THE LEGEND OF CONAN

THE LEGEND OF CONAN

Acme Corporation / 2020

Acme Corporation / published by arrangement with the Daily Bugle and the
Daily Planet

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2020, Mary Sue Rey

Cover Art by Gino D'Achille

This book may be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any

other means, with permission.

ISBN - 10: 1440583099

ISBN - 13: 9781440583094

Published by
Acme Corporation,
666 Grub Street, No.69,
Mouseton, Calisota

Printed in the Kaiserkeller, St. Pauli quarter, Hamburg, Germany

CONSULTING EDITOR: Mary Sue Rey

 Foreword

“Collected within these pages are two poems and six short stories, one of
which is an original Howard story, ‘The Slave Princess’. Every tales has
been written to seize the tone of Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories
and to give a sense of that same roving gypsy, on edge thrills. These tales
were selected and written intentionally to remain episodic and distinct from
one another in likeness of Howard’s method to the Conan stories; with his
well-known barbarian in moments picked from a life span full of high
exploit and deeds. *Note only one of the stories: The Queen Of Archeron, is
incomplete.” — Mary Sue Rey

Consultant Editor; Mary Sue Rey: in her early thirties, born in Cardiff,
Wales in England, of French parents, who lives in Oklahoma City in the
good old U.S. of A, for five years now. And as a part-time editor, she's also
an expert-scholar on Conan the Cimmerian, she studied every Howard's
works and read every pastiche novels, that were ever put out there. She's a
good-natured, old-fashioned Anglo-French caucasian girl, who works in a
comic book store and also sometimes moonlights for the Oklahoma Daily
newspaper.
 Contents

Title page and copyright

Foreword
Nemedian Chronicles
Map of the Hyborian Age
A sonnet
Echo From the Ebon Isles
Tower of Blood - David A. English
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
The Slave Princess - Robert E. Howard
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Atlas of the Serpent Men - Chris L Adams
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
The Queen Of Archeron - Than Osrules
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Conan in Jail - Jay Bowers
The Defiler in the Tomb - Dan Mauric
Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian - Lin Carter
About the Ebooks
THE CONAN SERIES IN EBOOKS
List of books currently available
 “Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons
of Aryas there was an age undreamed-of. And unto this, Conan destined to
bear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his
chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of
high adventure.” — Nemedian Chronicles

Oh stop, by the way, this book is dedicated to those crazy purist fanboys
Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet... Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you —
NOT. Those guys are so obsessed with everything, Howard, they refuse to
be open-minded because they'd see those pastiche writers are pretty good.
Not bad right? (Yes. Frank Frazetta and Tor book covers had sexist genre
art, but NOT inside the books, inside, a lot of Conan stories had girl-
power swordswomen) Okay I'm done, I'm sorry for the interruption, you
may resume reading, sorry for my boring paragraph — Mary Sue Rey
Now available for the first time in epub

Star of Doom (Red Sonja #6) by David C. Smith, Richard L. Tierney

and

The Howling Tower (Red Sonja #7) Coming Soon November 2020

and

The Further Legends of Conan – Coming 2021

Map of the Hyborian Age
A sonnet
 Echo From the Ebon Isles

A sonnet dedicated to the Modern Master of Fantasy—Robert E.

Howard

From ancient, fabled Cimmeria he came

With sword uplifted, on that bloody day.
To join the beaten forces in the fray,
And triumphant refuse eternal fame.
Men trembled at the mention of his name,
And humbly stepped aside to make his way.
“You are our King,” they said; he answered “Nay”.
And left them wondering what could be his aim.

I saw him then, and I still see him now,

Cryptically silent—on yon hill’s brow;
Watching with brooding eyes the scene below
Where flame the earth and sky in scarlet glow,
He grasps his curious staff in mighty hands—
And strides into the dusk... toward other lands.

