Conan The Castle of Terror

by L. Sprague De Camp

  A dozen times he started awake, clutching at his sword and probing the soft shadows with his eyes, searching for whatever had aroused him. A dozen times he found nothing in the gloomy vastness of the ancient wreck. Each time he composed himself for slumber again, however, dim shadows clustered around him, and he half-heard whispering voices.

  Growling a weary curse to his barbaric gods, the Cimmerian damned all shadows and echoes to the eleven scarlet Hells of his mythology and threw himself down again, striving to slumber. At length he fell into a deep sleep. And in that sleep there came upon him a strange dream.

  It seemed that, although his body slept, his spirit waked and was watchful. To the immaterial eyes of his ka, as the Stygians called it, the gloomy balcony was filled with a dim glow of blood-hued light from some unseen source. This was neither the silvery sheen of the moon, which cast slanting beams into the hall through gaps in the stone, nor the pallid Bicker of distant lightning. By sanguine radiance, Conan’s spirit could see drifting shadows, which flitted like cloudy bats among die black marble columns—shadows with glaring eyes filled with mindless hunger—shadows that whispered in an all but audible cacophony of mocking laughter and bestial cries.

  Conan’s spirit somehow knew that these whispering shadows were the ghosts of thousands of sentient beings who had died within this ancient structure. How he knew this, he could not say, but to his ka it was a plain fact. The unknown people who had raised this enormous ruin—

  whether the serpent men of Valusian legend or some other forgotten race—had drenched the marble altars of the black castle with the blood of thousands. The ghosts of their victims were chained forever to this castle of terror. Perhaps they were held earthbound by some powerful spell of prehuman sorcery. Perhaps it was the same spell that kept out the beasts of the veldt.

  But this was not all. The ghosts of the black castle hungered for the blood of the living— for the blood of Conan.

  His exhausted body lay chained in ensorcelled slumber while shadowy phantoms flitted about him, tearing at him with impalpable fingers. But a spirit cannot harm a living being unless it first manifests itself on the physical plane and assumes material form. These gibbering shadow hordes were weak. Not for years had a man defied the ancient curse to set foot within the black castle, enabling them to feed. Enfeebled by long starvation, they could no longer easily materialize into a shambling horde of ghoul-things.

  Somehow, the spirit of the dreaming Conan knew this. While his body slept on, his ka observed movements on the astral plane and watched the vampiric shadows as they beat insubstantial wings about his sleeping head and slashed with impalpable claws at his pulsing throat But for all their voiceless frenzy, they could harm him not. Bound by the spell, he slept on.

  After an indefinite time, a change took place in die ruddy luminance of the astral plane. The specters were clustering together into a shapeless mass of thickening shadows.

  Mindless dead things though they were, hunger drove them into an uncanny alliance. Each ghost possessed a small store of that vital energy that went toward bodily materialization.

  Now each phantom mingled its slim supply of energy with that of its shadowy brethren.

  Gradually, a terrible shape, fed by the life force of ten thousand ghosts, began to materialize. In the dim gloom of the black marble balcony, it slowly formed out of a swirling cloud of shadowy particles.

  And Conan slept on.

  6. The Hundred Heads

  Thunder crashed deafeningly, lightning blazed with sulfurous fires above the darkened plain, whence the moonlight had fled again. The thick-piled storm clouds burst, soaking the grassy swales with a torrential downpour.

  The Stygian slave raiders had ridden all night, pressing southward toward the forests beyond Kush. Their ex-pedition had thus far been fruitless; not one black of the nomadic hunting and herding tribes of the savanna had fallen into their hands. Whether war or pestilence had swept the land bare of humankind, or whether the tribesmen, warned of the coming of the slavers, had fled beyond reach, they did not know.

  In any case, it seemed that they would do better among the lush jungles of the South. The forest Negroes dwelt in permanent villages, which the slavers could surround and take by surprise with a quick dawn rush, catching the inhabitants like fish in a net. Villagers too old, too young, or too sickly to endure the trek back to Stygia they would slay out of hand. Then they would drive the remaining wretches, fettered together to form a human chain, northward.

  There were forty Stygians, well-mounted warriors in helms and chain-mail hauberks. They were tall, swarthy, hawk-faced men, powerfully muscled. They were hardened marauders—

  tough, shrewd, fearless, and merciless, with no more compunction about killing a non-Stygian than most men have about slipping a gnat

  Now the first downpour of the storm swept their column.

  Winds whipped their woolen cloaks and linen robes and blew their horses manes into their faces. The almost continuous blaze of lightning dazzled them.

