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The Castle of Terror
Before he can bring off his plans for building a black, empire with himself at its head, Conan is thwarted
by a succession of natural catastrophes and the intrigues of his enemies among the Bamulas, many of
whom resent the rise to power in their tribe of a foreigner, forced to flee, he heads north through the
equatorial jungle and across the grassy veldt toward the semicivilized kingdom of Kush.
1. Burning Eyes
BEYOND THE trackless deserts of Stygia lay the vast grasslands of Kush. For over a hundred leagues,
there was' naught but endless stretches of thick grass. Here and there a solitary tree rose to break the
gently rolling monotony of the veldt: spiny acacias, sword-leaved dragon, trees, emerald-spired lobelias,
and thick fingered, poisonous spurges. Now and then a rare stream cut a shallow dell across the prairie,
giving rise to a narrow gallery forest along its banks. Herds of zebra, antelope, buffalo, and other
denizens of the savanna drifted athwart the veldt, grazing as they went
The grasses whispered and nodded in the wandering winds beneath skies of deep cobalt in which a fierce
tropical sun blazed blindingly. Now and then clouds boiled up; a brief thunderstorm roared and blazed
with catastrophic fury, only to die and clear as quickly as it had arisen.
Across this limitless waste, as the day died, a lone silent figure trudged. It was a young giant, strongly
built, with eliding thews that swelled under a sun-bronzed hide scored with the white traces of old
wounds. Deep of chest and broad of shoulder and long of limb was he; his scanty costume of loincloth
and sandals revealed his magnificent physique. His chest, shoulders, and back were burnt nearly as black
as the natives of this land. The tangled locks of an unkempt mane of coarse black hair framed a grim,
impassive face. Beneath scowling black brows, fierce eyes of burning blue roamed restlessly from side
to side as he marched with a limber, tireless stride across the level lands. His wary gaze pierced the
thick, shadowy grasses on either side, reddened by the angry crimson of sunset. Soon night would come
swiftly across Kush; under the gloom of its world-shadowing wings, danger and death would prowl the
waste.
Yet the lone traveler, Conan of Cimmeria, was not afraid. A barbarian of barbarians, bred on the bleak
hills of distant Cimmeria, the iron endurance and fierce vitality of the wild were his, granting him
survival where civilized men, though more learned, more courteous, and more sophisticated than he,
would miserably have perished. Although the wanderer had gone afoot for eight days, with no food save
the game he had slain with the great Bamula hunting bow slung across his back, the mighty barbarian
had nowhere nearly approached the limits of his strength.
Long had Conan been accustomed to the Spartan life of the wilderness. Although he had tasted the
languid luxuries of civilized life in half the walled, glittering cities of the world, he missed them not. He
plodded on toward the distant horizon, now obscured by a murky purple haze.
Behind him lay the dense jungles of the black lands beyond Kush, where fantastic orchids blazed amid
foliage his way for many weary leagues northward, until he reached the region where the crowding
forest thinned out and gave way to the open grasslands. Now he meant to cross Ac savanna on foot to
reach the kingdom of Kush, where his barbaric strength and the weight of his sword might find him
employment in the service of the dusky monarchs of that ancient land.
Suddenly his thoughts were snatched away from contemplation of the past by a thrill of danger. Some
primal instinct of survival alerted him to the presence of peril. He halted and stared about him through
the long shadows cast by the setting sun. As the hairs of his nape bristled with the touch of unseen

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menace, the giant barbarian searched the air with sensitive nostrils and probed the gloom with
smoldering eyes. Although he could neither see nor smell anything, the mysterious sense of danger of
the wilderness-bred told him that peril was near. He felt the feathery touch of invisible eyes and whirled
to glimpse a pair of large orbs, glowing in the gloom.
Almost in the same instant, the blazing eyes vanished. So short had been his glimpse and so utter the
disappearance that he was tempted to shrug off the sight as a product of his imagination. He turned and
went forward again, but now he was on the alert. As he continued his journey, flaming eyes opened
again amid the thick shadows of dense grasses, to follow his silent progress. Tawny, sinuous forms
glided after him on soundless feet. The lions of Kush were on his track, lusting for hot blood and fresh
flesh.
2. The Circle of Death
An hour later, night had fallen over the savanna, save for a narrow band of sunset glow along the
western horizon, against which an occasional small, gnarled tree of

