Queen of the Black Coast by Robert E. Howard
3 The Horror in the Jungle
_Was it a dream the nighted lotus brought? Then curst the dream that bought my sluggish life; And curst each laggard hour that does not see Hot blood drip blackly from the crimsoned knife._
THE SONG OF BELIT
First there was the blackness of an utter void, with the cold winds ofcosmic space blowing through it. Then shapes, vague, monstrous andevanescent, rolled in dim panorama through the expanse of nothingness,as if the darkness were taking material form. The winds blew and avortex formed, a whirling pyramid of roaring blackness. From it grewShape and Dimension; then suddenly, like clouds dispersing, the darknessrolled away on either hand and a huge city of dark green stone rose onthe bank of a wide river, flowing through an illimitable plain. Throughthis city moved beings of alien configuration.
Cast in the mold of humanity, they were distinctly not men. They werewinged and of heroic proportions; not a branch on the mysterious stalkof evolution that culminated in man, but the ripe blossom on an alientree, separate and apart from that stalk. Aside from their wings, inphysical appearance they resembled man only as man in his highest formresembles the great apes. In spiritual, esthetic and intellectualdevelopment they were superior to man as man is superior to the gorilla.But when they reared their colossal city, man's primal ancestors had notyet risen from the slime of the primordial seas.
These beings were mortal, as are all things built of flesh and blood.They lived, loved and died, though the individual span of life wasenormous. Then, after uncounted millions of years, the Change began. Thevista shimmered and wavered, like a picture thrown on a windblowncurtain. Over the city and the land the ages flowed as waves flow over abeach, and each wave brought alterations. Somewhere on the planet themagnetic centers were shifting; the great glaciers and ice-fields werewithdrawing toward the new poles.
The littoral of the great river altered. Plains turned into swamps thatstank with reptilian life. Where fertile meadows had rolled, forestsreared up, growing into dank jungles. The changing ages wrought on theinhabitants of the city as well. They did not migrate to fresher lands.Reasons inexplicable to humanity held them to the ancient city and theirdoom. And as that once rich and mighty land sank deeper and deeper intothe black mire of the sunless jungle, so into the chaos of squallingjungle life sank the people of the city. Terrific convulsions shook theearth; the nights were lurid with spouting volcanoes that fringed thedark horizons with red pillars.
After an earthquake that shook down the outer walls and highest towersof the city, and caused the river to run black for days with some lethalsubstance spewed up from the subterranean depths, a frightful chemicalchange became apparent in the waters the folk had drunk for millenniumsuncountable.
Many died who drank of it; and in those who lived, the drinking wroughtchange, subtle, gradual and grisly. In adapting themselves to thechanging conditions, they had sunk far below their original level. Butthe lethal waters altered them even more horribly, from generation tomore bestial generation. They who had been winged gods became pinioneddemons, with all that remained of their ancestors' vast knowledgedistorted and perverted and twisted into ghastly paths. As they hadrisen higher than mankind might dream, so they sank lower than man'smaddest nightmares reach. They died fast, by cannibalism, and horriblefeuds fought out in the murk of the midnight jungle. And at last amongthe lichen-grown ruins of their city only a single shape lurked, astunted abhorrent perversion of nature.
Then for the first time humans appeared: dark-skinned, hawk-faced men incopper and leather harness, bearing bows--the warriors of pre-historicStygia. There were only fifty of them, and they were haggard and gauntwith starvation and prolonged effort, stained and scratched withjungle-wandering, with blood-crusted bandages that told of fiercefighting. In their minds was a tale of warfare and defeat, and flightbefore a stronger tribe which drove them ever southward, until they lostthemselves in the green ocean of jungle and river.
Exhausted they lay down among the ruins where red blossoms that bloombut once in a century waved in the full moon, and sleep fell upon them.And as they slept, a hideous shape crept red-eyed from the shadows andperformed weird and awful rites about and above each sleeper. The moonhung in the shadowy sky, painting the jungle red and black; above thesleepers glimmered the crimson blossoms, like splashes of blood. Thenthe moon went down and the eyes of the necromancer were red jewels setin the ebony of night.
