The Greatest Works of Robert E. Howard: 300+ Titles in One Edition. Robert E. Howard

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СКАЧАТЬ from the Abyss millennia gone. Gagging with intolerable repugnance, Conan turned to flee the sight; and he was suddenly aware that the pinnacles of Dagon no longer glimmered through the trees. They had faded like smoke—the battlements, the crenellated towers, the great bronze gates, the velvets, the gold, the ivory, and the dark-haired women, and the men with their shaven skulls. With the passing of the inhuman intellect which had given them rebirth, they had faded back into the dust which they had been for ages uncounted. Only the stumps of broken columns rose above crumbling walls and broken paves and shatterd dome. Conan again looked upon the ruins of Xapur as he remembered them.

      The wild hetman stood like a statue for a space, dimly grasping something of the cosmic tragedy of the fitful ephemera called mankind and the hooded shapes of darkness which prey upon it. Then as he heard his voice called in accents of fear, he started, as one awakening from a deream, glanced again at the thing on the ground, shuddered and turned away toward the cliffs and the girl that waited there.

      She was peering fearfully under the trees, and she greeted him with a half-stifled cry of relief. He had shaken off the dim monstrous visions which had momentarily haunted him, and was his exuberant self again.

      "Where is he?" she shuddered.

      "Gone back to Hell whence he crawled," he replied cheerfully. "Why didn't you climb the stair and make your escape in my boat?"

      "I wouldn't desert—" she began, then changed her mind, and amended rather sulkily, "I have nowhere to go. The Hyrkanians would enslave me again, and the pirates would—"

      "What of the kozaks?" he suggested.

      "Are they better than the pirates?" she asked scornfully. Conan's admiration increased to see how well she had recovered her poise after having endured such frantic terror. Her arrogance amused him.

      "You seemed to think so in the camp by Ghori," he answered. "You were free enough with your smiles then."

      Her red lips curled in disdain. "Do you think I was enamored of you? Do you dream that I would have shamed myself before an ale-guzzling, meat-gorging barbarian unless I had to? My master—whose body lies there – forced me to do as i did."

      "Oh!" Conan seemed rather crestfallen. Then he laughed with undiminished zest. "No matter. You belong to me now. Give me a kiss."

      "You dare ask—" she began angrily, when she felt herself snatched off her feet and crushed to the hetman's muscular breast. She fought him fiercely, with all the supple strength of her magnificent youth, but he only laughed exuberantly, drunk with the possession of this splendid creature writhing in his arms.

      He crushed her struggles easily, drinking the nectar of her lips with all the unrestrained passion that was his, until the arms that strained against them melted and twined convulsively about his massive neck. Then he laughed down into the clear eyes, and said: "Why should not a chief of the Free People be preferable to a city-bred dog of Turan?"

      She shook back her tawny locks, still tingling in every nerve from the fire of his kisses. She did not loosen her arms from his neck. "Do you deem yourself an Agha's equal?" she challenged.

      He laughed and strode with her in his arms toward the stair. "You shall judge," he boasted. "I'll burn Khawarizm for a torch to light your way to my tent."

      The People of the Black Circle

       Table of Contents

       I. — DEATH STRIKES A KING

       II. — A BARBARIAN FROM THE HILLS

       III. — KHEMSA USES MAGIC

       IV. — AN ENCOUNTER IN THE PASS

       V. — THE BLACK STALLION

       VI. — THE MOUNTAIN OF THE BLACK SEERS

       VII. — ON TO YIMSHA

       VIII. — YASMINA KNOWS STARK TERROR

       IX. — THE CASTLE OF THE WIZARDS

       X. — YASMINA AND CONAN

      I. — DEATH STRIKES A KING

       Table of Contents

      THE King of Vendhya was dying. Through the hot, stifling night the temple gongs boomed and the conchs roared. Their clamor was a faint echo in the gold- domed chamber where Bunda Chand struggled on the velvet-cushioned dais. Beads of sweat glistened on his dark skin; his fingers twisted the gold-worked fabric beneath him. He was young; no spear had touched him, no poison lurked in his wine. But his veins stood out like blue cords on his temples, and his eyes dilated with the nearness of death. Trembling slave-girls knelt at the foot of the dais, and leaning down to him, watching him with passionate intensity, was his sister, the Devi Yasmina. With her was the wazam, a noble grown old in the royal court.

      She threw up her head in a gusty gesture of wrath and despair as the thunder of the distant drums reached her ears.

      "The priests and their clamor!" she exclaimed. "They are no wiser than the leeches who are helpless! Nay, he dies and none can say why. He is dying now—and I stand here helpless, who would burn the whole city and spill the blood of thousands to save him."

      "Not a man of Ayodhya but would die in his place, if it might be, Devi," answered the wazam. "This poison—"

      "I tell you it is not poison!" she cried. "Since his birth he has been guarded so closely that the cleverest poisoners of the East could not reach him. Five skulls bleaching on the Tower of the Kites can testify to attempts which were made—and which failed. As you well know, there are ten men and ten women whose sole duty is to taste his food and wine, and fifty armed warriors guard his chamber as they guard it now. No, it is not poison; it is sorcery—black, ghastly magic—"

      She ceased as the king spoke; his livid lips did not move, and there was no recognition in his glassy eyes. But his voice rose in an eery call, indistinct and far away, as if called to her from beyond vast, wind-blown gulfs.

      "Yasmina! Yasmina! My sister, where are you? I can not find you. All is darkness, and the roaring of great winds!"

      "Brother!" cried Yasmina, catching his limp hand in a convulsive grasp. "I am here! Do you not know me—"

      Her voice died at the utter vacancy of his face. A low confused moan waned from his mouth. The СКАЧАТЬ