The People of the Black Circle

by Robert E. Howard

  6 The Mountain of the Black Seers

  'Where now?' Yasmina was trying to sit erect on the rocking saddle-bow,clutching her captor. She was conscious of a recognition of shame thatshe should not find unpleasant the feel of his muscular flesh under herfingers.

  'To Afghulistan,' he answered. 'It's a perilous road, but the stallionwill carry us easily, unless we fall in with some of your friends, or mytribal enemies. Now that Yar Afzal is dead, those damned Wazulis will beon our heels. I'm surprized we haven't sighted them behind us already.'

  'Who was that man you rode down?' she asked.

  'I don't know. I never saw him before. He's no Ghuli, that's certain.What the devil he was doing there is more than I can say. There was agirl with him, too.'

  'Yes.' Her gaze was shadowed. 'I can not understand that. That girl wasmy maid, Gitara. Do you suppose she was coming to aid me? That the manwas a friend? If so, the Wazulis have captured them both.'

  'Well,' he answered, 'there's nothing we can do. If we go back, they'llskin us both. I can't understand how a girl like that could get this farinto the mountains with only one man--and he a robed scholar, for that'swhat he looked like. There's something infernally queer in all this.That fellow Yar Afzal beat and sent away--he moved like a man walking inhis sleep. I've seen the priests of Zamora perform their abominablerituals in their forbidden temples, and their victims had a stare likethat man. The priests looked into their eyes and muttered incantations,and then the people became the walking dead men, with glassy eyes, doingas they were ordered.

  'And then I saw what the fellow had in his hand, which Yar Afzal pickedup. It was like a big black jade bead, such as the temple girls of Yezudwear when they dance before the black stone spider which is their god.Yar Afzal held it in his hand, and he didn't pick up anything else. Yetwhen he fell dead, a spider, like the god at Yezud, only smaller, ranout of his fingers. And then, when the Wazulis stood uncertain there, avoice cried out for them to kill me, and I know that voice didn't comefrom any of the warriors, nor from the women who watched by the huts. Itseemed to come from _above_.'

  Yasmina did not reply. She glanced at the stark outlines of themountains all about them and shuddered. Her soul shrank from their gauntbrutality. This was a grim, naked land where anything might happen.Age-old traditions invested it with shuddery horror for anyone born inthe hot, luxuriant southern plains.

  The sun was high, beating down with fierce heat, yet the wind that blewin fitful gusts seemed to sweep off slopes of ice. Once she heard astrange rushing above them that was not the sweep of the wind, and fromthe way Conan looked up, she knew it was not a common sound to him,either. She thought that a strip of the cold blue sky was momentarilyblurred, as if some all but invisible object had swept between it andherself, but she could not be sure. Neither made any comment, but Conanloosened his knife in his scabbard.

  They were following a faintly marked path dipping down into ravines sodeep the sun never struck bottom, laboring up steep slopes where looseshale threatened to slide from beneath their feet, and followingknife-edge ridges with blue-hazed echoing depths on either hand.

  The sun had passed its zenith when they crossed a narrow trail windingamong the crags. Conan reined the horse aside and followed it southward,going almost at right angles to their former course.

  'A Galzai village is at one end of this trail,' he explained. 'Theirwomen follow it to a well, for water. You need new garments.'

  Glancing down at her filmy attire, Yasmina agreed with him. Hercloth-of-gold slippers were in tatters, her robes and silkenunder-garments torn to shreds that scarcely held together decently.Garments meant for the streets of Peshkhauri were scarcely appropriatefor the crags of the Himelians.

  Coming to a crook in the trail, Conan dismounted, helped Yasmina downand waited. Presently he nodded, though she heard nothing.

  'A woman coming along the trail,' he remarked. In sudden panic sheclutched his arm.

  'You will not--not kill her?'

  'I don't kill women ordinarily,' he grunted; 'though some of thehill-women are she-wolves. No,' he grinned as at a huge jest. 'By Crom,I'll _pay_ for her clothes! How is that?' He displayed a large handfulof gold coins, and replaced all but the largest. She nodded, muchrelieved. It was perhaps natural for men to slay and die; her fleshcrawled at the thought of watching the butchery of a woman.

