entire relieving force had been wiped out, not by honest combat but by some heinous heathen sorcery. Soon afterward, a messenger arrived from the northern marches, saying that one unnamed trooper had survived the battle and, practically singlehanded, had returned the city of Yaralet to my rule. That man, I now know, was Conan. Before long he had been transferred at his own insistence to the southern front."
The emperor shook his head in frank admiration, kindling faint responsive gleams in the eyes of the court women. "No surprise that, since men like Conan need an arena, a bold undertaking in which to unleash their talents." Sitting well forward in his chair, Yildiz patted the knees of several of his smiling listeners as he spoke―not including Irilya, who kept well out of his reach. "Of such human material, skillfully shaped and tempered, is a strong empire forged."
"Most impressive." Level-eyed, Irilya feigned the same credulity her companions showed. "With one such warrior, capable of defeating whole armies, you will hardly need more legions to conquer Venjipur! Doubtless his exploits there have been of equal magnitude?"
"Aye, they have," Yildiz nodded, unruffled. "Of late he led a force of hand picked raiders in storming a vital enemy outpost, a heathen temple.
In the fight he himself came near to slaying Mojurna, the witch-man who is prime instigator of the Venji rebellion." The emperor beamed into the wide eyes of his dark-haired listeners, his beringed hands busy patting and stroking where they could. "But that is not all; I am told that we received, just today, news of a further exploit, which General Abolhassan has joined us here to relate."
"With pleasure, Your Resplendency." The general, already edgy from his clashes with Irilya, watched Yildiz's physical communion with the other court wives in growing discomfiture. In his mind lingered a germ of doubt whether this casual patting and handholding might not at any moment blossom into the shameful kind of scene Yildiz was fond of subjecting him to in the imperial bedchamber. With an effort, he forced his thoughts to the business at hand.
"We have just received word of a successful action by a territorial elephant brigade, backed by massed cavalry and Imperial regulars. Our force overran an enemy camp, destroying approximately ten thousand rebels and routing the survivors, with negligible losses to our own side.
The officer Conan spearheaded the attack―and himself suffered a grave
wound from which his recovery is unlikely." Abolhassan shook his head soberly. "In all, the battle represents a signal victory for Turan."
"Truly, General!" Irilya said archly. "I am amazed that any rebels are left, since their army, by your accounts, was always so small and scattered."
"Indeed, milady," Abolhassan assured her with a venomous smile. "We have anticipated and blunted their main stroke against us. The end of the campaign cannot be far off now."
"Wonderful news, surely." Yildiz sat with brow knit beneath his jeweled turban, his hands for once idle at the sides of his chair. "Yet I worry about my officer Conan; he is the best man to come out of the frontier marches in years, possibly ever. Can you send a swift message southward to guarantee him the best of care?"
"Certainly, Your Resplendency." After listening thoughtfully to his seated ruler, the general nodded his smiling assent. "Assuming that he still lives, I will direct that he receive very special treatment."
"Excellent!" Yildiz clapped his hands on his silk-wrapped thighs. "Now, ladies, if there are no further points to be discussed, I suggest that we end our interview. This latest news from the front is so significant, I intend to take the dispatch into the map-room and study the details." Leaning forward in his chair, he patted several rounded knees in farewell. "Be assured that your proposals have been heard and that your emperor will use every suitable means to address them. I look forward to having another meeting with you soon… perhaps a more convivial gathering in my chambers, with a small feast set forth? When it is arranged, I will summon you. It has been a great pleasure."
Arising with the emperor, Irilya stepped forward to grip his hand firmly in both of hers. "Resplendency, the concerns I voiced will not cease of themselves. I warn you to weigh my words carefully against the counsel of others in your court." Her glance at Abolhassan was expressive, but Yildiz's attention was already diverted by the other wives' more simpering farewells.
"Thank you all, ladies! We are pleased to have this opportunity to elucidate our imperial aims. Tarim bless and provide you!"
