Robert E. Howard - Conan - Shadows In Zamboula

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SHADOWS IN ZAMBOULA

Robert E. Howard

1. A Drum Begins

"Peril hides in the house of Aram Baksh!"

The speaker's voice quivered with earnestness and his lean, black-nailed

fingers clawed at Conan's mightily-muscled arm as he croaked his warning. He

was a wiry, sunburnt man with a straggling black beard, and his ragged

garments prolcaimed him a nomad. He looked smaller and meaner than ever in

contrast to the giant Cimmerian with his black brows, broad chest, and

powerful limbs. They stood in a corner of the Sword Makers' Bazaar, and on

either side of them flowed past the many-tongued, many-colored stream of the

Zamboulan streets, which are exotic, hybrid, flamboyant, and clamorous.

Conan pulled his eyes back from following a bold-eyed, red-lipped Ghanara

whose short skirt bared her brown thigh at each insolent step, and frowned

down at his importunate companion.

"What do you mean by peril?" he demanded.

The desert man glanced furtively over his shoulder before replying, and

lowered his voice.

"Who can say? But desert men and travelers _have_ slept in the house of Aram

Baksh and never been seen or heard of again. What became of them? He swore

they rose and went their way -- and it is true that no citizen of the city has

ever disappeared from his house. But no one saw the travelers again, and men

say that goods and equipment recognised as theirs have been seen in the

bazaars. If Aram did not sell them, after doing away with their owners, how

came they there?"

"I have no goods," growled the Cimmerian, touching the shagreen-bound hilt of

the broadsword that hung at his hip. "I have even sold my horse."

"But it is not always rich strangers who vanish by night from the house of

Aram Baksh!" chattered the Zuagir. "Nay, poor desert men have slept there --

because his score is less than that of the other taverns -- and have been seen

no more. Once a chief of the Zuagirs whose son had thus vanished complained to

the satrap, Jungir Khan, who ordered the house searched by soldiers."

"And they found a cellar full of corpses?" asked Conan in good-humored

derision.

"Nay! They found naught! And drove the chief from the city with threats and

curses! But" -- he drew closer to Conan and shivered -- "something else was

found! At the edge of the desert, beyond the houses, there is a clump of palm

trees, and within that grove there is a pit. And within that pit have been

found human bones, charred and blackened. Not once, but many times!"

"Which proves what?" grunted the Cimmerian.

"Aram Baksh is a demon! Nay, in this accursed city which Stygians built and

which Hyrkanians rule -- where white, brown, and black folk mingle together to

produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds -- who can tell who is a man,

and who is a demon in disguise? Aram Baksh is a demon in the form of a man! At

night he assumes his true guise and carries his guests off into the desert,

where his fellow demons from the waste meet in conclave."

"Why does he always carry off strangers?" asked Conan skeptically.

"The people of the city would not suffer him to slay their people, but they

care nought for the strangers who fall into his hands. Conan, you are of the

West, and know not the secrets of this ancient land. But, since the beginning

of happenings, the demons of the desert have worshipped Yog, the Lord of the

Empty Abodes, with fire -- fire that devours human victims.

"Be warned! You have dwelt for many moons in the tents of the Zuagirs, and you

are our brother! Go not to the house of Aram Baksh!"

"Get out of sight!" Conan said suddenly. "Yonder comes a squad of the city

watch. If they see you they may remember a horse that was stolen from the

satrap's stable--"

The Zuagir gasped and moved convulsively. He ducked between a booth and a

stone horse trough, pausing only long enough to chatter: "Be warned, my

brother! There are demons in the house of Aram Baksh!" Then he darted down a

narrow alley and was gone.

Conan shifted his broad sword-belt to his liking and calmly returned the

searching stares directed at him by the squad of watchmen as they swung past.

They eyed him curiously and suspiciously, for he was a man who stood out even

in such a motley throng as crowded the winding streets of Zamboula. His blue

eyes and alien features distinguished him from the Eastern swarms, and the

straight sword at his hip added point to the racial difference.

The watchmen did not accost him but swung on down the street, while the crowd

opened a lane for them. They were Pelishtim, squat, hook-nosed, with

blue-black beards sweeping their mailed breasts -- mercenaries hired for work

the ruling Turanians considered beneath themselves, and no less hated by the

mongrel population for that reason.

