Conan's impulse to dash after the fleeing wizard was hampered by the grip of his liberated captive at his arm. Rather than drag an unclothed, unarmed female back into danger, he stopped to pry himself loose from her.
"By Astoreth's sacred dugs, woman," he roared at last, "let me go slay your tormentors!"
As he shook her off, he was unable to tell from her blank stare whether she clung to him out of fear for herself, or for him, or to protect the wizard. Regardless, he broke free and lunged after Juma and a pair of less eager Turanian troopers, who dogged the Mojurna's flame-speckled track.
Their pursuit was short. As they closed with the ancient shaman, he scuttled between a grimy altar and a hulking statue of a lion-headed warrior, into a deep crevice at the back of the gallery. Juma bent nearly double to follow him into the cranny, then darted suddenly backward as a heavy, dusty scraping sounded overhead. An instant later a massive slab thudded down in the entryway, striking sulfurous sparks from the lintel where it came to rest.
A few moments' inspection showed that the trick door, whether mechanical or magical in its workings, had effectively sealed off the escape passage.
"By Otumbe and Ijo!" Juma swore fiercely, kicking the patterned face of the slab with his sandaled heel and probing at it with his sword. "The old one has escaped! 'Twas Mojurna, the rebel chieftain we sought, Conan, I am sure of it!" Squinting at the impenetrable stone in the dim, fading firelight, he shrugged and turned back to the watching soldiers. "Come on, perhaps we can pick up his trail in the forest."
"Aye." Conan turned away with him. "In any case, we should not tarry
here. If the wizard can make stones fall, he may try to seal us up in this chamber."
He detoured back to his female prize, who stood watching where he had left her. Taking her by the wrist, he led her toward the entry. Still unclothed, she walked without apparent shame before the Turanian troopers. The men left off kindling torches, binding the Hwong captives, and aiding the burned troopers, turning to stare and mutter covetous remarks. Even the moaning wounded fell silent at her approach. But to the looks and gruff comments she gave no apparent heed.
Passing near the dying fire, Conan. halted with his ward to gaze at the remains of the man he had knocked into it. Considering the small size of the blaze and the short time which had elapsed, the body had been consumed with uncanny totality. Only a few tarnished metal trappings and stubs of bone remained, outlining the man's shape in a sooty, sprawling X superimposed across the still-winking ashes.
"Dangerous sorcery, by Crom!" Conan muttered as he passed the incinerated remains.
"No, not by Crom, but by our ancient goddess Sigtona," the woman declared at his side in smooth, liltingly accented Turanian. "Such is the Shining One's power." She shook her stately head, averting her eyes from the smoking remains. "I am glad it was not I who fed the goddess."
Chapter 2
Mqjurna's Sign
"Make way! I go on the emperor's business!"
Hiking his caftan up around his knees to keep it from flapping unbecomingly, Azhar the acolyte hurried along the tiled corridor. He shoved through a company of shaven-headed, bare-chested eunuchs and silk-wrapped female slaves bearing linens and water-jugs. These yielded scant way to him, forcing him to brush against their sleek, oiled bodies as he scurried past. Behind his back they flashed ribald, ironic grins at this self-important young man, not truly of a high caste. He was, after all, the slave of mere wizards, not of a mighty king.
Azhar, meanwhile, rounded the corner at the end of the passage. He
emerged onto a long, roofed balcony patterned by bright daylight beaming through the filigreed stone railings. He maintained his brisk pace, sandals slapping the intricate mosaic tile. On his left, framed by the slender, graceful pillars supporting the balcony's vaulted canopy, spread Aghrapur, capital city of Turan. Golden under noon sun, the jumble of tiled roofs and glittering domes stretched away out of sight, the view fading swiftly into a smoky, coppery haze born of ten thousand kilns, cookfires, and forges.
If not for the smothering haze, Azhar knew, the balcony would have commanded an even more breathless view of distant plains and mountains. Yet piously he reminded himself that the lord of the palace, the resplendent Emperor Yildiz of Turan, held sway over more of the earth than could possibly be glimpsed from the tallest mountaintop, even on the clearest day.
