The People of the Black Circle

by Robert E. Howard

  8 Yasmina Knows Stark Terror

  Yasmina had time but for one scream when she felt herself enveloped inthat crimson whirl and torn from her protector with appalling force. Shescreamed once, and then she had no breath to scream. She was blinded,deafened, rendered mute and eventually senseless by the terrific rushingof the air about her. There was a dazed consciousness of dizzy heightand numbing speed, a confused impression of natural sensations gone mad,and then vertigo and oblivion.

  A vestige of these sensations clung to her as she recoveredconsciousness; so she cried out and clutched wildly as though to stay aheadlong and involuntary flight. Her fingers closed on soft fabric, anda relieving sense of stability pervaded her. She took cognizance of hersurroundings.

  She was lying on a dais covered with black velvet. This dais stood in agreat, dim room whose walls were hung with dusky tapestries across whichcrawled dragons reproduced with repellent realism. Floating shadowsmerely hinted at the lofty ceiling, and gloom that lent itself toillusion lurked in the corners. There seemed to be neither windows nordoors in the walls, or else they were concealed by the nightedtapestries. Where the dim light came from, Yasmina could not determine.The great room was a realm of mysteries, or shadows, and shadowy shapesin which she could not have sworn to observe movement, yet which invadedher mind with a dim and formless terror.

  But her gaze fixed itself on a tangible object. On another, smaller daisof jet, a few feet away, a man sat cross-legged, gazing contemplativelyat her. His long black velvet robe, embroidered with gold thread, fellloosely about him, masking his figure. His hands were folded in hissleeves. There was a velvet cap upon his head. His face was calm,placid, not unhandsome, his eyes lambent and slightly oblique. He didnot move a muscle as he sat regarding her, nor did his expression alterwhen he saw she was conscious.

  Yasmina felt fear crawl like a trickle of ice-water down her supplespine. She lifted herself on her elbows and stared apprehensively at thestranger.

  'Who are you?' she demanded. Her voice sounded brittle and inadequate.

  'I am the Master of Yimsha.' The tone was rich and resonant, like themellow tones of a temple bell.

  'Why did you bring me here?' she demanded.

  'Were you not seeking me?'

  'If you are one of the Black Seers--yes!' she answered recklessly,believing that he could read her thoughts anyway.

  He laughed softly, and chills crawled up and down her spine again.

  'You would turn the wild children of the hills against the Seers ofYimsha!' He smiled. 'I have read it in your mind, princess. Your weak,human mind, filled with petty dreams of hate and revenge.'

  'You slew my brother!' A rising tide of anger was vying with her fear;her hands were clenched, her lithe body rigid. 'Why did you persecutehim? He never harmed you. The priests say the Seers are above meddlingin human affairs. Why did you destroy the king of Vendhya?'

  'How can an ordinary human understand the motives of a Seer?' returnedthe Master calmly. 'My acolytes in the temples of Turan, who are thepriests behind the priests of Tarim, urged me to bestir myself in behalfof Yezdigerd. For reasons of my own, I complied. How can I explain mymystic reasons to your puny intellect? You could not understand.'

  'I understand this: that my brother died!' Tears of grief and rage shookin her voice. She rose upon her knees and stared at him with wideblazing eyes, as supple and dangerous in that moment as a she-panther.

  'As Yezdigerd desired,' agreed the Master calmly. 'For a while it was mywhim to further his ambitions.'

  'Is Yezdigerd your vassal?' Yasmina tried to keep the timbre of hervoice unaltered. She had felt her knee pressing something hard andsymmetrical under a fold of velvet. Subtly she shifted her position,moving her hand under the fold.

  'Is the dog that licks up the offal in the temple yard the vassal of thegod?' returned the Master.

  He did not seem to notice the actions she sought to dissemble. Concealedby the velvet, her fingers closed on what she knew was the golden hiltof a dagger. She bent her head to hide the light of triumph in her eyes.

