“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 skull-face 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 wings 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.
“Excellent, Azhar!” The chief mage adjusted the hawk effigy on the low table, making its spreadeagled shadow play full against the curtain. “Be sure to follow the sunray with the mirror as it moves; I will stand here and follow with the sacred emblem. Now there remains only… the unveiling!” As he spoke, he reached beside him to a knotted cord and pulled it, causing the black curtains to jerk apart and reveal the silvery crystal of the far-seeing window.
The skull was there, maintaining its unceasing vigil on the far side of the pane. The light cast by the mirror picked out its hideous visage in livid detail, kindling sparks in the many-colored gems of its brows and cheekbones and making them blaze in their polished settings. The shadow of the Hawk of Tarim was somehow difficult to trace, lost in the many-faceted and disturbingly massive physiognomy of the evil talisman. For a moment, it almost seemed to Azhar that the jeweled visage was the
source
of the light, beaming its blinding intensity back through his mirror and up into heaven.
Then, as he watched, the skull grew larger—or nearer, he realized an instant later when his accustomed sense of isolation from things beyond the window was suddenly and horribly violated. For the skull-face pushed in through the glass with a rending crash, scattering silver shards and splintering the tile casement as its jewel-crusted jaws gaped wide. The giant face, radiant in sun-pierced gloom, drove onto Ibn Uluthan like the prow of a vast, grounding ship, smashing his golden idol and seizing him by one hip in its grinning, diamond-toothed bite.
Amid the sorcerer’s screams, with the light from Azhar’s unsteady mirror veering and darting wildly over the scene, the greedy skull retreated, dragging its struggling victim back through the window and beyond the rightful confines of the Court of Seers. Clouds of dust, debris, and arcane papers flurried after them, lashed by unnatural winds. Inward through the anomalous breech in the wall flapped likewise the black, desolate billows of the ragged curtains. Ibn Uluthan’s shrieks dwindled rapidly across an echoless abyss of distance, then were cut off, leaving the dust to settle lazily before the bare stone wall where the window had stood.
Azhar the acolyte, staggering under the weight of his toppling mirror, was flung backward as it finally fell and splintered. He struck his head against the base of a pillar, there to lie motionless and senseless.
“Come, you parched desert dogs! This is no time to collapse in a stinking hostel.” Conan halted on the worn threshold of the inn where the cart had deposited its passengers and their meager traps. Clamping hamlike hands on the shoulders of his two friends, he drew them back out into the teeming street. “The city of Venjipur awaits us in all its wicked glory!”
“What say you!” Juma turned to Conan, straightening up from the crouch he had assumed in order to pass beneath the low lintel. “You were fool enough to risk the cart ride here from Sikander with your injured leg; now you want to rove the alleys of Venjipur by night?” Scanning the twilit street, he stood above die dusky currents of its dwellers like a black snag in a swirling yellow river.
On all sides the city crowded close, its ancient stone buildings crumbling behind their gaudy, ramshackle facades. Awnings, lean-tos, cupolas, and false minarets, all had been added to seduce free-spending troops and catch the inflow of foreign coinage. Now, in the fading light, the street’s odd angles and gaudy trappings lured the eye. In spite of Juma’s denials, his ebony features barely concealed his yearning. “Nay, Conan, ‘tis out of the question. You are still too lame.”
“Aye. Hence the need for exercise.” Conan yoked his friend’s burly, leather-vested shoulders under a heavy forearm. “I must stretch the scar-flesh and keep the limb from growing stiff.” He gathered in the half-willing Babrak on his other side. “And our devout friend here… surely he must experience at least one night of carousing, so that his repentances before Tarim will have weight later on!”
“Nay, truly, Conan, I would be poor company on such an excursion!” Babrak braced himself upright under the burden of the Cimmerian’s arm. “Anyway, the kvass they serve in the street taverns is no less sour than what is poured in this hostelry.”
“He is right, Conan.” Glumly Juma watched the jostling, shoulder-high streams of walkers passing in the street. “Remember, this is Venjipur! You know the countless snares and dangers that lurk here.”
Conan, leaning on the tall black man so as to pry him further from the inn door, spoke intensely in his ear. “Surely I do, Juma, and I crave them. As would you, if you had just spent an eternity on your back watching lizards gulp flies on the ceiling! Weeks of that recreation, then a full day of lying prone in a jolting elephant cart—and now you expect me to go flop into some moldy hostel bed?”