Conan The Magnificent.

By 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 amphitheater. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 center 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 ma.s.sive 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 G.o.ds!"

A sigh of exaltation pa.s.sed through the watchers, and their response rumbled against the mountainsides. "All glory be to the true G.o.ds!"

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 amphitheater, and scores of others joined them every day. With the power the true G.o.ds had given him, with the sign of their favor they had granted him, he had done what no other could. And he would do more! The ancient G.o.ds of the Kezankians had chosen him out.

"Men of the cities," he made the word sound obscene, "worship false G.o.ds! They know nothing of the true G.o.ds, 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 fervor. Hundreds of Imallas wandered the mountains, carrying the word of the ancient G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds' triumph.

"The people of the cities are an iniquity in the sight of the true G.o.ds!" 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 G.o.ds! 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 gray granite beneath his feet, barely touched his thoughts. Deep into the warren of caverns beneath this verymountain he had gone, through stygian pa.s.sages 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 G.o.ds led him to the subterranean pool where eyeless, albescent fish swam around the clutch of huge eggs, as hard as the finest armor, left there countless centuries past.

For years he had feared the true G.o.ds 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 l.u.s.t, 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 G.o.ds 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 gray 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 sc.r.a.ping of claws longer than a man's hand.

"The sign of the true G.o.ds 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, ma.s.sive legs. "The sign of the true G.o.ds 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 armor 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 G.o.ds' favor would soon be complete.

The creature turned its head to stare with paralyzing 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 G.o.ds. Yet the malevolence was there. Perhaps it was the contempt of a creature of the true G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sages 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 favor of the old G.o.ds 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'smarrow 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 a.s.semblage. "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 G.o.ds are with us!" Basrakan declaimed. "On a day soon, the sign of the G.o.ds' favor 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 favor of the old G.o.ds, and purge the world with fire and steel! All praise be to the true G.o.ds!"

'''All praise be to the true G.o.ds!" his followers answered.

"All glory to the true G.o.ds!"

"All glory to the true G.o.ds!"

"Death to the unbelievers!"

The roar was deafening. "DEATH TO THE UNBELIEVERSl"

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 amphitheater 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds. The structure was for their glory.

Turbanned and bearded men in stained leather vests and voluminous trousers, the original color of which was a mystery lost in age and dirt, bowed as he pa.s.sed, 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 multi-hued turban bent himself and gestured with a bony hand. "The blessings of the true G.o.ds 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 spa.r.s.ely 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 jeweled 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 s worthiness, 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-"

"Enough!" Basrakan spat. "You had best have what I sent you for, Akkadan. I commanded you not to return without the information."

"I have it, Basrakan Imalla. I have found them. And I have made plans of the palace and maps-"

Basrakan's shout cut him short. "Truly I am favored above all other men by the true G.o.ds!"

Turning his back on Akkadan, he strode to the wall hanging, clenched fists raised in triumph toward the nations represented there. Soon the Eyes of Fire would be his, and the drake would be bound to him as if part of his flesh and will. And with the sign of the true G.o.ds' favor flying before his followers, no army of mortal men would long stand against them.

"All glory to the true G.o.ds," Basrakan whispered fiercely. "Death to all unbelievers!"

Chapter 1.

Light caressed Shadizar, that city known as 'the Wicked,' and veiled the happenings which justified that name a thousand times over. The darkness that brought respite to other cities drew out the worst in Shadizar of the Alabaster Towers, Shadizar of the Golden Domes, city of venality and debauchery.

In a score of marble chambers silk-clad n.o.bles coerced wives not theirs to their beds, and many-chinned merchants licked fat lips over the abductions of compet.i.tors' nubile daughters. Perfumed wives, fanned by slaves wielding snowy ostrich plumes, plotted the cuckolding of husbands, sometimes their own, while hot-eyed young women of wealth or n.o.ble birth or both schemed at circ.u.mventing the guards placed on their supposed chast.i.ty. Nine women and thirty-one men, one a beggar and one a lord, died by murder. The gold of ten wealthy men was taken from iron vaults by thieves, and fifty others increased their wealth at the expense of the poor. In three brothels perversions never before contemplated by humankind were created. Doxies beyond numbering plied their ancient trade from the shadows, and twisted, ragged beggars preyed on the trulls' wine-soaked patrons. No man walked the streets unarmed, but even in the best quarters of the city arms were often not enough to save one's silver from cutpurses and footpads. Night in Shadizar was in full cry.

