Conan took the heavy mallet from the slack grip and held it up before the man's eyes, fists touching in the middle of the thick handle. The muscles of his arms and shoulders knotted and bunched; there was a sharp crack, and he let the two pieces fall to the bar.

The tavern-keeper licked his thin lips. He stared at Conan as if at a wonderment. "Never before have I seen the man Ashra could not break in two wit his bare hands," he said slowly. "But then, even he couldn't have..." His gaze dropped to the broken mallet, and he swallowed hard. "Have you a mind to employment? The job held by that sack of flesh they're hauling off is open. A silver piece a day, plus a room, food, drink, and your choice of any wench who has not a customer. My name is Manilik. How are you called?"

"I am no hauler of tosspots," Conan said flatly. "Now tell me what you know of Emilio."

Manilik hesitated, then gave a strained laugh. "Mayhap you do know him.

I'm careful of my tongue, you see. Talk when you shouldn't, and you're apt to lose your tongue. I don't waggle mine."

"Waggle it now. About Emilio."

"But that is the problem, stranger. Oh, I know of Emilio," he said quickly, as Conan's ma.s.sive fist knotted atop the bar, "but I know little. And I've not seen him these three days past."

"Three days," Conan muttered despondently. Thus far he had found many who knew Emilio, but none who had seen the Corinthian these three days past."That boasting idiot is likely gazing into a mirror or rolling with that hot-blooded Davinia of his," he growled.

"Davinia?" Manilik sounded startled. "If you know of her, perhaps you truly do know..." He trailed off with a nervous laugh under Conan's icy eyes.

"What do you know of Davinia, Manilik?"

The innkeeper shivered, so quietly was that question asked. It seemed to him the quiet of the tomb, mayhap of his tomb an he answered not quickly.

Words bubbled from him as water from a spring.

"General Mundara Khan's mistress, bar-, ah, stranger, and a dangerous woman for the likes of Emilio, not just for who it is that keeps her, but for her ambition. 'Tis said lemans have bodies, but not names. This Davinia's name is known, though. Not two years gone, she appeared in Aghrapur on the arm of an ivory trader from Punt. The trader left, and she remained. In the house of a minor gem merchant. Since then she's managed to change her leash from one hand to another with great dexterity. A rug merchant of moderate wealth, the third richest ship owner in the city, and now Mundara Khan, a cousin of King Yildiz himself, who would be a prince had his mother not been a concubine."

The flow of talk slowed, then stopped. Greed and fear warred on Manilik's face, and his mouth was twisted with the pain of giving away what he might, another time, have sold.

Conan laughed disparagingly and lied. "Can you not tell me more than is known on every street corner? Why, I've heard strumpets resting their feet wager on whether the next bed Davinia graces will be that of Yildiz." He searched for a way to erase the doubt that still creased the tavern-keeper's face. "Next," he said, "you'll tell me that as she chooses her patrons only to improve herself, she must risk leaving her master's bed for her own pleasures." How else to explain Emilio, and this Davinia so clearly a woman intent on rising?

Manilik blinked. "I had no idea so much was so widely known. It being so, there are those who will want to collect what the Corinthian owes before Mundara Khan has him gelded and flayed. He had better have the gold he has bragged of, or he'll not live to suffer the general's mercies."

"He mentioned gold, did he?" Conan prompted.

"Yes, he ..." The heavy-lidded eyes opened wide. "Mean you to say it's a lie? Four or five days, he claimed, and he would have gold dripping from his fingers. An you are a friend of the Corinthian, warn him clear most particularly of one Narxes, a Zamoran. His patience with Emilio's excuses is gone, and his way with a knife will leave your friend weeping that he is not dead. Narxes likes well to make examples for others who might fail to pay what they owe. Best you tell him to keep quiet about my warning, though. I've no wish for the Zamoran to come after me before Emilio finishes him."

"I will tell him," Conan said dryly. Manilik was licking his narrow lips, avarice personified. As soon as he could, the tavern-keeper would have a messenger off to this Narxes. Whether it was Narxes or Emilio who survived, Manilik would claim it was his warning that tipped the balance. But Conan did not mean to add to the Corinthian thief's troubles. "So far as I know, the gold will be his, as he claims."

The innkeeper shrugged. "If you say it, then I believe it, stranger."

But his voice carried a total lack of conviction.

