Conan did not stride back; he ran to the slumped form of Zafra, and now all watched as the northish barbarian swung his borrowed sword on high. Zafra stared up at him.
'Ss-lay—' Zafra gasped, and Conan did.
He had to strike twice, and the second time the sword clanged and struck sparks off the floor. The head of the Wizard of Zamboula had not stopped its grisly spinning on the floor when Conan whirled and spoke.
'I suggest you burn this,' Conan said. 'One can never be too sure, with sorcerers.'
After another long moment, he spoke again. 'I dislike your city, and will leave it and will swear never to have heard of it. Well—what's wrong with all of you brave partisans of Zamboula? Three villains lie dead, and justly so, and Zamboula and all the world are far better off without them all three! Cannot any of you think to say… long live Jungir Khan!'
After a moment Isparana cried out the same words, and then someone in the corridor—it was the vizir, Hafar—and then others took up the shout, and soon it was a chorus that echoed throughout the city while Hafar and Isparana went to find the boy who had become Khan of Zamboula. Along the way they agreed; neither told him, ever, how a foreigner had made him king and satrap of Empire.
A big young man sat a horse to whose saddle were attached the leads of five laden pack animals. Men mounted on camels surrounded him, and all wore white kaffias and robes over red leggings, and all gazed down upon the woman who came to the horseman. 'What's on the pack horses, Conan?' The Cimmerian smiled and looked around at the animals. 'Hello, Ispa. Water to get me to Zamora or that what's-it-called oasis, I hope. And… a few trinkets I… picked up. I feared Jungir Khan might forget to reward me for my service to his father, in returning that amulet! We were promised rewards, you know.'
She flashed him a wan smile. Then, 'He is taking his father's death well. He assures Hafar and me that he will forgive the plotters, if they swear fealty. I fear we have convinced him that Balad was a sorcerer who had them in thrall… and none has mentioned a certain Cimmerian to him.'
'He and I have never seen each other. I hope we never do. I don't like his rotten city and its rotten plotting people and I'm sure I could not like any son of Akter Khan's, even with you and Hafar to guide him. As to his forgiving everyone and never taking sanctions… I'd believe that when I saw it,' Conan said, for he had aged a bit more, and had met more kings and would-be kings, and was a bit wiser. 'Best they saddled horses and rode and rode.' Rather self-consciously he tugged at the lead reins, and his sumpter beasts stirred. He watched the shifting of their packs, narrow-eyed. 'Hate to have those slip off. Hajimen and I are leaving, 'sparana. I may tarry a day or two with them. The Shanki are the best people I've met this year, and I have met too many. No one is minding the stables, you know. There are lots of fine animals in there. I am taking only six, and Hajimen insists that I'll have a camel or two forced on me. Shall we saddle another horse for you?'
'You really are leaving, then.'
'I am. I prefer a place like Shadizar, where a man knows how he stands: everyone is openly wicked and admits it, and so none plots or dissembles!'
She smiled, a shade wistfully. 'You are quite a man, Conan of Cimmeria.'
'You are quite a woman, 'sparana.'
They gazed at each other for a time, and she said, 'Hafar calls me Khan's Companion and the nobles have confirmed. I am first woman of Zamboula, Conan. Gods, how we need a general who owes naught to any faction! A big foreigner, perhaps.'
Conan compressed his lips, lifted his eyebrows, thought on it. And he shook his head. 'Not in Zamboula! Not me! Quite a woman indeed… how old are you anyway, 'sparana?'
'Six-and-twenty,' she said, so easily he was sure she spoke truth. 'How old are you, Conan, who can say no to being general and… more, to me?'
'Eighteen,' he said, promoting himself past his next birthday, and pulled his horse around. The Shanki sat waiting on camels delighted to stand still. The tails of the horses snapped constantly at flies. Conan looked around. 'Hajimen?'
'Ready,' the Shanki said.
Conan looked at Isparana. 'Coming?'
'Eighteen!'
'Well… almost.'
She shook her head. Pearls gleamed in her hair, and on her broad-strapped bandau of yellow silk. 'Almost eighteen,' she breathed. 'What a man you will be.'
