The Conan Chronicles: Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle Read online

  ‘Until perhaps half an hour before midnight. Then he left, saying that he was going to the Temple, and would return after he had done what he wished to do there.’

  ‘What was he going to do there?’

  Promero hesitated at revealing the secrets of his dreaded employer, then a shuddering glance at Posthumo, who was grinning evilly as he doubled his huge fist, opened his lips quickly.

  ‘There was something in the Temple he wished to examine.’

  ‘But why should he come here alone in so much secrecy?’

  ‘Because it was not his property. It arrived in a caravan from the south, at dawn. The men of the caravan knew nothing of it, except that it had been placed with them by the men of a caravan from Stygia, and was meant for Kalanthes of Hanumar, priest of Ibis. The master of the caravan had been paid by these other men to deliver it directly to Kalanthes, but he’s a rascal by nature, and wished to proceed directly to Aquilonia, on the road to which Hanumar does not lie. So he asked if he might leave it in the Temple until Kalanthes could send for it.

  ‘Kallian agreed, and told him he himself would send a runner to inform Kalanthes. But after the men had gone, and I spoke of the runner, Kallian forbade me to send him. He sat brooding over what the men had left.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘A sort of sarcophagus, such as is found in ancient Stygian tombs, but this one was round, like a covered metal bowl. Its composition was something like copper, but much harder, and it was carved with hieroglyphics, like those found on the more ancient menhirs in southern Stygia. The lid was made fast to the body by carven copper-like bands.’

  ‘What was in it?’

  ‘The men of the caravan did not know. They only said that the men who gave it to them told them that it was a priceless relic, found among the tombs far beneath the pyramids and sent to Kalanthes “because of the love the sender bore the priest of Ibis”. Kallian Publico believed that it contained the diadem of the giant-kings, of the people who dwelt in that dark land before the ancestors of the Stygians came there. He showed me a design carved on the lid, which he swore was the shape of the diadem which legend tells us the monster-kings wore.

  ‘He determined to open the Bowl and see what it contained.

  He was like a madman when he thought of the fabled diadem, which myths say was set with the strange jewels known only to that ancient race, a single one of which is worth more than all the jewels of the modern world.

  ‘I warned him against it. But he stayed at my house as I have said, and a short time before midnight, he came along to the Temple, hiding in the shadows until the watchman had passed to the other side of the building, then letting himself in with his belt key. I watched him from the shadows of the silk shop, saw him enter the Temple, and then returned to my own house. If the diadem was in the Bowl, or anything else of great value, he intended hiding it somewhere in the Temple and slipping out again. Then on the morrow he would raise a great hue and cry, saying that thieves had broken into his house and stolen Kalanthes’s property. None would know of his prowlings but the charioteer and I, and neither of us would betray him.’

  ‘But the watchman?’ objected Demetrio.

  ‘Kallian did not intend being seen by him; he planned to have him crucified as an accomplice of the thieves,’ answered Promero. Arus gulped and turned pale as this duplicity of his employer came home to him.

  ‘Where is this sarcophagus?’ asked Demetrio. Promero pointed, and the Inquisitor grunted. ‘So! The very room in which Kallian must have been attacked.’

  Promero turned pale and twisted his thin hands.

  ‘Why should a man in Stygia send Kalanthes a gift? Ancient gods and queer mummies have come up the caravan roads before, but who loves the priest of Ibis so well in Stygia, where they still worship the arch-demon Set who coils among the tombs in the darkness? The god Ibis has fought Set since the first dawn of the earth, and Kalanthes has fought Set’s priests all his life. There is something dark and hidden here.’

  ‘Show us this sarcophagus,’ commanded Demetrio, and Promero hesitantly led the way. All followed, including Conan, who was apparently heedless of the wary eye the guardsmen kept on him, and seemed merely curious. They passed through the torn hangings and entered the room, which was rather more dimly lighted than the corridor. Doors on each side gave into other chambers, and the walls were lined with fantastic images, gods of strange lands and far peoples. And Promero cried out sharply. ‘Look! The Bowl! It’s open - and empty!’ In the center of the room stood a strange black cylinder, nearly four feet in height, and perhaps three feet in diameter at its widest circumference, which was halfway between the top and bottom. The heavy carven lid lay on the floor, and beside it a hammer and a chisel. Demetrio looked inside, puzzled an instant over the dim hieroglyphs, and turned to Conan. ‘Is this what you came to steal?’ The barbarian shook his head.

