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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  III

  XIII

  IV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  Tor Books by Robert Jordan

  Notes

  Copyright Page

  To

  L. Sprague de Camp

  whose mighty thews have borne the muscular Cimmerian on high for lo these many years.

  Sunlight streaming through marble-arched windows illumined the tapestry-hung room. The servants, tongueless so that they could not speak of whom they saw in their master’s house, had withdrawn, leaving five people to sip their wine in silence.

  Cantaro Albanus, the host, studied his guests, toying idly with the heavy gold chain that hung across his scarlet tunic. The lone woman pretended to study the intricate weaving of the tapestries; the men concentrated on their winecups.

  Midmorning, Albanus reflected, was exactly the time for such meetings, though it rubbed raw the nerves of his fellows. Traditionally such were held in the dark of night by desperate men huddled in secret chambers sealed to exclude so much as a moonbeam. Yet who would believe, who could even suspect that a gathering of Nemedia’s finest in the bright light of day, in the very heart of the capital, could be intent on treason?

  His lean-cheeked face darkened at the thought, and his black eyes became obsidian. With his hawk nose and the slashes of silver at the temples of his dark hair, he looked as if he should have been a general. He had indeed been a soldier, once, for a brief year. When he was but seventeen his father had obtained him a commission in the Golden Leopards, the bodyguard regiment of Nemedian Kings since time beyond memory. At his father’s death he had resigned. Not for him working his way up the ladder of rank, no matter how swiftly aided by high birth. Not for one who by blood and temperament should be King. For him nothing could be treason.

  “Lord Albanus,” Barca Vegentius said suddenly, “we have heard much of the … special aid you bring to our … association. We have heard much, but thus far we have seen nothing.” Large and square of face and body, the current Commander of the Golden Leopards pronounced his words carefully. He thought to hide his origins by hiding the accents of the slums of Belverus, and was unaware that everyone knew his deception.

  “Such careful words to express your doubts, Vegentius,” Demetrio Amarianus said. The slender youth touched a perfumed pomander to his nose, but it could not hide the sneer that twisted his almost womanly mouth. “But then you always use careful words, don’t you? We all know you are here only to—”

  “Enough!” Albanus snapped.

  Both Demetrio and Vegentius, whose face had been growing more purple by the second, subsided like well-trained animals at the crack of the trainer’s whip. These squabbles were constant, and he tolerated them no more than he was forced to. Today he would not tolerate them at all.

  “All of you,” Albanus went on, “want something. You, Vegentius, want the generalship you feel King Garian has denied you. You, Demetrio, want the return of the estates Garian’s father took from your grandfather. And you, Sephana. You want revenge against Garian because he told you he liked his women younger.”

  “As pleasantly stated as is your custom, Albanus,” the lone woman said bitterly. Lady Sephana Galerianus’ heart-shaped face was set with violet eyes and framed by a raven mane that hung below her shoulders. Her red silk robe was cut to show both the inner and outer slopes of her generous breasts, and slashed to expose her legs to the hip when she walked.

  “And what do I want?” the fourth man in the room asked, and everyone started as if they had forgotten he was there.

  It was quite easy to forget Constanto Melius, for the middle-aged noble was vagueness personified. Thinning hair and the pouches beneath his constantly blinking eyes were his most prominent features, and his intelligence and abilities matched the rest of him.

  “You want your advice listened to,” Albanus replied. “And so it shall be, when I am on the throne.”

  It would be listened to for as long as it took to order the man banished, the hawk-faced lord thought. Garian had made the mistake of rebuffing the fool, then leaving him free in the capital to foment trouble. Albanus would not make the same mistake.

  “We seem to have passed by what Vegentius said,” Sephana said abruptly, “but I, too, would like to see what help we can count on from you, Albanus. Demetrio and Vegentius provide information. Melius and I provide gold to buy disorders in the street, and to pay brigands to burn good grain. You keep your plans to yourself and tell us about the magicks that will make Garian give the throne to you, if we do these other things as well. I, too, want to see these magicks.”

  The others seemed somewhat abashed that she had brought the promised sorcery out into the open, but Albanus merely smiled.

  Rising, he tugged a brocade bellpull on the wall before moving to a table at the end of the room, a table where a cloth covered certain objects. Cloth and objects alike Albanus had placed there with his own hands.

  “Come,” he told the others. Suddenly reluctant, they moved to join him slowly.

  With a flourish he whisked the cloth aside, enjoying their starts. He knew that the things on that table—a statuette in sapphire, a sword with serpentine blade and quillons of ancient pattern, a few crystals and engraved gems—were, with one exception, practically useless. At least, he had found little use prescribed for them in the tomes he had so plainfully deciphered. Items of power he kept elsewhere.

  Ten years earlier, slaves on one of his estates north of Numalia had dug into a subterranean chamber. Luckily he had been there at the time, been there to recognize it as the storehouse of a sorcerer, been there to see that the luckless slaves were buried in that chamber once he had emptied it.