the veldt stood up in black silhouette. And Conan almost reached the limits of his endurance. Thrice
lionesses had rushed upon him out of the shadows to right or to left. Thrice he had driven them off with
the flying death of his arrows. Although it was hard to shoot straight in the gathering dark, an explosive
snarl from the chasing cats had thrice told him of hits, although he had no way of knowing whether he
had slain or only wounded the deadly predators.
But now his quiver was empty, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the silent marauders
pulled him down. There were eight or ten lions on his track! Now even the grim barbarian felt a pang of
despair. Even if his mighty sword accounted for one or two of the attackers, the rest would tear him into
gory pieces before he could slash or thrust again. Conan had encountered lions before and knew their
enormous strength, which enabled them to pick up and drag a whole zebra as easily as a cat does a
mouse. Although Conan was one of the strongest men of his time, once a lion got its claws and teeth into
him that strength would be no more effective than that of a small child.
Conan ran on. He had been running now for the better part of an hour, with a long, loping stride that ate
up the leagues. At first he had run effortlessly, but now the grueling exertions of his flight through the
black jungles and his eight-day trek across the plain began to take their toll. His eyes blurred; the
muscles of his legs ached. Every beat of his bursting heart seemed to drain away the strength remaining
in his giant form.
He prayed to his savage gods for the moon to emerge from the dense, stormy clouds that veiled most of
the sky. He prayed for a hillock or a tree to break the gently rolling flatness of the plain, or even a
boulder against which he could set his back to make a last stand against the pride.

But the gods heard not The only trees in this region were dwarfish, thorny growths, which rose to a
height of six or eight feet and then spread their branches out horizontally in a mushroom shape. If he
managed to climb such a tree despite the thorns, it would be easy for the first lion to reach the base to
spring upon him from below and bear him to the ground in one leap. The only hillocks were termite
nests, some rising several feet in height but too small for purposes of defense. There was nothing to do
but run on. To lighten himself, he had cast aside the great hunting bow when he had spent his last shaft,
although it wrenched his heart to throw away the splendid weapon. Quiver and straps soon followed. He
was now stripped to a mere loincloth of leopard hide, the high-laced sandals that clad his feet, his

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goatskin water bag, and the heavy broadsword, which he now carried scabbarded in one fist. To part
with these would mean surrendering his last hope.
The lions were now almost at his heels. He could smell the strong reek of their lithe bodies and hear
their panting breath. Any moment, now, they would, close in upon him, and he would be making his last
furious fight for life before they pulled him down.
He expected his pursuers to follow their age-old tactics. The oldest male—the chief of the pride—would
follow directly behind him, with the younger males on either flank. The swifter lionesses would range
ahead on either side in a crescent formation until they were far enough ahead of him to close the circle
and trap him. Then they would all rush in upon him at once, making any effective defense impossible.
Suddenly, the land was flooded with light. The round, silver eye of the rising moon glared down upon
the broad plains, bathing the racing figure of the giant barbarian with her gaze and drawing lines of pale
silver fire along the rippling sinews of the lions as they loped at his heels, washing their short, silken fur
with her ghostly radiance.
Coan's wary eye caught the moonfire on rippling fur ahead to his left, and he knew that the encirclement
was nearly complete. As he braced himself to meet the charge, however, he was astounded to see the
same lioness veer off and halt. In two strides he was past her. As he went, he saw that the young lioness
on his right had also stopped short. She squatted motionless on the grass with tail twitching and lashing.
A curious sound, half roar and half wail, came from her fanged jaws.               |
Conan dared to slow his run and glance bad. To his utter astonishment, he saw that the entire pride had
halted as if at some invisible barrier. They stood in a snarling line with fangs gleaming like silver in the
moonlight. Earth shaking roars of baffled rage came from their throats.
Conan's eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and his scowling brows knotted in puzzlement. What had halted
the pride at the very moment when they had made sure of their prey? What unseen force had annulled
the fury of the chase? He stood for a moment facing them, sword in hand, wondering if they would
resume their charge. But the lions stayed where they were, growling and roaring
from foam-dripping jaws.
  Then Conan observed a curious thing. The place where the lions had halted seemed to mark a line of
demarcation across the plain. On the further side grew thick, long, lush grasses. At the invisible
boundary, however, the grass became thin, stubby, and ill nourished, with broad patches of bare earth.
Although Conan could not clearly distinguish colors by moonlight alone, it seemed to him that the
grasses on the hither side of the line lacked the normal green color of growing things. Instead, the
grasses around his feet seemed dry and gray, as if leached of all vitality.

