The People of the Black Circle Page 3

  3 Khemsa Uses Magic

  In the confusion that reigned in the fortress while the guard was beingturned out, no one noticed that the girl who had accompanied the Devislipped out the great arched gate and vanished in the darkness. She ranstraight for the city, her garments tucked high. She did not follow theopen road, but cut straight through fields and over slopes, avoidingfences and leaping irrigation ditches as surely as if it were broaddaylight, and as easily as if she were a trained masculine runner. Thehoof-drum of the guardsmen had faded away up the hill before she reachedthe city wall. She did not go to the great gate, beneath whose arch menleaned on spears and craned their necks into the darkness, discussingthe unwonted activity about the fortress. She skirted the wall until shereached a certain point where the spire of the tower was visible abovethe battlements. Then she placed her hands to her mouth and voiced a lowweird call that carried strangely.

  Almost instantly a head appeared at an embrasure and a rope camewriggling down the wall. She seized it, placed a foot in the loop at theend, and waved her arm. Then quickly and smoothly she was drawn up thesheer stone curtain. An instant later she scrambled over the merlons andstood up on a flat roof which covered a house that was built against thewall. There was an open trap there, and a man in a camel-hair robe whosilently coiled the rope, not showing in any way the strain of hauling afull-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 intothe hills!' She blurted out her news in a rush, the words stumbling overone another.

  Khemsa showed no emotion, but merely nodded his turbaned head. 'KerimShah will be glad to hear that,' he said.

  'Wait!' The girl threw her supple arms about his neck. She was pantinghard, but not only from exertion. Her eyes blazed like black jewels inthe starlight. Her upturned face was close to Khemsa's, but though hesubmitted to her embrace, he did not return it.

  'Do not tell the Hyrkanian!' she panted. 'Let us use this knowledgeourselves! The governor has gone into the hills with his riders, but hemight as well chase a ghost. He has not told anyone that it was the Deviwho 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 mewith 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 bodyturn cold under her arms.

  'Aye!' she shook him in the fury of her emotion. 'You too are amagician! Why will you be a slave, using your powers only to elevateothers? Use your arts for yourself!'

  'That is forbidden!' He was shaking as if with an ague. 'I am not one ofthe Black Circle. Only by the command of the masters do I dare to usethe knowledge they have taught me.'

  'But you _can_ use it!' she argued passionately. 'Do as I beg you! Ofcourse Conan has taken the Devi to hold as hostage against the seventribesmen in the governor's prison. Destroy them, so Chunder Shan cannot use them to buy back the Devi. Then let us go into the mountains andtake her from the Afghulis. They can not stand against your sorcery withtheir knives. The treasure of the Vendhyan kings will be ours asransom--and then when we have it in our hands, we can trick them, andsell her to the king of Turan. We shall have wealth beyond our maddestdreams. With it we can buy warriors. We will take Khorbhul, oust theTuranians from the hills, and send our hosts southward; become king andqueen of an empire!'

  Khemsa too was panting, shaking like a leaf in her grasp; his faceshowed gray in the starlight, beaded with great drops of perspiration.

  'I love you!' she cried fiercely, writhing her body against his, almoststrangling him in her wild embrace, shaking him in her abandon. 'I willmake a king of you! For love of you I betrayed my mistress; for love ofme betray your masters! Why fear the Black Seers? By your love for meyou have broken one of their laws already! Break the rest! You are asstrong as they!'

  A man of ice could not have withstood the searing heat of her passionand fury. With an inarticulate cry he crushed her to him, bending herbackward and showering gasping kisses on her eyes, face and lips.

  'I'll do it!' His voice was thick with laboring emotions. He staggeredlike a drunken man. 'The arts they have taught me shall work for me, notfor my masters. We shall be rulers of the world--of the world--'

  'Come then!' Twisting lithely out of his embrace, she seized his handand led him toward the trap-door. 'First we must make sure that thegovernor does not exchange those seven Afghulis for the Devi.'

  He moved like a man in a daze, until they had descended a ladder and shepaused in the chamber below. Kerim Shah lay on a couch motionless, anarm across his face as though to shield his sleeping eyes from the softlight of a brass lamp. She plucked Khemsa's arm and made a quick gestureacross her own throat. Khemsa lifted his hand; then his expressionchanged and he drew away.

  'I have eaten his salt,' he muttered. 'Besides, he can not interferewith us.'

  He led the girl through a door that opened on a winding stair. Aftertheir 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 notdread, but he feared Khemsa as a man fears a poisonous reptile.

  'People who plot on roofs should remember to lower their voices,' hemuttered. 'But as Khemsa has turned against his masters, and as he wasmy only contact between them, I can count on their aid no longer. Fromnow on I play the game in my own way.'

