Conan review #13: People of the Black Circle

This story’s a novella originally serialized in the September, October and November 1934 issues of Weird Tales. Margaret Brundage’s cover is main girl Yasmina being menaced by a sorcerer of the Black Circle while surprisingly clothed.

As the king of Vendhya lies dying in the capital of Ayodhya, nobleman Karim Shah asks a sorcerer, Khemsa “Why now?” He answers that sorcery is subject to cosmic laws: the stars had to be right and they needed a lock of the king’s hair. In a moment of weakness, “the princess of Khosala, who loved Bhunda Chand vainly, he gave her a lock of his long black hair”, which the Black Seers of Yimsha got a thief to steal.

The dying king begs his sister, the Devi Yasmina, to kill him before the sorcerers of the Himelians cut his silver cord and trap him as a miserable ghost, so his soul will go to a good afterlife. She obeys, and predictably will seek revenge. She then appears in the fortress of Chunder Shan, governor of Peshkhauri (that’s a choke point between the plains of Panjab and the mountains), who was just writing a letter that explains he has seven hostile tribesmen in prison, and their foreign chief (that’s Conan) has threatened to burn Peshkhauri and cover his saddle with my hide rather as his negotiation tactic for their release, rather than parley. She tells him to bring Conan here, because she needs a mountain man who knows the way to Mount Yimsha to aid her Kshatriyas. There’s political trouble with King Yezdigerd of Turan, and they mention needing to verify that Conan’s not his spy during parley.

As soon as Yasmina leaves, Conan sneaks into this tower room, telling Chunder he’ll pay anything for the release of his henchmen, as each one is a headman and the common henchmen are about to rip him apart like wolves if he can’t get them back. Cue Devi Yasmina’s terms: aid in killing the Black Seers. But oops, the anonymous Devi comes in and is abducted by Conan!

Her maid runs from the fortress to the city and tells Khemsa what happened. She’ll double-cross the Devi out of love for him, asking him to cast spells in ways not authorized by the Black Seers to steal her from Conan, ransom her, then double-cross the people bringing the ransom by killing her and taking over. The “sleeping” Kerim Shah overheard them and writes a letter to Khosru Khan, one of the king of Turan’s governors. Meanwhile Khemsa goes to the prison and casts Charm Person on the guard, making him unlock the door and then kill himself. For the guard inside, “Khemsa flicked the spear aside with his left hand, as a man might flick a straw, and his right flashed out and back, seeming gently to caress the warrior’s neck in passing. And the guard pitched on his face without a sound, his head lolling on a broken neck.” He then casts Knock or “destroy door” on the next one, letting him and the traitor maid into a courtyard with a grille of bars across from where they enter. He casts some sort of Area of Effect spell that kills the seven men in that barred cell.

While riding with his captive Conan gets ambushed, leaping from his horse with her as it dies. The ambush turns out to be Yar Afzal, a friend of his. They all retreat to a village ahead of Yasmina’s defenders.

The next day, an angry mob tells Conan and Yar Afzal that Kshatriyas are violently searching the villages and Kerim Shah has disappeared into the hills. A member of the mob is intimidating into going to the watch-post instead of kicking Conan out, where Khemsa appears and throws him a ball of jade to take to Yar Afzal. He tells his girlfriend it’s “the globe of Yezud”, which will kill Yar Afzal (by turning into a venomous spider), leaving Conan without protectors. Conan kills three angry men in self-defense and flees with Yasmina on a stolen stallion. During the escape, she sees Gitara, her maid, with someone unknown to her and Conan (Khemsa). They discuss how weird these events are:

That fellow Yar Afzal beat and sent away–he moved like a man walking in his sleep. I’ve seen the priests of Zamora perform their abominable rituals in their forbidden temples, and their victims had a stare like that man. The priests looked into their eyes and muttered incantations, and then the people became the walking dead men, with glassy eyes, doing as they were ordered.”