  Presently a woman appeared around the crook of the trail--a tall, slimGalzai girl, straight as a young sapling, bearing a great empty gourd.She stopped short and the gourd fell from her hands when she saw them;she wavered as though to run, then realized that Conan was too close toher to allow her to escape, and so stood still, staring at them with amixed expression of fear and curiosity.

  Conan displayed the gold coin.

  'If you will give this woman your garments,' he said, 'I will give youthis money.'

  The response was instant. The girl smiled broadly with surprize anddelight, and, with the disdain of a hill-woman for prudish conventions,promptly yanked off her sleeveless embroidered vest, slipped down herwide trousers and stepped out of them, twitched off her wide-sleevedshirt, and kicked off her sandals. Bundling them all in a bunch, sheproffered them to Conan, who handed them to the astonished Devi.

  'Get behind that rock and put these on,' he directed, further provinghimself no native hillman. 'Fold your robes up into a bundle and bringthem to me when you come out.'

  'The money!' clamored the hill-girl, stretching out her hands eagerly.'The gold you promised me!'

  Conan flipped the coin to her, she caught it, bit, then thrust it intoher hair, bent and caught up the gourd and went on down the path, asdevoid of self-consciousness as of garments. Conan waited with someimpatience while the Devi, for the first time in her pampered life,dressed herself. When she stepped from behind the rock he swore insurprize, and she felt a curious rush of emotions at the unrestrainedadmiration burning in his fierce blue eyes. She felt shame,embarrassment, yet a stimulation of vanity she had never beforeexperienced, and a tingling when meeting the impact of his eyes. He laida heavy hand on her shoulder and turned her about, staring avidly at herfrom all angles.

  'By Crom!' said he. 'In those smoky, mystic robes you were aloof andcold and far off as a star! Now you are a woman of warm flesh and blood!You went behind that rock as the Devi of Vendhya; you come out as ahill-girl--though a thousand times more beautiful than any wench of theZhaibar! You were a goddess--now you are real!'

  He spanked her resoundingly, and she, recognizing this as merely anotherexpression of admiration, did not feel outraged. It was indeed as if thechanging of her garments had wrought a change in her personality. Thefeelings and sensations she had suppressed rose to domination in hernow, as if the queenly robes she had cast off had been material shacklesand inhibitions.

  But Conan, in his renewed admiration, did not forget that peril lurkedall about them. The farther they drew away from the region of theZhaibar, the less likely he was to encounter any Kshatriya troops. Onthe other hand he had been listening all throughout their flight forsounds that would tell him the vengeful Wazulis of Khurum were on theirheels.

  Swinging the Devi up, he followed her into the saddle and again reinedthe stallion westward. The bundle of garments she had given him, hehurled over a cliff, to fall into the depths of a thousand-foot gorge.

  'Why did you do that?' she asked. 'Why did you not give them to thegirl?'

  'The riders from Peshkhauri are combing these hills,' he said. 'They'llbe ambushed and harried at every turn, and by way of reprisal they'lldestroy every village they can take. They may turn westward any time. Ifthey found a girl wearing your garments, they'd torture her intotalking, and she might put them on my trail.'

  'What will she do?' asked Yasmina.

  'Go back to her village and tell her people that a stranger attackedher,' he answered. 'She'll have them on our track, all right. But shehad to go on and get the water first; if she dared go back without it,they'd whip the skin off her. That gives us a long start.
They'll nevercatch us. By nightfall we'll cross the Afghuli border.'

  'There are no paths or signs of human habitation in these parts,' shecommented. 'Even for the Himelians this region seems singularlydeserted. We have not seen a trail since we left the one where we metthe Galzai woman.'

  For answer he pointed to the northwest, where she glimpsed a peak in anotch of the crags.

  'Yimsha,' grunted Conan. 'The tribes build their villages as far fromthe mountain as they can.'

  She was instantly rigid with attention.

  'Yimsha!' she whispered. 'The mountain of the Black Seers!'