Wisps of cloud, stirred by a warm breeze, dappled the moon sitting high in the sky. Vagrant shadows fled over the rooftops, yet they were enough for the ma.s.sively muscled young man, swordbelt slung across his broad chest so that the worn hilt of his broadsword projected above his right shoulder, who raced with them from chimney to chimney. With a skill born in the savagewastes of his native Cimmerian mountains he blended with the drifting shades, and was invisible to the eyes of the city-born.

The roof the muscular youth traveled came to an end, and he peered down into the blackness hiding the paving stones of the street, four stories below.

His eyes were frozen sapphires, and his face, a square-cut lion's mane of black held back from it by a leather cord, showed several ordinary lifetimes'

experience despite its youth. He eyed the next building, an alabaster cube with a freize of scrollwork running all the way around it an arm's length below the roof. From deep in his throat came a soft growl. A good six paces wide, the street was, although it was the narrowest of the four that surrounded the nearly palatial structure. What he had not noticed when he chose this approach-eying the distances from the ground- was that the far roof was sloped. Steeply! Erlik take Baratses, he thought. And his gold!

This was no theft of his own choosing, but rather was at the behest of the merchant Baratses, a purveyor of spices from the most distant realms of the world. Ten pieces of gold the spice dealer had offered for the most prized possession of Samarides, a wealthy importer of gems: a goblet carved from a single huge emerald. Ten pieces of gold was the hundredth part of the goblet's worth, one tenth of what the fences in the Desert would pay, but a run of bad luck with the dice had put the Cimmerian in urgent need of coin. He had agreed to theft and price, and taken two gold pieces in advance, before he even knew what was to be stolen. Still, a bargain sworn to must be kept. At least, he thought grimly, there was no guard atop the other building, as there were on so many other merchants' roofs.

"Crom!" he muttered with a last look at Samarides' roof, and moved back from the edge, well back into the shadows among the chimneys. Breathing deeply to charge his lungs, he crouched. His eyes strained toward the distant rooftop. Suddenly, like a hunting leopard, he sprang forward; in two strides he was sprinting at full speed. His lead foot touched the edge of the roof, and he leaped, hurling himself into the air with arms outstretched, fingers curled to grab.

With a crash he landed at full length on the sloping roof. And immediately began to slide. Desperately he spread his arms and legs to slow himself; his eyes searched for a projection to grasp, for the smallest nub that might stop his fall. Inexorably he moved toward the drop to the pavement.

No wonder there was no watchman on the roof, he thought, furious at himself for not questioning that lack earlier. The roof tiles were glazed to a surface like oiled porcelain. In the s.p.a.ce of a breath his feet were over the edge, then his legs. Abruptly his left hand slid into a gap where a tile was missing. Tiles shattered as his weight smashed his vainly gripping hand through them; fragments showered past him into the gloom beneath. Wood slapped his palm; convulsively he clutched. With a jerk that wrenched at the heavy muscles of his shoulder he was brought up short to swing over the shadowed four-story drop.

For the first time since his leap he made a sound, a long, slow exhalation between his teeth. "Ten gold pieces," he said in a flat voice, "are not enough."

Suddenly the wooden roof-frame he was grasping gave with a sharp snap, and he was falling again. Twisting as he dropped, he stretched, caught the finger-joint-wide ledge at the bottom of the frieze by his fingertips, and slammed flat against the alabaster wall.

"Not nearly enough," he panted when he had regained his breath. "I've half a mind to take the accursed thing to Zeno after this." But even as he said it he knew he would not go to the Nemedian fence. He had given his word.

At the moment, he realized, his problem lay not in how to dispose of the emerald goblet, but in how to leave his present position with a whole skin.

The only openings piercing the alabaster wall at this height were ventilation holes the size of his fist, for the top floor and the attic were given over to storage and quarters for servants and slaves. Such needed no windows, to the mind of Samarides, and if they had them would only lean out and spoil theappearance of his fine house. No other ledges or friezes broke the smoothness of the walls, nor were there balconies overlooking the street. The roof he had first leaped from might as well have been in Sultanapur, the roof above as well have been beyond the clouds. That, the dangling youth reluctantly concluded, left only the windows of the third floor, their arched tops a good armspan lower than his feet.

It was not his way to dally when his course was decided. Slowly, hanging by his fingertips, he worked his way along the narrow ledge. The first two arched windows to pa.s.s beneath his feet glowed with light. He could not risk meeting people. The third, however, was dark.

Taking a deep breath, he let go his hold and dropped, his body brushing lightly against the wall. If he touched the wall too much, it would push him out and away to fall helplessly. As he felt his legs come in front of the window, he moved his feet inward, toward the window sill. Stone smashed against his soles, his palms slapped hard against the sides of the window, and he hung precariously, leaning outward. The thickness of the wall, the depth of the window, denied even a fingernail's hold. Only the outward pressure of his hands kept him from hurtling to the street.

