By Robert E. Howard

[Transcriber’s Note: This etext was first published in Weird Tales
November 1935. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

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, sun-burnt man with a straggling black beard, and
his ragged garments proclaimed 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’
Bazar, and on either side of them flowed past the many-tongued,
many-colored stream of the Zamboula streets, which is 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 recognized as
theirs have been seen in the bazars. If Aram did not sell them, after
doing away with their owners, how came they here?’

‘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 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 naught 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 bazar, 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 courtezans. Giant black slaves slouched along, jostling
blue-bearded wanderers from the Shemitish cities, ragged nomads from the
surrounding deserts, traders and adventurers from all the lands of the
East.