To either side, in the bright moonlight, he could see the region of dead grasses curve away into the
distance, as if he stood alone in a vast circle of death.
3. The Black Citadel
  Although he still ached with weariness, the brief pause had given Conan the strength to continue his
progress. Since he did not know the nature of the invisible line that had halted the lions, he could not tell
how long this mysterious influence would continue to hold them at bay. Therefore he preferred to put as
much distance between the pride and himself as possible.
Soon he saw a dark mass take form out of the dimness ahead of him. He went forward even more warily
than before, sword in hand and eyes searching the hazy immensities of this domain. The moonlight was
still brilliant, but its radiance became obscure with distance as if veiled by some thickening haze. So, at

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first, Conan could make nothing of the black, featureless mass that lifted out of the plain before him,
save for its size and its stillness. Like some colossal idol of primitive devil worship, hewn from a
mountain of black stone by some unknown beings in time's dawn, the dark mass squatted motionless
amid the dead gray grass. As Conan came nearer, details emerged from the dark, featureless blur. He
saw that it was a tremendous edifice, which lay partly in ruins on the plains of Kush—a colossal
structure erected by unknown hands for some nameless purpose. It looked like a castle or fortress of
some sort, but of an architectural type that Conan had never seen. Made of dense black stone, it rose in a
complex facade of pillars and terraces and battlements, whose alignment seemed oddly awry. It baffled
the view. The eye followed mind-twisting curves that seemed subtly wrong, weirdly distorted. The huge
structure gave the impression of a chaotic lack of order, as if its builders had not been quite sane.
  Conan wrenched his gaze from the vertiginous curves of this misshapen mass of masonry, merely to
look upon which made him dizzy. He thought he could at last perceive why the beasts of the veldt
avoided this crumbling pile. It somehow exuded an aura of menace and horror. Perhaps, during the
millennia that the black citadel had squatted on the plains, the animals had come to dread it and to avoid
its shadowy precincts, until such habits of avoidance were now instinctive.
  The moon dimmed suddenly as high-piled storm clouds again darkened her ageless face. Distant
thunder grumbled, and Conan's searching gaze caught the sulfurous flicker of lightning among the
boiling masses of cloud. One of .those quick, tempestuous thunderstorms of the savanna was about to
break.
  Conan hesitated. On the one hand, curiosity and a desire for shelter from the coming storm drew him to
the ' crumbled stronghold. On the other, his barbarian's mind held a deep-rooted aversion to the
supernatural. Toward earthly, mortal dangers he was fearless to the point of rashness, but otherworldly
perils could send the tendrils of panic quivering along his nerves. And something about this mysterious
structure hinted at the supernatural. He could feel its menace in the deepest layers of his consciousness.
  A louder nimble of thunder decided him. Taking an iron grip on his nerves, he strode confidently into
the dark portal, naked steel in hand, and vanished within.

4. The Serpent Men
  Conan prowled the length of the high-vaulted hall, finding nothing that lived. Dust and dead leaves
littered the black pave. Moldering rubbish was heaped in the comers and around the bases of towering
stone columns. However old this pile of masonry was, evidently no living thing had dwelt therein for
centuries.
The hall, revealed by another brief appearance of ,the moon, was two stories high. A balustrated balcony
ran around the second floor. Curious to probe deeper into the mystery of this enigmatic structure which
squatted here on the plain many leagues from any other stone building, Conan roamed the corridors,
which wound as sinuously as a serpent's track. He poked into dusty chambers whose original purpose he
could not even guess.
The castle was of staggering size, even to one who had seen the temple of the spider-god at Yezud in
Zamora and the palace of King Yfldiz at Aghrapur in Turan. A good part of it—one whole wing, in fact
—had fallen into a featureless mass of tumbled black blocks, but the part that remained more or less
intact was still the largest building that Conan had seen. Its antiquity was beyond guessing. The black
onyx of which it was wrought was unlike any stone that Conan had seen in this part of the world. It must
have been brought across immense distances—why, Conan could not imagine.