“And then I saw what the fellow had in his hand, which Yar Afzal picked up. It was like a big black jade bead, such as the temple girls of Yezud wear when they dance before the black stone spider which is their god. Yar Afzal held it in his hand, and he didn’t pick up anything else. Yet when he fell dead, a spider, like the god at Yezud, only smaller, ran out of his fingers.”

Conan buys a suit of clothes off a woman’s back for Yasmina, and she’s relieved that he’s not a brute who’s going to kill her for them. In her peasant clothes, Conan calls her more beautiful keeping it real than in her unapproachable goddess form and spanks her. One swat, I mean: the narrative doesn’t come to a screeching halt for a Gor interlude.

They see Mt. Yimsha to the northwest, and she asks how long it would take him to ride there. Further,

“Would you be afraid to attack them?”

“I?” The idea seemed a new one to him. “Why, if they imposed upon me, it would be my life or theirs. But I have nothing to do with them. I came to these mountains to raise a following of human beings, not to war with wizards.”

The stallion is spooked and refuses to continue, and then they see Khemsa. As soon as Conan makes eye contact, he can’t break it: the sorcery is based on hypnotism.

The way has been prepared for the hypnotist for untold centuries of generations who have lived and died in the firm conviction of the reality and power of hypnotism, building up, by mass thought and practise, a colossal though intangible atmosphere against which the individual, steeped in the traditions of the land, finds himself helpless.

But Conan was not a son of the East. Its traditions were meaningless to him; he was the product of an utterly alien atmosphere. Hypnotism was not even a myth in Cimmeria.

In short, his ethnicity gives him a great saving throw against whatever spell Khemsa was attempting. Conan attacks but Khemsa is still able to knock him prone by touching a pressure point on the neck. As he gets up, a crimson cloud comes down among them and changes into four Black Seers. They try to punish him with a mental attack, but he fights four on one to a stalemate… strengthened by his love of Gitara. So they mentally drive her to suicide, weakening him. He switches to charging with a blade, but one of them stomps a foot, creating a crevice that widens instantly. Then they cast the crimson cloud spell again, including Yasmina in it.

Soon Conan meets 500 of his followers. He’s glad to see them and says he’s riding for Yimsha… and they call him a traitor for not bringing the seven chiefs. He tries to explain, but nearly faints when they tell him those prisoners are dead. A Wazuli escaped through the doors the wizard burst in his entry, and told the tale to scouts of Conan’s tribe. He keeps riding before they can kill him as a traitor. On the way he finds the dying Khemsa, who gives him his magic girdle and warns him to break the crystal globe that has four golden pomegranates. Then he meets Kerim Shah along the pass. He demands the Devi. Conan tells him the Black Seers have her, and don’t kill me, because the 500 men who just rebelled against me would be jealous. Kerim Shah says he’ll go with to fight the Black Seers: “We both want the Devi. You know my reason; King Yezdigerd desires to add her kingdom to his empire, and herself in his seraglio. And I knew you, in the days when you were a hetman of the kozak steppes; so I know your ambition is wholesale plunder.” We know each other well enough to work together with no trust!

Yasmina awakes in the same room as the Master of Yimsha. Reading her mind, he knows she would turn the wild children of the hills against the Seers. As to why he killed her brother, “My acolytes in the temples of Turan, who are the priests behind the priests of Tarim, urged me to bestir myself in behalf of Yezdigerd. For reasons of my own, I complied.”

She wants to stab him, but he transmutes her knife into a lotus. He says she’s pretty enough to keep as a slave, and she gasps that he’d dare.

“The king dares not trample a worm in the road? Little fool, do you not realize that your royal pride is no more than a straw blown on the wind? I, who have known the kisses of the queens of Hell!”

He uses Black Lotus to make her dream she’s reliving all her past lives, which is apparently terrifying. Then the black-robed figure in the room grips her, and from that hood looked forth features like rotting parchment on a moldering skull.

