Conan the adaptable, p.111
Conan the Adaptable, page 111
He wrenched the carriage to a grinding halt at the curb before the building where Rolok lived in. Conan pointed out Rolok's door, and Trocero cast it open without knocking and shouldered his way in. Conan was close at his heels.
Rolok, in a dressing-gown of Khitain silk worked with dragons, was lounging on a divan, in a cloud of herbs. He sat up, overturning a wine-glass which stood with a half-filled bottle at his elbow.
Before Trocero could speak, Conan burst out with our news. "Enri has been shot!"
He sprang to his feet. "Shot? When? When did she kill him?"
"She?" Conan glared in bewilderment. "How did you know—"
With a steely hand Trocero thrust him aside, and as the men faced each other, Conan saw recognition flare up in Rolok's face. They made a strong contrast: Trocero, tall, pale with some white-hot passion; Rolok, slim, darkly handsome, with the arch of his slim brows above his black eyes. Conan realized that whatever else occurred, it lay between those two men. They were not strangers; Conan could sense like a tangible thing the hate that lay between them.
"Count Trocero!" softly whispered Rolok.
"You remember me, Vrolok!" Only an iron control kept Trocero's voice steady. The other merely stared at him without speaking.
"Years ago," said Trocero more deliberately, "when we delved in the dark mysteries together in Stygia, I saw whither you were drifting. I drew back; I would not descend to the foul depths of forbidden occultism and diabolism to which you sank. And because I would not, you despised me, and you robbed me of the only woman I ever loved; you turned her against me by means of your vile arts, and then you degraded and debauched her, sank her into your own foul slime. I had killed you with my hands then, Vrolok—vampire by nature as well as by name that you are—but your arts protected you from physical vengeance. But you have trapped yourself at last!"
Trocero's voice rose in fierce exultation. All his cultured restraint had been swept away from him, leaving a primitive, elemental man, raging and gloating over a hated foe.
"You sought the destruction of Baron Enri and his wife, because she unwittingly escaped your snare; you—"
Rolok shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "You are mad. I have not seen them for weeks. Why blame me for their family troubles?"
Trocero snarled. "Liar as always. What did you say just now when Conan told you Enri had been shot? 'When did she kill him?' You were expecting to hear that the girl had killed her husband. Your psychic powers had told you that a climax was close at hand. You were nervously awaiting news of the success of your devilish scheme.
"But I did not need a slip of your tongue to recognize your handiwork. I knew as soon as I saw the ring on Evlena Enri's finger; the ring she could not remove; the ancient and accursed ring of a disciple of Thoth-amon, handed down by foul cults of sorcerers, I knew that ring was yours, and I knew by what ghastly rites you came to possess it. And I knew its power. Once she put it on her finger, in her innocence and ignorance, she was in your power. By your black magic you summoned the black elemental spirit, the haunter of the ring, out of the gulfs of Night and the ages. Here in your accursed chamber you performed unspeakable rituals to drive Evlena's soul from her body, and to cause that body to be possessed by that godless sprite from outside the human universe.
"She was too clean and wholesome, her love for her husband too strong, for the fiend to gain complete and permanent possession of her body; only for brief instants could it drive her own spirit into the void and animate her form. But that was enough for your purpose. But you have brought ruin upon yourself by your vengeance!"
Trocero's voice rose to a feline screech.
"What was the price demanded by the fiend you drew from the Pits? Ha, you blench! Vrolok is not the only man to have learned forbidden secrets! After I left Stygia, a broken man, I took up again the study of the black arts, to trap you, you cringing serpent! I explored the ruins of Zembabwie, the lost mountains of inner Hyrkania, and the forgotten jungle islands of the southern seas. I learned what sickened my soul so that I forswore occultism forever, but I learned of the black spirit that deals death by the hand of a beloved one, and is controlled by a master of magic.
"But, Vrolok, you are not an adept! You have not the power to control the fiend you have invoked. And you have sold your soul!"
The vampire tore at his collar as if it were a strangling noose. His face had changed, as if a mask had dropped away; he looked much older.