  Rising to his feet he went quickly to a table, drew pen and parchmentfrom 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 hemade fast the parchment, rolled into a tiny cylinder and secured withgold wire. Then he went quickly to a casement and tossed the bird intothe night. It wavered on fluttering wings, balanced, and was gone like aflitting shadow. Catching up helmet, sword and cloak, Kerim Shah hurriedout of the chamber and down the winding stair.

  * * * * *

  The prison quarters of Peshkhauri were separated from the rest of thecity by a massive wall, in which was set a single iron-bound door underan arch. Over the arch burned a lurid red cresset, and beside the doorsquatted 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 manwas standing before him, a man he had not heard approach. The man wore acamel-hair robe and a green turban. In the flickering light of thecresset his features were shadowy, but a pair of lambent eyes shonesurprizingly 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 hisbosom. 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; hestood rigid as a statue, his eyes slowly glazing.

  'You lie! You are obliged to obey me! You have looked into my eyes, andyour 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 andswung open the door. Then he stood at attention, his unseeing starestraight ahead of him.

  A woman glided from the shadows and laid an eager hand on themesmerist's arm.

  'Bid him fetch us horses, Khemsa,' she whis
pered.

  'No need of that,' answered the Rakhsha. Lifting his voice slightly hespoke 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 againstthe base of the wall, and placed the keen head against his body, justbelow the ribs. Then slowly, stolidly, he leaned against it with all hisweight, so that it transfixed his body and came out between hisshoulders. Sliding down the shaft he lay still, the spear jutting abovehim its full length, like a horrible stalk growing out of his back.

  The girl stared down at him in morbid fascination, until Khemsa took herarm and led her through the gate. Torches lighted a narrow space betweenthe outer wall and a lower inner one, in which were arched doors atregular intervals. A warrior paced this enclosure, and when the gateopened he came sauntering up, so secure in his knowledge of the prison'sstrength that he was not suspicious until Khemsa and the girl emergedfrom the archway. Then it was too late. The Rakhsha did not waste timein hypnotism, though his action savored of magic to the girl. The guardlowered his spear threateningly, opening his mouth to shout an alarmthat would bring spearmen swarming out of the guardrooms at either endof the alleyway. Khemsa flicked the spear aside with his left hand, as aman might flick a straw, and his right flashed out and back, seeminggently to caress the warrior's neck in passing. And the guard pitched onhis face without a sound, his head lolling on a broken neck.

  Khemsa did not glance at him, but went straight to one of the archeddoors and placed his open hand against the heavy bronze lock. With arending shudder the portal buckled inward. As the girl followed himthrough, she saw that the thick teakwood hung in splinters, the bronzebolts were bent and twisted from their sockets, and the great hingesbroken and disjointed. A thousand-pound battering-ram with forty men toswing it could have shattered the barrier no more completely. Khemsa wasdrunk with freedom and the exercise of his power, glorying in his mightand flinging his strength about as a young giant exercises his thewswith unnecessary vigor in the exultant pride of his prowess.

  The broken door let them into a small courtyard, lit by a cresset.Opposite the door was a wide grille of iron bars. A hairy hand wasvisible, gripping one of these bars, and in the darkness behind themglimmered the whites of eyes.

  Khemsa stood silent for a space, gazing into the shadows from whichthose glimmering eyes gave back his stare with burning intensity. Thenhis hand went into his robe and came out again, and from his openingfingers a shimmering feather of sparkling dust sifted to the flags.Instantly a flare of green fire lighted the enclosure. In the briefglare the forms of seven men, standing motionless behind the bars, werelimned in vivid detail; tall, hairy men in ragged hill-men's garments.They did not speak, but in their eyes blazed the fear of death, andtheir hairy fingers gripped the bars.

  The fire died out but the glow remained, a quivering ball of lambentgreen that pulsed and shimmered on the flags before Khemsa's feet. Thewide gaze of the tribesmen was fixed upon it. It wavered, elongated; itturned into a luminous greensmoke spiraling upward. It twisted andwrithed like a great shadowy serpent, then broadened and billowed out inshining folds and whirls. It grew to a cloud moving silently over theflags--straight toward the grille. The men watched its coming withdilated eyes; the bars quivered with the grip of their desperatefingers. Bearded lips parted but no sound came forth. The green cloudrolled on the bars and blotted them from sight; like a fog it oozedthrough the grille and hid the men within. From the enveloping foldscame a strangled gasp, as of a man plunged suddenly under the surface ofwater. That was all.

  Khemsa touched the girl's arm, as she stood with parted lips and dilatedeyes. Mechanically she turned away with him, looking back over hershoulder. Already the mist was thinning; close to the bars she saw apair of sandalled feet, the toes turned upward--she glimpsed theindistinct outlines of seven still, prostrate shapes.

  'And now for a steed swifter than the fastest horse ever bred in amortal stable,' Khemsa was saying. 'We will be in Afghulistan beforedawn.'