The People of the Black Circle
Shan saw recognition and intent flame up in the fierce blue eyes.
The governor shouted desperately and caught at his sword, but the
hillman moved with the devastating speed of a hurricane. He sprang,
knocked the governor sprawling with a savage blow of his knife-hilt,
swept up the astounded Devi in one brawny arm and leaped for the window.
Chunder Shan, struggling frantically to his feet, saw the man poise an
instant on the sill in a flutter of silken skirts and white limbs that
was his royal captive, and heard his fierce, exultant snarl: '_Now_ dare
to hang my men!' and then Conan leaped to the parapet and was gone. A
wild scream floated back to the governor's ears.
'Guard! _Guard!_' screamed the governor, struggling up and running
drunkenly to the door. He tore it open and reeled into the hall. His
shouts re-echoed along the corridors, and warriors came running, gaping
to see the governor holding his broken head, from which the blood
streamed.
'Turn out the lancers!' he roared. 'There has been an abduction!' Even
in his frenzy he had enough sense left to withhold the full truth. He
stopped short as he heard a sudden drum of hoofs outside, a frantic
scream and a wild yell of barbaric exultation.
Followed by the bewildered guardsmen, the governor raced for the stair.
In the courtyard of the fort a force of lancers stood by saddled steeds,
ready to ride at an instant's notice. Chunder Shan led his squadron
flying after the fugitive, though his head swam so he had to hold with
both hands to the saddle. He did not divulge the identity of the victim,
but said merely that the noblewoman who had borne the royal signet-ring
had been carried away by the chief of the Afghulis. The abductor was out
of sight and hearing, but they knew the path he would strike--the road
that runs straight to the mouth of the Zhaibar. There was no moon;
peasant huts rose dimly in the starlight. Behind them fell away the grim
bastion of the fort, and the towers of Peshkhauri. Ahead of them loomed
the black walls of the Himelians.
3 Khemsa Uses Magic
In the confusion that reigned in the fortress while the guard was being
turned out, no one noticed that the girl who had accompanied the Devi
slipped out the great arched gate and vanished in the darkness. She ran
straight for the city, her garments tucked high. She did not follow the
open road, but cut straight through fields and over slopes, avoiding
fences and leaping irrigation ditches as surely as if it were broad
daylight, and as easily as if she were a trained masculine runner. The
hoof-drum of the guardsmen had faded away up the hill before she reached
the city wall. She did not go to the great gate, beneath whose arch men
leaned on spears and craned their necks into the darkness, discussing
the unwonted activity about the fortress. She skirted the wall until she
reached a certain point where the spire of the tower was visible above
the battlements. Then she placed her hands to her mouth and voiced a low
weird call that carried strangely.
Almost instantly a head appeared at an embrasure and a rope came
wriggling down the wall. She seized it, placed a foot in the loop at the
end, and waved her arm. Then quickly and smoothly she was drawn up the
sheer stone curtain. An instant later she scrambled over the merlons and
stood up on a flat roof which covered a house that was built against the
wall. There was an open trap there, and a man in a camel-hair robe who
silently coiled the rope, not showing in any way the strain of hauling a
full-grown woman up a forty-foot wall.
'Where is Kerim Shah?' she gasped, panting after her long run.
'Asleep in the house below. You have news?'
'Conan has stolen the Devi out of the fortress and carried her away into
the hills!' She blurted out her news in a rush, the words stumbling over
one another.
Khemsa showed no emotion, but merely nodded his turbaned head. 'Kerim
Shah will be glad to hear that,' he said.
'Wait!' The girl threw her supple arms about his neck. She was panting
hard, but not only from exertion. Her eyes blazed like black jewels in
the starlight. Her upturned face was close to Khemsa's, but though he
submitted to her embrace, he did not return it.
'Do not tell the Hyrkanian!' she panted. 'Let us use this knowledge
ourselves! The governor has gone into the hills with his riders, but he
might as well chase a ghost. He has not told anyone that it was the Devi
who was kidnapped. None in Peshkhauri or the fort knows it except us.'
'But what good does it do us?' the man expostulated. 'My masters sent me
with Kerim Shah to aid him in every way--'
'Aid yourself!' she cried fiercely. 'Shake off your yoke!'
'You mean--disobey my masters?' he gasped, and she felt his whole body
turn cold under her arms.
'Aye!' she shook him in the fury of her emotion. 'You too are a
magician! Why will you be a slave, using your powers only to elevate
others? Use your arts for yourself!'
'That is forbidden!' He was shaking as if with an ague. 'I am not one of
the Black Circle. Only by the command of the masters do I dare to use
the knowledge they have taught me.'
'But you _can_ use it!' she argued passionately. 'Do as I beg you! Of
course Conan has taken the Devi to hold as hostage against the seven
tribesmen in the governor's prison. Destroy them, so Chunder Shan can
not use them to buy back the Devi. Then let us go into the mountains and
take her from the Afghulis. They can not stand against your sorcery with
their knives. The treasure of the Vendhyan kings will be ours as
ransom--and then when we have it in our hands, we can trick them, and
sell her to the king of Turan. We shall have wealth beyond our maddest
dreams. With it we can buy warriors. We will take Khorbhul, oust the
Turanians from the hills, and send our hosts southward; become king and
queen of an empire!'