  'So they say,' he answered. 'This is as near as I ever approached it. Ihave swung north to avoid any Kshatriya troops that might be prowlingthrough the hills. The regular trail from Khurum to Afghulistan liesfarther south. This is an ancient one, and seldom used.'

  She was staring intently at the distant peak. Her nails bit into herpink palms.

  'How long would it take to reach Yimsha from this point?'

  'All the rest of the day, and all night,' he answered, and grinned. 'Doyou want to go there? By Crom, it's no place for an ordinary human, fromwhat the hill-people say.'

  'Why do they not gather and destroy the devils that inhabit it?' shedemanded.

  'Wipe out wizards with swords? Anyway, they never interfere with people,unless the people interfere with them. I never saw one of them, thoughI've talked with men who swore they had. They say they've glimpsedpeople from the tower among the crags at sunset or sunrise--tall, silentmen in black robes.'

  'Would you be afraid to attack them?'

  'I?' The idea seemed a new one to him. 'Why, if they imposed upon me, itwould be my life or theirs. But I have nothing to do with them. I cameto these mountains to raise a following of human beings, not to war withwizards.'

  Yasmina did not at once reply. She stared at the peak as at a humanenemy, feeling all her anger and hatred stir in her bosom anew. Andanother feeling began to take dim shape. She had plotted to hurl againstthe masters of Yimsha the man in whose arms she was now carried. Perhapsthere was another way, besides the method she had planned, to accomplishher purpose. She could not mistake the look that was beginning to dawnin this wild man's eyes as they rested on her. Kingdoms have fallen whena woman's slim white hands pulled the strings of destiny. Suddenly shestiffened, pointing.

  'Look!'

  Just visible on the distant peak there hung a cloud of peculiar aspect.It was a frosty crimson in color, veined with sparkling gold. This cloudwas in motion; it rotated, and as it whirled it contracted. It dwindledto a spinning taper that flashed in the sun. And suddenly it detacheditself from the snow-tipped peak, floated out over the void like agay-hued feather, and became invisible against the cerulean sky.

  'What could that have been?' asked the girl uneasily, as a shoulder ofrock shut the distant mountain from view; the phenomenon had beendisturbing, even in its beauty.

  'The hill-men call it Yimsha's Carpet, whatever that means,' answeredConan. 'I've seen five hundred of them running as if the devil were attheir heels, to hide themselves in caves and crags, because they sawthat crimson cloud float up from the peak. What in--'

  They had advanced through a narrow, knife-cut gash between turretedwalls and emerged upon a broad ledge, flanked by a series of ruggedslopes on one hand, and a gigantic precipice on the other. The dim trailfollowed this ledge, bent around a shoulder and reappeared at intervalsfar below, working a tedious way downward. And emerging from the cutthat opened upon the ledge, the black stallion halted short, snorting.Conan urged him on impatiently, and the horse snorted and threw his headup and down, quivering and straining as if against an invisible barrier.

  Conan swore and swung off, lifting Yasmina down with him. He wentforward, with a hand thrown out before him as if expecting to encounterunseen resistance, but there was nothing to hinder him, though when hetried to lead the horse, it neighed shrilly and jerked back. ThenYasmina cried out, and Conan wheeled, hand starting to knife-hilt.

  Neither of them had seen him come, but he stood there, with his armsfolded, a man in a camel-hair robe and a green turban. Conan gruntedwith surprize to recognize the man the stallion had spurned in theravine outside the Wazuli village.

  'Who the devil are you?' he demanded.

  The man did not answer. Conan noticed that his eyes were wide, fixed,and of a peculiar luminous quality. And those eyes held his like amagnet.

  Khemsa's sorcery was based on hypnotism, as is the case with mostEastern magic. The way has been prepared for the hypnotist for untoldcenturies of generations who have lived and died in the firm convictionof the reality and power of hypnotism, building up, by mass thought andpractise, a colossal though intangible atmosphere against which theindividual, steeped in the traditions of the land, finds himselfhelpless.

  But Conan was not a son of the East. Its traditions were meaningless tohim; he was the product of an utterly alien atmosphere. Hypnotism wasnot even a myth in Cimmeria. The heritage that prepared a native of theEast for submission to the mesmerist was not his.