Conan smiled, very tightly. 'You said 'are,' before, Isparana, and 'will be' that time. You are not coming, then. Farewell, Isparana. I'm glad you failed to kill me.'
'I am not so sure,' she said softly.
Conan laughed. 'And for what? An amulet to protect Akter Khan! Marvelous effective, wasn't it. Our bringing it here protected him right onto a bier! Save me from such amulets, all you gods.'
'Conan… do you think you will ever be returning to Zamboula?'
' 'sparana…' He turned to look back at Hajimen. 'Hear me, Haji. I vow by Cimmerian Crom and Zamboulan Erlik and Shanki Theba that never will I so much as admit I have been to Zamboula! It is a vow! I will deny having been here. I'll forget it, fast as I can. And that damned Eye of Erlik!'
'And me.' She looked small, the Khan's Companion, standing on the ground with Conan mounted on a horse from the khan's own stable.
'And you, Ispa. If ever I slip and do return to Zamboula, Isparana, nurse and Companion to Jungir Khan, you will be wrinkled and a mother several times over. Depend on it.' Blue eyes stared into brown for a long while, and he saw a glaze come over the brown, and he jerked as if awaking. 'Hajimen!' Conan called, and he twitched his horse's rein.
She stood and watched him ride away.
Conan the Magnificent
Robert Jordan
Prologue
Icy air hung deathly still among the crags of the Kezankian mountains, deep in the heart of that arm of those mountains which stretched south and west along the border between Zamora and Brythunia. No bird sang, and the cloudless azure sky was empty, for even the ever-present vultures could find no current on which to soar.
In that eerie quiesence a thousand fierce, turbanned Kezankian hillmen crowded steep brown slopes that formed a natural amphitheatre. They waited and merged with the silence of the mountains. No sheathed tulwar clattered against stone. No booted foot shifted with the impatience that was plain on lean, bearded faces. They hardly seemed to breathe.
Black eyes stared down unblinkingly at a space two hundred paces across, floored with great granite blocks and encircled by a waist-high wall as wide as a man was tall. Granite columns, thick and crudely hewn, lined the top of the wall like teeth in a sun-dried skull. In the centre of that circle three men, pale-skinned Brythunians, were bound to tall stakes of black iron, arms stretched above their heads, leather cords digging cruelly into their wrists. But they were not the object of the watcher’s attention. That was on the tall, scarlet-robed man with a forked beard who stood atop a tunnel of massive stone blocks that pierced the low wall and led back into the mountain behind him.
Basrakan Imalla, dark face thin and stern beneath a turban of red, green and gold, threw back his head and cried, 'All glory be to the true gods!'
A sigh of exaltation passed through the watchers, and their response rumbled against the mountainsides. 'All glory be to the true gods!'
Had Basrakan’s nature been different, he might have smiled in satisfaction. Hillmen did not gather in large numbers, for every clan warred against every other clan, and the tribes were riddled by blood feuds. But he had gathered these and more. Nearly ten times their number camped amid the jagged mountains around the amphitheatre, and scores of others joined them every day. With the power the true gods had given him, with the sign of their favour they had granted him, he had done what no other could. And he would do more! The ancient gods of the Kezankians had chosen him out.
'Men of the cities,' he made the word sound obscene, 'worship false gods! They know nothing of the true gods, the spirits of earth, of air, of water. And of fire!'
A wordless roar broke from a thousand throats, approbation for
Basrakan and hatred for the men of the cities melting together till even the men who shouted could not tell where one ended and the other began.
Basrakan’s black eyes burned with fervour. Hundreds of Imallas wandered the mountains, carrying the word of the ancient gods from clan to clan, kept safe from feud and battle by the word they carried. But it had been given to him to bring about the old gods’ triumph.
'The people of the cities are an iniquity in the sight of the true gods!' His voice rang like a deep bell, and he could feel his words resonate in the minds of his listeners. 'Kings and lords who murder true believers in the names of the foul demons they call gods! Fat merchants who pile up more gold in their vaults than any clan of the mountains possesses! Princesses who flaunt their half-naked bodies and offer themselves to men like trulls! Trulls who drench themselves in perfumes and bedeck themselves in gold like princesses! Men with less pride than animals, begging in the streets! The filth of their lives stains the world, but we will wash it away in their blood!'
