Almuric - Robert E. Howard (trending books to read TXT) 📗

so I am a goddess. What do your

hairy friends, the Guras, worship?”

 

“They worship Thak; at least they acknowledge Thak as the creator

and preserver. They have no regular ritual of worship, no temples,

altars or priests. Thak is the Hairy One, the god in the form of man.

He bellows in the tempest, and thunders in the hills with the voice of

the lion. He loves brave men, and hates weaklings, but he neither

harms nor aids. When a male child is born, he blows into it courage

and strength; when a warrior dies, he ascends to Thak’s abode, which

is a land of celestial plains, river and mountains, swarming with

game, and inhabited by the spirits of departed warriors, who hunt,

fight and revel forever as they did in life.”

 

She laughed. “Stupid pigs. Death is oblivion. We Yagas worship only

our own bodies. And to our bodies we make rich sacrifices with the

bodies of the foolish little people.”

 

“Your rule cannot last forever,” I was moved to remark.

 

“It has lasted since beyond the gray dawn of Time’s beginning. On

the dark rock Yuthla my people have brooded through ages uncountable.

Before the cities of the Guras dotted the plains, we dwelt in the land

of Yagg. We were always masters. As we rule the Guras, so we ruled the

mysterious race which possessed the land before the Guras evolved from

the ape: the race which reared their cities of marble whose ruins now

affright the moon, and which perished in the night.

 

“Tales! I could tell you tales to blast your reason! I could tell

you of races which appeared from the mist of mystery, moved across the

world in restless waves, and vanished in the midst of oblivion. We of

Yugga have watched them come and go, each in turn bending beneath the

yoke of our godship. We have endured, not centuries or millenniums,

but cycles.

 

“Why should not our rule endure forever? How shall these Gura-fools

overcome us? You have seen how it is when my hawks swoop from the air

in the night on the cities of the apeman. How then shall they attack

us in our eyrie? To reach the land of Yagg they must cross the Purple

River, whose waters race too swiftly to be swum. Only at the Bridge of

Rocks can it be crossed, and there keen-eyed guards watch night and

day. Once, the Guras did try to attack us. The watchers brought word

of their coming and the men of Yagg were prepared. In the midst of the

desert they fell on the invaders and destroyed them by thirst and

madness and arrows showering upon them from the skies.

 

“Suppose a horde should fight its way through the desert and reach

the rock Yuthla? They have the river Yogh to cross, and when they have

crossed it, in the teeth of the Akki spears, what then? They could not

scale the cliffs. No; no foreign foe will ever set foot in Yugga. If,

by the wildest whim of the gods, such a thing should come to pass”—

her beautiful features became even more cruel and sinister—“rather

than submit to conquest I would loose the Ultimate Horror, and

perish in the ruins of my city,” she whispered, more to herself than

to me.

 

“What do you say?” I asked, not understanding.

 

“There are secrets beneath the velvet coverings of the darkest

secrets,” she said. “Tread not where the very gods tremble. I said

nothing—you heard nothing. Remember that!”

 

There was silence for a space, and then I asked a question I had

long mulled over: “Whence come these red girls and yellow girls among

your slaves?”

 

“You have looked southward from the highest towers on clear days,

and seen a faint blue line rimming the sky far away? That is the

Girdle that bands the world. Beyond that Girdle dwell the races from

which come those alien slaves. We raid across the Girdle just as we

raid the Guras, though less frequently.”

 

I was about to ask more concerning these unknown races, when a timid

tap came on the outer door. Yasmeena, frowning at the interruption,

called a sharp question, and a frightened feminine voice informed her

that the lord Gotrah desired audience. Yasmeena spat an oath at her,

and bade her tell the lord Gotrah to go to the devil.

 

“No, I must see the fellow,” she said rising. “Theta! Oh, Theta!

Where has the little minx gone? I must do my own biddings, must I? Her

buttocks shall smart for her insolence. Wait here, Ironhand. I’ll see

to Gotrah.”

 

She crossed the cushion-strewn chamber with her lithe, long stride,

and passed through the door. As it closed behind her, I was struck by

what was nothing less than an inspiration. No especial reason occurred

to me to urge me to feign drunkenness. It was intuition or blind

chance that prompted me. Snatching up the crystal jug which contained

the golden wine, I emptied it into a great golden vessel which stood

half hidden beneath the fringe of a tapestry. I had drunk enough for

the scent to be on my breath.

 

Then, as I heard footsteps and voices without, I extended myself

quickly on a divan, the jug lying on its side near my outstretched

hand. I heard the door open, and there was an instant’s silence so

intense as to be almost tangible. Then Yasmeena spat like an angry

cat. “By the gods, he’s emptied the jug? See how he lies in brutish

slumber! Faugh! The noblest figure is abominable when besotted. Well,

let us to our task. We need not fear to be overheard by him.”