Conan left with a wry smile, but just outside he stopped and leaned against the doorjamb. The lowering sun was a b.l.o.o.d.y ball on the rooftops.

Moments later a slender, dark-haired serving wench darted from the inn, pulling a cloak of coa.r.s.e brown wool about her. He caught the girl's arm, pulling her aside. The wench stared up at him, dark eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

"You are the one Manilik is sending to Narxes," he said.

She straightened defiantly - she came no higher than Conan's chest - and glared. "I'll tell you naught. Loose me."

Releasing his grip, he half pushed her toward the street. "Go then.

Never before have I seen anyone run to have her throat slit."The girl hesitated, rubbing her arm and eying the pa.s.sing carts rumbling over the cobblestones. Sailors and tradesmen thronged between the high-wheeled vehicles. A quick dash and she could be lost among them. Instead she said, "Why should Narxes wish to harm me? I've never had a copper to wager at his tables. The likes of me'd never get past the door."

"You mean you don't know?" Conan said incredulously. "That alters matters."

"Know what? What matters?"

"I heard Manilik say he was sending a girl to Narxes for..." He let his voice trail off, shaking his head. "No, it's no use. Better you do not know.

You couldn't escape, anyway."

She laughed shakily. "You're trying to frighten me. I am just to tell Narxes that Manilik has word for him. What did you hear?" Conan was silent, frowning as if in thought, until she stepped closer and laid a trembling hand on his arm. "You must tell me! Please?"

"Not that it will do you any good," Conan said, feigning reluctance.

"Narxes will find you no matter how far you run."

"My parents have a farm far from the city. He'd never find me there.

Tell me!"

"Narxes has been selling young girls to the Cult of Doom for sacrifices," he lied, and invented some detail. "You'll be strapped to an altar, and when your throat is cut the blood will be gathered in a chalice, then -"

"No!" She staggered back, one hand to her mouth. Her face had a greenish cast, as if she were about to be sick. "I've never heard that the Cult of Doom makes such sacrifices. Besides, the use of freeborn for sacrifices is forbidden by law."

"How will anyone ever know, once you're safely dead and your body tossed to the sea?" He shrugged. "But if you do not believe me, then seek out Narxes.

Perhaps he will explain it to you on your way to the compound of the Cult."

"What am I to do?" she moaned, taking quick steps first in one direction then another. "I have no money, nothing but what I stand in. How am I to get to my parents" farm?"

Sighing, Conan dug a fistful of coppers from his pouch. Emilio would repay him, or he would know the reason why. "Here, girl. This will see you there."

"Thank you. Thank you." Half-sobbing, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the coins from his outstretched hand and ran.

Not even a kiss for grat.i.tude, Conan thought grumpily as he watched her disappear down the teeming street. But with luck Manilik would not discover for at least a day that his plans had gone awry. A day to find Emilio without worrying about finding him dead. The story he had concocted for the girl had sounded even more convincing than he had hoped. With a satisfied smile he started down the street.

In the dimness that foreshadowed dusk he did not notice the shaven-headed man in saffron robes, standing in the mouth of an alley beside the inn he had just left, a man who watched his going with interest.

V.

Night filled the ivory-walled compound of the Cult of Doom. No dimmest flicker of light showed, for those of the Cult rose, worked, ate and slept only by command. No coppers were wasted on tapers. In an inner room, though, where Jhandar met with those who followed him most faithfully, bronze lion lamps illumined walls of alabaster bas-relief and floors mosaicked in a thousand colors.

The forty saffron-robed men who waited beneath the high vaulted ceiling knelt as Jhandar entered, each touching a dagger to his forehead. "Blessed beHoly Chaos," they intoned. "Blessed be disorder, confusion, and anarchy."

"Blessed be Holy Chaos," the mage replied perfunctorily. He was, as always, robed as they.

He eyed the lacquered tray of emerald and gold that had been placed on a small tripod table before the waiting men. His hands moved above the two-score small, stone bottles on the tray, fingers waving like questing snakes"

tongues, as if they could sense the freshness of the blood within those stoppered containers.

One of the men shifted. "The kills were all made within the specified hours, Great Lord."

Jhandar acknowledged him only with an irritated flick of an eyelid. Of course those killed had died as he had commanded, at the hour he had commanded. Those who knelt before him did not know why the deaths must occur so, nor even why they must collect the blood while their victims" hearts still beat. They believed that they knew a great deal, but what they knew was how to obey. For Jhandar's purposes, that was enough.