  'I am weary of Yezdigerd,' said the Master. 'I have turned to otheramusements--ha!'

  With a fierce cry Yasmina sprang like a jungle cat, stabbingmurderously. Then she stumbled and slid to the floor, where she cowered,staring up at the man on the dais. He had not moved; his cryptic smilewas unchanged. Tremblingly she lifted her hand and stared at it withdilated eyes. There was no dagger in her fingers; they grasped a stalkof golden lotus, the crushed blossoms drooping on the bruised stem.

  She dropped it as if it had been a viper, and scrambled away from theproximity of her tormenter. She returned to her own dais, because thatwas at least more dignified for a queen than groveling on the floor atthe feet of a sorcerer, and eyed him apprehensively, expectingreprisals.

  But the Master made no move.

  'All substance is one to him who holds the key of the cosmos,' he saidcryptically. 'To an adept nothing is immutable. At will, steel blossomsbloom in unnamed gardens, or flower-swords flash in the moonlight.'

  'You are a devil,' she sobbed.

  'Not I!' he laughed. 'I was born on this planet, long ago. Once I was acommon man, nor have I lost all human attributes in the numberless eonsof my adeptship. A human steeped in the dark arts is greater than adevil. I am of human origin, but I rule demons. You have seen the Lordsof the Black Circle--it would blast your soul to hear from what farrealm I summoned them and from what doom I guard them with ensorcelledcrystal and golden serpents.

  'But only I can rule them. My foolish Khemsa thought to make himselfgreat--poor fool, bursting material doors and hurtling himself and hismistress through the air from hill to hill! Yet if he had not beendestroyed his power might have grown to rival mine.'

  He laughed again. 'And you, poor, silly thing! Plotting to send a hairyhill chief to storm Yimsha! It was such a jest that I myself could havedesigned, had it occurred to me, that you should fall in his hands. AndI read in your childish mind an intention to seduce by your femininewiles to attempt your purpose, anyway.

  'But for all your stupidity, you are a woman fair to look upon. It is mywhim to keep you for my slave.'

  The daughter of a thousand proud emperors gasped with shame and fury atthe word.

  'You dare not!'

  His mocking laughter cut her like a whip across her naked shoulders.

  'The king dares not trample a worm in the road? Little fool, do you notrealize that your royal pride is no more than a straw blown on the wind?I, who have known the kisses of the queens of Hell! You have seen how Ideal with a rebel!'

  Cowed and awed, the girl crouched on the velvet-covered dais. The lightgrew dimmer and more phantom-like. The features of the Master becameshadowy. His voice took on a newer tone of command.

  'I will never yield to you!' Her voice trembled with fear but it carrieda ring of resolution.

  'You will yield,' he answered with horrible conviction. 'Fear and painshall teach you. I will lash you with horror and agony to the lastquivering ounce of your endurance, until you become as melted wax to bebent and molded in my hands as I desire. You shall know such disciplineas no mortal woman ever knew, until my slightest command is to you asthe unalterable will of the gods. And first, to humble your pride, youshall travel back through the lost ages, and view all the shapes thathave been you. _Aie, yil la khosa!_'

  At these words the shadowy room swam before Yasmina's affrighted gaze.The roots of her hair prickled her scalp, and her tongue clove to herpalate. Somewhere a gong sounded a deep, ominous note. The dragons onthe tapestries glowed like blue fire, and then faded out. The Master onhis dais was but a shapeless shadow. The dim light gave way to soft,thick darkness, almost tangible, that pulsed with strange radiations.She could no longer see the Master. She could see nothing. She had astrange sensation that the walls and ceiling had withdrawn immenselyfrom her.

  Then somewhere in the darkness a glow began, like a firefly thatrhythmically dimmed and quickened. It grew to a golden ball, and
as itexpanded its light grew more intense, flaming whitely. It burstsuddenly, showering the darkness with white sparks that did not illuminethe shadows. But like an impression left in the gloom, a faint luminanceremained, and revealed a slender dusky shaft shooting up from theshadowy floor. Under the girl's dilated gaze it spread, took shape;stems and broad leaves appeared, and great black poisonous blossoms thattowered above her as she cringed against the velvet. A subtle perfumepervaded the atmosphere. It was the dread figure of the black lotus thathad grown up as she watched, as it grows in the haunted, forbiddenjungles of Khitai.

