Conan the Destroyer (Robert Jordan's Conan Novels 6)

No one made a sound until Bombatta said, “A dream of madness. A foul dream brought on by this foul place. Even my sleep is troubled by things that never were.”

“So it seems,” Akiro said at last. “You will see to her?” he asked Zula.

The ebon woman nodded, and stroked Jehnna’s hair as she began again the soft crooning that had brought sleep before. Bombatta sat on the other side of the girl, as if he, too, would guard her sleep this time. The two warriors, man and woman, stared at each other unblinkingly.

In company with Akiro Conan walked slowly to the water’s edge, its black sheen undisturbed by the smallest ripple. “When Jehnna was barely old enough to walk,” the Cimmerian said slowly, “Taramis was perhaps sixteen. Just barely the age to be invested with her brother’s titles and estates.”

“Perhaps it was just a dream.”

“Perhaps,” Conan said. “Perhaps.”

Amon-Rama peered into the crimson depths of the Heart of Ahriman, frowning at the sleeping figures. None remained awake on the far side of the night-shrouded lake. Last to slumber had been the yellow-skinned wizard, peering into the sky and attempting—this brought a momentary sneer to the Stygian’s hawk nosed face—attempting to touch the powers cupped in the crater. The wizard had retired long after the others breathed deep and slow beneath their blankets. But now even he slept. On the morn they would come, and … .

His frown deepened to a scowl. On the morn. Long had he waited, and now there were but hours more to wait, yet he itched with impatience. Naught could go wrong at so late a moment. So why did he feel as if ants crawled on his skin?

He released his concentration from the Heart, and the glow faded, leaving

only a gem more scarlet than rubies. He would not spend a night so. There would be an end to it.

Swiftly he strode from the mirrored chamber, through crystal halls whose smallest golden ornament would have been a delight to kings, up to the top of the tallest glittering spire of the palace. From that towering height he looked once toward the far shore, as if his unaided eyes could pierce the unnaturally pale night, then produced from beneath his hooded vermilion robes a black chalk compounded from the burned bones of murdered men and the life’s breath of virgins.

In quick strokes he scribed a pentagram, leaving one break so it would be safe for him to enter. In each point of the star he drew two symbols, one the same and one different in each of the five. The like symbols would add their warding to the protective power of the pentagram. The other five would summon. Holding his robes carefully so as to smudge no part of the pattern—there could be disaster in that!—he stepped within, and completed the last segment of the unholy diagram.

Slowly at first, then with greater force, he began to chant, until he howled the words at the night. Yet he heard no word he spoke. Such words were not meant for men. His ear could not hear them. Only with long years of painful practice could he speak them. In that place where bonds were broken, Amon-Rama invoked spirits of change and dissolution.

Bit by bit the paleness of the night seem to gather around him, thickening, swirling, enfolding, hiding him as in a pillar of smoke. And that smoke grew and shaped, changed. Wings stretched forth in a span four times the height of a man. Massive talons scraped at the adamantine crystal of the towertop. Within the scribed lines of power stood a gigantic bird, a fierce-beaked eagle, but all of smoke that swirled and roiled within.

The great wings beat—there was no sound, as if they did not beat at the air of this world—and the monstrous form rose into the night. Swiftly the vaporous creature flew, until it circled far above the black sand beach. Ethereal pinions folded, and the bird-shape swooped.

Unerring it struck, straight at the slender form of the girl. Huge wings smote doward to brake; no flutter of air disturbed the blankets of the black woman or the scar-faced man sleeping on either side. Talons closed firmly about her slender body, but she did not wake, nor give any sign that she felt any other than deep, normal sleep.

Upward the smoky creature flew, then, wings seeming to sweep the breadth of the sky as they hurtled it back across the raven lake to the coruscant spire. As it lowered toward that vitric tower, the bird-form dissolved once more to a pillar of smoke, a pillar that touched down within the pentagram, swirled, and dissipated to reveal Amon-Rama bearing Jehnna in his red-robed arms.

Carefully he scrubbed out a section of the diagram with his foot, then stepped out. The rest he could dispose of later. Now there was a matter more important. The lifeless-eyed necromancer smiled thinly—it touched no more than his lips—down at the lovely face she turned up to him in her unbroken sleep. A matter infinitely more important.

Crystalline stairs that chimed beneath his hurried tread carried him down into the palace. To the chamber of mirrors, he hastened, and beyond, to a room like no other in that sparkling faceted structure, nor like any other to be found on the face of the earth.

Elsewhere in that crystal palace was there always light and brightness, without need of lamp or sun. Here was darkness. The walls seemed tapestried with blackest shadow, if walls there were, or ceiling or floor, for the chamber appeared to extend in all directions infinitely, and no spark of light in it save two. Brightness framed the doorway that gave entrance from the chamber of mirrors, but that brightness failed abruptly at the very door. No pool of light stretched from it. The second light was indeed a pool, a soft glow without apparent source that surrounded a huge bed piled high with silken cushions. On that bed Amon-Rama laid his slight burden.

He looked down at her, no expression in his flat black eyes, then slowly traced one hand along the line from slim ankle to rounded thigh to tiny waist to swelling breast. Normal vices had been burned out of him by his thaumaturgies long years ago, but others remained, others that gave him dark pleasures. And, he thought, as he had not the same use for the girl as that foolish woman, Taramis, there was no reason for him not to indulge himself in them. But when his sport with the others was done. Now that the girl, the One, was finally in his grasp, his impatience was gone. Now was a time for preparations.

“Hear me now!” he called, his voice rolling into vast distances. “No door, no window, no crack nor opening to air. So do I say it, so must it be!”

The crystal palace tolled brazenly like a great bell, and it was so. The palace was sealed.

“Let us see first how they deal with that,” he murmured.

With a final glance at Jehnna’s unmoving form, he made his way from the place. When he had shut the door behind him, only the one pool of light remained, and Jehnna floated in the midst of infinite dark.

xii

Eerily pearlescent darkness still filled the crater when Conan woke, but he did not need a paling of the sky to the east to tell him that dawn approached. To cross the lake at dawn they must be awake before dawn, therefore he had awakened in good time. It was a useful trick he had, though he would admit that too much wine could befuddle it.

Tossing aside his blankets, he sheathed the bared broadsword that had lain by him through the night and rose, stretching. He frowned as his eye fell on Jehnna’s empty blankets. Swiftly he scanned the slope of the crater above their camp. The horses stood with heads down, sleeping. Nothing moved.

He bent to prod Akiro and Malak. “Wake,” he said quietly. “Jehnna is gone. Up with you.”

Leaving then—Malak spluttering and cursing, Akiro muttering direly about his age and need for sleep—Conan strode to where Bombatta and Zula slept, one to either side of the empty blankets where Jehnna had been. He glared at the scar-faced warrior, snoring in a low buzz, and planted his booted foot in the man’s ribs.