The People of the Black Circle
releasing the Turanian's arm. 'Agreed; what about your men?'
Kerim Shah turned to the silent Irakzai and spoke briefly: 'This chief
and I are going to Yimsha to fight the wizards. Will you go with us, or
stay here to be flayed by the Afghulis who are following this man?'
They looked at him with eyes grimly fatalistic. They were doomed and
they knew it--had known it ever since the singing arrows of the ambushed
Dagozai had driven them back from the pass of Shalizah. The men of the
lower Zhaibar had too many reeking bloodfeuds among the crag-dwellers.
They were too small a band to fight their way back through the hills to
the villages of the border, without the guidance of the crafty Turanian.
They counted themselves as dead already, so they made the reply that
only dead men would make: 'We will go with thee and die on Yimsha.'
'Then in Crom's name let us be gone,' grunted Conan, fidgeting with
impatience as he started into the blue gulfs of the deepening twilight.
'My wolves were hours behind me, but we've lost a devilish lot of time.'
Kerim Shah backed his steed from between the black stallion and the
cliff, sheathed his sword and cautiously turned the horse. Presently the
band was filing up the path as swiftly as they dared. They came out upon
the crest nearly a mile east of the spot where Khemsa had halted the
Cimmerian and the Devi. The path they had traversed was a perilous one,
even for hill-men, and for that reason Conan had avoided it that day
when carrying Yasmina, though Kerim Shah, following him, had taken it
supposing the Cimmerian had done likewise. Even Conan sighed with relief
when the horses scrambled up over the last rim. They moved like phantom
riders through an enchanted realm of shadows. The soft creak of leather,
the clink of steel marked their passing, then again the dark mountain
slopes lay naked and silent in the starlight.
8 Yasmina Knows Stark Terror
Yasmina had time but for one scream when she felt herself enveloped in
that crimson whirl and torn from her protector with appalling force. She
screamed once, and then she had no breath to scream. She was blinded,
deafened, rendered mute and eventually senseless by the terrific rushing
of the air about her. There was a dazed consciousness of dizzy height
and 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 recovered
consciousness; so she cried out and clutched wildly as though to stay a
headlong and involuntary flight. Her fingers closed on soft fabric, and
a relieving sense of stability pervaded her. She took cognizance of her
surroundings.
She was lying on a dais covered with black velvet. This dais stood in a
great, dim room whose walls were hung with dusky tapestries across which
crawled dragons reproduced with repellent realism. Floating shadows
merely hinted at the lofty ceiling, and gloom that lent itself to
illusion lurked in the corners. There seemed to be neither windows nor
doors in the walls, or else they were concealed by the nighted
tapestries. Where the dim light came from, Yasmina could not determine.
The great room was a realm of mysteries, or shadows, and shadowy shapes
in which she could not have sworn to observe movement, yet which invaded
her mind with a dim and formless terror.
But her gaze fixed itself on a tangible object. On another, smaller dais
of jet, a few feet away, a man sat cross-legged, gazing contemplatively
at her. His long black velvet robe, embroidered with gold thread, fell
loosely about him, masking his figure. His hands were folded in his
sleeves. There was a velvet cap upon his head. His face was calm,
placid, not unhandsome, his eyes lambent and slightly oblique. He did
not move a muscle as he sat regarding her, nor did his expression alter
when he saw she was conscious.
Yasmina felt fear crawl like a trickle of ice-water down her supple
spine. She lifted herself on her elbows and stared apprehensively at the
stranger.
'Who are you?' she demanded. Her voice sounded brittle and inadequate.
'I am the Master of Yimsha.' The tone was rich and resonant, like the
mellow 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 of
Yimsha!' 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 persecute
him? He never harmed you. The priests say the Seers are above meddling
in human affairs. Why did you destroy the king of Vendhya?'
'How can an ordinary human understand the motives of a Seer?' returned
the Master calmly. 'My acolytes in the temples of Turan, who are the
priests behind the priests of Tarim, urged me to bestir myself in behalf
of Yezdigerd. For reasons of my own, I complied. How can I explain my
mystic reasons to your puny intellect? You could not understand.'
'I understand this: that my brother died!' Tears of grief and rage shook
in her voice. She rose upon her knees and stared at him with wide
blazing eyes, as supple and dangerous in that moment as a she-panther.
'As Yezdigerd desired,' agreed the Master calmly. 'For a while it was my
whim to further his ambitions.'