The door-guards moved near to assist Yildiz in shooing away the covey of silk-decked, spangled women. Meanwhile Abolhassan bowed deeply to the emperor, holding forth his rolled copy of the Venji dispatch. "Here it is, Resplendency. Most inspired, the way you handled those biddies"―he glanced aside to be sure that they were gone―"but I would beware that insolent, pale-haired one. Remember my past warnings on that score, sire; you may yet have need for the strap and the knife to gain compliance with your wishes." He bowed perfunctorily once more, backing away. "I shall be eager to discuss these matters with you further, Lord, after a nagging afternoon engagement of which my secretary only lately informed me.
Thank you, Resplendency. Good day!"
Leaving Yildiz to devour the preposterous Venji dispatch, Abolhassan made his way quickly through back corridors to yet another quarter of the vast palace, the eunuchs' apartments. Here, the general was soon sickened by the scents of patchouli and sandalwood hanging heavy in the air. Yet he steeled his eagle-hooked nostrils, dismissing the odors as just another pathetic overindulgence by those who had treacherously been denied life's greatest overindulgence.
Even the gilded door which he sought out was ornate to the point of offense. Yet it did not repel him so much as what lay beyond.
"Greetings, General. You are late." The eunuch Dashibt Bey squatted on a tasseled cushion behind a low, lacquered table strewn with remnants of his midafternoon meal. The obese figure squatted at the center of a vast carpet, whose patterns blazed arabesque in the yellow lamplight, effectively concealing any food morsels and wine-stains scattered by the feast. "I would have bidden you partake also―but now, it appears, there is nothing left!" He surveyed the desolation of smeared platters, gnawed bones, nutshells, and gouged crusts. "Unless, of course you want some fruit," he added with a belch, pushing his omnipresent gilded basket to the center of the table with one stubby hand.
"No, Dashibt Bey. I come straight from Yildiz, and I must presently return to him." Abolhassan shut the door tightly behind him. "Frankly, I do not cherish this meeting; I thought we agreed to avoid such needless risks. What business can be so pressing as to require my presence here?"
"Why, General, are not high treason and royal usurpation pressing matters? The bedazzlement of an emperor and the theft of an empire?"
Dashibt Bey laughed deeply, his fingers fumbling among table crumbs.
"Nay, General, do not gape so fearfully! There are no windows here, no spyholes or lip-readers in my private dining-chamber. We are alone and safe from prying eyes and ears. We may speak frankly, without the need to deceive Yildiz, or, more subtly, our fellow conspirators." His smile was evil, his beady eyes glinting from the gleaming expanse of his face. "There are some matters which need to be discussed openly, between equals."
"Equals." Abolhassan took a long moment to swallow the word, his face imperfectly concealing the effort. "Of course we are equals, Dashibt Bey!
Equal partners, sharing equal risks. Though I daresay, should our conspiracy fail, you will be cut up into more and larger pieces than I!"
"You reassure me, General! You jest!" The eunuch laughed. "You lie!"
His eyes did not leave Abolhassan's face. "But you lie cleverly, as skillfully as anyone like myself could wish, whose ambitions also hinge on your powers of deceit." Dashibt Bey shook his head broadly, ignoring his guest's scowl of insult.
"But do not think for one moment, General, that I am deceived! Do not imagine that I, like the others, heed your talk of ruling councils and shared powers. You will predominate; you are a natural leader of
the common herd and, more significantly, of their herders, the cavalry." Dashibt Bey nodded approvingly. "Your personal ascendancy will be the last fact many fools learn in their shortened lives. The seizure of the throne will be only the start of the bloodbath." Complacency shone from his round, oily features.
"But as you are pruning the top of the slender, lofty tree of state, lopping off limbs and heads"―here the eunuch fumbled in a jade bowl, mopping up the last smear of pink sauce with a shred of crust―"do not think to dissever me! My position is too strong to allow it, and my function too vital, whether you appreciate it or not." He popped the smeared crust into his mouth, chewing in undisguised satisfaction.
