Conan The Castle of Terror
L. Sprague De Camp
"The Castle of Terror" is a short story written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. It was first published in the 1969 collection Conan of Cimmeria.
An exhausted Conan seeks shelter in a ruined castle, where he encounters a pack of slavers and an undead horror.
The Castle of Terror
Before he can bring off his plans for building a black, empire with himself at its head, Conan is thwarted by a succession of natural catastrophes and the intrigues of his enemies among the Bamulas, many of whom resent the rise to power in their tribe of a foreigner, forced to flee, he heads north through the equatorial jungle and across the grassy veldt toward the semicivilized kingdom of Kush.
1. Burning Eyes
BEYOND THE trackless deserts of Stygia lay the vast grasslands of Kush. For over a hundred leagues, there was’ naught but endless stretches of thick grass. Here and there a solitary tree rose to break the gently rolling monotony of the veldt: spiny acacias, sword-leaved dragon, trees, emerald-spired lobelias, and thick fingered, poisonous spurges. Now and then a rare stream cut a shallow dell across the prairie, giving rise to a narrow gallery forest along its banks. Herds of zebra, antelope, buffalo, and other denizens of the savanna drifted athwart the veldt, grazing as they went
The grasses whispered and nodded in the wandering winds beneath skies of deep cobalt in which a fierce tropical sun blazed blindingly. Now and then clouds boiled up; a brief thunderstorm roared and blazed with catastrophic fury, only to die and clear as quickly as it had arisen.
Across this limitless waste, as the day died, a lone silent figure trudged. It was a young giant, strongly built, with eliding thews that swelled under a sun-bronzed hide scored with the white traces of old wounds. Deep of chest and broad of shoulder and long of limb was he; his scanty costume of loincloth and sandals revealed his magnificent physique. His chest, shoulders, and back were burnt nearly as black as the natives of this land. The tangled locks of an unkempt mane of coarse black hair framed a grim, impassive face. Beneath scowling black brows, fierce eyes of burning blue roamed restlessly from side to side as he marched with a limber, tireless stride across the level lands. His wary gaze pierced the thick, shadowy grasses on either side, reddened by the angry crimson of sunset. Soon night would come swiftly across Kush; under the gloom of its world-shadowing wings, danger and death would prowl the waste.
Yet the lone traveler, Conan of Cimmeria, was not afraid. A barbarian of barbarians, bred on the bleak hills of distant Cimmeria, the iron endurance and fierce vitality of the wild were his, granting him survival where civilized men, though more learned, more courteous, and more sophisticated than he, would miserably have perished. Although the wanderer had gone afoot for eight days, with no food save the game he had slain with the great Bamula hunting bow slung across his back, the mighty barbarian had nowhere nearly approached the limits of his strength.
Long had Conan been accustomed to the Spartan life of the wilderness. Although he had tasted the languid luxuries of civilized life in half the walled, glittering cities of the world, he missed them not. He plodded on toward the distant horizon, now obscured by a murky purple haze.
Behind him lay the dense jungles of the black lands beyond Kush, where fantastic orchids blazed amid foliage his way for many weary leagues northward, until he reached the region where the crowding forest thinned out and gave way to the open grasslands. Now he meant to cross Ac savanna on foot to reach the kingdom of Kush, where his barbaric strength and the weight of his sword might find him employment in the service of the dusky monarchs of that ancient land.
Suddenly his thoughts were snatched away from contemplation of the past by a thrill of danger. Some primal instinct of survival alerted him to the presence of peril. He halted and stared about him through the long shadows cast by the setting sun. As the hairs of his nape bristled with the touch of unseen menace, the giant barbarian searched the air with sensitive nostrils and probed the gloom with smoldering eyes. Although he could neither see nor smell anything, the mysterious sense of danger of the wilderness-bred told him that peril was near.
He felt the feathery touch of invisible eyes and whirled to glimpse a pair of large orbs, glowing in the gloom.