  Their leader sighted the black castle, looming above the grasslands, for the blazing lightning made it visible in the rain-veiled dark. He shouted a guttural command and drove his spurs into the ribs of his big black mare. The others spurred after him and rode up to the frowning bastions with a clatter of hoofs, a creaking of leather, and a jingle of mail. In the blur of rain and night, the abnormality of the facade was not visible, and the Stygians were eager to get under shelter before they were soaked.

  They came stamping in, cursing and bellowing and shaking the water from their cloaks. In a trice, the gloomy silence of the ruin was broken with a clamor of noise. Brushwood and dead leaves were gathered; flint and steel were struck. Soon a smoking, sputtering fire leaped up in the midst of the cracked marble floor, to paint the sculptured walls with rich orange.

  The men flung down their saddlebags, stripped off wet burnooses, and spread them to dry. They struggled out of their coats of mail and set to rubbing the moisture from them with oily rags. They opened their saddlebags

  and sank strong white teeth into round loaves of hard, stale bread.

  Outside, the storm bellowed and flashed. Streams of rainwater, like little waterfalls, poured through gaps in the masonry. But the Stygians heeded them not.

  On the balcony above, Conan stood silently, awake but trembling with shudders that wracked his powerful body.

  With the cloudburst, the spell that held him captive had broken. Starting up, he glared about for the shadowy conclave of ghosts that he had seen form in his dream.

  When the lightning flashed, he thought he glimpsed a dark, amorphous form at the far end of the balcony, but he did not care to go closer to investigate.

  While he pondered the problem of how to quit the balcony without coming in reach of the Thing, the Stygians came stamping and roaring in. They were hardly an improvement on the ghosts. Given half a chance, they would be delighted to capture him for their slave gang. For all his immense strength and skill at arms, Conan knew that no man can fight forty well-armed foes at once. Unless he instantly cut his way out and escaped, they would bring him down. He faced either a swift death or / a bitter life of groaning drudgery in a Stygian slave pen. He was not sure which he preferred.

  If the Stygians distracted Conan’s attention from the phantoms, they likewise distracted the attention of the phantoms from Conan. In their mindless hunger, the shadow-things ignored the Cimmerian in favor of the forty Stygians encamped below. Here was living flesh and vital force enough to glut their phantasmal lusts thrice over. Like autumn leaves, they drifted over the balustrade and down from the balcony into the hall below.

  The Stygians sprawled around their fire, passing a bottle of wine from hand to hand and talking in their guttural tongue.

  Although Conan knew only a few words of Stygian, from the intonations and gestures he could follow the course of the argument The leader—a clean-shaven giant, as tall as the Cimmerian—swore that he would not venture into the downpour on such
a night They would await the dawn in this crumbling ruin. At least, the roof seemed to be still sound in places, and a man could here out of the drip.

  When several more bottles had been emptied, the Stygians, now warm and dry, composed themselves for sleep. The fire burned low, for the brushwood with which they fed it could not long sustain a strong blaze. The leader pointed to one of his men and spoke a harsh sentence. The man protested, but after some argument he heaved himself up with a groan and pulled on his coat of mail. He, Conan realized, had been chosen to stand the first watch. |

  Presently, with sword in hand and shield on arm, the sentry was standing in the shadows at the margin of the light of the dying fire. From time to time he walked slowly up and down the length of the hall, pausing to peer into the winding corridors or out through the front doors, where the storm was in retreat.

  While the sentry stood in the main doorway with his back to his comrades, a grim shape formed among the snoring band of slavers. It grew slowly out of wavering clouds of insubstantial shadows. The compound creature that gradually took shape was made up of the vital force of thousands of dead beings. It became a ghastly form—a huge bulk that sprouted countless malformed limbs and appendages. A dozen squat legs supported its monstrous weight. From its top, like grisly fruit, sprouted scores of heads: some lifelike, with shaggy hair and brows; others mere lumps in which eyes, ears, mouths, and nostrils were arranged at random.

  The sight of the hundred-headed monster in that dimly firelit ball was enough to freeze the blood of the stoutest with terror. Conan felt his nape hairs rise and his skin crawl with revulsion as he stared down upon the scene.

  The thing lurched across the floor. Leaning unsteadily down, it clutched one of the Stygians with half a dozen grasping claws. As the man awoke with a scream, the nightmare Thing tore its victim apart, spattering his sleeping comrades with gory, dripping fragments of the man.