  A year it had taken him just to discover how ancient that cache was, dating back to Acheron, that dark empire ruled by the vilest thaumaturgies and now three millenia and more gone in the dust. For all those years he had studied, eschewing a tutor for fear any sorcerer of ability would seize the hoard for his own. It had been a wise decision, for had he been known to be studying magicks he would surely have been caught up in Garian’s purge of sorcerers from the capital. Garian. Thinking dark thoughts, Albanus lifted a small red crystal sphere from the table.

  “I mistrust these things,” Sephana said, shuddering. “Better we should rely on ways more natural. A subtle poison—”

  “Would provoke a civil war for the succession,” Albanus cut her off. “I don’t want to tell you again that I have no intention of having to wrest the Dragon Throne from a half score of claimants. The throne will be given to me, as I have said.”

  “That,” Vegentius grumbled, “I will believe when I see it.”

  Albanus mot
ioned the others to silence as a serving girl entered. Blonde and pale of skin, she was no more than sixteen years of age. Her simple white tunic, embroidered about the hem with Albanus’ house-mark, was slashed to show most of her small breasts and long legs. She knelt immediately on the marble floor, head bent.

  “Her name is Omphale,” the hawk-faced lord said.

  The girl shifted at the mention of her name, but knew enough not to lift her head. She was but newly enslaved, sold for the debts of her father’s shop, but some lessons were quickly learned.

  Albanus held the red crystal at arm’s length in his left hand, making an arcane gesture with his right as he intoned, “An-naal naa-thaan Vas-ti no-entei!”

  A flickering spike of flame was suddenly suspended above the crystal, as long as a man’s forearm and more solid than a flame should be. Within the pulsing red-and-yellow, two dark spots, uncomfortably like eyes, moved as if examining the room and its occupants. All moved back unconsciously except for Omphale, who cowered where she knelt, and Albanus.

  “A fire elemental,” Albanus said conversationally. Without changing his tone he added, “Kill Omphale!”

  The blonde’s mouth widened to scream, but before a sound emerged the elemental darted forward, swelling to envelop her. Jerkily she rose to her feet, twitching in the midst of an egg of flame that slowly opaqued to hide her. The fire hissed, and in the depths of the hiss was a thin shriek, as of a woman screaming in the distance. With the pop of a bursting bubble the flame disappeared, leaving behind a faint sickly sweet smell.

  “Messy,” Albanus mused, scuffing with a slippered foot at an oily black smudge on the marble floor where the girl had been.

  The others’ stares were stunned, as if he had transformed into the fabled dragon Xutharcan. Surprisingly, it was Melius who first regained his tongue.

  “These devices, Albanus. Should we not have some of them as well as you?” His pouchy eyes blinked uncomfortably at the others’ failure to speak. “As a token that we are all equals,” he finished weakly.

  Albanus smiled. Soon enough he would be able to show them how equal they were. “Of course,” he said smoothly. “I’ve thought of that myself.” He gestured to the table. “Choose, and I will tell you what powers your choice possesses.” He slipped the red crystal into a pouch at his belt as he spoke.

  Melius hesitated, reached out, and stopped with his hand just touching the sword. “What … what powers does this have?”

  “It turns whoever wields it into a master swordsman.” Having found that such was the extent of the blade’s power, Albanus had researched no further. He had no interest in becoming a warrior-hero; he would be King, with such to do his bidding. “Take the blade, Melius. Or if you fear it, perhaps Vegentius … .” Albanus raised a questioning eyebrow at the square-faced soldier.

  “I need no magicks to make me a bladesman,” Vegentius sneered. But he made no move to choose something else, either.

  “Demetrio?” Albanus said. “Sephana?”

  “I mislike sorcery,” the slender young man replied, openly flinching away from the display on the table.

  Sephana was made of sterner stuff, but she shook her head just as quickly. “If these sorceries can pull Garian from the Dragon Throne, ’tis well enough for me. And they can not … .” She met Albanus’ gaze for a moment, then turned away.

  “I’ll take the sword,” Melius said suddenly. He hefted the weapon, testing the balance, and laughed. “I have no such scruples as Vegentius about how I become a swordsman.”

  Albanus smiled blandly, but slowly his face hardened. “Now hear me,” he intoned, fixing each of them in turn with an obsidian eye. “I have shown but a small sampling of the powers that will gain me the throne of Nemedia, and grant your own desires. Know that I will brook no deviation, no meddling that might interfere with my designs. Nothing will stand between me and the Dragon Crown. Nothing! Now go!”

  They backed from his presence as if he already sat on the Dragon Throne.

  I

  The tall, muscular youth strode the streets of Belverus, monument-filled and marble-columned capital of Nemedia, with a wary eye and a hand close to the well-worn leather-wrapped hilt of his broadsword. His deep blue eyes and fur-trimmed cloak spoke of the north country. Belverus had seen many northern barbarians in better times, dazzled by the great city and easily separated from their silver or their pittance of gold—though often, not understanding the ways of civilization, they had to be hauled away by the black-cloaked City Guard, complaining that they had been duped. This man, however, though only twenty-two, walked with the confidence of one who had trod the paving stones of cities as great or greater, of Arenjun and Shadizar, called the Wicked; of Sultanapur and Aghrapur; even the fabled cities of far-off Khitai.