  He was aware of what Khemsa was trying to do to him; but he felt theimpact of the man's uncanny power only as a vague impulsion, a tuggingand pulling that he could shake off as a man shakes spiderwebs from hisgarments.

  Aware of hostility and black magic, he ripped out his long knife andlunged, as quick on his feet as a mountain lion.

  But hypnotism was not all of Khemsa's magic. Yasmina, watching, did notsee by what roguery of movement or illusion the man in the green turbanavoided the terrible disembowelling thrust. But the keen blade whickeredbetween side and lifted arm, and to Yasmina it seemed that Khemsa merelybrushed his open palm lightly against Conan's bull-neck. But theCimmerian went down like a slain ox.

  Yet Conan was not dead; breaking his fall with his left hand, he slashedat Khemsa's legs even as he went down, and the Rakhsha avoided thescythe-like swipe only by a most unwizardly bound backward. Then Yasminacried out sharply as she saw a woman she recognized as Gitara glide outfrom among the rocks and come up to the man. The greeting died in theDevi's throat as she saw the malevolence in the girl's beautiful face.

  Conan was rising slowly, shaken and dazed by the cruel craft of thatblow which, delivered with an art forgotten of men before Atlantis sank,would have broken like a rotten twig the neck of a lesser man. Khemsagazed at him cautiously and a trifle uncertainly. The Rakhsha hadlearned the full flood of his own power when he faced at bay the knivesof the maddened Wazulis in the ravine behind Khurum village; but theCimmerian's resistance had perhaps shaken his new-found confidence atrifle. Sorcery thrives on success, not on failure.

  He stepped forward, lifting his hand--then halted as if frozen, headtilted back, eyes wide open, hand raised. In spite of himself Conanfollowed his gaze, and so did the women--the girl cowering by thetrembling stallion, and the girl beside Khemsa.

  Down the mountain slopes, like a whirl of shining dust blown before thewind, a crimson, conoid cloud came dancing. Khemsa's dark face turnedashen; his hand began to tremble, then sank to his side. The girl besidehim, sensing the change in him, stared at him inquiringly.

  The crimson shape left the mountain slope and came down in a longarching sweep. It struck the ledge between Conan and Khemsa, and theRakhsha gave back with a stifled cry. He backed away, pushing the girlGitara back with groping, fending hands.

  The crimson cloud balanced like a spinning top for an instant, whirlingin a dazzling sheen on its point. Then without warning it was gone,vanished as a bubble vanishes when burst. There on the ledge stood fourmen. It was miraculous, incredible, impossible, yet it was true. Theywere not ghosts or phantoms. They were four tall men, with shaven,vulture-like heads, and black robes that hid their feet. Their handswere concealed by their wide sleeves. They stood in silence, their nakedheads nodding slightly in unison. They were facing Khemsa, but behindthem Conan felt his own blood turning to ice in his veins. Rising, hebacked stealthily away, until he could feel the stallion's shouldertremblin
g against his back, and the Devi crept into the shelter of hisarm. There was no word spoken. Silence hung like a stifling pall.

  All four of the men in black robes stared at Khemsa. Their vulture-likefaces were immobile, their eyes introspective and contemplative. ButKhemsa shook like a man in an ague. His feet were braced on the rock,his calves straining as if in physical combat. Sweat ran in streams downhis dark face. His right hand locked on something under his brown robeso desperately that the blood ebbed from that hand and left it white.His left hand fell on the shoulder of Gitara and clutched in agony likethe grasp of a drowning man. She did not flinch or whimper, though hisfingers dug like talons into her firm flesh.

  Conan had witnessed hundreds of battles in his wild life, but never onelike this, wherein four diabolical wills sought to beat down one lesserbut equally devilish will that opposed them. But he only faintly sensedthe monstrous quality of that hideous struggle. With his back to thewall, driven to bay by his former masters, Khemsa was fighting for hislife with all the dark power, all the frightful knowledge they hadtaught him through long, grim years of neophytism and vassalage.