  7. Flight from Nightmare

  In an instant, the Stygians were on their feet. Hardbitten ravagers though they were, the sight was frightful enough to wring yells of terror from some. Wheeling at the first scream, the sentry rushed back into the hall to hack at the monster with his sword. Bellowing commands, the leader snatched up the nearest weapon and fell to. The rest, although unarmored, disheveled, and confused, seized sword and spear to defend themselves against the shape that shambled and slew among them.

  Swords hacked into misshapen thighs; spears plunged into the swollen, swaying belly. Clutching hands and arms were hacked away to thud, jerking and grasping, to the floor. But, seeming to reel no pain, the monster snatched up man after man. Some Stygians had their heads twisted off by strangling hands. Others were seized by the feet and battered to gory remnants against the pillars.

  As the Cimmerian watched from above, a dozen Stygians were battered or torn to death. The ghastly wounds inflicted on the monster by the weapons of the Stygians instantly closed up and healed. Severed heads and arms were replaced by new members, which sprouted from the bulbous body.

  Seeing that the Stygians had no chance against the monster, Conan resolved to take his leave while the Thing was still occupied with the slavers and before it turned its attention to him. Thinking it unwise to enter the hall, he sought a more direct exit He cimbed out through a window. This let on to a roof terrace of broken tiles, where a false step could drop him through a gap in the pavement to ground level.

  The rain had slackened to a drizzle. The moon, now nearly overhead, showed intermittent beams again. Looking down from the parapet that bounded the terrace, Conan found a place where the exterior carvings, together with climbing vines, provided means of descent. With the lithe grace of an ape, he lowered himself hand over hand down the weirdly carven facade.

  Now the moon glazed out in full glory, lighting the courtyard below where the Stygians horses stood tethered, moving and whinnying uneasily at the sounds of mortal combat that came from the great hall. Over the roar of battle sounded screams of agony as man after man was torn limb from limb.

  Conan dropped, landing lightly on the earth of the courtyard. He sprinted for the great black mare that had belonged to the leader of the slavers. He would have liked to linger to loot the bodies, for he needed their armor and other supplies. The mail shirt he had worn as Belits piratical partner had long since succumbed to wear and rust, and his flight from Bamula had been too hasty to allow him to equip himself more completely. But no force on earth could have drawn him into that ”hall, where a horror of living death still stalked and slew.

  As the young Cimmerian untethered the horse he had chosen, a screaming figure burst from the entrance and came pelting across the courtyard toward him. Conan saw that it was the man who had stood the first sentry-go. The Stygian’s helmet and mail shirt had protected him just enough to enable him to survive the massacre of his comrades.

  Conan opened his mouth to speak. There was no love lost between him and the Stygian people; nevertheless, if this Stygian were the only survivor of his party, Conan would have been willing to form a rogues alliance with him, however temporary, until they could reach more settled country.

  But Conan had no chance to make such a proposal, for the experience had driven the burly Stygian mad. His eyes blazed wildly in the moonlight, and foam dripped from his lips. He rushed straight upon Conan, whirling a scimitar so that the moonlight flashed upon it and shrieking, “Back to your hell, O demon!”

  The primitive survival instinct of the wilderness-bred Cimmerian flashed into action without conscious thought. By the time the man was within striking distance. Conan’s own sword had cleared its scabbard. Again and gain, steel clanged against steel, striking sparks. As the wild-eyed Stygian swung back for another slash, Conan drove his point into the madman’s throat The Stygian gurgled, swayed, and toppled.

  For an instant, Conan leaned on the mare’s saddle bow, panting. The duel had been short but fierce, and the Stygian had been no mean antagonist From within the ancient pile of stone, no more cries of terror rang. There was naught but an ominous silence. Then Conan heard slow, heavy, shuffling footsteps. Had the ogreish thing slaughtered them all? Was it dragging its misshapen bulk toward the door, to emerge into the courtyard?

  Conan did not wait to find out. With trembling fingers he unlaced the dead man’s hauberk and pulled the mail shirt off. He also collected the Stygian’s helmet and shield, the latter made from the hide of one of the great, thick-skinned beasts of the veldt He hastily tied these trophies to the saddle, vaulted upon the steed, wrenched at the reins, and kicked the mare’s ribs. He galloped out of the ruined courtyard into the region of withered grass. With every stride of the flying hoofs, the castle of ancient evil fen behind.

  Somewhere beyond the circle of dead grass, perhaps the hungry lions still prowled. But Conan did not care. After the ghostly horrors of the black citadel, he would gladly take his chances with mere lions.

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  L. Sprague De Camp

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