About them now lay the courtyard, aflare with torches and ascamper with men under a crescent moon. Most of the guards and servants who had been drawn by the rogue’s shrieks were now able to scatter out of its path; those who could not paid in the cheap token of their lives. A few ill-aimed arrows struck near Conan, none even sticking in the animal’s thick hide. The only real obstacle ahead was the castle’s drawbridge.
This opened between two flanking stone towers, a broad ramp of studded timbers crossing a ditch of unknown depth. In response to the alarms, the bridge was being raised; Conan heard chains clanking and saw men bending their backs to windlasses on the tower-tops. Heavily counterweighted, the ramp was clearly massive; as it yawned near, the helpless passenger saw it rise slowly to a height from which no lumbering pachyderm could leap. Instinct made him tug back on the heavy collar; but the elephant did not come to rein as a horse would. Instead it charged onward, straight toward the impossibly steep obstacle. Conan clenched both arms beneath the leather strapping as the elephant struck the bridge.
Momentum carried them upward, the mad brute’s feet thundering on the wooden planks. At either side Conan heard the agonized stretching of chains and the stripping of ratchet-pawls. Then, inexorably, the angle of the ramp began to flatten. Wails and shrieks sounded as men were batted down or flung off the tower-tops by the fast-unwinding winches. The elephant strained upward along the creaking, rattling timbers and, just as the ramp thudded to earth underfoot, lunged forward onto solid roadway. Staggering, the beast found its stride and loped forward into the night.
The courtyard behind was a chaos of shrieks and wails; of pursuit there was no sign. Ahead lay rice-fields fringed by jungle, and a white road winding away under the moon.
“So the outlander Conan still lives!” Emperor Yildiz squirmed with elation on his embroidered sofa. “He can survive not only battles and maimings, but a three-day carouse in a southern port town! That is the best news I have heard in days.”
The Lord of All Turan relaxed in his Court of Protocols, which was empty but for a handful of functionaries; he inched himself up straighter beside the harem-slave who was busy feeding him peeled grapes. Shorter than he, she had to strain her ample body against his to pop the purple globules between his lips. Yildiz, visibly enjoying her efforts, continued, “Once he is fit enough for the journey, he can be recalled to Aghrapur! I shall make a great show of declaring him a hero.”
“Declare him hero…” General Abolhassan digested his commander’s words, his frown ill-concealed beneath his healthy brown mustache. “I counsel Your Resplendency against such a move.” The general’s sidelong glance toward Euranthus at his side was meant to warn the eunuch which way to tend. “Why would you want to exalt a lowly trooper thus, Sire? A foreign savage, to boot?”
Yildiz turned his head aside to nip a grape morsel out of his concubine’s plump, gold-nailed fingertips. Chewing, he looked back at Abolhassan. “It may not be part of your duties to notice, General, but of late our military efforts are a cause of dissatisfaction at court. Dashibt Bey’s death was a blow to us all, and we could not reasonably expect to keep Ibn Uluthan’s fate from being whispered of as well. I need some excuse to declare a holiday, stage a feast, and win back popular support for our aims. This could be it.”
“Emperor, I beg to protest! Your subjects are not so grossly disloyal, after all.” Abolhassan broached the topic with careful solicitude. “I saw you most ably defuse the stirrings of dissent among the court women, Sire, by your interviews and… luncheons with them. I was privileged to assist you at the first meeting when the Dame Irilya was so openly seditious. Without her—”
Yildiz laughed. “Yes, Irilya Faharazendra, that vixen! Do not think for a moment that she has ceased to badger me. She was not won over like the other wives, and is still busy undoing my careful diplomacy.” Yildiz paused to receive another grape. This one the harem-wench had prepared by placing in it her own mouth, expertly biting off the bitter skin and sucking out the seeds, and then, with gentle fingers, transferring its sweet, slimy flesh to her emperor’s lips.
In a moment Yildiz resumed. “Now Irilya heads something called the First Wives League, which not only cavils at imperial policy, but questions our very traditions of wife ownership! What do you think of that, my little peach blossom?” He pinched the rosy cheek of his houri, who responded with a jiggle of her fleshy bosom and a pout of pretended indignation. “Irilya holds luncheons of her own, meets with foreign envoys, invokes church law… a whirling dervish of a girl! Would that she were less seniorly wed, and to someone other than my richest shah!”
