The Conan Chronicles: Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle

by Robert E. Howard

  ‘At any rate, he struck when I least expected it. Last night he appeared to go suddenly mad. His actions had all the appearance of bestial insanity, yet I know that they must have been the result of long and careful planning.

  ‘I heard a sound of fighting in the garden, and going to investigate - for I believed it was yourself, being dragged down by my watch-dog - I saw Thak emerge from the shrubbery dripping with blood. Before I was aware of his intention, he sprang at me with an awful scream and struck me senseless. I remember no more, but can only surmise that, following some whim of his semi-human brain, he stripped me of my gown and cast me still living into the pit - for which reason, only the gods can guess. He must have killed the dog when he came from the garden, and after he struck me down, he evidently killed Joka, as you saw the man lying dead in the house. Joka would have come to my aid, even against Thak, whom he always hated.’

  Murilo stared at the mirror at the creature which sat with such monstrous patience before the closed door. He shuddered at the sight of the great black hands, thickly grown with hair that was almost fur-like. The body was thick, broad and stooped. The unnaturally wide shoulders had burst the scarlet gown, and on these shoulders Murilo noted the same thick growth of black hair. The face peering from the scarlet hood was utterly bestial, and yet Murilo realized that Nabonidus spoke truth when he said that Thak was not wholly a beast. There was something in the red murky eyes, something in the creature’s clumsy posture, something in the whole appearance of the thing that set it apart from the truly animal. That monstrous body housed a brain and soul that were just budding awfully into something vaguely human. Murilo stood aghast as he recognized a faint and hideous kinship between his kind and that squatting monstrosity, and he was nauseated by a fleeting realization of the abysses of bellowing bestiality up through which humanity had painfully toiled.

  ‘Surely he sees us,’ muttered Conan. ‘Why does he not charge us? He could break this window with ease.’

  Murilo realized that Conan supposed the mirror to be a window through which they were looking.

  ‘He does not see us,’ answered the priest. ‘We are looking into the chamber above us. That door that Thak is guarding is the one at the head of these stairs. It is simply an arrangement of mirrors. Do you see those mirrors on the walls? They transmit the reflection of the room into these tubes, down which other mirrors carry it to reflect it at last on an enlarged scale in this great mirror.’

  Murilo realized that the priest must be centuries ahead of his generation, to perfect such an invention; but Conan put it down to witchcraft, and troubled his head no more about it.

  ‘I constructed these pits for a place of refuge as well as a dungeon,’ the priest was saying. ‘There are times when I have taken refuge here, and through these mirrors, watched doom fall upon those who sought me with ill intent.’

  ‘But why is Thak watching that door?’ demanded Murilo.

  ‘He must have heard the falling of the grating in the tunnel. It is connected with bells in the chambers above. He knows someone is in the pits, and he is waiting for him to come up the stairs. Oh, he has learned well the lessons I taught him. He has seen what happened to men who come through that door, when I tugged at the rope that hangs on yonder wall, and he waits to mimic me.’

  ‘And while he waits, what are we to do?’ demanded Murilo.

  ‘There is naught we can do, except watch him. As long as he is in that chamber, we dare not ascend the stairs. He has the strength of a true gorilla, and could easily tear us all to pieces. But he does not need to exert his muscles; if we open that door he has but to tug that rope, and blast us into eternity.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I bargained to help you escape,’ answered the priest; ‘not to betray my secrets.’

  Murilo started to reply, then stiffened suddenly. A stealthy hand had parted the curtains of one of the doorways. Between them appeared a dark face whose glittering eyes fixed menacingly on the squat form in the scarlet robe.

  Tetreus!’ hissed Nabonidus. ‘Mitra, what a gathering of vultures this night is!’

  The face remained framed between the parted curtains. Over the intruder’s shoulder other faces peered - dark, thin faces, alight with sinister eagerness.

  ‘What do they here?’ muttered Murilo, unconsciously lowering his voice, although he knew they could not hear him.

  ‘Why, what would Petreus and his ardent young nationalists be doing in the house of the Red Priest?’ laughed Nabonidus. ‘Look how eagerly they glare at the figure they think is their arch-enemy. They have fallen into your error; it should be amusing to watch their expressions when they are disillusioned.’