When dawn spread its white veil over the river, there were no men to beseen: only a hairy winged horror that squatted in the center of a ringof fifty great spotted hyenas that pointed quivering muzzles to theghastly sky and howled like souls in hell.
Then scene followed scene so swiftly that each tripped over the heels ofits predecessor. There was a confusion of movement, a writhing andmelting of lights and shadows, against a background of black jungle,green stone ruins and murky river. Black men came up the river in longboats with skulls grinning on the prows, or stole stooping through thetrees, spear in hand. They fled screaming through the dark from red eyesand slavering fangs. Howls of dying men shook the shadows; stealthy feetpadded through the gloom, vampire eyes blazed redly. There were grislyfeasts beneath the moon, across whose red disk a bat-like shadowincessantly swept.
Then abruptly, etched clearly in contrast to these impressionisticglimpses, around the jungled point in the whitening dawn swept a longgalley, thronged with shining ebon figures, and in the bows stood awhite-skinned ghost in blue steel.
It was at this point that Conan first realized that he was dreaming.Until that instant he had had no consciousness of individual existence.But as he saw himself treading the boards of the _Tigress_, herecognized both the existence and the dream, although he did not awaken.
Even as he wondered, the scene shifted abruptly to a jungle glade whereN'Gora and nineteen black spearmen stood, as if awaiting someone. Evenas he realized that it was he for whom they waited, a horror swoopeddown from the skies and their stolidity was broken by yells of fear.Like men maddened by terror, they threw away their weapons and racedwildly through the jungle, pressed close by the slavering monstrositythat flapped its wings above them.
* * * * *
Chaos and confusion followed this vision, during which Conan feeblystruggled to awake. Dimly he seemed to see himself lying under a noddingcluster of black blossoms, while from the bushes a hideous shape crepttoward him. With a savage effort he broke the unseen bonds which heldhim to his dreams, and started upright.
Bewilderment was in the glare he cast about him. Near him swayed thedusky lotus, and he hastened to draw away from it.
In the spongy soil near by there was a track as if an animal had put outa foot, preparatory to emerging from the bushes, then had withdrawn it.It looked like the spoor of an unbelievably large hyena.
He yelled for N'Gora. Primordial silence brooded over the jungle, inwhich his yells sounded brittle and hollow as mockery. He could not seethe sun, but his wilderness-trained instinct told him the day was nearits end. A panic rose in him at the thought that he had lain senselessfor hours. He hastily followed the tracks of the spearmen, which layplain in the damp loam before him. They ran in single file, and he soonemerged into a glade--to stop short, the skin crawling between hisshoulders as he recognized it as the glade he had seen in hislotus-drugged dream. Shields and spears lay scattered about as ifdropped in headlong flight.
And from the tracks which led out of the glade and deeper into thefastnesses, Conan knew that the spearmen had fled, wildly. Thefootprints overlay one another; they weaved blindly among the trees. Andwith startling suddenness the hastening Cimmerian came out of the jungleonto a hill-like rock which sloped steeply, to break off abruptly in asheer precipice forty feet high. And something crouched on the brink.
At first Conan thought it to be a great black gorilla. Then he saw thatit was a giant black man that crouched ape-like, long arms dangling,froth dripping from the loose lips. It was not until, with a sobbingcr
With his skin crawling with the horror that madness always instils inthe sane, Conan passed his sword through the black man's body; then,avoiding the hooked hands that clawed at him as N'Gora sank down, hestrode to the edge of the cliff.
For an instant he stood looking down into the jagged rocks below, wherelay N'Gora's spearmen, in limp, distorted attitudes that told of crushedlimbs and splintered bones. Not one moved. A cloud of huge black fliesbuzzed loudly above the blood-splashed stones; the ants had alreadybegun to gnaw at the corpses. On the trees about sat birds of prey, anda jackal, looking up and seeing the man on the cliff, slunk furtivelyaway.
For a little space Conan stood motionless. Then he wheeled and ran backthe way he had come, flinging himself with reckless haste through thetall grass and bushes, hurdling