“Why, the woman is blatantly treasonous, Sire!” The eunuch Euranthus eagerly seized an obvious turn for the conversation. “Even among subjects as loyal as yours, such a shameless slut is bound to cause trouble…”
General Abolhassan was well aware of Irilya’s transgressions, having ordered a special study of her movements and meetings since his first open clash with her. So far, fortunately, her meddling had served to undermine Emperor Yildiz in ways helpful to his own plans. Abolhassan now watched carefully, anxious to steer his ruler, yet inevitably nervous lest this interview degenerate into another disgraceful orgy of fondling and stroking between Yildiz and his floozy. There was no sure safeguard against his whims.
But the younger, less expert Euranthus had put Yildiz in a mood of unwhimsical pique directed at himself. “It is not only Lady Irilya who petitions, I remind you, Master Eunuch,” the emperor now admonished him. “And not merely women either. Courtiers, merchants, my rural shahs, even some of your own eunuch brethren whisper against our Venjipur campaign. And with reason!” The emperor turned his gaze upon Abolhassan. “The cost of the war grows burdensome; I find it necessary not just to increase taxes, but to levy new tithes on our land tenants. A vast expense of weapons and stores depart up the Ilbars River, not to mention the recruits—with no clear result except a glut of widows and orphans, crippled beggars, lotus addicts and pedlars, and a host of other evils! Where are the slaves, the plunder and tribute, the rich trade routes that were promised my subjects at the outset? How am I to answer their complaints? ‘Tis enough, General, to make me question my own wisdom in prosecuting this war, and your efficacy in winning it!”
“My Resplendent, All-Knowing Emperor.” No sooner had the damage been done than Abolhassan diligently set about repairing it. “If your concerns lead you to doubt yourself, in your abiding wisdom, Sire, then I can safely say they are misplaced. Rather, Lord, doubt the doubters—those who undermine your programs and place their own petty welfare above your clear-sighted aims.” He stood straight and proud, a loyal soldier defending his emperor. “Sire, may I suggest that you are overly generous in your sufferance of all this petitioning and civil turmoil?
“Rather, I submit, the situation you describe calls for fire and steel. The scourge and the rod, nothing less, can assert the full authority of your rule and bring these intransigents into line.” His dark eyes glinted righteously at Yildiz, warningly at Euranthus. “No widespread purge is needed at this stage, Sire; merely a few highly visible examples, starting with the woman Irilya.”
“Abolhassan, will you never understand?” Strangely Yildiz seemed restored to equanimity, as he so often was by the general’s speeches. Smiling, he rested against his sofa-arm, hugging the harem-girl closer with her painted bowl of grapes. “What I command is not a war of knives and sticks, General. I wage a broader war, one of beliefs—fought not in a jungle swamp, but on the fields of men’s minds and hearts. A war of kings, and of the very gods.”
Distracted momentarily, Yildiz paused; from her new, more intimate position his concubine was able to transfer grapes directly from her own lips to the emperor’s, without the untidy intercession of fingers. Now she performed this trick, leaving her hands free to pursue other errands upon her lord’s silk-clothed body. A moment more, and Yildiz turned back to Abolhassan, gulping contentedly.
“As I was saying, General: I need causes and heroes, ceremony and pageantry to fight my war. Such tools can be more valuable than any victory in the field, in their effect on unity and spirit here in Aghrapur. By decorating this barbarian, we promote the idea of extending our imperial sway far beyond Turan’s present borders. Let me steer the court and the city rabble, General, and you marshal the troops! Then there will be recruits aplenty, and ample use for your talents on distant battlefields.”
“Thy will be done, Sire.” Abolhassan bowed, aware that his face burned slightly. It infuriated him to see such grossness alloyed by such dangerous statecraft… but he must be careful to let this imperial swine think his blush was due to modesty. “Thank you. My last caution, Resplendency, is this: When you create heroes, you also create hazards. The barbarian might speak out unwisely, or perhaps too wisely. He might gather a rebellious following or cause other trouble for us here. There is no knowing the potential of this rude foreigner.”
“Precisely, General; there is no knowing.” Yildiz looked up with an air of afterthought from his new pastime of nibbling his slave-girl’s ear. “Why, he might even rise through the ranks to become as valuable an officer as yourself, Abolhassan. I hope the threat of competition is not what you hold against him! But if he does not serve our ends… well enough.” The emperor shrugged airily. “One happy fact about fractious military officers: They can always be disposed of by assignment to remote frontier outposts. Another benefit of empire!” His look at his questioner had a subtly pointed nature. “Tarim bless you, sirs.” He waved, dismissing his retainers.