  Murilo did not reply. The whole affair had a distinctly unreal atmosphere. He felt as if he were watching the play of puppets, or as a disembodied ghost himself, impersonally viewing the actions of the living, his presence unseen and unsuspected.

  He saw Petreus put his finger warningly to his lips, and nod to his fellow-conspirators. The young nobleman could not tell if Thak were aware of the intruders. The apeman’s position had not changed, as he sat with his back toward the door through which the men were gliding.

  ‘They had the same idea you had,’ Nabonidus was muttering at his ear. ‘Only their reasons were patriotic rather than selfish. Easy to gain access to my house, now that the dog is dead. Oh, what a chance to rid myself of their menace once and for all! If I were sitting where Thak sits - a leap to the wall - a tug on that rope--’

  Petreus had placed one foot lightly over the threshold of the chamber; his fellows were at his heels, their daggers glinting dully. Suddenly Thak rose and wheeled toward him. The unexpected horror of his appearance, where they had thought to behold the hated but familiar countenance of Nabonidus, wrought havoc with their nerves, as the same spectacle had wrought upon Murilo. With a shriek Petreus recoiled, carrying his companions backward with him. They stumbled and floundered over each other, and in that instant Thak, covering the distance in one prodigious, grotesque leap, caught and jerked powerfully at a thick velvet rope which hung near the doorway.

  Instantly the curtains whipped back on either hand, leaving the door clear, and down across it something flashed with a peculiar silvery blur.

  ‘He remembered!’ Nabonidus was exulting. ‘The beast is half a man! He had seen the doom performed, and he remembered! Watch, now! Watch! Watch!’

  Murilo saw that it was a panel of heavy glass that had fallen across the doorway. Through it he saw the pallid faces of the conspirators. Petreus, throwing out his hands as if to ward off a charge from Thak, encountered the transparent barrier, and from his gestures, said something to his companions. Now that the curtains were drawn back, the men in the pits could see all that took place in the chamber that contained the nationalists. Completely unnerved, these ran across the chamber toward the door by which they had apparently entered, only to halt suddenly, as if stopped by an invisible wall.

  ‘The jerk of the rope sealed that chamber,’ laughed Nabonidus. ‘It is simple; the glass panels work in grooves in the doorways.

  Jerking the rope trips the spring that holds them. They slide down and lock in place, and can only be worked from outside. The glass is unbreakable; a man with a mallet could not shatter it. Ah!’

  The trapped men were in a hysteria of fright; they ran wildly from one door to another, beating vainly at the crystal walls, shaking their fists wildly at the implacable black shape which squatted outside. Then one threw back his head, glared upward, and began to scream, to judge from the working of his lips, while he pointed toward the ceiling.

  ‘The fall of the panels released the clouds of doom,’ said the Red Priest with a wild laugh. ‘The dust of the gray lotus, from the Swamps of the Dead, beyond the land of Khitai.’

  In the middle of the ceiling hung a cluster of gold buds; these had opened like the petals of a great carven rose, and from them billowed a gray mist that swiftly filled the chamber. Instantly the scene changed from one of hysteri
a to one of madness and horror. The trapped men began to stagger; they ran in drunken circles. Froth dripped from their lips, which twisted as in awful laughter. Raging, they fell upon one another with daggers and teeth, slashing, tearing, slaying in a holocaust of madness. Murilo turned sick as he watched, and was glad that he could not hear the screams and howls with which that doomed chamber must be ringing. Like pictures thrown on a screen, it was silent.

  Outside the chamber of horror Thak was leaping up and down in brutish glee, tossing his long hairy arms on high. At Murilo’s shoulder Nabonidus was laughing like a fiend.

  ‘Ah, a good stroke, Petreus! That fairly disemboweled him! Now one for you, my patriotic friend! So! They are all down, and the living tear the flesh of the dead with their slavering teeth.’

  Murilo shuddered. Behind him the Cimmerian swore softly in his uncouth tongue. Only death was to be seen in the chamber of the gray mist; torn, gashed and mangled, the conspirators lay in a red heap, gaping mouths and blood-dabbled faces staring blankly upward through the slowly swirling eddies of gray.

