Shadows in Zamboula
They entered a court paved with marble which gleamed whitely in the
starlight. A short flight of broad marble steps led up to the pillared
portico. The great bronze doors stood wide open as they had stood for
centuries. But no worshippers burnt incense within. In the day men and
women might come timidly into the shrine and place offerings to the
ape-god on the black altar. At night the people shunned the temple of
Hanuman as hares shun the lair of the serpent.
Burning censers bathed the interior in a soft weird glow that created an
illusion of unreality. Near the rear wall, behind the black stone altar,
sat the god with his gaze fixed for ever on the open door, through which
for centuries his victims had come, dragged by chains of roses. A faint
groove ran from the sill to the altar, and when Conan's foot felt it, he
stepped away as quickly as if he had trodden upon a snake. That groove
had been worn by the faltering feet of the multitude of those who had
died screaming on that grim altar.
Bestial in the uncertain light Hanuman leered with his carven mask. He
sat, not as an ape would crouch, but cross-legged as a man would sit,
but his aspect was no less simian for that reason. He was carved from
black marble, but his eyes were rubies, which glowed red and lustful as
the coals of hell's deepest pits. His great hands lay upon his lap,
palms upward, taloned fingers spread and grasping. In the gross emphasis
of his attributes, in the leer of his satyr-countenance, was reflected
the abominable cynicism of the degenerate cult which deified him.
The girl moved around the image, making toward the back wall, and when
her sleek flank brushed against a carven knee, she shrank aside and
shuddered as if a reptile had touched her. There was a space of several
feet between the broad back of the idol and the marble wall with its
frieze of gold leaves. On either hand, flanking the idol, an ivory door
under a gold arch was set in the wall.
'Those doors open into each end of a hair-pin shaped corridor,' she said
hurriedly. 'Once I was in the interior of the shrine--once!' She
shivered and twitched her slim shoulders at a memory both terrifying and
obscene. 'The corridor is bent like a horseshoe, with each horn opening
into this room. Totrasmek's chambers are enclosed within the curve of
the corridor and open into it. But there is a secret door in this wall
which opens directly into an inner chamber--'
She began to run her hands over the smooth surface, where no crack or
crevice showed. Conan stood beside her, sword in hand, glancing warily
about him. The silence, the emptiness of the shrine, with imagination
picturing what might lie behind that wall, made him feel like a wild
beast nosing a trap.
'Ah!' The girl had found a hidden spring at last; a square opening gaped
blackly in the wall. 'Set!' she screamed, and even as Conan leaped
toward her, he saw that a great misshapen hand had fastened itself in
her hair. She was snatched off her feet and jerked head-first through
the opening. Conan, grabbing ineffectually at her, felt his fingers slip
from a naked limb, and in an instant she had vanished and the wall
showed blank as before. Only from beyond it came briefly the muffled
sounds of a struggle, a scream, faintly heard, and a low laugh that made
Conan's blood congeal in his veins.
3 Black Hands Gripping
With an oath the Cimmerian smote the wall a terrific blow with the
pommel of his sword, and the marble cracked and chipped. But the hidden
door did not give way, and reason told him that doubtless it had been
bolted on the other side of the wall. Turning, he sprang across the
chamber to one of the ivory doors.
He lifted his sword to shatter the panels, but on a venture tried the
door first with his left hand. It swung open easily, and he glared into
a long corridor that curved away into dimness under the weird light of
censers similar to those in the shrine. A heavy gold bolt showed on the
jamb of the door, and he touched it lightly with his finger tips. The
faint warmness of the metal could have been detected only by a man whose
faculties were akin to those of a wolf. That bolt had been touched--and
therefore drawn--within the last few seconds. The affair was taking on
more and more of the aspect of a baited trap. He might have known
Totrasmek would know when anyone entered the temple.
To enter the corridor would undoubtedly be to walk into whatever trap
the priest had set for him. But Conan did not hesitate. Somewhere in
that dim-lit interior Zabibi was a captive, and, from what he knew of
the characteristics of Hanuman's priests, he was sure that she needed
help badly. Conan stalked into the corridor with a pantherish tread,
poised to strike right or left.
On his left, ivory, arched doors opened into the corridor, and he tried
each in turn. All were locked. He had gone perhaps seventy-five feet
when the corridor bent sharply to the left, describing the curve the
girl had mentioned. A door opened into this curve, and it gave under his
hand.
He was looking into a broad, square chamber, somewhat more clearly
lighted than the corridor. Its walls were of white marble, the floor of
ivory, the ceiling of fretted silver. He saw divans of rich satin,
gold-worked footstools of ivory, a disk-shaped table of some massive,
metal-like substance. On one of the divans a man was reclining, looking
toward the door. He laughed as he met the Cimmerian's startled glare.
This man was naked except for a loin-cloth and high-strapped sandals. He
was brown-skinned, with close-cropped black hair and restless black eyes
that set off a broad, arrogant face. In girth and breadth he was
enormous, with huge limbs on which the great muscles swelled and rippled
at each slightest movement. His hands were the largest Conan had ever
seen. The assurance of gigantic physical strength colored his every
action and inflection.
'Why not enter, barbarian?' he called mockingly, with an exaggerated
gesture of invitation.