'Is Yezdigerd your vassal?' Yasmina tried to keep the timbre of her
voice unaltered. She had felt her knee pressing something hard and
symmetrical 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 the
god?' returned the Master.
He did not seem to notice the actions she sought to dissemble. Concealed
by the velvet, her fingers closed on what she knew was the golden hilt
of 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 other
amusements--ha!'
With a fierce cry Yasmina sprang like a jungle cat, stabbing
murderously. 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 smile
was unchanged. Tremblingly she lifted her hand and stared at it with
dilated eyes. There was no dagger in her fingers; they grasped a stalk
of golden lotus, the crushed blossoms drooping on the bruised stem.
She dropped it as if it had been a viper, and scrambled away from the
proximity of her tormenter. She returned to her own dais, because that
was at least more dignified for a queen than groveling on the floor at
the feet of a sorcerer, and eyed him apprehensively, expecting
reprisals.
But the Master made no move.
'All substance is one to him who holds the key of the cosmos,' he said
cryptically. 'To an adept nothing is immutable. At will, steel blossoms
bloom 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 a
common man, nor have I lost all human attributes in the numberless eons
of my adeptship. A human steeped in the dark arts is greater than a
devil. I am of human origin, but I rule demons. You have seen the Lords
of the Black Circle--it would blast your soul to hear from what far
realm I summoned them and from what doom I guard them with ensorcelled
crystal and golden serpents.
'But only I can rule them. My foolish Khemsa thought to make himself
great--poor fool, bursting material doors and hurtling himself and his
mistress through the air from hill to hill! Yet if he had not been
destroyed his power might have grown to rival mine.'
He laughed again. 'And you, poor, silly thing! Plotting to send a hairy
hill chief to storm Yimsha! It was such a jest that I myself could have
designed, had it occurred to me, that you should fall in his hands. And
I read in your childish mind an intention to seduce by your feminine
wiles to attempt your purpose, anyway.
'But for all your stupidity, you are a woman fair to look upon. It is my
whim to keep you for my slave.'
The daughter of a thousand proud emperors gasped with shame and fury at
the 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 not
realize 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 I
deal with a rebel!'
Cowed and awed, the girl crouched on the velvet-covered dais. The light
grew dimmer and more phantom-like. The features of the Master became
shadowy. His voice took on a newer tone of command.
'I will never yield to you!' Her voice trembled with fear but it carried
a ring of resolution.
'You will yield,' he answered with horrible conviction. 'Fear and pain
shall teach you. I will lash you with horror and agony to the last
quivering ounce of your endurance, until you become as melted wax to be
bent and molded in my hands as I desire. You shall know such discipline
as no mortal woman ever knew, until my slightest command is to you as
the unalterable will of the gods. And first, to humble your pride, you
shall travel back through the lost ages, and view all the shapes that
have 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 her
palate. Somewhere a gong sounded a deep, ominous note. The dragons on
the tapestries glowed like blue fire, and then faded out. The Master on
his 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 a
strange sensation that the walls and ceiling had withdrawn immensely
from her.
Then somewhere in the darkness a glow began, like a firefly that
rhythmically dimmed and quickened. It grew to a golden ball, and as it
expanded its light grew more intense, flaming whitely. It burst
suddenly, showering the darkness with white sparks that did not illumine
the shadows. But like an impression left in the gloom, a faint luminance
remained, and revealed a slender dusky shaft shooting up from the
shadowy floor. Under the girl's dilated gaze it spread, took shape;
stems and broad leaves appeared, and great black poisonous blossoms that
towered above her as she cringed against the velvet. A subtle perfume
pervaded the atmosphere. It was the dread figure of the black lotus that
had grown up as she watched, as it grows in the haunted, forbidden
jungles of Khitai.
The broad leaves were murmurous with evil life. The blossoms bent toward
her like sentient things, nodding serpent-like on pliant stems. Etched
against soft, impenetrable darkness it loomed over her, gigantic,
blackly visible in some mad way. Her brain reeled with the drugging
scent and she sought to crawl from the dais. Then she clung to it as it
seemed to be pitching at an impossible slant. She cried out with terror
and clung to the velvet, but she felt her fingers ruthlessly torn away.
There was a sensation as of all sanity and stability crumbling and
vanishing. She was a quivering atom of sentiency driven through a black,
roaring, icy void by a thundering wind that threatened to extinguish her
feeble flicker of animate life like a candle blown out in a storm.