The scream that answered him, shaking the grey granite beneath his feet, barely touched his thoughts. Deep into the warren of caverns beneath this very mountain he had gone, through stygian passages lit only by the torch he carried, seeking to be closer to the spirits of the earth when he offered them prayers. There the true gods led him to the subterranean pool where eyeless, albescent fish swam around the clutch of huge eggs, as hard as the finest armour, left there countless centuries past.
For years he had feared the true gods would turn their faces from him for his study of the thaumaturgical arts, but only those studies had enabled him to transport the slick black spheres back to his hut.
Without the knowledge from those studies he could never have succeeded in hatching one of the nine, could never have bound the creature that came from it to him, even as imperfectly as he had. If only he had the Eyes of Fire … no, when he had them all, bonds, so tenuous now, would become as iron.
'We will kill the unbelievers and the defilers!' Basrakan intoned as the tumult faded. 'We will tear down their cities and sow the ground whereon they stood with salt! Their women, who are vessels of lust, shall be scourged of their vileness! No trace of their blood shall remain! Not even a memory!' The hook-nosed Imalla threw his arms wide.
'The sign of the true gods is with us!'
In a loud, clear voice he began to chant, each word echoing sharply from the mountains. The thousand watching warriors held their collective breath. He knew there were those listening who sought only gold looted from the cities rather than the purification of the world.
Now they would learn to believe.
The last syllable of the incantation rang in the air like struck crystal. Basrakan ran his eyes over the Brythunian captives, survivors of a party of hunters who had entered the mountains from the west. One was no more than sixteen, his grey eyes twisted with fear, but the Imalla did not see the Brythunians as human. They were not of the tribes. They were outsiders. They were the sacrifice.
Basrakan felt the coming, a slow vibration of the stone beneath his feet, before he heard the rough scraping of claws longer than a man’s hand.
'The sign of the true gods is with us!' he shouted again, and the creature’s great head emerged from the tunnel.
A thousand throats answered the Imalla as the rest of the thick, tubular body came into view, more than fifteen paces in length and supported on four wide-set, massive legs. 'The sign of the true gods is with us!' Awe and fear warred in that thunderous roar.
Blackened plates lined its short muzzle, overlapped by thick, irregular teeth designed for ripping flesh. The rest of that monstrous head and body were covered by scales of green and gold and scarlet, glittering in the pale sun, harder than the finest armour the hand of man could produce. On its back those scales had of late been displaced by two long, leathery boils. Drake, the ancient tomes called it, and if those volumes were correct about the hard, dull bulges, the sign of the true gods’ favour would soon be complete.
The creature turned its head to stare with paralysing intensity directly at Basrakan. The Imalla remained outwardly calm, but a core of ice formed in his stomach, and that coldness spread, freezing his breath and the words in his throat. That golden-eyed gaze always seemed to him filled with hatred. It could not be hatred of him, of course. He was blessed by the true gods. Yet the malevolence was there. Perhaps it was the contempt of a creature of the true gods for mere mortal men. In any case, the wards he had set between the crudely hewn granite columns would keep the drake within the circle, and the tunnel exited only there. Or did it? Though he had often descended into the caverns beneath the mountain-at least, in the days before he found the black drake eggs-he had not explored the tenth part of them. There could be a score of exits from that tangle of passages he had never found.
Those awesome eyes turned away, and Basrakan found himself drawing a deep breath. He was pleased to note there was no shudder in it. The favour of the old gods was truly with him.
With a speed that seemed too great for its bulk, the glittering creature moved to within ten paces of the bound men. Suddenly the great, scaled head went back, and from its gaping maw came a shrill ululation that froze men’s marrow and turned their bones to water. Awed silence fell among the watchers, but one of the prisoners screamed, a high, thin sound with the reek of madness in it. The boy fought his cords silently; blood began to trickle down his arms.
The fiery-eyed Imalla brought his hands forward, palms up, as if offering the drake to the assemblage. 'From the depths of the earth it comes!' he cried. 'The spirits of earth are with us!'