  The broad leaves were murmurous with evil life. The blossoms bent towardher like sentient things, nodding serpent-like on pliant stems. Etchedagainst soft, impenetrable darkness it loomed over her, gigantic,blackly visible in some mad way. Her brain reeled with the druggingscent and she sought to crawl from the dais. Then she clung to it as itseemed to be pitching at an impossible slant. She cried out with terrorand clung to the velvet, but she felt her fingers ruthlessly torn away.There was a sensation as of all sanity and stability crumbling andvanishing. She was a quivering atom of sentiency driven through a black,roaring, icy void by a thundering wind that threatened to extinguish herfeeble flicker of animate life like a candle blown out in a storm.

  Then there came a period of blind impulse and movement, when the atomthat was she mingled and merged with myriad other atoms of spawning lifein the yeasty morass of existence, molded by formative forces until sheemerged again a conscious individual, whirling down an endless spiral oflives.

  In a mist of terror she relived all her former existences, recognizedand _was_ again all the bodies that had carried her ego throughout thechanging ages. She bruised her feet again over the long, weary road oflife that stretched out behind her into the immemorial past. Back beyondthe dimmest dawns of Time she crouched shuddering in primordial jungles,hunted by slavering beasts of prey. Skin-clad, she waded thigh-deep inrice swamps, battling with squawking water-fowl for the precious grains.She labored with the oxen to drag the pointed stick through the stubbornsoil, and she crouched endlessly over looms in peasant huts.

  She saw walled cities burst into flame, and fled screaming before theslayers. She reeled naked and bleeding over burning sands, dragged atthe slaver's stirrup, and she knew the grip of hot, fierce hands on herwrithing flesh, the shame and agony of brutal lust. She screamed underthe bite of the lash, and moaned on the rack; mad with terror she foughtagainst the hands that forced her head inexorably down on the bloodyblock.

  She knew the agonies of childbirth, and the bitterness of love betrayed.She suffered all the woes and wrongs and brutalities that man hasinflicted on woman throughout the eons; and she endured all the spiteand malice of women for woman. And like the flick of a fiery whipthroughout was the consciousness she retained of her Devi-ship. She wasall the women she had ever been, yet in her knowing she was Yasmina.This consciousness was not lost in the throes of reincarnation. At oneand the same time she was a naked slave-wench groveling under the whip,and the proud Devi of Vendhya. And she suffered not only as theslave-girl suffered, but as Yasmina, to whose pride the whip was like awhite-hot brand.

  Life merged into life in flying chaos, each with its burden of woe andshame and agony, until she dimly heard her own voice screamingunbearably, like one long-drawn cry of suffering echoing down the ages.

  Then she awakened on the velvet-covered dais in the mystic room.

  In a ghostly gray light she saw again the dais and the cryptic robedfigure seated upon it. The hooded head was bent, the high shouldersfaintly etched against the uncertain dimness. She could make out nodetails clearly, but the hood, where the velvet cap had been, stirred aformless uneasiness in her. As she stared, there stole over her anameless fear that froze her tongue to her palate--a feeling that it wasnot the Master who sat so silently on that black dais.

  Then the figure moved and rose upright, towering above her. It stoopedover her and the long arms in their wide black sleeves bent about her.She fought against them in speechless fright, surprized by their leanhardness. The hooded head bent down toward her averted face. And shescreamed, and screamed again in poignant fear and loathing. Bony armsgripped her lithe body, and from that hood looked forth a countenance ofdeath and decay--features like rotting parchment on a moldering skull.

  She screamed again, and then, as those champing, grinning jaws benttoward her lips, she lost consciousness....