  ‘How could I bear it away? It is too big for one man to carry.’ ‘The bands were cut with this chisel,’ mused Demetrio, ‘and in haste. There are marks where misstrokes of the hammer dented the metal. We may assume that Kallian opened the Bowl. Someone was hiding nearby - possibly in the hangings in the doorway. When Kallian had the Bowl open, the murderer sprang on him - or he might have killed Kallian and opened the Bowl himself.’

  ‘This is a grisly thing,’ shuddered the clerk. ‘It’s too ancient to be holy. Who ever saw metal like it in a sane world? It seems less destructible than Aquilonian steel, yet see how it is corroded and eaten away in spots. Look at the bits of black mold clinging in the grooves of the hieroglyphics; they smell as earth smells from far below the surface. And look - here on the lid!’ The clerk pointed with a shaky finger. ‘What would you say it is?’ Demetrio bent closer to the carven design. ‘I’d say it represents a crown of some sort,’ he grunted. ‘No!’ exclaimed Promero. ‘I warned Kallian, but he would not believe me! It is a scaled serpent coiled with its tail in its mouth. It is the sign of Set, the Old Serpent, the god of the Stygians! This Bowl is too old for a human world - it is a relic of the time when Set walked the earth in the form of a man! The race which sprang from his loins laid the bones of their kings away in such cases as these, perhaps!’

  ‘And you’ll say that those moldering bones rose up and strangled Kallian Publico and then walked away, perhaps,’ derided Demetrio.

  ‘It was no man who was laid to rest in that bowl,’ whispered the clerk, his eyes wide and staring. ‘What human could lie in it?’

  Demetrio swore disgustedly.

  ‘If Conan is not the murderer,’ he snapped, ‘the slayer is still somewhere in this building. Dionus and Arus, remain here with me, and you three prisoners stay here too. The rest of you search the building. The murderer could only have escaped - if he got away before Arus found the body - by the way Conan used in entering, and in that case the barbarian would have seen him, if he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘I saw no one but this dog,’ growled Conan, indicating Arus.

  ‘Of course not, because you’re the murderer,’ said Dionus. ‘We’re wasting time, but we’ll search the building as a formality. And if we find no one, I promise you shall burn! Remember the law, my black-haired savage - you go to the mines for killing a commoner, you hang for killing a tradesman, and for murdering a rich man, you burn!’

  Conan answered with a wicked lift of his lip, baring his teeth, and the men began their search. The listeners in the chamber heard them stamping upstairs and down, moving objects, opening doors and bellowing to one another through the rooms.

  ‘Conan,’ said Demetrio, ‘you know what it means if they find no one?’

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ snarled the Cimmerian. ‘If he had sought to hinder me I’d have split his skull. But I did not see him until I saw his corpse.’

  ‘I know that someone sent you here tonight, to steal at least,’ said Demetrio. ‘By your silence you incriminate yourself in this murder as well. You had best speak. The mere fact of your being here is sufficient
to send you to the mines for ten years, anyhow, whether you admit your guilt or not. But if you tell the whole tale, you may save yourself from the stake.’

  ‘Well,’ answered the barbarian grudgingly, ‘I came here to steal the Zamorian diamond goblet. A man gave me a diagram of the Temple and told me where to look for it. It is kept in that room -‘ Conan pointed - ‘in a niche in the floor under a copper Shemitish god.’

  ‘He speaks truth there,’ said Promero. ‘I’d thought that not half a dozen men in the world knew the secret of that hiding place.’

  ‘And if you had secured it,’ asked Dionus sneeringly, ‘would you really have taken it to the man who hired you? Or would you have kept it for yourself?’

  Again the smoldering eyes flashed resentment.

  ‘I am no dog,’ the barbarian muttered. ‘I keep my word.’

  ‘Who sent you here?’ Demetrio demanded, but Conan kept a sullen silence.

  The guardsmen were straggling back from their search.