At length the porch rejoined the domed mass of the central palace.
Azhar reentered cool, scented shadow, turning down a curving corridor in the direction of the emperor's apartments. Finally, before a pair of gold-inlaid doors he halted, panting. Two red-cloaked Imperial Guards barred his way, their double-bladed axes meeting at the level of his chest.
"Let me pass!" he gasped to them. "I bring word to His Resplendency from the Court of Seers. I am to tell Emperor Yildiz―"
"Enough!" The ranking guard's craggy, battle-scarred face was too stern to betray even contempt. "Go below to the common chamber and petition the eunuch, Dashibt Bey. If your business is of any merit, he can arrange an audience."
"But sir… I mean, Guardian! Ibn Uluthan, the chief mage, told me…"
Breathless and confused, the acolyte faltered. Struck then by a sudden recollection, he reached to the neck of his caftan and fished anxiously inside it. The guard waited motionless before him, showing no fear of any weapon the scrawny lad might produce.
What he brought forth from his richly embroidered garment was a heavy signet ring, a glinting golden lump on a loop of silken cord. He pinched it waveringly in the air for the guard to inspect.
"The horned conch… symbol of the Khitan Seers." The guard-commander looked coolly from Azhar to his younger comrade, who
nodded understandingly. The Guild had entry where others were denied, even into the imperial presence.
Without further words, the officer retracted his ax. Hooking its weighty head on a catch at his belt, he turned to unlatch the ornate door. When one of the portals swung slightly ajar, he passed through, with Azhar treading cautiously at his heels. The second guard secured the door behind them.
Azhar, following the heavy footsteps of the armored warrior, scarcely dared crane his neck to marvel at the sumptuousness of the royal apartments about him. A dazzling rainbow of rugs and cushions littered the black and white tiled floor, their lush softness strewn between massive columns of varicolored marble and heavy tables of gold and onyx. Here and there amidst the lavish appointments, immaculately groomed servants waited still and silent as human furniture, with none of the insolence of the lesser palace slaves. And this, Azhar told himself with a thrill of awe, was only the Great One's vestibule.
His escort halted to exchange muttered words with a bearded slave whose splendid turban betold high rank. Then he led the way through one of several nobly arched doorways into a high-ceilinged room. It resembled a ballroom, except for its floor; this fell away toward the center in broad, shallow stairsteps resembling those of an arena.
Around the upper edge of the depression, adorned in lavish silks, lounged eunuchs and courtiers of the highest rank. At the far side of the room, the Resplendent One himself sat on a padded couch, fanned by two kneeling servants. And yet at first, Azhar found himself unable to lavish his eyes on the divine sight, so peculiar was the nature of the entertainment underway in the shallow pit.
There crouched two women, young and athletic-looking, facing each other in bizarre combat. One was armed with twin pairs of broad-tipped pincers, the other with blunt horn-hooks grasped in either hand. Though barefoot, both women wore blouses and pantaloons of thin, gossamer-like fabric, flimsy at best and now badly rent and ribboned by their exertions.
Each, it appeared, was trying to strip the clothing away from her opponent.
As the acolyte watched wide-eyed, the raven-haired girl lashed out with her tongs, snatching away a streamer of fabric to lay bare a shapely
expanse of her red-headed rival's thigh. But the Circassian was quick to retaliate,
hooking the neck of the other's blouse and shredding it down the front, so that half its cloth streamed in tatters from the wearer's supple shoulder. At this triumph, a patter of faint, polite applause passed around the circle of watchers.
Abruptly the combat halted. Azhar, following the obedient gaze of watchers and contestants alike, looked to the emperor, who had snapped his fingers sharply at his elite guard's approach. The two women, bobbing their heads obediently, jogged and jiggled to the side of the arena where they sat together on the bottom step.
Emperor Yildiz the Resplendent, whom the acolyte had never been privileged to view so closely, was a small, chubby, olive-skinned man.
Azhar, as the guard led him forward, searched in vain for some sign of imperial distinction: certainly his silken robe and pointed-toed slippers were of the rarest quality, his nails and his fringe of hair well-trimmed.