"Go," the necromancer commanded. "Food and drink await you. Then sleep.

Go."

"Blessed be Holy Chaos," they chanted and, rising, filed slowly from the room.

Jhandar waited until the heavy bronze door had clanged shut behind them before speaking again. "Che Fan," he said. "Suitai. Attend me."

Two men, tall, lean, and robed in black, appeared as if materializing from air. It would have taken a quick eye to see the turning panel of stone in the wall from behind which they had stepped. But then, even a quick eye would have stared so at the men as to miss everything else. Even in Aghrapur, they were unusual. Their black eyes seemed to slant, and their skin was the color of parchment left in the sun till it yellowed, yet so smooth that it gave no hint of age. Like as twins they were, though, the man called Che Fan was perhaps a fingerbreadth the taller. By birth and training they were a.s.sa.s.sins, able to kill with no more than the touch of a hand.

Suitai took the tray, while Che Fan hurried to open a small wooden door, lacquered and polished to mirror brightness. Jhandar swept through, followed by the two men. The pa.s.sage beyond was narrow, brightly lit by gold lamps dangling from wall sconces, and empty. The shaven-headed mage kept his tame killers out of sight, for there might be those who would know them for what they were. Even the Chosen saw them but rarely.

The narrow corridor led to a chamber, in the center of which was a large circle of bare dirt, with dead sterility. Great fluted columns supported the domed alabaster ceiling, and surrounding the barren earth were thirteen square pillars truncated at waist height.

As he had done many times before, Suitai began setting out the stone bottles on the hard-packed dirt. He made four groups of five, each group forming a cross.

"Great Lord." Che Fan spoke in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "We follow as you command, yet our existence is empty."

Jhandar looked at him in surprise. The two a.s.sa.s.sins never spoke unless spoken to. "Would you prefer to be where I found you?" he asked harshly.

Che Fan recoiled. He and Suitai had been walled up alive within the Khitan fortress where Jhandar had been imprisoned. Accidentally the necromancer had freed them in his own escape, and they had sworn to follow him. He was not certain they believed he could actually return them to their slow death in Khitai, but they seemed to.

"No, Great Lord," the Khitan said finally. "But we beg, Suitai and I, that we be allowed to use our talents in your service. Not since ..." His voice trailed off. Suitai glanced up from placing the last of the bottles, then studiously avoided looking at either of the other two men again.

Jhandar's face darkened. To speak of the distant past was one thing, to speak of the near past another. He disliked being reminded of failure and ignominy. Effort went into keeping his voice normal, but it still came outlike the grate of steel on rock. "Fool! Your talents, as you call them, destroy the essence of the man, as you well know. There is naught left for me to summon when you kill. When I need your abilities again, if I need them again, I will command you. Unless you wish to step within the circle and be commanded now?"

Suitai stumbled hurriedly from the patch of dirt. "No, Great Lord," Che Fan replied hastily. "I beg forgiveness for my presumption." As one, the two a.s.sa.s.sins bowed low.

Jhandar left them so for a moment, then spoke. "Rise. In the days ahead there will be labors to sate even your desires. Now get you gone until I call again. I have my own labors to perform."

As they bowed their way from his presence, he put them from his awareness. There were more important matters which needed all of his attention.

From beneath his robes he produced a piece of black chalk. Atop four of the pillars, equidistantly s.p.a.ced about the circle, he marked the ancient Khitan ideograms for the four seasons, chanting as he did in a language not even he understood, though he well understood the effect of the words. Next were drawn the ideograms for the four humors, then the four elements, and all the while he intoned the primordial spells. But one of the short, square pillars remained. He drew the symbol for life, then quickly, over it, the symbol of death.

A chill rose in the air, till his words came in puffs of white, and his voice took on a hollow aspect, as though he called from a vast deep. Mist roiled over the circle of earth, blue and flecked with silver, like the mist above the Pool of the Ultimate, yet pale and transparent. The hairs on Jhandar's arms and legs stirred and rose. He could feel the Power flowing through him, curling around his bones.

In the center of the mist light flashed, argent and azure lightning. In silence the air of the chamber quivered, as to a monstrous clap of thunder.