Almost in the same instant, the blazing eyes vanished. So short had been his glimpse and so utter the disappearance that he was tempted to shrug off the sight as a product of his imagination. He turned and went forward again, but now he was on the alert. As he continued his journey, flaming eyes opened again amid the thick shadows of dense grasses, to follow his silent progress. Tawny, sinuous forms glided after him on soundless feet. The lions of Kush were on his track, lusting for hot blood and fresh flesh.
2. The Circle of Death
An hour later, night had fallen over the savanna, save for a narrow band of sunset glow along the western horizon, against which an occasional small, gnarled tree of the veldt stood up in black silhouette. And Conan almost reached the limits of his endurance. Thrice lionesses had rushed upon him out of the shadows to right or to left. Thrice he had driven them off with the flying death of his arrows.
Although it was hard to shoot straight in the gathering dark, an explosive snarl from the chasing cats had thrice told him of hits, although he had no way of knowing whether he had slain or only wounded the deadly predators.
But now his quiver was empty, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the silent marauders pulled him down.
There were eight or ten lions on his track! Now even the grim barbarian felt a pang of despair. Even if his mighty sword accounted for one or two of the attackers, the rest would tear him into gory pieces before he could slash or thrust again.
Conan had encountered lions before and knew their enormous strength, which enabled them to pick up and drag a whole zebra as easily as a cat does a mouse. Although Conan was one of the strongest men of his time, once a lion got its claws and teeth into him that strength would be no more effective than that of a small child.
Conan ran on. He had been running now for the better part of an hour, with a long, loping stride that ate up the leagues. At first he had run effortlessly, but now the grueling exertions of his flight through the black jungles and his eight-day trek across the plain began to take their toll. His eyes blurred; the muscles of his legs ached. Every beat of his bursting heart seemed to drain away the strength remaining in his giant form.
He prayed to his savage gods for the moon to emerge from the dense, stormy clouds that veiled most of the sky. He prayed for a hillock or a tree to break the gently rolling flatness of the plain, or even a boulder against which he could set his back to make a last stand against the pride.
But the gods heard not The only trees in this region were dwarfish, thorny growths, which rose to a height of six or eight feet and then spread their branches out horizontally in a mushroom shape. If he managed to climb such a tree despite the thorns, it would be easy for the first lion to reach the base to spring upon him from below and bear him to the ground in one leap. The only hillocks were termite nests, some rising several feet in height but too small for purposes of defense.
There was nothing to do but run on. To lighten himself, he had cast aside the great hunting bow when he had spent his last shaft, although it wrenched his heart to throw away the splendid weapon. Quiver and straps soon followed. He was now stripped to a mere loincloth of leopard hide, the high-laced sandals that clad his feet, his goatskin water bag, and the heavy broadsword, which he now carried scabbarded in one fist. To part with these would mean surrendering his last hope.
The lions were now almost at his heels. He could smell the strong reek of their lithe bodies and
hear their panting breath.
Any moment, now, they would, close in upon him, and he would be making his last furious fight for life before they pulled him down.
He expected his pursuers to follow their age-old tactics. The oldest malethe chief of the pridewould follow directly behind him, with the younger males on either flank. The swifter lionesses would range ahead on either side in a crescent formation until they were far enough ahead of him to close the circle and trap him. Then they would all rush in upon him at once, making any effective defense impossible.
Suddenly, the land was flooded with light. The round, silver eye of the rising moon glared down upon the broad plains, bathing the racing figure of the giant barbarian with her gaze and drawing lines of pale silver fire along the rippling sinews of the lions as they loped at his heels, washing their short, silken fur with her ghostly radiance.
Coan’s wary eye caught the moonfire on rippling fur ahead to his left, and he knew that the encirclement was nearly complete. As he braced himself to meet the charge, however, he was astounded to see the same lioness veer off and halt.