Conan's eyes began to smolder ominously, but he trod warily into the
chamber, his sword ready.
'Who the devil are you?' he growled.
'I am Baal-pteor,' the man answered. 'Once, long ago and in another
land, I had another name. But this is a good name, and why Totrasmek
gave it to me, any temple wench can tell you.'
'So you're his dog!' grunted Conan. 'Well, curse your brown hide,
Baal-pteor, where's the wench you jerked through the wall?'
'My master entertains her!' laughed Baal-pteor. 'Listen!'
From beyond a door opposite the one by which Conan had entered there
sounded a woman's scream, faint and muffled in the distance.
'Blast your soul!' Conan took a stride toward the door, then wheeled
with his skin tingling. Baal-pteor was laughing at him, and that laugh
was edged with menace that made the hackles rise on Conan's neck and
sent a red wave of murder-lust driving across his vision.
He started toward Baal-pteor, the knuckles on his sword-hand showing
white. With a swift motion the brown man threw something at him--a
shining crystal sphere that glistened in the weird light.
Conan dodged instinctively, but, miraculously, the globe stopped short
in midair, a few feet from his face. It did not fall to the floor. It
hung suspended, as if by invisible filaments, some five feet above the
floor. And as he glared in amazement, it began to rotate with growing
speed. And as it revolved it grew, expanded, became nebulous. It filled
the chamber. It enveloped him. It blotted out furniture, walls, the
smiling countenance of Baal-pteor. He was lost in the midst of a
blinding bluish blur of whirling speed. Terrific winds screamed past
Conan, tugging, tearing at him, striving to wrench him from his feet, to
drag him into the vortex that spun madly before him.
With a choking cry Conan lurched backward, reeled, felt the solid wall
against his back. At the contact the illusion ceased to be. The
whirling, titanic sphere vanished like a bursting bubble. Conan reeled
upright in the silver-ceilinged room, with a gray mist coiling about his
feet, and saw Baal-pteor lolling on the divan, shaking with silent
laughter.
'Son of a slut!' Conan lunged at him. But the mist swirled up from the
floor, blotting out that giant brown form. Groping in a rolling cloud
that blinded him, Conan felt a rending sensation of dislocation--and
then room and mist and brown man were gone together. He was standing
alone among the high reeds of a marshy fen, and a buffalo was lunging at
him, head down. He leaped aside from the ripping scimitar-curved horns,
and drove his sword in behind the foreleg, through ribs and heart. And
then it was not a buffalo dying there in the mud, but the brown-skinned
Baal-pteor. With a curse Conan struck off his head; and the head soared
from the ground and snapped beast-like tusks into his throat. For all
his mighty strength he could not tear it loose--he was
choking--strangling; then there was a rush and roar through space, the
dislocating shock of an immeasurable impact, and he was back in the
chamber with Baal-pteor, whose head was once more set firmly on his
shoulders, and who laughed silently at him from the divan.
'Mesmerism!' muttered Conan, crouching and digging his toes hard against
the marble.
His eyes blazed. This brown dog was playing with him, making sport of
him! But this mummery, this child's play of mists and shadows of
thought, it could not harm him. He had but to leap and strike and the
brown acolyte would be a mangled corpse under his heel. This time he
would not be fooled by shadows of illusion--but he was.
A blood-curdling snarl sounded behind him, and he wheeled and struck in
a flash at the panther crouching to spring on him from the metal-colored
table. Even as he struck, the apparition vanished and his blade clashed
deafeningly on the adamantine surface. Instantly he sensed something
abnormal. The blade stuck to the table! He wrenched at it savagely. It
did not give. This was no mesmeristic trick. The table was a giant
magnet. He gripped the hilt with both hands, when a voice at his
shoulder brought him about, to face the brown man, who had at last risen
from the divan.
Slightly taller than Conan, and much heavier, Baal-pteor loomed before
him, a daunting image of muscular development. His mighty arms were
unnaturally long, and his great hands opened and closed, twitching
convulsively. Conan released the hilt of his imprisoned sword and fell
silent, watching his enemy through slitted lids.
'Your head, Cimmerian!' taunted Baal-pteor. 'I shall take it with my
bare hands, twisting it from your shoulders as the head of a fowl is
twisted! Thus the sons of Kosala offer sacrifice to Yajur. Barbarian,
you look upon a strangler of Yota-pong. I was chosen by the priests of
Yajur in my infancy, and throughout childhood, boyhood and youth I
trained in the art of slaying with the naked hands--for only thus are
the sacrifices enacted. Yajur loves blood, and we waste not a drop from
the victim's veins. When I was a child they gave me infants to throttle;
when I was a boy I strangled young girls; as a youth, women, old men and
young boys. Not until I reached my full manhood was I given a strong man
to slay on the altar of Yota-pong.
'For years I offered the sacrifices to Yajur. Hundreds of necks have
snapped between these fingers--' he worked them before the Cimmerian's
angry eyes. 'Why I fled from Yota-pong to become Totrasmek's servant is
no concern of yours. In a moment you will be beyond curiosity. The
priests of Kosala, the stranglers of Yajur, are strong beyond the belief
of men. And I was stronger than any. With my hands, barbarian, I shall
break your neck!'
And like the stroke of twin cobras, the great hands closed on Conan's