"Very well, Dashibt Bey." The general hovered before the table, gazing down on the eunuch with only the faintest flare of his nostrils hinting his distaste. "I shall ignore your insults, for the time. Of course I need you, conciliating and expediting, keeping the court functioning smoothly. With you to ease the transfer of power, we can proceed quickly from this simple rebellion to greater military triumphs―"
"That is what I mean, General," Dashibt Bey interrupted. "If you think
that Turan is a military state, to be led by a general into war against Hyborian nations, you err sadly. As a militarist, you ignore our predominance in commerce, diplomacy, politics―in graft, as well." The eunuch shook his head patiently on its thick padding of neck. "Why, real war would deprive our country of its best advantages! Rather, Turan's greatness requires that you act as figurehead only. Oppress the realm, by all means! Defend it, and chip away at its borders. But defer to me in all important things, especially international ones." He scowled. "And let there be no more whispers in the city garrison of a red night of slaughtering eunuchs."
The administrator, showing no reaction to the officer's surprise, continued. "Yes, I know of that scheme, General. Its instigators, by the way, have already received their transfer orders and taken ship for the Hyrkanian wilds. My eunuchs, my children―nay, do not laugh, General―my eunuch-children tell me of all that transpires in Aghrapur.
We are the real power in Turan. Thus it has always been under Yildiz, and thus it shall continue. Be thankful that I have warned you; another time might have been… too late."
The immense man turned his head a little aside, yawning. "But you see, it is not so bad. Every king must compromise. I offer you sole rulership, after all, with as much sway as Yildiz, and considerably more. No ruler ever realizes the full, overweening scope of his dreams… luckily for the world and its inhabitants."
Abolhassan moved back and forth before the table, shuffling listlessly as he digested what he had heard. A long silence ensued. When he turned back to Dashibt Bey, a gray deadness was in his face. "What, then, of the arms caravan Yildiz ordered for Venjipur? Has it been processed?"
The eunuch nodded. "Half of it dispatched southward by river, the other half laid aside in warehouses south of the docks. It will be ready at our day of need." He glanced up at his guest. "General Abolhassan, you must not take this so hard. I know it is trying for you. Here, have a piece of fruit." He reached out and nudged the heaped basket forward again.
"Thank you, I will." Abolhassan bent over the choice globes and ovals, taking some time to select one for size and firmness. He chose a ripe mango, its leathery skin shading from green through yellow into blazing scarlet, like a tropical sunset. Wordless, then, he strode up onto the table and across it, kicking dishes aside roughly with his cavalry boots.
Dropping on both knees onto Dashibt Bey's broad chest, he crammed the oval fruit into his interviewer's startled, wide-open mouth. With one hand clutching the back of the eunuch's neck, he forced the slimy, rupturing fruit down between the man's distended jaws until its wide, sharp stone lodged in the capacious throat. There he held it with an iron grip.
"Aagahh―ahk!" Dashibt Bey made faint utterances as his scrabbling fingers shifted ineffectually from his dagger-bearing cummerbund to Abolhassan's clenched arm, thence to his own fast-purpling throat. A series of upheavals began as his massive legs kicked at the table, flipping it upward in the air, and then scuffed at the tiled floor. His convulsions propelled him lurching backward off his silken cushion, his huge body spasming amid the shattered debris of the meal. The general inched forward along with him, his powerful arms clenched in a vengeful grip, maintaining his hold until he was sure the fruit would not be expelled.
Then he shrugged free, stepping back from his victim's final convulsions just in time to hear a latch rattle and see the gilded door swing inward.
It was Euranthus, Dashibt Bey's eager second administrator. The sleek youth came running around the inverted table to kneel at his master's side. "I heard the dreadful crashing―General, what happened?"
"The poor man choked to death on a fruit-pit," Abolhassan said, his hand drifting to the dagger concealed in his own sash. "Now you will have to take his place at court, I fear, and in his numerous other profitable pursuits." Abolhassan knew that Euranthus was privy to the conspiracy; how much the eunuch might have heard outside the door, he could only guess.
"Yes, it is so!" Though Dashibt Bey's outflung limbs still clutched and shivered futilely, his junior stared down at his clogged, blue-black face as if he were already dead, not daring or deigning to offer help. "What a tragedy… an untimely accident!" Damp-faced and trembling with warring feelings, Euranthus grimaced up at Abolhassan. "Lucky that I am here to carry on his work!"
