Kill him, kill him, kill him!

Kill him, kill him, kill him! is the murderous liturgical refrain of the Cult of Set, the ritual chant through which Thulsa Doom and his priests command their followers to slay all who stand against their god. It is the culminating performative utterance of Doom's doctrine of the Great Cleansing, the verbal blade that turns worshippers into assassins and marks the moment when Conan, hidden in the shadows of the great temple, recognizes his own destiny as the one who must end the cult's evil. The phrase is the sharpest expression of the cult's central paradox: a religion that promises eternal life and bliss unutterable in the embrace of the Wise Serpent, yet whose most sacred words are an incantation of murder.

The Litany of the Great Cleansing

The chant emerges at the climax of the great temple ceremony, when the Faithful of Set have gathered to hear the exhortation of their master. Hundreds of candles, nursed by loving hands, throw a dim radiance over the chamber and reflect the eager faces of the congregation, while the commingling of young voices, flutes, and brasses makes solemn music that reverberates through the cavernous hall. All becomes silent as Thulsa Doom, resplendent in his reptilian armour, mounts the dais and faces his followers. His eyes are dark and filled with sorcery, but there is no humanity in them. He fixes his gaze beyond the uplifted faces massed before him, as if he sees some vision of the future that he alone can see, and intones that the day of doom is here, that the purging is at last at hand. All who stand against them in high places, all who have lied to the people and tried to turn them from him—parents, teachers, judges—shall depart in a night of blood and fire, and then the earth shall be cleansed and ready to receive the god they worship. The listeners moan in ecstasy, and Doom continues, telling his children that they are the pure water that will cleanse the world, that they shall destroy all who stand against them, that in their hands they hold the eternal light that burns in the eyes of Set.

It is at this point that the ritual reaches its murderous peak. One of the lesser priests resumes the ritual at Doom's feet, and to his hypnotic chant the bodies of the worshippers sway in rhythm, like half-coiled serpents weaving before a snake charmer. The priest intones the incantation: "Blind your eyes, mystic serpent," he calls, "Kabil sabul; Kabil Kabil; Kabil hakim! Lift blind eyes to the moon. Whom call ye forth from the gulfs of night? What shadow falleth between the light and thee? Look into the eyes of such a one, O Father Set. Look and blast his soul to shrivelled dust! Kill him, kill him, kill him! And all who love him, kill!" The rapt throng echoes the single word: "Kill!" The chant is thus not merely an order but a prayer, a request directed at the god Set himself to blast the soul of the designated victim to shrivelled dust, with the human congregation adding its own murderous ratification.

The Catechism of Obedience

The refrain is the culmination of a longer catechism that Doom has been building throughout his ministry. In an earlier ceremony, witnessed by Conan from hiding, Doom steps forward, raises his arms majestically, then abruptly turns his palms down, and the chanting ceases upon the instant of the gesture. On the sepulchral silence that ensues, his resonant voice rises and falls like the tolling of a bell. He asks who amongst his followers fears the warm embrace of death, whether they will take life for him when he, their father, asks it, whether they will strike true to the infidel heart, whether it be the heart of friend, or lover, or loved one in their former life. The entranced faces, upturned in ecstasy, moan "Doom! Doom!" in rhythm to the beat of his utterances. The catechism continues: will they slip the silken noose over the heads of Set's enemies, will they stay true in the wide world, ignoring the blandishments of the leaders, judges, and parents who have taught them falsely, will they clutch the hilts of their daggers and spill the heart's blood of the infidels, to give them the infinite benison of eternal peace. Doom's magnetic eyes dart from face to face and hold each follower in thrall, and then the questions cease and the litany begins. He promises that they will feel naught but joy when they perform their duty to their god and lord, when they strike for Set and Doom, when the infidel bows before the blade, the cord, or the bowstring, accepting the inevitable. They will grow in love of the Dark Master, the Wise Serpent, in the embrace of whose coils lies eternal life and bliss unutterable, for the day of Doom is at hand, the day of the Great Cleansing. The Kill him refrain is thus the logical terminus of this catechism: the questions about willingness to kill resolve into the imperative to kill, and the promise of eternal life in Set's coils is purchased with the blood of the infidel.