  Thak, stooping like a giant gnome, approached the wall where the rope hung, and gave it a peculiar sidewise pull.

  ‘He is opening the farther door,’ said Nabonidus. ‘By Mitra, he is more human than even I had guessed! See, the mist swirls out of the chamber, and is dissipated. He waits, to be safe. Now he raises the other panel. He is cautious - he knows the doom of the gray lotus, which brings madness and death. By Mitra!’

  Murilo jerked about at the electric quality of the exclamation.

  ‘Our one chance!’ exclaimed Nabonidus. ‘If he leaves the chamber above for a few minutes, we will risk a dash up those stairs.’

  Suddenly tense, they watched the monster waddle through the doorway and vanish. With the lifting of the glass panel, the curtains had fallen again, hiding the chamber of death.

  ‘We must chance it!’ gasped Nabonidus, and Murilo saw perspiration break out on his face. ‘Perhaps he will be disposing of the bodies as he has seen me do. Quick! Follow me up those stairs!’

  He ran toward the steps and up them with an agility that amazed Murilo. The young nobleman and the barbarian were close at his heels, and they heard his gusty sigh of relief as he threw open the door at the top of the stairs. They burst into the broad chamber they had seen mirrored below. Thak was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘He’s in that chamber with the corpses!’ exclaimed Murilo. ‘Why not trap him there as he trapped them?’

  ‘No, no!’ gasped Nabonidus, an unaccustomed pallor tinge-ing his features. ‘We do not know that he is in there. He might emerge before we could reach the trap-rope, anyway! Follow me into the corridor; I must reach my chamber and obtain weapons which will destroy him. This corridor is the only one opening from this chamber which is not set with a trap of some kind.’

  They followed him swiftly through a curtained doorway opposite the door of the death-chamber, and came into a corridor, into which various chambers opened. With fumbling haste Nabonidus began to try the doors on each side. They were locked, as was the door at the other end of the corridor.

  ‘My God!’ The Red Priest leaned against the wall, his skin ashen. ‘The doors are locked, and Thak took my keys from me. We are trapped, after all.’

  Murilo stared appalled to see the man in such a state of nerves, and Nabonidus pulled himself together with an effort.

  ‘That beast has me in a panic,’ he said. ‘If you had seen him tear men as I have seen - well, Mitra aid us, but we must fight him now with what the gods have given us. Come!’

  He led them back to the curtained doorway, and peered into the great chamber in time to see Thak emerge from the opposite doorway. It was apparent that the beastman had suspected something. His small, close-set ears twitched; he glared angrily about him, and approaching the nearest doorway, tore aside the curtains to look behind them.

  Nabonidus drew back, shaking like a leaf. He gripped Conan’s shoulder. ‘Man, do you dare pit your knife against his fangs?’

  The Cimmerian’s eyes blazed in answer.

  ‘Quick!’ the Red Priest whispered, thrusting him behind the curtains, close against the wall. ‘As he will find us soon enough, we will draw him to us. As he rushes past you, sink your blade in his back if you can. You Murilo, show yourself to him, and then flee up the corridor. Mitra knows, we have no chance with him in hand-to-hand combat, but we are doomed anyway when he finds us.’

  Murilo felt his blood congeal in his veins, but he steeled himself, and stepped outside the doorway. Instantly Thak, on the other side of the chamber, wheeled, glared, and charged with a thunderous roar. His scarlet hood had fallen back, revealing his black misshapen head; his black hands and red robe were splashed with a brighter red. He was like a crimson and black nightmare as he rushed across the chamber, fangs bared, his bowed legs hurtling his enormous body along at a terrifying gait.

  Murilo turned and ran back into the corridor, and quick as he was, the shaggy horror was almost at his heels. Then as the monster rushed past the curtains, from among them catapulted a great form that struck full on the apeman’s shoulders, at the same instant driving the poniard into the brutish back. Thak screamed horribly as the impact knocked him off his feet, and the combatants hit the floor together. Instantly there began a whirl and thrash of limbs, the tearing and rending of a fiendish battle.