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Some features of the bizarre architecture of the structure reminded Conan of ancient tombs in accursed
Zamora. Others suggested forbidden temples that he had glimpsed in far Hyrkania during his mercenary
service with the Turanians. But whether the black castle had been erected primarily as a tomb, a fortress,
a palace, or a temple, or some combination of these, he could not tell.
Then, too, there was a disturbing alienage about the castle that made him obscurely uneasy. Even as the
facades seemed to have been built according to the canons of some alien geometry, so the interior
contained baffling features. The steps of the stairways, for example, were much broader and shallower
than was required for human feet. The doorways were too tall and too narrow, so that Conan had to turn
sideways to get through them.
The walls were sculptured in low relief with coiling, geometrical arabesques of baffling, hypnotic
complexity. Conan found that he had to wrench his gaze away from the sculptured walls by force of
will, lest his mind be entrapped and held by the cryptic symbols formed by the writhing lines.
 In fact, everything about this strange, baffling enigma in stone reminded Conan of serpents—the
winding corridors, the writhing decoration, and even, he thought, a faint trace of a musky, ophidian odor.
Conan halted, brows knotted. Could this unknown ruin have been raised by the serpent folk of ancient
Valussa? The day of that pre-human people lay an unthinkable interval in the past, before the dawn of
man himself, in the dim mists of time when giant reptiles ruled the earth. Or ever the Seven Empires
arose in the days before the Cataclysm—even before Atlantis arose from the depths of the Western
Ocean—the serpent people had reigned. They had vanished long before the coming of man—but not
entirely.
Around the campfires in the bleak hills of Cimmeria and again in the marbled courts of the temples of
Nemedia, Conan had heard the legend of Kull, the Atlantean king of Valusia. The snake people had
survived here and there by means of their magic, which enabled them to appear to others as ordinary
human beings. But Kull had stumbled upon their secret and had purged his realm dean of their taint,
wiping them out with fire and sword.
Still, might not the black castle, with its alien architecture, be a relic of that remote era, when men
contended for the rule of the planet with these reptilian survivors of lost ages?

5. Whispering Shadows
 The first thunderstorm missed the black castle. There was a brief patter of raindrops on the crumbling
stonework and a trickle of water through holes in the roof. Then the lightning and thunder diminished as
the storm passed off to westward, leaving the moon to shine unobstructed once more through the gaps in
the stone. But other storms followed, muttering and flickering out of the east. Conan slept uneasily in a
comer of the balcony above the great hall, tossing and turning like some wary animal that dimly senses
the approach of danger. Caution had made him suspicious of sleeping in the hall before the wide-open
doors. Even though the circle of death seemed to bar the denizens of the plains, he did not trust the
unseen force that held the beasts at bay.
A dozen times he started awake, clutching at his sword and probing the soft shadows with his eyes,
searching for whatever had aroused him. A dozen times he found nothing in the gloomy vastness of the
ancient wreck. Each time he composed himself for slumber again, however, dim shadows clustered
around him, and he half-heard whispering voices.
Growling a weary curse to his barbaric gods, the Cimmerian damned all shadows and echoes to the
eleven scarlet Hells of his mythology and threw himself down again, striving to slumber. At length he

