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 o
f 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 assassins, 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 passage 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 hoarse whisper. “We follow as you command, yet our existence is empty.”
Jhandar looked at him in surprise. The two assassins 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 out like 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. Unles 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 assassins 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 spaced 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 him like water from a ewer. As the Power went, so did the mist 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 hellborn 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 was little 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.