Khemsa too was panting, shaking like a leaf in her grasp; his face
showed gray in the starlight, beaded with great drops of perspiration.
'I love you!' she cried fiercely, writhing her body against his, almost
strangling him in her wild embrace, shaking him in her abandon. 'I will
make a king of you! For love of you I betrayed my mistress; for love of
me betray your masters! Why fear the Black Seers? By your love for me
you have broken one of their laws already! Break the rest! You are as
strong as they!'
A man of ice could not have withstood the searing heat of her passion
and fury. With an inarticulate cry he crushed her to him, bending her
backward and showering gasping kisses on her eyes, face and lips.
'I'll do it!' His voice was thick with laboring emotions. He staggered
like a drunken man. 'The arts they have taught me shall work for me, not
for my masters. We shall be rulers of the world--of the world--'
'Come then!' Twisting lithely out of his embrace, she seized his hand
and led him toward the trap-door. 'First we must make sure that the
governor does not exchange those seven Afghulis for the Devi.'
He moved like a man in a daze, until they had descended a ladder and she
paused in the chamber below. Kerim Shah lay on a couch motionless, an
arm across his face as though to shield his sleeping eyes from the soft
light of a brass lamp. She plucked Khemsa's arm and made a quick gesture
across her own throat. Khemsa lifted his hand; then his expression
changed and he drew away.
'I have eaten his salt,' he muttered. 'Besides, he can not interfere
with us.'
He led the girl through a door that opened on a winding stair. After
their soft tread had faded into silence, the man on the couch sat up.
Kerim Shah wiped the sweat from his face. A knife-thrust he did not
dread, but he feared Khemsa as a man fears a poisonous reptile.
'People who plot on roofs should remember to lower their voices,' he
muttered. 'But as Khemsa has turned against his masters, and as he was
my only contact between them, I can count on their aid no longer. From
now on I play the game in my own way.'
Rising to his feet he went quickly to a table, drew pen and parchment
from his girdle and scribbled a few succinct lines.
'To Khosru Khan, governor of Secunderam: the Cimmerian Conan has
carried the Devi Yasmina to the villages of the Afghulis. It is an
opportunity to get the Devi into our hands, as the king has so long
desired. Send three thousand horsemen at once. I will meet them in
the valley of Gurashah with native guides.'
And he signed it with a name that was not in the least like Kerim Shah.
Then from a golden cage he drew forth a carrier pigeon, to whose leg he
made fast the parchment, rolled into a tiny cylinder and secured with
gold wire. Then he went quickly to a casement and tossed the bird into
the night. It wavered on fluttering wings, balanced, and was gone like a
flitting shadow. Catching up helmet, sword and cloak, Kerim Shah hurried
out of the chamber and down the winding stair.
* * * * *
The prison quarters of Peshkhauri were separated from the rest of the
city by a massive wall, in which was set a single iron-bound door under
an arch. Over the arch burned a lurid red cresset, and beside the door
squatted a warrior with spear and shield.
This warrior, leaning on his spear, and yawning from time to time,
started suddenly to his feet. He had not thought he had dozed, but a man
was standing before him, a man he had not heard approach. The man wore a
camel-hair robe and a green turban. In the flickering light of the
cresset his features were shadowy, but a pair of lambent eyes shone
surprizingly in the lurid glow.
'Who comes?' demanded the warrior, presenting his spear. 'Who are you?'
The stranger did not seem perturbed, though the spear-point touched his
bosom. His eyes held the warrior's with strange intensity.
'What are you obliged to do?' he asked, strangely.
'To guard the gate!' The warrior spoke thickly and mechanically; he
stood rigid as a statue, his eyes slowly glazing.
'You lie! You are obliged to obey me! You have looked into my eyes, and
your soul is no longer your own. Open that door!'
Stiffly, with the wooden features of an image, the guard wheeled about,
drew a great key from his girdle, turned it in the massive lock and
swung open the door. Then he stood at attention, his unseeing stare
straight ahead of him.
A woman glided from the shadows and laid an eager hand on the
mesmerist's arm.
'Bid him fetch us horses, Khemsa,' she whispered.
'No need of that,' answered the Rakhsha. Lifting his voice slightly he
spoke to the guardsman. 'I have no more use for you. Kill yourself!'
Like a man in a trance the warrior thrust the butt of his spear against
the base of the wall, and placed the keen head against his body, just
below the ribs. Then slowly, stolidly, he leaned against it with all his
weight, so that it transfixed his body and came out between his
shoulders. Sliding down the shaft he lay still, the spear jutting above
him its full length, like a horrible stalk growing out of his back.
The girl stared down at him in morbid fascination, until Khemsa took her
arm and led her through the gate. Torches lighted a narrow space between
the outer wall and a lower inner one, in which were arched doors at
regular intervals. A warrior paced this enclosure, and when the gate
opened he came sauntering up, so secure in his knowledge of the prison's
strength that he was not suspicious until Khemsa and the girl emerged
from the archway. Then it was too late. The Rakhsha did not waste time
in hypnotism, though his action savored of magic to the girl. The guard
lowered his spear threateningly, opening his mouth to shout an alarm
that would bring spearmen swarming out of the guardrooms at either end