  He walked the High Streets, in the Market District, not half a mile from the Royal Palace of Garian, King of Nemedia, yet he thought he might as well be in Hellgate, the city’s thieves’ district. The open-fronted shops had display tables out, and crowds moved among them pricing cloth from Ophir, wines from Argos, goods from Koth and Corinthia and even Turan. But the peddlers’ carts rumbling over the paving stones carried little in the way of foodstuffs, and their prices made him wonder if he could afford to eat in the city for long.

  Between the shops were huddled beggars, maimed or blind or both, their wailing for alms competing with the hawkers crying their wares. And every street corner had its knot of toughs, hard-eyed, roughly dressed men who fingered swordhilts, or openly sharpened daggers or weighed cudgels in their fists as their gazes followed a plump merchant scurrying by or a lissome shopkeeper’s daughter darting through the crowd with nervous eyes. All that was missing were the prostitutes in their brass and copper bangles, sheer shifts cut to display their wares. Even the air had something of the cloying smell he associated with a dozen slums he had seen, a mixture of vomit, urine and excrement.

  Suddenly a fruit cart crossing an intersection was surrounded by half-a-dozen ruffians in motley bits of finery mixed with rags. The skinny vendor stood silent, eyes down and careworn face red, as they picked over his goods, taking a bite of this and a bite of that, then throwing both into the street. Stuffing the folds of their tunics with fruit, they started away, swaggering, insolent eyes daring anyone to speak. The well-dressed passersby acted as if the men were invisible.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll pay,” the vendor moaned without raising his eyes.

  One of the bravos, an unshaven man wearing a soiled cloak embroidered with thread-of-gold over a ragged cotton tunic, smiled, showing the blackened stumps of his teeth. “Pay? Here’s pay.” His backhand blow split the skinny man’s cheek, and the pushcart man collapsed sobbing across his barrow. With a grating laugh the bravo joined his fellows who had stopped to see the sport, and they shoved their way through the crowd of shoppers, who gave way with no more than a wordless mutter.

  The muscular northern youth stopped a pace away from the pushcart. “Will you not call the City Guard?” he asked curiously.

  The peddler pushed himself wearily erect. “Please. I have to feed my family. There are other carts.”

  “I steal not fruit, nor beat old men,” the youth said stiffly. “My name is Conan. Will the City Guard not protect you?”

  “The City Guard?” the old man laughed bitterly. “They stay in their barracks and protect themselves. I saw three of these scum hang a Guardsman by his heels and geld him. Thus they think of the City Guard.” He wiped his hands shakily down the front of his tunic, suddenly realizing how visible he was talking to a barbarian in the middle of the intersection. “I have to go,” he muttered. “I have to go.” He bent to the handles of his pushcart without another glance at the young barbarian.

  Conan watched him go with a pitying glance. He had come to Belverus to hire himself as a bodyguard or a soldier—he had been both, as well as a thief, a smuggler and a bandit—but whoever could hire his sword for protection in that city, it would unfortunately not be those who needed
it most.

  Some of the street-corner toughs had noticed his words with the peddler, and approached, thinking to have some fun with the outlander. As his gaze passed over them, though, cold as the mountain glaciers of his native Cimmeria, it came to them that death walked the streets of Belverus that day. There was easier prey elsewhere, they decided. In minutes the intersection was barren of thugs.

  A few people looked at him gratefully, realizing he had made that one place safe for the moment. Conan shook his head, half angry with himself, half with them. He had come to hire his sword for gold, not to clear the streets of scum.

  A scrap of parchment, carried by a vagrant breeze, fetched up against his boot. Idly he picked it up, read the words writ there in a fine round hand.

  King Garian sits on the Dragon Throne.

  King Garian sits to his feast alone.

  You sweat and toil for a scrap of bread,

  And learn to walk the streets in dread.

  He is not just, this King of ours,

  May his reign be counted in hours.

  Mitra save us from the Dragon Throne,

  And the King who sits to his feast alone.

  He let the scrap go with the breeze, joining still other scraps swirling down the street. He saw people lift one to read. Some let it drop, whitefaced, or threw it away in anger, but some read and furtively tucked the bit of sedition into their pouches.

  Belverus was a plum ripe for the plucking. He had seen the signs before, in other cities. Soon the furtiveness would be gone. Fists would be shaken openly at the Royal Palace. Stronger thrones had been toppled by less.

  Suddenly a running man pushed past him with horror-stricken eyes, and on his heels came a woman, her mouth open in a soundless scream. A flock of children ran past shrieking unintelligibly.

  Down the street more screams and cries rose, and the crowd suddenly stampeded toward the intersection. Their fear communicated itself, and without knowing why others joined the stream. With difficulty Conan forced his way to the side of the street, to a shop deserted by its owner. What could cause this, he wondered.