But his olive-skinned face, and indeed his whole bearing, had a tame look about them, an air of intense ordinariness quite at odds with the grandeur Azhar had expected.
"Well, messenger?" The emperor turned his small, dark, bored eyes from the kneeling guard to the stricken-faced acolyte. "What news does the Court of Seers offer me now? Sorcerous warning of some new disaster in the southern campaign? Or just another incomprehensible wrinkle of my astrological destiny?" Yildiz examined Azhar's expressionless face with the faintest hint of annoyance.
"Oh, Resplendent One!" Lightheaded with awe and penitence for his first, blasphemous thoughts, and smitten by the great ruler's mild voice like a reed before a mighty gale, Azhar found himself collapsing to the floor to grovel on knees and elbows before the emperor's padded couch.
"Great Lord, forgive this interruption!" His fingers scrabbled numbly on the patterned tile, venturing almost to touch the upcurled toes of the ruby-crusted imperial slippers. "My arcane masters bade me bring word of this morning's event… but I scarcely dare trouble you, Sire…" His voice quivered to silence, a last tremor of dread animating his hunched shoulders.
"Yes, yes, I know. And what is the news? You may rise." Yildiz gestured impatiently to the attending guard. "Help him up, will you?"
"Oh, Your Resplendency!" Struggling with his own unruly limbs and feeble voice, Azhar felt himself hauled upright by a strong hand at the scruff of his neck. "My master Ibn Uluthan is in audience with Your Splendor's military liason before the Crystal Window." He choked out the words through the constricted collar of his caftan, still not daring to meet the Great One's eyes. "Emperor, they told me to ask… they beg your divine presence, O Lord of all Turan!"
"Is that so?" Yildiz arose energetically to his feet. "Then they may be making some progress at last, Tarim willing! If they are, I shall be happy to see it." A golden-haired male servant came forward from the wall to place a massive, bejeweled turban on the emperor's head, which added considerably to his height and grandeur. Then he flicked a finger at Azhar and the guard officer. "Come, boy, we shall take the inner way. Meanwhile, let the combat continue for the edification of my guests."
As the warrior-girls arose to face one another again, Yildiz led Azhar forth from the room. A diminishing series of archways and double-guarded doors brought the three at last into a long, angling hallway. Windowless it was, lit by oil lamps suspended from the ceiling at the junctions of cross-corridors. Azhar knew of this nominally secret inner passage reserved for the emperor's private use, but he had not guessed its extent. It seemed to run the whole length of the vast palace, with stairways and branchings penetrating to the building's remotest wings.
Taking down a lamp from a hook to light their way, the guard led them up a long spiral stairway to a brassbound door. Here Yildiz produced from his silken garments a many-pronged key, which he plied in a concealed aperture. With a faint click, the door swung open on the broad atrium of the Court of Seers.
The high, domed chamber echoed with the shadowy, musty silence elder sages require for their meditations. The octagonal room's corners, lined with shelves of dusty fetishes and scrolls, cowered well back from the light; but its center was bright with dusty sunrays streaming down through glazed slits in the vaulted dome, within which a wooden mezzanine had been installed for stargazing.
The floor level of the room contained several arched entrances, but only one window. Before this stood two men, a senior seer and a military officer, who turned solicitously toward the open door. As Yildiz walked forward, flanked by the bashful Azhar, the high-ranking men offered deep,
lingering bows.
"O Gracious One, welcome!" The speaker, Ibn Uluthan, was a tall man wearing the dark burnoose of a court sage, with the hood thrown back from his gray-tousled head. "We requested your presence, my Lord, because of great matters in the offing. Now Your Excellency can see our spells at work."
"Indeed, O Emperor; Uluthan and his fellow magicians have not misled us this time, it would seem." The black-clad officer, General Abolhassan, nodded a grudging smile at the wizard, his strong yellow teeth gleaming in a hawk-nosed, dark-mustached face. "It appears that we finally have intelligence from the southern campaign." Military cordons and insignia winked from the black mound of his turban as he wheeled toward the bright window.