In two strides he was past her. As he went, he saw that the young lioness on his right had also stopped short. She squatted motionless on the grass with tail twitching and lashing. A curious sound, half roar and half wail, came from her fanged jaws. |
Conan dared to slow his run and glance bad. To his utter astonishment, he saw that the entire pride had halted as if at some invisible barrier. They stood in a snarling line with fangs gleaming like silver in the moonlight. Earth shaking roars of baffled rage came from their throats.
Conan’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and his scowling brows knotted in puzzlement. What had halted the pride at the very moment when they had made sure of their prey?
What unseen force had annulled the fury of the chase? He stood for a moment facing them, sword in hand, wondering if they would resume their charge. But the lions stayed where they were, growling and roaring
from foam-dripping jaws.
Then Conan observed a curious thing. The place where the lions had halted seemed to mark a line of demarcation across the plain. On the further side grew thick, long, lush grasses. At the invisible boundary, however, the grass became thin, stubby, and ill nourished, with broad patches of bare earth. Although Conan could not clearly distinguish colors by moonlight alone, it seemed to him that the grasses on the hither side of the line lacked the normal green color of growing things. Instead, the grasses around his feet seemed dry and gray, as if leached of all vitality.
To either side, in the bright moonlight, he could see the region of dead grasses curve away into the distance, as if he stood alone in a vast circle of death.
3. The Black Citadel
Although he still ached with weariness, the brief pause had given Conan the strength to continue his progress.
Since he did not know the nature of the invisible line that had halted the lions, he could not tell how long this mysterious influence would continue to hold them at bay.
Therefore he preferred to put as much distance between the pride and himself as possible.
Soon he saw a dark mass take form out of the dimness ahead of him. He went forward even more warily than before, sword in hand and eyes searching the hazy immensities of this domain. The moonlight was still brilliant, but its radiance became obscure with distance as if veiled by some thickening haze. So, at first, Conan could make nothing of the black, featureless mass that lifted out of the plain before him, save for its size and its stillness. Like some colossal idol of primitive devil worship, hewn from a mountain of black stone by some unknown beings in time’s dawn, the dark mass squatted motionless amid the dead gray grass. As Conan came nearer, details emerged from the dark, featureless blur.
He saw that it was a tremendous edifice, which lay partly in ruins on the plains of Kusha colossal structure erected by unknown hands for some nameless purpose. It looked like a castle or fortress of some sort, but of an architectural type that Conan had never seen. Made of dense black stone, it rose in a complex facade of pillars and terraces and battlements, whose alignment seemed oddly awry. It baffled the view. The eye followed mind-twisting curves that seemed subtly wrong, weirdly distorted. The huge structure gave the impression of a chaotic lack of order, as if its builders had not been quite sane.
Conan wrenched his gaze from the vertiginous curves of this misshapen mass of masonry, merely to look upon which made him dizzy. He thought he could at last perceive why the beasts of the veldt avoided this crumbling pile. It somehow exuded an aura of menace and horror. Perhaps, during the millennia that the black citadel had squatted on the plains, the animals had come to dread it and to avoid its shadowy precincts, until such habits of avoidance were now instinctive.
The moon dimmed suddenly as high-piled storm clouds again darkened her ageless face. Distant thunder grumbled, and Conan’s searching gaze caught the sulfurous flicker of lightning among the boiling masses of cloud. One of .those quick, tempestuous thunderstorms of the savanna was about to break.
Conan hesitated. On the one hand, curiosity and a desire for shelter from the coming storm drew him to the ‘ crumbled stronghold. On the other, his barbarian’s mind held a deep-rooted aversion to the supernatural. Toward earthly, mortal dangers he was fearless to the point of rashness, but otherworldly perils could send the tendrils of panic quivering along his nerves. And something about this mysterious structure hinted at the supernatural. He could feel its menace in the deepest layers of his consciousness.