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fell into a deep sleep. And in that sleep there came upon him a strange dream.
It seemed that, although his body slept, his spirit waked and was watchful. To the immaterial eyes of his
ka, as the Stygians called it, the gloomy balcony was filled with a dim glow of blood-hued light from
some unseen source. This was neither the silvery sheen of the moon, which cast slanting beams into the
hall through gaps in the stone, nor the pallid Bicker of distant lightning. By sanguine radiance, Conan's
spirit could see drifting shadows, which flitted like cloudy bats among die black marble columns—
shadows with glaring eyes filled with mindless hunger—shadows that whispered in an all but audible
cacophony of mocking laughter and bestial cries.
Conan's spirit somehow knew that these whispering
shadows were the ghosts of thousands of sentient beings who had died within this ancient structure. How
he knew this, he could not say, but to his ka it was a plain fact. The unknown people who had raised this
enormous ruin—whether the serpent men of Valusian legend or some other forgotten race—had
drenched the marble altars of the black castle with the blood of thousands. The ghosts of their victims
were chained forever to this castle of terror. Perhaps they were held earthbound by some powerful spell
of prehuman sorcery. Perhaps it was the same spell that kept out the beasts of the veldt.
But this was not all. The ghosts of the black castle hungered for the blood of the living—for the blood
oft Conan.                               |
His exhausted body lay chained in ensorcelled slumber while shadowy phantoms flitted about him,
tearing at him with impalpable fingers. But a spirit cannot harm a living being unless it first manifests
itself on the physical plane and assumes material form. These gibbering shadow hordes were weak. Not
for years had a man defied the ancient curse to set foot within the black castle, enabling them to feed.
Enfeebled by long starvation, they could no longer easily materialize into a shambling horde of ghoul-
things.
Somehow, the spirit of the dreaming Conan knew this. While his body slept on, his ka observed
movements on the astral plane and watched the vampiric shadows as they beat insubstantial wings about
his sleeping head
and slashed with impalpable claws at his pulsing throat But for all their voiceless frenzy, they could
harm him not. Bound by the spell, he slept on.
After an indefinite time, a change took place in die ruddy luminance of the astral plane. The specters
were clustering together into a shapeless mass of thickening shadows. Mindless dead things though they
were, hunger drove them into an uncanny alliance. Each ghost possessed a small store of that vital
energy that went toward bodily materialization. Now each phantom mingled its slim supply of energy
with that of its shadowy brethren.
Gradually, a terrible shape, fed by the life force of ten thousand ghosts, began to materialize. In the dim
gloom of the black marble balcony, it slowly formed out of a swirling cloud of shadowy particles.
And Conan slept on.
6. The Hundred Heads
Thunder crashed deafeningly, lightning blazed with sulfurous fires above the darkened plain, whence the
moonlight had fled again. The thick-piled storm clouds burst, soaking the grassy swales with a torrential
downpour.
The Stygian slave raiders had ridden all night, pressing southward toward the forests beyond Kush.
Their expedition had thus far been fruitless; not one black of the nomadic hunting and herding tribes of
the savanna had fallen into their hands. Whether war or pestilence had swept the land bare of

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humankind, or whether the tribesmen, warned of the coming of the slavers, had fled beyond reach, they
did not know.
In any case, it seemed that they would do better among the lush jungles of the South. The forest Negroes
dwelt in permanent villages, which the slavers could surround and take by surprise with a quick dawn
rush, catching the inhabitants like fish in a net. Villagers too old, too young, or too sickly to endure the
trek back to Stygia they would slay out of hand. Then they would drive the remaining wretches, fettered
together to form a human chain, northward.
There were forty Stygians, well-mounted warriors in helms and chain-mail hauberks. They were tall,
swarthy, hawk-faced men, powerfully muscled. They were hardened marauders—tough, shrewd,
fearless, and merciless, with no more compunction about killing a non-Stygian than most men have
about slipping a gnat
Now the first downpour of the storm swept their column. Winds whipped their woolen cloaks and linen
robes and blew their horses manes into their faces. The almost continuous blaze of lightning dazzled
them.
Their leader sighted the black castle, looming above the grasslands, for the blazing lightning made it
visible in the rain-veiled dark. He shouted a guttural command and drove his spurs into the ribs of his
big black mare. The others spurred after him and rode up to the frowning bastions with a clatter of hoofs,
a creaking of leather, and a jingle of mail. In the blur of rain and night, the abnormality of the facade
was not visible, and the Stygians were eager to get under shelter before they were soaked.
They came stamping in, cursing and bellowing and shaking the water from their cloaks. In a trice, the
gloomy silence of the ruin was broken with a clamor of noise. Brushwood and dead leaves were
gathered; flint and steel were struck. Soon a smoking, sputtering fire leaped up in the midst of the
cracked marble floor, to paint the sculptured walls with rich orange.
The men flung down their saddlebags, stripped off wet burnooses, and spread them to dry. They
struggled out of their coats of mail and set to rubbing the moisture from them with oily rags. They
opened their saddlebags