The object of his attention stood out strikingly, since its light was a blue-green glare, strangely out of keeping with the pale golden rays pouring from the window slits overhead. Outlined by its eerie radiance, the newcomers moved closer with an air of fascination. The prospect it looked out on they found even more surprising: not the hazy cityscape Azhar had recently witnessed from the terrace, but a jungle profusion of trees and brush simmering beneath a hazy tropic sky, with mounds and spires of ancient, crumbling architecture looming in its midst, and human figures fleeing in its depths.
However vast the imperial palace, it was clearly impossible for such an immensity to be enclosed within its walls. Even the stoic guardsman, swallowing a silent oath, knew that he was witnessing formidable sorcery.
The window itself was nothing more than a sturdy black-tiled ceramic casement set in a south-facing wall, and glazed over with marvelously smooth crystal. Yet its view opened, not on some lavish indoor garden, but on an alien place far removed from this teeming northern city.
"Fascinating, indeed! Good work, Ibn Uluthan." The emperor, moving closer to the casement, nodded at the smiling wizard. "I have but glimpsed the power of your spell before; never was it so satisfactory as this!" He pointed down to the human figures visible in the jungle depths. "The trackless jungles of Venjipur! And those, I take it, are our expeditionary troops carrying out a military operation?"
The beaming sorcerer nodded. "Yes, Your Resplendency. To achieve
this effect, we simply intensified the projections of astral force we have been making for months now. As you know, we were plagued with false images caused by the enemy's mystic emanations. But this morning, for reasons that are not entirely clear to us, the Venji spell began to weaken.
By following its emanations back to their fading source, we were able to pinpoint this activity."
"You don't know why the resistance stopped?"
"No, Emperor; we hope it means the death of the arch-wizard Mojurna.
Without his powers, the Venji rebels can never again resist our sorceries."
As Ibn Uluthan spoke, the view from the window swept breathtakingly forward and down, making the watchers reel and clutch at the sill for support. The light wavered and dimmed, tree-fronds melting into the casement as it magically pushed through the forest. But the sense of motion was only an illusion; from Ibn Uluthan's subtle motions, it became clear that the sorcerer was varying the angle and direction of the window's view by swirling his fingers in a small bowl of black oil on a podium before him.
General Abolhassan moved close beside Yildiz, pointing down at the moving figures who were now nearer and clearer in the prospect. "Those men are Turanians, one of our elite jungle patrols. A fortnight ago I sent orders southward designating Mojurna as a target of priority; these troopers may
just now have slain the old scoundrel and cleared the way for us. If this kind of contact with the Venjipur front can be maintained, as Ibn Uluthan says it can, it will relieve our command problems, quicken our responses, make possible an almost limitless expansion of our empire…"
"Indeed, I could direct such a war myself, with little need for your intercession, General!" Sparing but a brief glance for Abolhassan, Yildiz gazed down intently on the supernatural vista before him―which, under the wizard's deft manipulation, was following the Turanian band swiftly through jungle depths. Nearest to their aerial vantage loped the last trooper, a large, tigerish man who seemed to be purposefully lagging behind the rest, scanning the jungle for signs of pursuit.
"That giant is a northern barbarian, is he not?" Yildiz asked of no one in particular. "A Vanir, by his looks. They make such splendid figures in uniform; I wish I could recruit more of them!"
The lurking man's expectations of pursuit were soon rewarded: out of the leafy shadows flitted three dim shapes, near-naked warriors racing to encircle him. The lone trooper's blade flicked once, twice in the dimness, causing half-seen thrashings on the jungle floor; then the yataghan swept in a glinting circle, sending the third and last of the pursuers sprawling back across the writhing bodies of the other two. Scarcely pausing, the lone skirmisher turned to follow his band.
"There, you can see," Abolhassan proclaimed to the others, "these Hwong rebels are poor fighters. Our imperial troops vanquish them easily, with or without sorcerous aid! Spells like this are diverting, true―but even this window is of little use, lacking a swift means to communicate with the battlefront." He glanced at the wizard, whose eyes gleamed green in sorcerous daylight as he guided the moving window through the forest.
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