deities, with foul Mojurna as their croaking prophet.”
“Of course, such a pagan cult poses little danger to us here; you see no jungle demons prowling the streets of Aghrapur. Our star-castings have a high rate of accuracy, and our various prognostications within the settled empire are of unquestioned value. Our power, in fact, remains unchallenged—except when we try to channel it southward to the devil-plagued Tarqheban coast!”
The sorcerer’s gaze, leaving the general’s ironic face, wandered absently across the room to the tall, black-silled window, where hung gloom relieved by only the palest radiance. Through the casement, if one peered deep into the dim obscurity, could be seen the faint, half-illusory image of a jewel-bedecked skull.
“Very well, Ibn Uluthan,” Abolhassan said in his deep, faintly amused voice. “I thank you for rendering me a more thorough accounting than I could have wished. I only wondered whether Mojurna’s magic has been overcome—whether it will soon be possible, as you once showed us, for our beloved Emperor Yildiz to stand in this chamber and see with his own eyes the events transpiring in far-off Venjipur.”
“In answer to your question: no.” Ibn Uluthan turned a sullen shoulder to his visitor, moving back behind his lectern. “But with the blessings of Tarim and gracious Emperor Yildiz, our efforts will continue. Some aspect of the problem must inevitably yield to our scrutiny, and in time you may expect a breakthrough. But for the moment, no.”
“Thank you, Mage. I expected as much.” Showing no great dissatisfaction, Abolhassan spun on his heel and left the hall.
Of course, he told himself as he crossed the outer balconies, the spells would have been a convenience. Oversight of the battlefront, even direct command, would benefit all concerned with the campaign, especially that detestable busybody Yildiz. But the present situation, with all its delays and indirections, afforded advantages he was in a unique position to exploit.
Leaving the shade of a filigreed trellis, Abolhassan strode through blazing sun to a gilded, onion-pointed archway. The cool, perfumed halls of the palace swallowed him again, its smoothly descending rampways taking him to the judicial galleries.
There murmured and echoed the business of state, proceeding as it did every day and late into the night. Merchant squabbles, family vendettas, pleadings of law, tax, and troth—those interminable questions, nominally the domain of the emperor, were now adjudged and enforced by eunuchs.
Abolhassan was careful to skirt the public corridors with their mad assortment of chained felons, unkept clans of litigating goatherds, and clusters of dicing advocates. There a general’s noble garb and exalted bearing would be met by fatuous looks or cries of beseechment. Happily, the meeting for which he was now overdue lay in the Court of Protocols, a large inner gallery reserved for ceremonies involving His Resplendency and His highest satraps.
A pair of household guards at the Court’s double doors bowed him through. Once inside, he was surprised by the strident tone of the interview already underway.
“You beguile our sons and brothers into your armies, or else impress them outright! You send them to die far away from their homes and families! You teach them to murder and pillage, so that their hearts can never be at peace in the grace of Tarim!” The speaker, holding forth at full pitch, was female, a comely woman expensively garbed. From her head waved an unruly banner of pale yellow hair which Abolhassan thought he recognized from previous petitionings and civil delegations. The target of her diatribe, sitting alone on a stool and looking distinctly ill-at-ease, was the medium-sized, pudgy Emperor Yildiz.
Seemingly heedless of his divinity, the woman railed on. “I ask you, Resplendency, is any thought given to the cost of these excursions to savage lands like Venjipur? Not only the cost in
“Of course, such a pagan cult poses little danger to us here; you see no jungle demons prowling the streets of Aghrapur. Our star-castings have a high rate of accuracy, and our various prognostications within the settled empire are of unquestioned value. Our power, in fact, remains unchallenged—except when we try to channel it southward to the devil-plagued Tarqheban coast!”
The sorcerer’s gaze, leaving the general’s ironic face, wandered absently across the room to the tall, black-silled window, where hung gloom relieved by only the palest radiance. Through the casement, if one peered deep into the dim obscurity, could be seen the faint, half-illusory image of a jewel-bedecked skull.
“Very well, Ibn Uluthan,” Abolhassan said in his deep, faintly amused voice. “I thank you for rendering me a more thorough accounting than I could have wished. I only wondered whether Mojurna’s magic has been overcome—whether it will soon be possible, as you once showed us, for our beloved Emperor Yildiz to stand in this chamber and see with his own eyes the events transpiring in far-off Venjipur.”
“In answer to your question: no.” Ibn Uluthan turned a sullen shoulder to his visitor, moving back behind his lectern. “But with the blessings of Tarim and gracious Emperor Yildiz, our efforts will continue. Some aspect of the problem must inevitably yield to our scrutiny, and in time you may expect a breakthrough. But for the moment, no.”
“Thank you, Mage. I expected as much.” Showing no great dissatisfaction, Abolhassan spun on his heel and left the hall.
Of course, he told himself as he crossed the outer balconies, the spells would have been a convenience. Oversight of the battlefront, even direct command, would benefit all concerned with the campaign, especially that detestable busybody Yildiz. But the present situation, with all its delays and indirections, afforded advantages he was in a unique position to exploit.
Leaving the shade of a filigreed trellis, Abolhassan strode through blazing sun to a gilded, onion-pointed archway. The cool, perfumed halls of the palace swallowed him again, its smoothly descending rampways taking him to the judicial galleries.
There murmured and echoed the business of state, proceeding as it did every day and late into the night. Merchant squabbles, family vendettas, pleadings of law, tax, and troth—those interminable questions, nominally the domain of the emperor, were now adjudged and enforced by eunuchs.
Abolhassan was careful to skirt the public corridors with their mad assortment of chained felons, unkept clans of litigating goatherds, and clusters of dicing advocates. There a general’s noble garb and exalted bearing would be met by fatuous looks or cries of beseechment. Happily, the meeting for which he was now overdue lay in the Court of Protocols, a large inner gallery reserved for ceremonies involving His Resplendency and His highest satraps.
A pair of household guards at the Court’s double doors bowed him through. Once inside, he was surprised by the strident tone of the interview already underway.
“You beguile our sons and brothers into your armies, or else impress them outright! You send them to die far away from their homes and families! You teach them to murder and pillage, so that their hearts can never be at peace in the grace of Tarim!” The speaker, holding forth at full pitch, was female, a comely woman expensively garbed. From her head waved an unruly banner of pale yellow hair which Abolhassan thought he recognized from previous petitionings and civil delegations. The target of her diatribe, sitting alone on a stool and looking distinctly ill-at-ease, was the medium-sized, pudgy Emperor Yildiz.
Seemingly heedless of his divinity, the woman railed on. “I ask you, Resplendency, is any thought given to the cost of these excursions to savage lands like Venjipur? Not only the cost in
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