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.

Picking up from where we left off in Part 1 – Conan and Yasmina escape from the Wazuli tribe and Conan pays a traveling villager they happen across for her clothes so Yasmina will have something more appropriate for travel and also have a better disguise. When Yasmina changes he’s impressed with what he sees-

Conan waited with some impatience while the Devi, for the first time in her pampered life, dressed herself. When she stepped from behind the rock he swore in surprise, and she felt a curious rush of emotions at the unrestrained admiration burning in his fierce blue eyes. She felt shame, embarrassment, yet a stimulation of vanity she had never before experienced, and a tingling when meeting the impact of his eyes. He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder and turned her about, staring avidly at her from all angles.

“By Crom!” said he. “In those smoky, mystic robes you were aloof and cold and far off as a star! Now you are a woman of warm flesh and blood! You went behind that rock as the Devi of Vendhya; you come out as a hill-girl—though a thousand times more beautiful than any wench of the Zhaibar! You were a goddess—now you are real!”

In the distance they see Mount Yimsha, home of the Black Circle Seers, and Yasmina realizes she may be able to use her feminine wiles to enact her original plan and have Conan slay her brother’s killers-

She stared at the peak as at a human enemy, feeling all her anger and hatred stir in her bosom anew. And another feeling began to take dim shape. She had plotted to hurl against the masters of Yimsha the man in whose arms she was now carried. Perhaps there was another way, besides the method she had planned, to accomplish her purpose. She could not mistake the look that was beginning to dawn in this wild man’s eyes as they rested on her. Kingdoms have fallen when a woman’s slim hands pulled the strings of destiny.

Khemsa, the mage who rebelled from the Black Seers, and Gitara, Yasmina’s traitorous handmaid, intercept them on their journey, intent on taking Yasmina for themselves as leverage. A quick scuffle breaks out until even more trouble arrives-

The crimson cloud balanced like a spinning top for an instant, whirling in a dazzling sheen on its point. Then without warning it was gone, vanished as a bubble vanishes when burst. There on the ledge stood four men. It was miraculous, incredible, impossible, yet it was true. They were not ghosts or phantoms. They were four tall men, with shaven, vulture-like heads, and black robes that hid their feet. Their hands were concealed by their wide sleeves. They stood in silence, their naked heads nodding slightly in unison. They were facing Khemsa, but behind them Conan felt his own blood turning to ice in his veins. Rising, he backed stealthily away, until he could feel the stallion’s shoulder trembling against his back, and the Devi crept into the shelter of his arm. There was no word spoken. Silence hung like a stifling pall.

All four of the men in black robes stared at Khemsa. Their vulture-like faces were immobile, their eyes introspective and contemplative. But Khemsa shook like a man in an ague. His feet were braced on the rock, his calves straining as if in physical combat. Sweat ran in streams down his dark face.

Khemsa’s former masters have arrived and they are none too pleased that their boy betrayed them. The Seers try to overpower Khemsa’s mind and, at first he’s able to resist thanks to his deep love for Gitara. Unfortunately, that also means she’s a weakness they can exploit-

The girl shrank and wilted like a leaf in the drought. Irresistibly impelled, she tore herself from her lover’s arms before he realized what was happening. Then a hideous thing came to pass. She began to back toward the precipice, facing her tormentors, her eyes wide and blank as dark gleaming glass from behind which a lamp has been blown out. Khemsa groaned and staggered toward her, falling into the trap set for him. A divided mind could not maintain the unequal battle. He was beaten, a straw in their hands. The girl went backward, walking like an automaton, and Khemsa reeled drunkenly after her, hands vainly outstretched, groaning, slobbering in his pain, his feet moving heavily like dead things.

On the very brink she paused, standing stiffly, her heels on the edge, and he fell on his knees and crawled whimpering toward her, groping for her, to drag her back from destruction. And just before his clumsy fingers touched her, one of the wizards laughed, like the sudden, bronze note of a bell in hell. The girl reeled suddenly and, consummate climax of exquisite cruelty, reason and understanding flooded back into her eyes, which flared with awful fear. She screamed, clutched wildly at her lover’s straining hand, and then, unable to save herself, fell headlong with a moaning cry.

Even though Khemsa and Gitara are traitors and villains, the tragic way they’re destroyed by the Seers of the Black Circle is wonderfully dramatic and engaging. Punchy and powerful. Then the Seers turn their focus to Conan and Yasmina-

He saw their outlines fading, dimming, becoming hazy and nebulous, as a crimson smoke billowed around their feet and rose about them. They were blotted out by a sudden whirling cloud—and then he realized that he too was enveloped in a blinding crimson mist—he heard Yasmina scream, and the stallion cried out like a woman in pain. The Devi was torn from his arm, and as he lashed out with his knife blindly, a terrific blow like a gust of storm wind knocked him sprawling against a rock. Dazedly he saw a crimson conoid cloud spinning up and over the mountain slopes. Yasmina was gone, and so were the four men in black.

Conan is enraged and heads toward Mount Yimsha intent on getting Yasmina back, but there’s even more trouble brewing for our hero. The barbarian tribesmen he leads have found out that their seven brethren are already dead and they blame our hero. Conan has to run from his former allies, find a way to break into the near-impregnable fortress of the Black Circle and try to rescue Yasmina. It’s a tightly churning stew of loyalty and betrayal, lust and courage, all of it written with bombast from scene to scene.

I won’t spoil how it all turns out, but I do need to include an excerpt of the hauntingly powerful sequence where the Master of Mount Yimsha uses his mental power to try and break Yasmina’s will. The way Howard describes her surreal psychic journey is top notch pulp-drama:

She knew the agonies of childbirth, and the bitterness of love betrayed. She suffered all the woes and wrongs and brutalities that man has inflicted on woman throughout the eons; and she endured all the spite and malice of women for woman. And like the flick of a fiery whip throughout was the consciousness she retained of her Devi-ship. She was all the women she had ever been, yet in her knowing she was Yasmina. This consciousness was not lost in the throes of reincarnation. At one and the same time she was a naked slave-wench groveling under the whip, and the proud Devi of Vendhya. And she suffered not only as the slave-girl suffered, but as Yasmina, to whose pride the whip was like a white-hot brand.

Life merged into life in flying chaos, each with its burden of woe and shame and agony, until she dimly heard her own voice screaming unbearably, like one long-drawn cry of suffering echoing down the ages.

I’d read People of the Black Circle before, but previously it hadn’t made a strong impact on me. This time it really hit the mark and I may have to reevaluate my Top Five Favorite Conan Stories list when Cimmerian September is complete…

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

If you haven’t read the original Conan prose stories, I recommend the Del Rey 3-book set, which has each story unedited and essays that add context around their publication.