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Conan The Magnificent
By Robert Jordan
Copyright 1984


PROLOGUE

Icy air hung deathly still among the crags of the Kezankian mountains, deep in
the heart of that arm of those mountains which stretched south and west along
the border between Zamora and Brythunia. No bird sang, and the cloudless azure
sky was empty, for even the ever-present vultures could find no current on
which to soar.
In that eerie quiesence a thousand fierce, turbanned Kezankian hillmen
crowded steep brown slopes that formed a natural amphitheater. They waited and
merged with the silence of the mountains. No sheathed tulwar clattered against
stone. No booted foot shifted with the impatience that was plain on lean,
bearded faces. They hardly seemed to breathe. Black eyes stared down
unblinkingly at a space two hundred paces across, floored with great granite
blocks and encircled by a waist-high wall as wide as a man was tall. Granite
columns, thick and crudely hewn, lined the top of the wall like teeth in a
sun-dried skull. In the center of that circle three men, pale-skinned
Brythunians, were bound to tall stakes of black iron, arms stretched above
their heads, leather cords digging cruelly into their wrists. But they were
not the object of the watcher's attention. That was on the tall, scarlet-robed
man with a forked beard who stood atop a tunnel of massive stone blocks that
pierced the low wall and led back into the mountain behind him.
Basrakan Imalla, dark face thin and stern beneath a turban of red, green
and gold, threw back his head and cried, "All glory be to the true gods!"
A sigh of exaltation passed through the watchers, and their response
rumbled against the mountainsides. "All glory be to the true gods!"
Had Basrakan's nature been different, he might have smiled in
satisfaction. Hillmen did not gather in large numbers, for every clan warred
against every other clan, and the tribes were riddled by blood feuds. But he
had gathered these and more. Nearly ten times their number camped amid the
jagged mountains around the amphitheater, and scores of others joined them
every day. With the power the true gods had given him, with the sign of their
favor they had granted him, he had done what no other could. And he would do
more! The ancient gods of the Kezankians had chosen him out.
"Men of the cities," he made the word sound obscene, "worship false
gods! They know nothing of the true gods, the spirits of earth, of air, of
water. And of fire!"
A wordless roar broke from a thousand throats, approbation for Basrakan
and hatred for the men of the cities melting together till even the men who
shouted could not tell where one ended and the other began.
Basrakan's black eyes burned with fervor. Hundreds of Imallas wandered
the mountains, carrying the word of the ancient gods from clan to clan, kept
safe from feud and battle by the word they carried. But it had been given to
him to bring about the old gods' triumph.
"The people of the cities are an iniquity in the sight of the true
gods!" His voice rang like a deep bell, and he could feel his words resonate