Zub Tales

Continuing my Conan reread for Cimmerian September, the eleventh published Conan story is People of the Black Circle, which originally serialized across three issues of Weird Tales magazine, from September to November 1934.

Given the larger format of this Conan story, I’m going to gloss over quite a bit, but there’s still a lot to cover so it’ll take two blogposts.

Chapter one opens with the King of of Vendhya lying on his deathbed, struck down by some kind of mystic curse from afar. His sister, the Devi Yasmina, is by his side, distraught and unable to stop the inevitable:

“Swift!” he gasped, and his weakening voice was rational. “I know now what brings me to the pyre. I have been on a far journey and I understand. I have been ensorcelled by the wizards of the Himelians. They drew my soul out of my body and far away, into a stone room. There they strove to break the silver cord of life, and thrust my soul into the body of a foul night-weird their sorcery summoned up from hell. Aie! I feel their pull upon me now! Your cry and the grip of your fingers brought me back, but I am going fast. My soul clings to my body, but its hold weakens. Quick—kill me, before they can trap my soul for ever!”

And kill him she does, kicking off our story with dark intensity.

Chapter two keeps things rolling by moving the narrative ahead to another location. Chunder Shan, the governor of Peshkhauri, writing a letter to the king to tell him he has seven tribesman captured from a barbaric horde that’s hounded their borders, and is ready to negotiate terms with their leader, as per Devi Yasmina’s orders, when he’s interrupted by an unexpected visitor – the Devi herself in person, which is high unusual and incredibly dangerous.

Yasmina’s research has uncovered that her brother was struck down by the Black Seers of Mount Yimsha and, since the barbarians know the untamed lands better than any other, she wants to trade the seven prisoners for the heads of those Black Circle Seers. And that plan might have worked, but the barbarian leader sneaks into the governor’s chamber and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s our boy Conan:

The invader was a tall man, at once strong and supple. He was dressed like a hillman, but his dark features and blazing blue eyes did not match his garb. Chunder Shan had never seen a man like him; he was not an Easterner, but some barbarian from the West. But his aspect was as untamed and formidable as any of the hairy tribesmen who haunt the hills of Ghulistan.

The governor is so shocked that he blurts out Yasmina’s identity and Conan immediately springs into action:

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.

Chapter three changes focus as the reader finds out that Gitara, Yasmina’s handmaid, is betraying her by aligning with Khemsa, a dark mage who serves the Black Seers. Khemsa is deeply in love with Gitara and she wants him to break ties with the Black Seers so they can strike out on their own and kidnap the Devi themselves and, with some lusty encouragement, he agrees:

“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.

Neither of them realize a mercenary named Kerim Shah has overheard their rooftop conspiracy plot. He sends a message to notify a neighboring kingdom that the King is dead and the Devi has been kidnapped so now is the time for them to make their move. Meanwhile, Khemsa uses magic to slay the seven tribesman (ruining any leverage the Vendhya have over the barbarians) and we get our first glimpse of magic hypnosis as he kills a guard in this nasty passage:

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.

Chapter four showcases Yasmina kidnapped by Conan. He knows that she is the perfect leverage to get his seven tribesman back, but first he has to lose their pursuers. That gets more difficult when a group of other tribesman attack and kill Conan’s horse. Luckily, the leader of this tribe owes Conan a favor, but they’ll need to hide out in their village for now. Yasmina’s had a stressful couple of days, and falls unconscious in this lyrical bit of prose:

Yasmina, snuggled warmly in her captor’s arms, grew drowsy in spite of herself. The motion of the horse, though it was uneven, uphill and down, yet possessed a certain rhythm which combined with weariness and emotional exhaustion to force sleep upon her. She had lost all sense of time or direction. They moved in soft thick darkness, in which she sometimes glimpsed vaguely gigantic walls sweeping up like black ramparts, or great crags shouldering the stars; at times she sensed echoing depths beneath them, or felt the wind of dizzy heights blowing cold about her. Gradually these things faded into a dreamy unwakefulness in which the clink of hoofs and the creak of saddles were like the irrelevant sounds in a dream.

Chapter five is the next morning. Yasmina and Conan banter and bristle a bit at each other before the chief of this tribe holds court with his people. The warriors want to kill Conan and take Yasmina for themselves, but the chief will have none of it. Khemsa and Gitara secretly arrive and Khemsa uses his magic to control a villager and have him deliver a magic trap to the chief:

He no longer held a smooth shining sphere in his fingers. And he dared not look; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not open his hand. His astonished warriors saw Yar Afzal’s eyes distend, the color ebb from his face. Then suddenly a bellow of agony burst from his bearded lips; he swayed and fell as if struck by lightning, his right arm tossed out in front of him. Face down he lay, and from between his opening fingers crawled a spider—a hideous, black, hairy-legged monster whose body shone like black jade. The men yelled and gave back suddenly, and the creature scuttled into a crevice of the rocks and disappeared.

With the chief dead, the villagers immediately attack, intent on killing Conan and taking Yasmina, kicking off a wild chase and escape. That completes the first part of three when it was originally serialized in Weird Tales, so it’s a natural point for us to end here as well.

There are a lot of characters and moving parts to the plot, but all of it is well introduced, and events move at a nice clip. Magic is critical to the story, but feels substantial and atmospheric instead of just a way to handwave events.

This story was first adapted to comics in Savage Sword of Conan #16-19 with jaw-dropping artwork by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala:

CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO!