Page:Weird Tales Volume 24 Number 06 (1934-12).djvu/5
lay there, she became aware of a spot of radiance glowing in the darkness before her. She watched, puzzled. It grew and its intensity deepened as it expanded, a widening disk of lurid light hovering against the dark velvet hangings of the opposite wall. Taramis caught her breath, starting up to a sitting position. A dark object was visible in that circle of light — a human head.
In a sudden panic the queen opened her lips to cry out for her maids; then she checked herself. The glow was more lurid, the head more vividly limned. It was a woman’s head, small, delicately molded, superbly poised, with a high-piled mass of lustrous black hair. The face grew distinct as she stared—and it was the sight of this face which froze the cry in Taramis’ throat. The features were her own! She might have been looking into a mirror which subtly altered her reflection, lending it a tigerish gleam of eye, a vindictive curl of lip.
"Ishtar!” gasped Taramis. "I am bewitched!”
Appallingly, the apparition spoke, and its voice was like honeyed venom.
"Bewitched? No, sweet sister! Here is no 'sorcery.”
"Sister?” stammered the bewildered girl. "I have no sister.”
"You never had a sister?” came the sweet, poisonously mocking voice. "Never a twin sister whose flesh was as soft as yours to caress or hurt?”
"Why, once I had a sister,” answered Taramis, still convinced that she was in the grip of some sort of nightmare. "But she died.”
The beautiful face in the disk was convulsed with the aspect of a fury; so hellish became its expression that Taramis, cowering back, half expected to see snaky locks writhe hissing about the ivory brow.
● Back in 1925, when Robert E. Howard was a college student, specializing in anthropology, he sent to Weird Tales a little story about the cavemen. That was his first published tale. Since that was printed, he has had forty stories in Weird Tales alone, and has gained an enormous following among the readers of the magazine. Many thousands of readers only buy any magazine that features one of Mr. Howard's stories. Though his work has appeared in many other periodicals, the choice pick of his fascinating stories are printed solely in Weird Tales. He has the faculty of making real characters of his heroes, not mere automatons who act as they do merely because the author pulls the strings. Conan the barbarian adventurer, gone berserk, raging mad with the red lust of combat; King Kull, the strange ruler of the fabled land of Valusia; Solomon Kane, the dour English Puritan and righter of wrongs, who lived by his sword; Skullface, the most villainous villain of them all—these are literary creations that fairly live and breathe, so graphically does the author portray them. Mr. Howard is at his best in the strange and thrilling—and at times blood-chilling—novelette that is printed herewith: "A Witch Shall Be Born." We commend this story to you, for you will find it well worth reading.
"You lie!” The accusation was spat from between the snarling red lips. "She did not die! Fool! Oh, enough of this mummery! Look—and let your sight be blasted!”
Light ran suddenly along the hang-