"You lie!" he panted. "I did not promise him my soul—"
"I do not lie!" Trocero's shriek was shocking in its wild exultation. "I know the price a man must pay for calling forth the nameless shape that roams the gulfs of Darkness. Look! There in the corner behind you! A nameless, sightless thing is laughing—is mocking you! It has fulfilled its bargain, and it has come for you, Vrolok!"
"No! No!" shrieked Vrolok, tearing his limp collar away from his sweating throat. His composure had crumpled, and his demoralization was sickening to see. "I tell you it was not my soul—I promised it a soul, but not my soul—he must take the soul of the girl, or of Baron Enri."
"Fool!" roared Trocero. "Do you think he could take the souls of innocence? That he would not know they were beyond his reach? The girl and the youth he could kill; their souls were not his to take or yours to give. But your black soul is not beyond his reach, and he will have his wage. Look! He is materializing behind you! He is growing out of thin air!"
Was it the hypnosis inspired by Trocero's burning words that caused Conan to shudder and grow cold, to feel an icy chill that was not of earth pervade the room? Was it a trick of light and shadow that seemed to produce the effect of a black anthropomorphic shadow on the wall behind what he once thought was a man? No, by Crom! It grew, it swelled—Vrolok had not turned. He stared at Trocero with eyes starting from his head, hair standing stiffly on his scalp, sweat dripping from his livid face.
Trocero's cry started shudders down his spine.
"Look behind you, fool! I see him! He has come! He is here! His grisly mouth gapes in awful laughter! His misshapen paws reach for you!"
And then at last Vrolok wheeled, with an awful shriek, throwing his arms above his head in a gesture of wild despair. And for one brain-shattering instant he was blotted out by a great black shadow—Trocero grasped Conan's arm and they fled from that accursed chamber, blind with horror.
"Enri's fantastic theory of reincarnation was wild enough," Conan said at last. "But the actual facts were still more incredible. Tell me, Trocero, was that last scene the result of hypnosis? Was it the power of your words that made him seem to see a black horror grow out of the air and rip Vrolok's soul from his living body?"
He shook his head. "No human hypnotism would strike that black-hearted devil dead on the floor. No; there are beings outside the ken of common humanity, foul shapes of transcosmic evil. Such a one it was with which Vrolok dealt."
"But how could it claim his soul?" Conan persisted. "If indeed such a foul bargain had been struck, it had not fulfilled its part, for Baron Enri was not dead, but merely knocked senseless."
"Vrolok did not know it," answered Trocero. "He thought that Enri was dead, and I convinced him that he himself had been trapped, and was doomed. In his demoralization he fell easy prey to the thing he called forth. It, of course, was always watching for a moment of weakness on his part. The powers of Darkness never deal fairly with human beings; he who traffics with them is always cheated in the end."
"It's a mad nightmare," Conan muttered. "But it seems to him, then, that you as much as anything else brought about Vrolok's death."
"It is gratifying to think so," Trocero answered. "Evlena is safe now; and it is a small repayment for what he did to another girl, years ago, and in a far country."
Table of Contents
Foreword
Old Garrad's Heart
The People of the Dark
Out of the Deep
Marchers of Aesgaard
The Dark Man
The Twilight of the Grim Grey God
The Gods of Bal-Sagoth
The Garden of Fear
Two Against Turan
The Hell-Spawn of Kara-Shehr
The Shadow of the Vulture
The Blood of Belshazzar
The House of Arabu
Mistress of Death
Tower of Blood
The Purple Heart of Erlik
The Lost Valley of Iskander
The Shadow of the Beast
Hawks of Khoraja
Swords of the Northern Sea
The Temple Of Abomination
Night of the Wolf
Tigers Of The Sea
The Thunder-Rider
The Vengeance of Amra
The Blood of the Gods
The Slave Princess
The Country of the Knife
Lions of Corinthia
Sons of the White Wolf
The Treasure of Khawarism
Swords of Khawarism
Hawk of the Hills
The Daughter of Erlik Khan
The Haunter of the Ring
Robert E. Howard, Gerald W. Page, Richard L. Tierney, David A. English, Conan the Adaptable