Elsewhere, Conan, Kerim and followers have to fight a guard dog and a steel-winged hawk just to get to the first tower, held by mere acolytes of the Black Seers. They launch Flaming Spheres at the men. They have to make hundreds of them prematurely explode by depleting their arrows. Kerim kills Bards until one falling from the tower also destroys the great horn they share. By the time Conan reaches the door, the defenders try to pour molten metal on him, which makes him feel good: they might have run out of magic. Inside the door, he has to dodge a falling stone trap. Once they seize the tower, Conan’s team realizes that it’s separated from the Seers’ own castle by a great ravine. And their princess is in that other castle.

They find a way along the bottom of the ravine, and before the castle the acolytes attack Conan with knives, unable to cast more spells on him, perhaps due to Khemsa’s girdle. Conan, Kerim and three henchmen go inside, leaving a guard posted. A Black Seer appears above the guard, who shoots him with an arrow. The Seer laughs and throws it back, whereupon it turns into a venomous snake that kills him. The rest of the party is trapped inside by an transparent door. Conan sees the crystal globe Khemsa mentioned. Four Seers appear, and one casts a spell that means his foes “could not advance, though he felt it in his power to retreat if he wished.” Fear! Another casts Charm Person on one of the henchmen, who kneels and offers his sword… which the Seer decapitates him with. Soon all three henchmen are dead, and the magic girdle ends the Fear spell’s effect on Conan. He attacks. Then he remembers he’s supposed to destroy the crystal sphere. The four golden snakes at the corners of the altar it’s on come alive to attack him, but he succeeds. And destroying the four golden pomegranates inside makes the four Seers drop dead. Then the Master of Yimsha walks in. He casts a spell that makes Kerim’s rib cage explode outward and his heart fly to the Master’s hand. Conan tries to attack, but no sooner does his blade cut the Master’s robe than he vanishes. Then Conan finds Yasmina being menaced by a giant snake. Conan saves her by throwing knives, then unsheathes another to stab it. Bleeding horribly, the snake… is smart enough to push a secret door open with its nose!

Conan and Yasmina hug and kiss, then begin their escape. The transparent door is shattered and they make it all the way back to where his party left horses, relieved to find the Game Master hasn’t stolen them. She tells him to ride back to her realm, where he’ll be rewarded. He refuses: he wants to keep her, and setting foot there would transmute her into an unapproachable princess. “Hey,” he must be thinking, “your name sounds like Yasmela.”

She protests that he has no followers now. “There is a chief of the Khurakzai who will keep you safely while I bicker with the Afghulis. If they will have none of me, by Crom! I will ride northward with you to the steppes of the kozaki. I was a hetman among the Free Companions before I rode southward. I’ll make you a queen on the Zaporoska River!”

She won’t consent. Their debate is interrupted by the sight of a running battle: Conan’s 500 ex-followers heavily outnumbered by mailed horsemen of Turan. Conan is torn between wanting to lead them to safety, which would get him forgiven, and not risking his life since it would leave Yasmina stuck here. Then her Kshatriyas appear, and she tells Conan to give her his horse so she can rally them to join the Afghulis against the Turanians.

The battle won, a vulture tries to kill Yasmina, but Conan strikes it out of the air. As it dropped, its black wings thrashing the air, it took on the semblance, not of a bird, but of a black-robed human body. The Master of Yimsha?

She offers Conan 10,000 gold pieces for ransoming her back to her people.

“I will collect your ransom in my own way, at my own time,” he said. “I will collect it in your palace at Ayodhya, and I will come with fifty thousand men to see that the scales are fair.”

She laughed, gathering her reins into her hands. “And I will meet you on the shores of the Jhumda with a hundred thousand!”

Aww, they love dominance!

I think this was one of the best stories in the Conan series. Things we’ve seen before seem better developed: the magic system, Conan’s relationship with a princess, and so on.