“Health, Sire. Tarim preserve your rule.” Abolhassan turned with Euranthus and strode out into the echoing corridor. The two did not commence their murmured conversation until they were well away from the guarded door.
“Curse that purient old fool! First we use some nameless savage to distract him from the real ills and purposes of the war, and now he wants to enthrone the lout! I saw this coming.” Abolhassan strode the geometric tiles briskly, making his shorter-legged companion scurry to keep abreast of him.
“I fear the emperor’s plan may be sound, General,” Euranthus panted. “He could yet undo our efforts and win back a following at court.”
“Indeed.” Abolhassan mulled silently a moment, striding along with downcast eyes. “I would say, let him bring this clod-lumper to the capital so that we can continue using him as our own catspaw. But the northern nature is unpredictable.”
Bobbing down the empty corridor, Euranthus nodded in doubtful assent. “We have already tried to dispose of the barbarian once, have we not?”
“Aye. He is loose-tongued, my spies say, and now he can reveal even more about our conduct of the war. He will have to be stopped; it should be no great matter. Once Yildiz has announced the fete, the loss will serve as one more setback to him.”
Euranthus nodded, smiling as best he could while hurrying along, gasping for air. “You were wise to counsel atrocious measures against the dissenters, General. That might undermine Yildiz further and turn more even courtiers against him.”
Abolhassan came to an abrupt halt, glaring at the eunuch, who staggered on a few steps down the corridor before turning. “You thought I lied? The measures I advocated are no harsher than I myself would use!” He shook his head sternly, then smiled. “And yet, eunuch, perhaps you are right; even if Yildiz tried them, they would not work for him. True tyranny requires a tyrant!”
Euranthus smiled, eager to placate his brooding fellow conspirator. “True, General, he lacks the strength for that.”
Abolhassan nodded, satisfied. “Haply for us. But come, our plans must go forward all the faster now.”
Atop the palace in the Court of Seers, Azhar the sorcerer directed a half-dozen acolytes in the preparation of an elaborate spell. His new position as chief mage had bestowed on him not only the rank and prestige, but also the haggard look of his predecessor. The spectacle of Ibn Uluthan’s death, to which he was closest witness, had made a lasting mark on him. And more recently, nightlong star-readings and daylong porings over his departed mentor’s tomes and notes left him time for only brief snatches of sleep in the hot, bright afternoons. In consequence, some of the night had come to rest in his face, its purple shadows bracketing his eyes like clouds gathering over the grave of a spent sunset.
But today he directed the sorcerous preparations with determined, restless energy. This was the decisive effort; it would right the balance. All the materials had been checked, the precautionary spells recited, the astrological alignments carefully chosen. Shipyard engineers had been summoned to construct the giant arbalest which now stood ready on its cross-shaped pedestal, the steel bow cranked back in a taut curve, the varnished silk cable forming a gleaming V in the noon light, streaming down from the roughly repaired slits of the great dome overhead.
The arrow laid along the crossbow’s sturdy stock was the main ingredient: hewn of toughest ash, carefully formed, and painted with astrological runes. Its tip was forged of tough, porous metal from a sky-fallen star. The shaft had been blest on Tarim’s holy altar before being steeped for potency in aconite and viper’s blood.
The target of the bow was the other critical component, looming broad and massive where the enchanted window had stood: a black millstone set in heavy masonry, its hollow center bored out laboriously to a size adequate for the passage of the giant projectile. In its middle, shards of the silvery crystal left from the window were mounted, no single one large enough to fill the small space. But they ringed the aperture, and in their midst sheened a gray radiance like that which had filtered through the void onto Ibn Uluthan’s conjurations.
Azhar knew he had restored enough of the former spell to open a loophole to Venjipur. He judged that the heavy stonework would provide a defense against the kind of invasion Mojurna had wrought against Ibn Uluthan. This mystic gap, though smaller, should be adequate for his purpose. Through it he could direct the bow’s killing force against the jeweled skull—or better, its owner. Now it remained only to check the aim and see whether Mojurna’s sorcerous barrier had been thrown up once again.