Conan the Unconquered (Robert Jordan's Conan Novels 3)

“No more than a handful, Great Lord,” Che Fan replied. “Well over a score perished.”

“Then perhaps a score still live to haunt me,” Jhandar said pensively. “They must be found. There will be work for the two of you, then, you may be sure.”

“Great Lord,” Suitai said, “there were others in the compound tonight. Not Hyrkanians. One wore the helmet of a Turanian soldier. The other was a tall man, pale of skin.”

“A barbarian?” Jhandar asked sharply. “With blue eyes?”

“Blue eyes?” Suitai asked incredulously, then recovered himself. “It was dark, Great Lord, and with the fighting I could not draw near enough to see. But they robbed the Tower of Contemplation, taking the necklace of thirteen rubies and slaying the thief you set there as guard.” He hesitated. “And they killed one of the initiates, Great Lord. The girl Zorelle.”

The necromancer made a dismissive gesture. He had marked the girl for his bed, in time, but her life or death was unimportant. But the necklace, now. The thief had come for that same bit of jewelry. There had to be a link there.

“Wait here,” he snarled.

Carefully shutting doors behind him, he made his way to the column-lined outer hall, where waited half a score of the Chosen, Zephran among them. They thought they stood as his bodyguard, though either of the Khitan assassins could have killed all ten without effort. They bowed as he appeared. He motioned to Zephran, who approached, bowing again.

“Go to the Tower of Contemplation,” Jhandar commanded. “There you will find the body of the one I set to guard that place. Bring the body to the Chamber of Summoning.”

“At once, Great Lord.” But Zephran did not move. He wished to ingratiate himself with the Great Lord Jhandar. “It was the Hyrkanians, Great Lord. Those I spoke to you about, I have no doubt.”

Jhandar’s cheek twitched, but otherwise his face was expressionless. “You knew there were Hyrkanians in Aghrapur?” he said quietly.

“Yes, Great Lord.” Sweat broke out on Zephran’s forehead. Suddenly he was no longer certain it had been a good idea to speak. “Those … those I spoke to you of. Surely you remember, Great Lord?”

“Bring the body,” Jhandar replied.

Zephran bowed low. When he straightened the necromancer was gone.

In his antechamber Jhandar massaged his temples as he paced, momentarily ignoring the Khitans. The fool had known of the Hyrkanians and yet said nothing! Of course, he had set no watch for them, warned none of the Chosen to report their appearance. To guard against them was to expect them to come, and did he expect them to come, then they would. It was the way of such things. The proof was in himself. He had not been able to destroy his own belief that they would appear. And they had come.

Carefully Jhandar gathered the powders and implements he would need. Dawn was but a few hours distant, now, and in the light of the sun he had few abilities beyond those of other mortals. He could not call on the Power at all while the sun shoned. He could not summon the spirit manifestations then, though commands previously given still held, of course. Perhaps he should summon them now, set them to find the Kyrkanians. No. What he intended would sap much of his strength, could it be done at all. He was not certain he would be physically able to perform both rituals, and what he intended was more important. He knew something of the Hyrkanians, nothing of the tall barbarian. The unknown threat was always more dangerous than the known.

He motioned the Khitans to follow. A sliding stone panel in the wall let into a secret passage, dim and narrow, that led down to the chamber containing the circle of barren earth. The Chamber of Summoning.

Quickly the corpse was brought to him there, as if Zephran thought to mitigate his transgressions with haste, and arranged by the Khitans under Jhandar’s direction, spreadeagled in the center of the circle. At a word the Chosen withdrew, while the mage studied on what he was about. He had never done the like before, and he knew no rituals to guide him. There was no blood to manifest the spirit of the man; there had been no blood in that body since its first death. After that there had been a tenuous connection between that spirit and the body, a connection enforced by his magic, but the second death, at the tower, had severed even that. Still, what he intended must be attempted.

While the Khitans watched Jhandar chose three pillars, spaced equidistantly around the circle. On the first he chalked the ideogram for death, and over it that for life. On the second, the ideogram for infinity covered that of nullity. And on the last, order covered chaos.

Spreading his arms, he began to chant, words with meanings lost in the mists of time ringing from the walls. Almost immediately he could feel the surge of Power, and the near uncontrollability of it. His choice of symbols formed a dissonance, and if inchoate Power could know fury, then there was fury in the Power that flowed through Jhandar’s bones.

Silver-flecked blue mist coalesced within the circle, roiling, swirling away from the posts he had marked. He willed it not to be so, and felt the resistance ripping at his marrow. Agony most torturous and exquisite. It would be as he willed. It would be. Through a red haze of pain he chanted.

Slowly the mists shifted toward, rather than away from, those three truncated pillars, touching them, then rushing toward them. Suddenly there was a snap, as from a spark leaping from a fingertip on a cold morning, but ten thousand times louder, and bars of silver-blue light, as bright as the sun, linked the posts. Chaos, forced into a triangle, the perfect shape, three sides, three points—three, the perfect number of power. Perfect order forced on ultimate disorder. Anathema, and anathema redoubled. And from that anathema, from that perversion of Chaos, welled such Power that Jhandar felt at any moment he would rise and float in the air. Sweat rolled down his body, plastering his saffron robes to his back and chest.

“You who called yourself Emilio the Corinthian,” Jhandar intoned. “I summon you back to this clay that was you. By the powers of Chaos enchained, and the powers of three, I summon you. I summon you. I summon you.”

The triangle of light flared, and within the circle the head of Emilio’s corpse rolled to one side. The mouth worked raggedly. “Noooo!” it moaned.

Jhandar smiled. “Speak, I command you! Speak, and speak true! You came to steal a necklace of rubies?”

“Yes.” The word was a pain-filled hiss.

“Why?”

“For … Da-vin-ia.”

“For a woman? Who is she?”

“Mis-tress … of … Mun-da-ra … Khan.”