  Murilo saw that the barbarian had locked his legs about the apeman’s torso, and was striving to maintain his position on the monster’s back, while he butchered it with his poniard. Thak, on the other hand, was striving to dislodge his clinging foe, to drag him around within reach of the giant fangs that gaped for his flesh. In a whirlwind of blows and scarlet tatters they rolled along the corridor, revolving so swiftly that Murilo dared not use the chair he had caught up, lest he strike the Cimmerian. And he saw that in spite of the handicap of Conan’s first hold, and the voluminous robe that lashed and wrapped about the apeman’s limbs and body, Thak’s giant strength was swiftly prevailing. Inexorably he was dragging the Cimmerian around in front of him. The apeman had taken punishment enough to have killed a dozen men. Conan’s poniard had sunk again and again into his torso, shoulders and bull-like neck; he was streaming blood from a score of wounds, but unless the blade quickly reached some absolutely vital spot, Thak’s inhuman vitality would survive to finish the Cimmerian, and after him, Conan’s companions.

  Conan was fighting like a wild beast himself, in silence except for his gasps of effort. The black talons of the monster and the awful grasp of those misshapen hands ripped and tore at him, the grinning jaws gaped for his throat. Then Murilo, seeing an opening, sprang and swung the chair with all his power, and with force enough to have brained a human being. The chair glanced from Thak’s slanted black skull; but the stunned monster momentarily relaxed his rending grasp, and in that instant Conan, gasping and streaming blood, plunged forward and sank his poniard to the hilt in the apeman’s heart.

  With a convulsive shudder the beastman started from the floor, then sank limply back. His fierce eyes set and glazed, his thick limbs quivered and became rigid.

  Conan staggered dizzily up, shaking the sweat and blood out of his eyes. Blood dripped from his poniard and fingers, and trickled in rivulets down his thighs, arms and breast. Murilo caught at him to support him, but the barbarian shook him off impatiently.

  ‘When I cannot stand alone, it will be time to die,’ he mumbled, through mashed lips. ‘But I’d like a flagon of wine.’

  Nabonidus was staring down at the still figure as if he could not believe his own eyes. Black, hairy, abhorrent, the monster lay, grotesque in the tatters of the scarlet robe; yet more human than bestial, even so, and possessed somehow of a vague and terrible pathos.

  Even the Cimmerian sensed this, for he panted: ‘I have slain a man tonight, not a beast. I will count him among the chiefs whose souls I’ve sent into the dark, and my women will sing of him.’

  Nabonidus stooped and picked up a bunch of keys o
n a golden chain. They had fallen from the apeman’s girdle during the battle. Motioning his companions to follow him, he led them to a chamber, unlocked the door, and led the way inside. It was illumined like the others. The Red Priest took a vessel of wine from a table and filled crystal beakers. As his companions drank thirstily, he murmured: ‘What a night! It is nearly dawn, now. What of you, my friends?’

  I'll dress Conan’s hurts, if you will fetch me bandages and the like,’ said Murilo, and Nabonidus nodded, and moved toward the door that led into the corridor. Something about his bowed head caused Murilo to watch him sharply. At the door the Red Priest wheeled suddenly. His face had undergone a transformation. His eyes gleamed with his old fire, his lips laughed soundlessly.

  ‘Rogues together!’ his voice rang with its accustomed mockery. ‘But not fools together. You are the fool, Murilo!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the young nobleman started forward.

  ‘Back!’ Nabonidus’s voice cracked like a whip. ‘Another step and I will blast you!’

  Murilo’s blood turned cold as he saw that the Red Priest’s hand grasped a thick velvet rope which hung among the curtains just outside the door.

  ‘What treachery is this?’ cried Murilo. ‘You swore--’

  ‘I swore I would not tell the king a jest concerning you! I did not swear not to take matters into my own hands if I could. Do you think I would pass up such an opportunity? Under ordinary circumstances I would not dare kill you myself, without sanction of the king, but now none will ever know. You will go into the acid-vats along with Thak and the nationalist fools, and none will be the wiser. What a night this has been for me! If I have lost some valuable servants, I have nevertheless rid myself of various dangerous enemies. Stand back! I am over the threshold, and you cannot possibly reach me before I tug this cord and send you to hell. Not the gray lotus, this time, but something just as effective. Nearly every chamber in my house is a trap. And so, Murilo, fool that you are--’