and sank strong white teeth into round loaves of hard, stale bread.
Outside, the storm bellowed and flashed. Streams of rainwater, like little waterfalls, poured through gaps
in the masonry. But the Stygians heeded them not.
On the balcony above, Conan stood silently, awake but trembling with shudders that wracked his
powerful body. With the cloudburst, the spell that held him captive had broken. Starting up, he glared
about for the shadowy conclave of ghosts that he had seen form in his dream. When the lightning
flashed, he thought he glimpsed a dark, amorphous form at the far end of the balcony, but he did not care
to go closer to investigate.
While he pondered the problem of how to quit the balcony without coming in reach of the Thing, the
Stygians came stamping and roaring in. They were hardly an improvement on the ghosts. Given half a
chance, they would be delighted to capture him for their slave gang. For all his immense strength and
skill at arms, Conan knew that no man can fight forty well-armed foes at once. Unless he instantly cut
his way out and escaped, they would bring him down. He faced either a swift death or / a bitter life of
groaning drudgery in a Stygian slave pen. He was not sure which he preferred.
If the Stygians distracted Conan's attention from the phantoms, they likewise distracted the attention of
the phantoms from Conan. In their mindless hunger, the shadow-things ignored the Cimmerian in favor

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of the forty Stygians encamped below. Here was living flesh and vital force enough to glut their
phantasmal lusts thrice over. Like autumn leaves, they drifted over the balustrade and down from the
balcony into the hall below.
The Stygians sprawled around their fire, passing a bottle of wine from hand to hand and talking in their
guttural tongue. Although Conan knew only a few words of Stygian, from the intonations and gestures
he could follow the course of the argument The leader—a clean-shaven giant, as tall as the Cimmerian—
swore that he would not venture into the downpour on such a night They would await the dawn in this
crumbling ruin. At least, the roof seemed to be still sound in places, and a man could here out of the drip.
When several more bottles had been emptied, the Stygians, now warm and dry, composed themselves
for sleep. The fire burned low, for the brushwood with which they fed it could not long sustain a strong
blaze. The leader pointed to one of his men and spoke a harsh sentence. The man protested, but after
some argument he heaved himself up with a groan and pulled on his coat of mail. He, Conan realized,
had been chosen to stand the first watch.                              |
Presently, with sword in hand and shield on arm, the sentry was standing in the shadows at the margin of
the light of the dying fire. From time to time he walked slowly up and down the length of the hall,
pausing to peer into the winding corridors or out through the front doors, where the storm was in
retreat.
 While the sentry stood in the main doorway with his back to his comrades, a grim shape formed
among the snoring band of slavers. It grew slowly out of wavering clouds of insubstantial shadows. The
compound creature that gradually took shape was made up of the vital force of thousands of dead
beings. It became a ghastly form—a huge bulk that sprouted countless malformed limbs and
appendages. A dozen squat legs supported its monstrous weight. From its top, like grisly fruit, sprouted
scores of heads: some lifelike, with shaggy hair and brows; others mere lumps in which eyes, ears,
mouths, and nostrils were arranged at random.

  The sight of the hundred-headed monster in that dimly firelit ball was enough to freeze the blood of the
stoutest with terror. Conan felt his nape hairs rise and his skin crawl with revulsion as he stared down
upon the scene.
  The thing lurched across the floor. Leaning unsteadily down, it clutched one of the Stygians with half a
dozen grasping claws. As the man awoke with a scream, the nightmare Thing tore its victim apart,
spattering his sleeping comrades with gory, dripping fragments of the man.
7. Flight from Nightmare
In an instant, the Stygians were on their feet. Hardbitten ravagers though they were, the sight was
frightful enough to wring yells of terror from some. Wheeling at the first scream, the sentry rushed back
into the hall to hack at the monster with his sword. Bellowing commands, the leader snatched up the
nearest weapon and fell to. The rest, although unarmored, disheveled, and confused, seized sword and
spear to defend themselves against the shape that shambled and slew among them.
Swords hacked into misshapen thighs; spears plunged into the swollen, swaying belly. Clutching hands
and arms were hacked away to thud, jerking and grasping, to the floor. But, seeming to reel no pain, the
monster snatched up man after man. Some Stygians had their heads twisted off by strangling hands.
Others were seized by the feet and battered to gory remnants against the pillars.
As the Cimmerian watched from above, a dozen Stygians were battered or torn to death. The ghastly
wounds inflicted on the monster by the weapons of the Stygians instantly closed up and healed. Severed