  He was stronger than even he had guessed, and the free exercise of hispowers in his own behalf had tapped unsuspected reservoirs of forces.And he was nerved to super-energy by frantic fear and desperation. Hereeled before the merciless impact of those hypnotic eyes, but he heldhis ground. His features were distorted into a bestial grin of agony,and his limbs were twisted as on a rack. It was a war of souls, offrightful brains steeped in lore forbidden to men for a million years,of mentalities which had plumbed the abysses and explored the dark starswhere spawn the shadows.

  Yasmina understood this better than did Conan. And she dimly understoodwhy Khemsa could withstand the concentrated impact of those four hellishwills which might have blasted into atoms the very rock on which hestood. The reason was the girl that he clutched with the strength of hisdespair. She was like an anchor to his staggering soul, battered by thewaves of those psychic emanations. His weakness was now his strength.His love for the girl, violent and evil though it might be, was yet atie that bound him to the rest of humanity, providing an earthlyleverage for his will, a chain that his inhuman enemies could not break;at least not break through Khemsa.

  They realized that before he did. And one of them turned his gaze fromthe Rakhsha full upon Gitara. There was no battle there. The girl shrankand wilted like a leaf in the drought. Irresistibly impelled, she toreherself from her lover's arms before he realized what was happening.Then a hideous thing came to pass. She began to back toward theprecipice, facing her tormentors, her eyes wide and blank as darkgleaming glass from behind which a lamp has been blown out. Khemsagroaned and staggered toward her, falling into the trap set for him. Adivided mind could not maintain the unequal battle. He was beaten, astraw in their hands. The girl went backward, walking like an automaton,and Khemsa reeled drunkenly after her, hands vainly outstretched,groaning, slobbering in his pain, his feet moving heavily like deadthings.

  On the very brink she paused, standing stiffly, her heels on the edge,and he fell on his knees and crawled whimpering toward her, groping forher, to drag her back from destruction. And just before his clumsyfingers touched her, one of the wizards laughed, like the sudden, bronzenote of a bell in hell. The girl reeled suddenly and, consummate climaxof exquisite cruelty, reason and understanding flooded back into hereyes, which flared with awful fear. She screamed, clutched wildly at herlover's straining hand, and then, unable to save herself, fell headlongwith a moaning cry.

  Khemsa hauled himself to the edge and stared over, haggardly, his lipsworking as he mumbled to himself. Then he turned and stared for a longminute at his torturers, with wide eyes that held no human light. Andthen with a cry that almost burst the rocks, he reeled up and camerushing toward them, a knife lifted in his hand.

  One of the Rakhshas stepped forward and stamped his foot, and as hestamped, there came a rumbling that grew swiftly to a grinding roar.Where his foot struck, a crevice opened in the solid rock that widenedinstantly. Then, with a deafening crash, a whole section of the ledgegave way. There was a last glimpse of Khemsa, with arms wildly upflung,and then he vanished amidst the roar of the avalanche that thundereddown into the abyss.

  The four looked contemplatively at the ragged edge of rock that formedthe new rim of the precipice, and then turned suddenly. Conan, thrownoff his feet by the shudder of the mountain, was rising, liftingYasmina. He seemed to move as slowly as his brain was working. He wasbefogged and stupid. He realized that there was a desperate need for himto lift the Devi on the black stallion and ride like the wind, but anunaccountable sluggishness weighted his every thought and action.

  And now the wizards had turned toward him; they raised their arms, andto his horrified sight, he saw their outlines fading, dimming, becominghazy and nebulous, as a crimson smoke billowed around their feet androse about them. They were blotted out by a sudden whirling cloud--andthen he realized that he too was enveloped in a blinding crimsonmist--he heard Yasmina scream, and the stallion cried out like a womanin pain. The Devi was torn from his arm, and as he lashed out with hisknife blindly, a terrific blow like a gust of storm wind knocked himsprawling against a rock. Dazedly he saw a crimson conoid cloud spinningup and over the mountain slopes. Yasmina was gone, and so were the fourmen in black. Only the terrified stallion shared the ledge with him.