Muscles knotted with the strain, he drew himself forward until he could step within Samarides' dwelling. As his foot touched the carpet-strewn floor, his hand went to the worn leather of his sword hilt. The room was dark, yet his night-accustomed eyes could make out the dim shapes of cushioned chairs.

Tapestries, their colors reduced to shadings of gray, hung on the walls, and a dimly patterned carpet covered the marble floor. With a sigh he relaxed, a trifle, at least. This was no sleeping chamber, with someone to awaken and scream an alarm. It was about time something went right on this night of continuous near-disaster.

There were still problems, though. He was unsure whether the worst of these was how to get out of the dwelling-or how to get to his goal. Samarides'

house was arranged around a central garden, where the gem merchant spent a great deal of his time among the fountains. The only door of the room in which he displayed his treasures opened onto the ground-floor colonnade around that garden.

It would have been easy to climb down from the roof to the garden, and Baratses had told him exactly the location of the door to the treasure room.

Now he must make his way through the corridors, and risk coming on servants or guards.

Opening the door a crack, he peered into the hall, lit by gilded bra.s.s oil lamps hung on chains from bronze wall sconces. Tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl stood at intervals along walls mosaicked in intricate patterns with thousands of tiny, multihued tiles. No one trod the polished marble floor. Silently he slipped into the corridor.

For a heartbeat he stood, picturing the plan of the house in his mind.

The treasure room was in that direction. Ears straining for the slightest hint of another's footstep, he hurried through the halls with a tread as light as a cat. Back stairs led downward, then others took him down again. Their location and the fact that their dark red tiles were dull and worn marked them as servant's stairs. Twice the scuff of sandals from a crossing corridor gave warning, and he pressed his back to a wall, barely breathing, while unseeing servants in pale blue tunics scurried by, too intent on their labors to so much as glance down the branching way.

Then he was into the central garden, the high, shadowed walls of the house making it a small canyon. Splash and burble echoed softly from half-a-score fountains, scattered among fig trees and flowering plants and alabaster statuary. The treasure room lay directly opposite him across the garden.

He took a step, and froze. A dim shape hurried toward him down one of the garden paths. Silently he moved further to the side, away from the light spilling from the doorway. The approaching figure slowed. Had he been seen, he wondered. Whoever was coming moved very slowly, now, seeming almost to creep,and made no sound at all. Abruptly the figure left the slated walk and moved toward him again. His jaw tightened; no other muscle of him moved, not so much as an eyelid blinking. Closer. Ten paces. Five. Two.

Suddenly the strangely still-dim figure froze, gasped. The big youth sprang. One hand cut off sound by covering the mouth that uttered it. His other arm pinned the figure's arms. Teeth dug into his calloused palm, and his captive flung about wildly, kicks thudding against his legs.

"Erlik take you!" he hissed. "You fight like a woman! Stop that, and I'll not hurt-"

It penetrated his mind that the body he held was rounded, if firm. He side-stepped to the edge of the light from the doorway, and found himself studying large, brown eyes that were suddenly frowning above his hand. It was a woman, and a pretty one, with satiny, olive skin and her hair braided tightly about her small head. The biting stopped, and he loosed his grip on her jaw. He opened his mouth to say he would not harm her if she gave no outcry, but she cut him off.

"I am a sorcereress," she whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "and I know you, Conan, far-traveler from Samaria, or Cymria, or some such place. You think you are a thief. Release me!"

The hairs on the back of his neck stirred. How could she know? He seemed to have a talent for running afoul of sorcerers, a talent he would just as soon lose. His grip was loosening when he became aware of the amused gleam in her big eyes, and the way her small, white teeth were biting a full lower lip.

For the first time he took in her garb, snug, dull black from neck to toes.

Even her feet were covered in ebon cloth, with the big toe separated like the thumb on a mitten.

Holding her out from him by her upper arms, he was unable to suppress a smile. Slender, she was, and short, but the close fit of her odd garments left no doubts as to her womanhood. She kicked at him, and he caught it on his thigh.

"Sorcereress?" he growled softly. "Then why do I think you'll change your story should I take a switch to your rump?"

"Why do I think that at the first blow I'll howl loudly enough to bring half the city?" she whispered back. "But truly I don't wish to. My name is Lyana, and I've heard of you, Conan. I've seen you in the streets. And admired you. I just wanted to sound mysterious, so I could compete with your other women." She shifted in his grasp, and her round b.r.e.a.s.t.s, large on her diminutive slimness, seemed even more prominent. Her tongue wet her lips, and she smiled invitingly. "Could you please put me down? You're so strong, and you're hurting me."