A louder nimble of thunder decided him. Taking an iron grip on his nerves, he strode confidently into the dark portal, naked steel in hand, and vanished within.
4. The Serpent Men
Conan prowled the length of the high-vaulted hall, finding nothing that lived. Dust and dead leaves littered the black pave. Moldering rubbish was heaped in the comers and around the bases of towering stone columns. However old this pile of masonry was, evidently no living thing had dwelt therein for centuries.
The hall, revealed by another brief appearance of ,the moon, was two stories high. A balustrated balcony ran around the second floor. Curious to probe deeper into the mystery of this enigmatic structure which squatted here on the plain many leagues from any other stone building, Conan roamed the corridors, which wound as sinuously as a serpent’s track.
He poked into dusty chambers whose original purpose he could not even guess.
The castle was of staggering size, even to one who had seen the temple of the spider-god at Yezud in Zamora and the palace of King Yfldiz at Aghrapur in Turan. A good part of itone whole wing, in facthad fallen into a featureless mass of tumbled black blocks, but the part that remained more or less intact was still the largest building that Conan had seen. Its antiquity was beyond guessing. The black onyx of which it was wrought was unlike any stone that Conan had seen in this part of the world. It must have been brought across immense distanceswhy, Conan could not imagine.
Some features of the bizarre architecture of the structure reminded Conan of ancient tombs in accursed Zamora.
Others suggested forbidden temples that he had glimpsed in far Hyrkania during his mercenary service with the Turanians.
But whether the black castle had been erected primarily as a tomb, a fortress, a palace, or a temple, or some combination of these, he could not tell.
Then, too, there was a disturbing alienage about the castle that made him obscurely uneasy. Even as the facades seemed to have been built according to the canons of some alien geometry, so the interior contained baffling features. The steps of the stairways, for example, were much broader and shallower than was required for human feet. The doorways were too tall and too narrow, so that Conan had to turn sideways to get through them.
The walls were sculptured in low relief with coiling, geometrical arabesques of baffling, hypnotic complexity.
Conan found that he had to wrench his gaze away from the sculptured walls by force of will, lest his mind be
entrapped and held by the cryptic symbols formed by the writhing lines.
In fact, everything about this strange, baffling enigma in stone reminded Conan of serpentsthe winding corridors, the writhing decoration, and even, he thought, a faint trace of a musky, ophidian odor.
Conan halted, brows knotted. Could this unknown ruin have been raised by the serpent folk of ancient Valussa? The day of that prehuman people lay an unthinkable interval in the past, before the dawn of man himself, in the dim mists of time when giant reptiles ruled the earth. Or ever the Seven Empires arose in the days before the Cataclysmeven before Atlantis arose from the depths of the Western Oceanthe serpent people had reigned. They had vanished long before the coming of manbut not entirely.
Around the campfires in the bleak hills of Cimmeria and again in the marbled courts of the temples of Nemedia, Conan had heard the legend of Kull, the Atlantean king of Valusia. The snake people had survived here and there by means of their magic, which enabled them to appear to others as ordinary human beings. But Kull had stumbled upon their secret and had purged his realm dean of their taint, wiping them out with fire and sword.
Still, might not the black castle, with its alien architecture, be a relic of that remote era, when men contended for the rule of the planet with these reptilian survivors of lost ages?
5. Whispering Shadows
The first thunderstorm missed the black castle. There was a brief patter of raindrops on the crumbling stonework and a trickle of water through holes in the roof. Then the lightning and thunder diminished as the storm passed off to westward, leaving the moon to shine unobstructed once more through the gaps in the stone. But other storms followed, muttering and flickering out of the east. Conan slept uneasily in a comer of the balcony above the great hall, tossing and turning like some wary animal that dimly senses the approach of danger. Caution had made him suspicious of sleeping in the hall before the wide-open doors. Even though the circle of death seemed to bar the denizens of the plains, he did not trust the unseen force that held the beasts at bay.
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