The Doctrine of Strength and the Garden Demonstration

The chant is inseparable from Doom's doctrine of strength, which he demonstrates in the garden of the Mountain of Power. There, before the chained Conan, Doom calls a young girl to him with a sibilant whisper, "Come to me, child." The childish face becomes suffused with joy; she poises for a moment at the edge of the embankment, then, without a glance at the youth beside her, she leaps from the wall and falls with a heavy thud on the tiles of the garden walk below. Conan averts his eyes from the doll-like broken body near their feet. Doom laughs, the music of his laughter spun through with a note of triumph, and declares: "That is strength, boy—that is power! It is strength against which the hardness of steel or the resilience of human flesh are as naught. What is steel, compared to the hand that wields it; what is the hand, without a mind to command it? There is the secret of strength. Steel, bah!" The Kill him refrain is the verbal counterpart of this demonstration: just as the girl leaps to her death out of love and obedience, so the followers are to kill out of love and obedience, and both acts are presented as the same kind of strength—the strength of the mind commanding the hand, the strength of faith overriding the flesh. The chant is thus the mechanism by which Doom's doctrine of power is converted into action, the moment when the mind's command becomes the hand's blow.

The Chant and Conan's Destiny

The refrain also marks the turning point of Conan's own mission. Hidden in the shadows beside the open doors of the great temple, the barbarian hears the priest's incantation and the throng's echoing "Kill!" Behind his helmet, his eyes are agleam with calm ferocity. His is no longer a mission of revenge; to rid the earth of evil such as this—this is his destiny. All the days of his life, he thinks—all the years of toil and suffering on the Wheel of Pain, all the months of training in the skills and wiles of a Pit fighter, all the weary hours of wandering, homeless, across the uncaring land—were but preparation for this moment. The chant that commands his death thus becomes the very thing that confirms his purpose. As the chanting priest moves forward with stately tread, bearing his lighted taper upraised above his head, and Thulsa Doom, stranger from the East, sorcerer, high priest of Set, magnificent in his snakelike plates of polished mail, walks like a conqueror behind his acolyte, the faithful fall in behind him, row by row, each intent on keeping his candle flame from flickering out. At the great portal Doom pauses and turns to bestow a final blessing on the cohorts he is about to fling into the world to do his evil bidding. As he raises a hand in benediction, a wave of consternation breaks over the assemblage, as ripples from a falling pebble disturb the surface of a pool. The spell of the devotions breaks and falters into silence. A hundred pairs of eyes seek to pierce the shadows beside the open doors. The chant that was to send the faithful out to kill has been interrupted, and the killer they were sent to destroy is already among them.

The Chant as a Speech Act

The Kill him refrain is the purest example in the book of speech as action. It is not a description of killing nor a prediction of it, but the very performance of the command that produces the killing. The priest's incantation is addressed to Set as a prayer for destruction, while the congregation's echoing "Kill!" is both an assent and a self-command, the moment at which the worshippers constitute themselves as the instruments of the god's wrath. The chant thus performs the transformation that Doom's catechism has been preparing: it turns the faithful from listeners into killers, from children into executioners. It is the verbal bridge between the doctrine of the Great Cleansing and the night of blood and fire that Doom promises, the moment at which the abstract promise of a cleansed earth becomes the concrete command to spill the heart's blood of the infidel. And it is precisely at this moment of maximum performative power that the spell breaks, that the hundred pairs of eyes seek the shadows, and that the chant's authority is confronted by the silent presence of the one man it was meant to destroy. The refrain that was to launch the Great Cleansing instead announces the arrival of the avenger.