  ‘There’s no man hiding in this building,’ they growled. ‘We’ve ransacked the place. We found the trap-door in the roof through which the barbarian entered, and the bolt he cut in half. A man escaping that way would have been seen by the guards we posted about the building, unless he fled before we came. Then, besides, he would have had to stack tables or chairs or cases upon each other to reach it from below, and that has not been done. Why couldn’t he have gone out the front door just before Arus came around the building?’

  ‘Because the door was bolted on the inside, and the only keys which will work that bolt are the one belonging to Arus and the one which still hangs on the girdle of Kallian Publico.’

  ‘I’ve found the cable the murderer used,’ one of them announced. ‘A black cable, thicker than a man’s arm, and curiously splotched.’

  ‘Then where is it, fool?’ exclaimed Dionus.

  ‘In the chamber adjoining this one,’ answered the guard. ‘It’s wrapped about a marble pillar, where no doubt the murderer thought it would be safe from detection. I couldn’t reach it. But it must be the right one.’

  He led the way into a room filled with marble statuary, and pointed to a tall column, one of several which served a purpose more of ornament to set off the statues, than of utility. And then he halted and stared.

  ‘It’s gone!’ he cried.

  ‘It never was there!’ snorted Dionus.

  ‘By Mitra, it was!’ swore the guardsman. ‘Coiled about the pillar just above those carven leaves. It’s so shadowy up there near the ceiling I couldn’t tell much about it - but it was there.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ snapped Demetrio, turning away. ‘That’s too high for a man to reach; and nothing but a snake could climb that smooth pillar.’

  ‘A Cimmerian could,’ muttered one of the men.

  ‘Possibly. Say that Conan strangled Kallian, tied the cable about the pillar, crossed the corridor and hid in the room where the stair is. How then, could he have removed it after you saw it? He has been among us ever since Arus found the body. No, I tell you Conan didn’t commit the murder. I believe the real murderer killed Kallian to secure whatever was in the Bowl, and is hiding now in some secret nook in the Temple. If we can’t find him, we’ll have to put the blame on the barbarian to satisfy Justice, but - where is Promero?’

  They had returned to the silent body in the corridor. Dionus bellowed threateningly for Promero, and the clerk came suddenly from the room in which stood the empty Bowl. He was shaking and his face was white.

  ‘What now, man?’ exclaimed Demetrio irritably.

  ‘I found a symbol on the bottom of the Bowl!’ chattered Promero. ‘Not an ancient hieroglyphic, but a symbol recently carved! The mark of Thothamon, the Stygian sorcerer, Kalanthes’s deadly foe! He found it in some grisly cavern below the haunted pyramids! The gods of old times did not die, as men died - they fell into long sleeps and their worshippers locked them in sarcophagi so that no alien hand might break their slumbers. Thothamon sent death to Kalanthes - Kallian’s greed caused him to loose the horror - and it is lurking somewhere near us - even now it may be creeping upon us--’

  ‘You gibbering fool!’ roared Dionus disgustedly, striking him heavily across the mouth. Dionus was a materialist, with scant patience for eery speculations.

  ‘Well, Demetrio,’ he said, turning to the Inquisitor, ‘I see nothing else to do other than to arrest this barbarian--’

  The Cimmerian cried out suddenly and they wheeled. He was glaring toward the door of a chamber that adjoined the room of statues.

  ‘Look!’ he exclaimed. ‘I saw something move in that room - I saw it through the hangings. Something that crossed the floor like a long dark shadow!’

  ‘Bah!’ snorted Posthumo. ‘We searched that room--’ ‘He saw something!’ Promero’s voice shrilled and cracked with hysterical excitement. ‘This place is accursed! Something came out of the sarcophagus and killed Kallian Publico! It hid from you where no human could hide, and now it is in that room! Mitra defend us from the powers of Darkness! I tell you it was one of Set’s children in that grisly Bowl!’ He caught Dionus’s sleeve with claw-like fingers. ‘You must search that room again!’

  The prefect shook him off disgustedly, and Posthumo was inspired to a flight of humor.

  ‘You shall search it yourself, clerk!’ he said, grasping Promero by neck and girdle, and propelling the screaming wretch forcibly toward the door, outside of which he paused and hurled him into the room so violently the clerk fell and lay half stunned.