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heads and arms were replaced by new members, which sprouted from the bulbous body.
Seeing that the Stygians had no chance against the monster, Conan resolved to take his leave while the
Thing was still occupied with the slavers and before it turned its attention to him. Thinking it unwise to
enter the hall, he sought a more direct exit He cimbed out through a window. This let on to a roof terrace
of broken tiles, where a false step could drop him through a gap in the pavement to ground level.
The rain had slackened to a drizzle. The moon, now nearly overhead, showed intermittent beams again.
Looking down from the parapet that bounded the terrace, Conan found a place where the exterior
carvings, together with climbing vines, provided means of descent. With the lithe grace of an ape, he
lowered himself hand over hand down the weirdly carven facade.
Now the moon glazed out in full glory, lighting the courtyard below where the Stygians horses stood
tethered, moving and whinnying uneasily at the sounds of mortal combat that came from the great hall.
Over the roar of battle sounded screams of agony as man after man was torn limb from limb.
Conan dropped, landing lightly on the earth of the courtyard. He sprinted for the great black mare that
had belonged to the leader of the slavers. He would have liked to linger to loot the bodies, for he needed
their armor and other supplies. The mail shirt he had worn as Belits piratical partner had long since
succumbed to wear and rust, and his flight from Bamula had been too hasty to allow him to equip
himself more completely. But no force on earth could have drawn him into that ''hall, where a horror of
living death still stalked and slew.
As the young Cimmerian untethered the horse he had chosen, a screaming figure burst from the entrance
and came pelting across the courtyard toward him. Conan saw that it was the man who had stood the
first sentry-go. The Stygian's helmet and mail shirt had protected him

just enough to enable him to survive the massacre of his comrades.
Conan opened his mouth to speak. There was no love lost between him and the Stygian people;
nevertheless, if this Stygian were the only survivor of his party, Conan would have been willing to form
a rogues alliance with him, however temporary, until they could reach more settled country.
But Conan had no chance to make such a proposal, for the experience had driven the burly Stygian mad.
His eyes blazed wildly in the moonlight, and foam dripped from his lips. He rushed straight upon Conan,
whirling a scimitar so that the moonlight flashed upon it and shrieking, "Back to your hell, O demon!"
The primitive survival instinct of the wilderness-bred Cimmerian flashed into action without conscious
thought. By the time the man was within striking distance. Conan's own sword had cleared its scabbard.
Again and gain, steel clanged against steel, striking sparks. As the wild-eyed Stygian swung back for
another slash, Conan drove his point into the madman's throat The Stygian gurgled, swayed, and toppled.
For an instant, Conan leaned on the mare's saddle bow, panting. The duel had been short but fierce, and
the Stygian had been no mean antagonist
From within the ancient pile of stone, no more cries of terror rang. There was naught but an ominous
silence. Then Conan heard slow, heavy, shuffling footsteps. Had the ogreish thing slaughtered them all?
Was it dragging its misshapen bulk toward the door, to emerge into the courtyard?
Conan did not wait to find out. With trembling fingers he unlaced the dead man's hauberk and pulled the
mail shirt off. He also collected the Stygian's helmet and shield, the latter made from the hide of one of
the great, thick-skinned beasts of the veldt He hastily tied these trophies to the saddle, vaulted upon the
steed, wrenched at the reins, and kicked the mare's ribs. He galloped out of the ruined courtyard into the
region of withered grass. With every stride of the flying hoofs, the castle of ancient evil fen behind.

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Somewhere beyond the circle of dead grass, perhaps the hungry lions still prowled. But Conan did not
care. After the ghostly horrors of the black citadel, he would gladly take his chances with mere lions.




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