Within the circle every stone jar shattered into numberless grains of dust, and the parched dirt drank blood. The tenuous vapors above began to glow.

Never ceasing his incantation, Jhandar sought within himself for the root of the Power that coursed his veins, seized on it, bent it to his bidding. With every fiber of his being he willed a summoning, he commanded a summoning, he forced a summoning.

Blood-clotted earth cracked and broke, and a hand reached up from the crack to claw at the surface, a hand withered and twisted, its nails like claws, its skin a mottled moldy gray-green. In another blood-soaked place the ground split, and monstrously deformed hands dug upward, outward. Then another, and another. A slavering panting beat its way up from below the surface. Inexorably drawn by Jhandar's chant, they dug their way from the bowels of the earth, stumpy misshapen creatures bearing little resemblance to humankind, for all they were the summoned corporeal manifestations of the essences of murdered men and women. There were no distinctions now between male and female. Neuter all, they were, with hairless mottled skin stretched tightly over domed skulls whose opalescent eyes had seen the grave from inside. Their lipless mouths emitted a cacophony of howls and lamentations.

Jhandar stopped his chant, reluctantly felt the Power pour from within the circle. The ravening creatures turned to him, seeming to see him for the first time, their cries rising.

"Be silent!" he shouted, and all sound was gone as if cut off with a knife.

He it was who had summoned; they could not but obey, though some glared at him with h.e.l.lborn fury. Some few always did.

"Hear you my words. Each of you will return to the house that you served in life." A low moan rose and was stilled. "There, in incorporeal form, you will watch, and listen. What your former masters and mistresses do not want known, you will tell to me when I summon you again. Nothing else will you do unless I command." That last was necessary, he had learned, though there waslittle they could do without being told to.

"I hear," came the muttering moans, "and obey."

"Then by the blood and earth and Power of Chaos by which I summoned you, begone."

With a crack of inrushing air the twisted shapes disappeared.

Jhandar smiled when he left the chamber. Already he knew more of the secrets of Turan than any ten other men. Already, with a whisper in the proper ear of what the owner of that ear would die to keep secret, he influenced decisions at the highest levels. Nay, he made those decisions. Soon the throne itself would bow to his will. He would not demand that his position as true ruler of Turan be made known to all. That he ruled would be enough. First Turan, then perhaps Zamora, and then...

"Great Lord."

Reverie broken, Jhandar glared at the shaven-headed man who had accosted him in a main corridor of his palatial quarters. Lamps of gold and silver, made from melted-down jewelry provided by new members of the Cult, cast glittering lights from walls worked in porphyry and amber.

"Why do you disturb me, Zephran?" he demanded. Not even the Chosen were allowed to approach him unbidden.

"Forgive me, Great Lord," Zephran answered, bowing low, "but I had a most distressing encounter in the city near dusk."

"Distressing encounter? What are you blathering about? I have no time for foolishness."

"It was a barbarian, Great Lord, who spoke of sacrifices within the Cult, of the altar and the use of blood."

Jhandar clutched his robes in white-knuckled fists. "Hyrkanian? He was Hyrkanian?"

"Nay, Great Lord."

"He must have been."

"Nay, Great Lord. His skin was pale where not bronzed by the sun, and his eyes were most strange, as blue as the sea."

Jhandar sagged against the wall. In Hyrkania, across the Vilayet Sea, he had first founded the Cult, first created and confined a Pool of Chaos. He would have welded the scattered Hyrkanian tribes of fierce hors.e.m.e.n into a single force that moved at his word. He would have launched such a wave of warriors as would have washed over Turan and Zamora and all to the West until it came to the sea. He would have...

But the spirit manifestations had not been properly controlled. They had managed to communicate to the living what occurred within the compound he was building, and the tribesmen had ridden against him, slaughtering his followers. Only by loosing the Power, turning a part of the Hyrkanian steppes into a h.e.l.l, had he himself managed to escape. They believed in blood vengeance, those Hyrkanians. Deep within him was the seed of fear, fear that they would follow him across the sea. Ridiculous, he knew, yet he could not rid himself of it.

"Great Lord," Zephran said diffidently, "I do not understand why filthy Hyrkanians should concern you. The few I have seen in-"

"You understand nothing," Jhandar snarled. "This barbarian. You killed him?"

Zephran shifted uneasily. "Great Lord, I... I lost him in the night and the crowd among the taverns near the harbor."