  ‘Enough of this,’ growled Dionus, eyeing the silent Cimmerian. The prefect lifted his hand, Conan’s eyes began to burn bluely, and a tension crackled in the air, when an interruption came. A guardsman entered, dragging a slender, richly dressed figure.

  ‘I saw him slinking about the back of the Temple,’ quoth the guard, looking for commendation. Instead he received curses that lifted his hair.

  ‘Release that gentleman, you bungling fool!’ swore the prefect. ‘Don’t you know Aztrias Petanius, the nephew of the city’s governor?’

  The abashed guard fell away and the foppish young nobleman brushed his embroidered sleeve fastidiously.

  ‘Save your apologies, good Dionus,’ he lisped affectedly. ‘All in line of duty, I know. I was returning from a late revel and walking to rid my brain of the wine fumes. What have we here? By Mitra, is it murder?’

  ‘Murder it is, my lord,’ answered the prefect. ‘But we have a man who, though Demetrio seems to have doubts on the matter, will doubtless go to the stake for it.’

  ‘A vicious looking brute,’ murmured the young aristocrat. ‘How can any doubt his guilt? I have never seen such a villainous countenance before.’

  ‘Yes, you have, you scented dog,’ snarled the Cimmerian, ‘when you hired me to steal the Zamorian goblet for you. Revels, eh? Bah! You were waiting in the shadows for me to hand you the goblet. I would not have revealed your name if you had given me fair words. Now tell these dogs that you saw me climb the wall after the watchman made the last round, so that they’ll know I didn’t have time to kill this fat swine before Arus entered and found the body.’

  Demetrio looked quickly at Aztrias, who did not change color.

  ‘If what he says is true, my lord,’ said the Inquisitor, ‘it clears him of the murder, and we can easily hush up the matter of attempted theft. He is due ten years at hard labor for house-breaking, but if you say the word, we’ll arrange for him to escape and none but us will ever know anything about it. I understand - you wouldn’t be the first young nobleman who had to resort to such things to pay gambling debts and the like. You can rely on our discretion.’

  Conan looked at the young nobleman expectantly, but Aztrias shrugged his slender shoulders and covered a yawn with a delicate white hand.

  ‘I know him not,’ he answered. ‘He is mad to say I hired him. Let him take his just desserts. He has a strong back and the toil in the mines will be well for him.’

  Conan’s eyes blaze
d and he started as if stung; the guards tensed, grasping their bills, then relaxed as he dropped his head suddenly, as if in sullen resignation, and not even Demetrio could tell that he was watching them from under his heavy black brows, with eyes that were slits of blue bale-fire.

  He struck with no more warning than a striking cobra; his sword flashed in the candlelight. Aztrias shrieked and his head flew from his shoulders in a shower of blood, the features frozen in a white mask of horror. Cat-like, Conan wheeled and thrust murderously for Demetrio’s groin. The Inquisitor’s instinctive recoil barely deflected the point which sank into his thigh, glanced from the bone and ploughed out through the outer side of the leg. Demetrio went to his knee with a groan, unnerved and nauseated with agony.

  Conan had not paused. The bill which Dionus flung up saved the prefect’s skull from the whistling blade which turned slightly as it cut through the shaft, and sheared his ear cleanly from his head. The blinding speed of the barbarian paralyzed the senses of the police and made their actions futile gestures. Caught flat-footed and dazed by his quickness and ferocity, half of them would have been down before they had a chance to fight back, except that Posthumo, more by luck than skill, threw his arms about the Cimmerian, pinioning his sword-arm. Conan’s left hand leaped to the guard’s head, and Posthumo fell away and writhed shrieking on the floor, clutching a gaping red socket where an eye had been.

  Conan bounded back from the waving bills and his leap carried him outside the ring of his foes, to where Arus stood fumbling at his crossbow. A savage kick in the belly dropped him, green-faced and gagging, and Conan’s sandalled heel crunched square in the watchman’s mouth. The wretch screamed through a ruin of splintered teeth, blowing bloody froth from his mangled lips.

  Then all were frozen in their tracks by the soul-shaking horror of a scream which rose from the chamber into which Posthumo had hurled Promero, and from the velvet-hung door the clerk came reeling, and stood there, shaking with great silent sobs, tears running down his pasty face and dripping off his loose sagging lips, like an idiot-babe weeping.