Mouth still open, the drake’s head lowered until those chill golden eyes regarded the captives. From those gaping jaws a gout of rubescent flame swept across the captives.
'Fire is its breath!' Basrakan shouted. 'The spirits of fire are with us!'
Two of the prisoners were sagging torches, tunic and hair aflame. The youth, wracked with the pain of his burns, shrieked, 'Mitra help me!
Eldran, I-'
The iridescent creature took two quick paces forward, and a shorter burst of fire silenced the boy. Darting forward, the drake ripped a burning body in half. The crunching of bones sounded loudly, and gobbets of charred flesh dropped to the stone.
'The true gods are with us!' Basrakan declaimed. 'On a day soon, the sign of the gods’ favour will fly! The spirits of air are with us!' The old tomes had to be right, he thought. Those leathery bulges would burst, and wings would grow. They would! 'On that day we will ride forth, invincible in the favour of the old gods, and purge the world with fire and steel! All praise be to the true gods!'
'All praise be to the true gods!' his followers answered.
'All glory to the true gods!'
'All glory to the true gods!'
'Death to the unbelievers!'
The roar was deafening. 'DEATH TO THE UNBELIEVERS!'
The thousand would stay to watch the feeding, for they were chosen by lot from the ever-growing number encamped in the surrounding mountains, and many had never seen it before. Basrakan had more important matters to tend to. The drake would return to its caverns of its own accord when the bodies were consumed. The Imalla started up a path, well worn now in the brown stone by many journeys, that led from the amphitheatre around the mountainside.
A man almost as tall as Basrakan and even leaner, his face burning with ascetic fanaticism above a plaited beard, met him and bowed deeply,
'The blessings of the true gods be on you, Basrakan Imalla,' the newcomer said. His turban of scarlet, green and gold marked him as Basrakan’s acolyte, though his robe was of plain black. 'The man Akkadan has come. I have had him taken to your dwelling.'
No glimmer of Basrakan’s excitement touched his stern face. The Eyes of Fire! He inclined his head slightly. 'The blessings of the true gods be on you, Jbeil Imalla. I will see him now.'
Jbeil bowed again; Basrakan went on, seemingly unhurried, but without even the inclination of his head this
time.
The path led around the slope of the mountain to the village of stone houses, a score in number, that had grown up where once stood the hut in which Basrakan had lived. His followers had spoken of building a fortress for him, but he had no need of such. In time, though, he had allowed the construction of a dwelling for himself, of two stories and larger than all the rest of the village placed together. It was not a matter of pride, he often reminded himself, for he denied all pride save that of the old gods. The structure was for their glory.
Turbanned and bearded men in stained leather vests and voluminous trousers, the original colour of which was a mystery lost in age and dirt, cowed as he passed, as did women covered from head to foot in black cloth, with only a slit for their eyes. He ignored them, as he did the two guards before his door, for he was openly hurrying now.
Within, another acolyte in multihued turban bent himself and gestured with a bony hand. 'The blessings of the true gods be on you, Basrakan Imalla. The man Akkadan-'
'Yes, Ruhallah.' Basrakan wasted not even moments on honorifics. 'Leave me!' Without waiting to be obeyed, the tall Imalla swept through the door Ruhallah had indicated, into a room sparsely furnished with black-lacquered tables and stools. A hanging on one wall was a woven map of the nations from the Vilayet Sea west to Nemedia and Ophir.
Basrakan’s face darkened at the sight of the man who waited there.
Turban and forked beard proclaimed him hillman, but his fingers bore jewelled rings, his cloak was of purple silk and there was a plumpness about him that bespoke feasting and wine.
'You have spent too much time among the men of the cities, Akkadan,'
Basrakan said grimly. 'No doubt you have partaken of their vices!
Consorted with their women!'
The plump man’s face paled beneath its swarthiness, and he quickly hid his beringed hands behind him as he bowed. 'No, Basrakan Imalla, I have not. I swear!' His words tumbled over each other in his haste. Sweat gleamed on his forehead. 'I am a true-'
The Conan Chronology Page 54