 

“Had I not better summon the guard and have him dragged to his

cell?” came Gotrah’s voice. “We cannot afford to take chances with

this secret, which none has ever known except the Queen of Yugga and

her major-domo.”

 

I sensed that they came and stood over me, looking down. I moved

vaguely and mumbled thickly, as if in drunken dreams.

 

Yasmeena laughed.

 

“No fear. He will know nothing before dawn. Yuthla could split and

fall into Yogh without breaking his sottish dreams. The fool! This

night he would have been lord of the world, for I would have made him

lord of the Queen of the world—for one night. But the lion changes

not his mane, nor the barbarian his brutishness.”

 

“Why not put him to the torture?” grunted Gotrah.

 

“Because I want a man, not a broken travesty. Besides, his is a

spirit not to be conquered by fire or steel. No. I am Yasmeena and I

will make him love me before I feed him to the vultures. Have you

placed the Kothan Altha among the Virgins of the Moon?”

 

“Aye, Queen of the dusky stars. A month and a half from this night

she dances the dance of the Moon with the other wenches.”

 

“Good. Keep them guarded day and night. If this tiger learns of our

plans for his sweetheart, chains and bolts will not hold him.”

 

“A hundred and fifty men guard the virgins,” answered Gotrah. “Not

even the Ironhand could prevail against them.”

 

“It is well. Now to this other matter. Have you the parchment?”

 

“Aye.”

 

“Then I will sign it. Give me the stylus.”

 

I heard the crackle of papyrus and the scratch of a keen point, and

then the Queen said:

 

“Take it now, and lay it on the altar in the usual place. As I

promise in the writing, I will appear in the flesh tomorrow night to

my faithful subjects and worshippers, the blue pigs of Akka. Ha! ha!

ha! I never fail to be amused at the animal-like awe on their stupid

countenances when I emerge from the shadows of the golden screen, and

spread my arms above them in blessing. What fools they are, not in all

these ages, to have discovered the secret door and the shaft that

leads from their temple to this chamber.”

 

“Not so strange,” grunted Gotrah. “None but the priest ever comes

into the temple except by special summons, and he is far too

superstitious to go meddling behind the screen. Anyway, there is no

sign to mark the secret door from without.”

 

“Very well,” answered Yasmeena. “Go.”

 

I heard Gotrah fumbling at something, then a slight grating sound.

Consumed by curiosity, I dared open one eye a slit, in time to glimpse

Gotrah disappearing through a black opening that gaped in the middle

of the stone floor, and which closed after him. I quickly shut my eye

again and lay still, listening to Yasmeena’s quick pantherish tread

back and forth across the floor.

 

Once she came and stood over me. I felt her burning gaze and heard

her curse beneath her breath. Then she struck me viciously across the

face with some kind of jeweled ornament that tore my skin and started

a trickle of blood. But I lay without twitching a muscle, and

presently she turned and left the chamber, muttering.

 

As the door closed behind her I rose quickly, scanning the floor for

some sign of the opening through which Gotrah had gone. A furry rug

had been drawn aside from the center of the floor, but in the polished

black stone I searched in vain for a crevice to denote the hidden

trap. I momentarily expected the return of Yasmeena, and my heart

pounded within me. Suddenly, under my very hand, a section of the

floor detached itself and began to move upward. A pantherish bound

carried me behind a tapestried couch, where I crouched, watching the

trap rise upward. The narrow head of Gotrah appeared, then his winged

shoulders and body.

 

He climbed up into the chamber, and as he turned to lower the lifted

trap, I left the floor with a catlike leap that carried me over the

couch and full on his shoulders.

 

He went down under my weight, and my gripping fingers crushed the

yell in his throat. With a convulsive heave he twisted under me, and

stark horror flooded his face as he glared up at me. He was down on

the cushioned stone, pinned under my iron bulk. He clawed for the

dagger at his girdle, but my knee pinned it down. And crouching on

him, I gutted my mad hate for his cursed race. I strangled him slowly,

gloatingly, avidly watching his features contort and his eyes glaze.

He must have been dead for some minutes before I loosed my hold.

 

Rising, I gazed through the open trap. The light from the torches of

the chamber shone down a narrow shaft, into which was cut a series of

narrow steps, that evidently led down into the bowels of the rock

Yuthla. From the conversation I had heard, it must lead to the temple

of the Akkas, in the town below. Surely I would find Akka no harder to

escape from than Yugga. Yet I hesitated, my heart torn at the thought

of leaving Altha alone in Yugga. But there was no other way. I did not

know in what part of that devil-city she was imprisoned, and I

remembered what Gotrah had said of the great band of warriors guarding

her and the other virgins.

 

Virgins of the Moon! Cold sweat broke out on me as the full

significance of the phrase became apparent. Just what the festival of

the Moon was I did not fully know, but I had heard hints and scattered

comments among the Yaga women, and I knew it was a beastly saturnalia,

in which the full frenzy of erotic ecstasy was reached in the dying

gasps of the wretches sacrificed to the