Conan glanced at the sun, just beginning to dip behind the flat-topped houses

on the western side of the bazaar, and hitching once more at his belt, moved

off in the direction of Aram Baksh's tavern.

With a hillman's stride he moved through the ever-shifting colors of the

streets, where the ragged tunics of whining beggars brushed against the

ermine-trimmed khalats of lordly merchants, and the pearl-sewn satin of rich

courtesans. Giant black slaves slouched along, jostling blue-bearded wanders

from the Shemitish cities, ragged nomads from the surrounding deserts, traders

and adventureers from all the lands of the East.

The native population was no less hetrogeneous. Here, centuries ago, the

armies of Stygia had come, carving an empire out of the eastern desert.

Zamboula was but a small trading town then, lying amidst a ring of oases, and

inhabited by descendants of nomads. The Stygians built it into a city and

settled it with their own people, and with Shemite and Kushite slaves. The

ceaseless caravans, threading the desert from east to west and back again,

brought riches and more mingling of races. Then came the conquering Turanians,

riding out of the East to thrust back the boundaries of Stygia, and now for a

generation Zamboula had been Turan's westernmost outpost, ruled by a Turanian

satrap.

The babel of a myriad tongues smote on the Cimmerian's ears as the restless

pattern of the Zamboulan streets weaved about him -- cleft now and then by a

squad of clattering horsemen, the tall, supple warriors of Turan, with dark

hawk-faces, clinking metal, and curved swords. The throng scampered from under

their horses' hoofs, for they were the lords of Zamboula. But tall, somber

Stygians, standing back in the shadows, glowered darkly, rememebering their

ancient glories. The hybrid population cared little whether the king who

controlled their destinies dwelt in dark Khemi or gleaming Aghrapur. Jungir

Khan ruled Zamboula, and men whispered that Nafertari, the satrap's mistress,

ruled Jungir Khan; but the people went their way, flaunting their myriad

colors in the streets, bargaining, disputing, gambling, swilling, loving, as

the people of Zamboula have done for all the centuries its towers and minarets

have lifted over the sands of the Kharamun.

Bronze lanterns, carved with leering dragons, had been lighted in the streets

before Conan reached the house of Aram Baksh. The tavern was the last occupied

house on the street, which ran west. A wide garden, enclosed by a wall, where

date palms grew thick, separated it from the houses farther east. To the west

of the inn stood another grove of palms, through which the street, now become

a road, wound out into the desert. Across the road from the tavern stood a row

of deserted huts, shaded by straggling palm trees and occupied only by bats

and jackals. As Conan came down the road, he wondered why the beggars, so

plentiful in Zamboula, had not appropriated these empty houses for sleeping

quarters. The lights ceased some distance behind him. Here were no lanterns,

except the one hanging before the tavern gate: only the stars, the soft dust

of the road underfoot, and the rustle of the palm leaves in the desert breeze.

Aram's gate did not open upon the road but upon the alley which ran between

the tavern and the garden of the date palms. Conan jerked lustily at the rope

which dangled from the bell beside the lantern, augmenting its clamor by

hammering on the iron-bound teakwood gate with the hilt of his sword. A wicket

opened in the gate, and a black face peered through.

"Open, blast you," requested Conan. "I'm a guest. I've paid Aram for a room,

and a room I'll have, by Crom!"

The black craned his neck to stare into the starlit road behind Conan; but he

opened the gate without comment and closed it again behind the Cimmerian,

locking it and bolting it. The wall was unusually high; but there were many

thieves in Zamboula, and a house on the edge of the desert might have to be

defended against a nocturnal nomad raid. Conan strode through a garden, where

great pale blossoms nodded in the starlight, and entered the taproom, where a

Stygian with the shaven head of a student sat at a table brooding over

nameless mysteries, and some nondescripts wrangled over a game of dice in a

corner.

Aram Baksh came forward, walking softly, a portly man, wih a black beard that

swept his breast, a jutting hooknose, and small black eyes which were never

still.

"You wish food?" he asked. "Drink?"

"I ate a joint of beef and a loaf of bread in the _suk_" grunted Conan. "Bring

me a tankard of Ghazan wine -- I've got just enough left to pay for it." He

tossed a copper coin on the wine-splashed board.

"You did not win at the gaming tables?"

"How could I, with only a handful of silver to begin with? I paid you for the

room this morning, because I knew I'd probably lose. I wanted to be sure I had

a roof over my head tonight. I notice nobody sleeps in the streets of

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