"'Tis by Tarim's grace that you are fit for the task, Euranthus! Pray, do not worry, I will assist and direct you in it." Abolhassan let his hand slip away from his dagger-hilt. "Perhaps, after all, this was inevitable; the fellow's greedy appetites were too large for his own good."
"Carefully, Azhar! Balance the mirror on edge to follow the motion of
the sun smoothly." Ibn Uluthan looked up from his sorcerous preparations, scowling across a low table set before the tall, black-covered window in the south wall of the Court of Seers.
"I pray that I can support its weight, Master!" The thin young man wrestled heroically with the oblong mirror, whose height overtopped his own. "The frame is massive, Sire, and lapped with heavy gold."
"Indeed! When we asked for the emperor's largest mirror, his eunuchs served us lavishly." The chief mage nodded over his worktable in satisfaction. "It proves that we still have His Resplendency's favor in some matters, at least!" Looking up again, he exhorted his acolyte, "Fear not, Azhar! I know you can manage this simple task. You merely need to reflect the solar rays straight into the window at the proper time… in just a few moments now, when that patch of sun enters the court's centermost circle."
The turbaned wizard pointed near his acolyte's feet, amid the broad tile outline of a white pentagram enclosed in a black pentagon, girdled in turn by a white circle. "I am sure that my measurements were correct." For the hundredth time he squinted up at the curvature of the dome, where workers had widened one of the star-viewing slits, crudely, by means of crowbars. Sunlight, in volumes unprecedented in these arcane precincts, now poured down in a broad, dusty beam to the polished floor. "It should require only a few moments of celestial radiance to achieve our ends."
Azhar rested the mirror on its flat bottom-edge. "Again, Sire, what exactly are we going to achieve by this irradiation?"
Ibn Uluthan smiled sallowly from beneath the gray circles of his eyes.
"Why, Azhar, I shall overwhelm our enemy and destroy Mojourna's devilish emblem, thus clearing our path of power to far-off Venjipur. His skullface may melt away to mist, or it may explode into a million brittle shards!" With one hand he patted the folds of heavy black curtain covering the mystic window. "After all, we have the greater strength here in Turan; our prayers and talismans are vastly enriched by the fullness of our faith and the godly might of our land."
Bending to his worktable, he took up the object he had been ritually preparing. "Here is our most potent holy symbol, the sacred Hawk of Tarim." He turned the heavy golden statuette so that its outspread wi
ngs flared wide as a man's shoulders, its tawny head craning sidewise in
heroic profile. "The writhing snake clasped in its beak represents the foul Cult of Set, so the priests say; but its power should serve just as well against rude jungle witchery." The mage glanced behind him, to where the bird's dim shadow struck the curtain. "When this noble silhouette is cast through the window by the full, pure light of northern day, it will be more than enough to vanquish our enemy's foul token.
"Mojurna's skull-symbol is tenuous and tenebrous, remember: a mere concentrated illusion. Have no doubt, our enemy is poised as intently on this contest as we are, this test of sorcerous will―but over a much shorter range, since he is far, far weaker. He is pressed already to the limit of his feeble endurance, and this will overwhelm him." Ibn Uluthan shook his head in weary triumph. "Mere hours ago I conceived of this means of projection, and already we are poised to put it into effect. Using the strength of Tarim's blessed sun, we shall superimpose our magical pattern over Mojurna's weaker one, even as mighty Turan imposes its national will on puny Venjipur!"
Braced against his heavy mirror, Azhar nodded dutifully. " 'Twill be a noteworthy thing, Master, to see our wizardry foe defeated with mirrors!"
Ibn Uluthan smiled. "Aye, such was ever the magician's way. But look lively, lad, the sun pierces the inner circle!"
Squinting into the dusty light for long, patient minutes, the two watched the jagged patch of radiance slowly light up one corner of the pentagram with its brilliance. As its main part bypassed the gleaming white tiles of the circle, Azhar began inching his mirror into the light. The intense, reflected beam flashed crazily at first over the walls and pillars of the domed court, brightening them with stark, fleeting daylight. Finally it settled on the curtain, wavering full-length in the arched outline of the mirror, making the black fabric blaze white in contrast with the chamber's interior gloom.
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