—Emil Petaja

Published in Weird Tales, Jan 1939, under the title 'The Warrior'
 Tower of Blood

- David A. English
 Chapter 1

The cries of his pursuers, deprived by distance of all humanity, drifted up

the mountainside of Kosala. Like the bombardment of gibberish yelling
alongside baying horses and hoofs foretelling disaster. For the time being
the Cimmerian crouched in the sparse concealment of a narrow copse and
watched. A detachment of Kosalan mamluks from the city of Yota-Pong
wandered aimlessly over the lower slope.
Conan was not encouraged. They would pick up his trail before long. And
soon it would be their strength against his—and they were many...
Maybe this would teach him better to avoid the snare of women, he
reflected bitterly. Although it was a little late to be making maxims for
future guidance. The Priests of Mitra, most likely, had all the maxims he
was going to need.
He only hoped the Raja Laxil would deal as sternly with his deceitful
concubine. Small chance of that, though. She was wonderfully sly and had
probably already persuaded the old fool that Conan had led her astray.
Conan laughed, not pleasantly.
As he watched, the horsemen gathered into a tight squadron once more,
Having picked up his trail, they rode into the pass.
Conan abruptly brought his thoughts back to the present. He quickly
determined on a final sleight to gain time.
Slapping the flank of his weary steed, he sent the animal galloping down
the main trail. When Laxil’s men emerged from the pass, the horse would
be out of sight. Perhaps they would follow the false trace for a while. He
doubted it.
With hope or without it, Conan ran to the mouth of a raw—edged cleft that
split the side of the looming cliff. Even if it led nowhere, at least it was
narrow and would be an advantageous place to stand and sell his life dearly.
He proceeded cautiously up the slide of scree that formed a kind of floor to
the cleft. Tile debris was treacherously loose, and he did not want to start a
rock—slide that would persist after his passing and betray him.
A change in the quality of his pursuer’s voices warned him that they had
emerged from the pass. He cursed. He could not reach the upper end of the
cleft before they came abreast of its lower opening and were in a position to
observe him.
In the seconds that remained, he wedged himself into a narrow cleft, out of
sight. It did not completely conceal his big body, but he hoped the broken
shadows would distort his outline enough so he would not be noticed.
Conan looked around, surveying the possibilities, which were few enough.
At the upper opening of the cleft, half embedded in broken rocks and
gravel, stood a great boulder. He decided that he wanted that boulder at his
back if he must stand and fight. If they succumbed to his trick, however, he
would try lo lost himself in the mountains. That was all he had in the way of
plans.
Damn Laxil’s woman.
Down below, Conan’s pursuers wheeled and milled. Anxiously, their quarry
peered and cocked his ear, trying to discern their intentions. Their voices
reached him loud but incomprehensible, confused by echoes and the singing
of the blood in his ears.
He could not tell what decided them. Perhaps his horse, with misguided
loyalty, had returned along the trail. Or some sleuth, too wily by half, had
noticed that the hoofprints were not those of an animal bearing a man's
weight.
Conan broke from his covert and scrambled toward the boulder, the goal he
had set himself. Facing Laxil’s dozen was no pleasant prospect under any
circumstances, but braced against that stout backstop he would make a
moiety of them bleed before they reaped his head to gratify Laxil’s stupid
jealousy.
When he attained the boulder, he turned to look back. They had come about
halfway. But now their steps were slowing.
They saw the advantage he enjoyed, such as it was. And each one privately
was beginning to fear that he might not be among those who went back to
receive Laxil’s praise. The pursuit was turning into one of those ludicrous
races where the prize goes to the loser.
In his impatience with its slow approach, Conan turned from the creeping
doom below him. In the shadowy valley on the other side of the ridge, he
saw age-blackened ruins of a wall that poked up through the brown,
hummocky grass, and a stark tower, which even to his gaze, looked wicked
and menacing.
And even this dismal prospect, gods had decreed, he was not to attain. No
need even to think of the broad, blue vistas of plains beyond that, or the
snow-covered peaks of the farther reaches of the mountain range. These
were lands of escape, lands of freedom and never-dying; lands, if that must
be, which he would never enter.
He turned to the swordsmen of Laxil and drew his sword. He shook it at
them and whirled it about his head in the high sunlight until it was as a
glory around him. He raved at them and cursed them, calling down bloody
death for those who fell under its glancing beams.
Slowly and more slowly still they came on. And Conan grew even more
furious that he should get his bane from such nidderings. Through mere
numbers they would overcome him, and what renown could they expect
from that?
In the end it was not cunning or valor or might in battle that saved him. It
was sheer rage and despair that finally inspired him, a will to survive that
was ravening and mad in its intensity.
No man in his right sense would have attempted what he did. No one
lacking a lunatic’s demon-given strength would have succeeded.
In all the region around him there was only one missile sufficient for his
blazing wrath. The boulder itself, the landmark on which he had first fixed
his eye from far below.
At first he grappled with it face to face, as one who would heave it up above
his head and hurl it down. He was as crazy as that with rage! But even
Conan’s mighty back was not adequate for that heroic feat.
But he felt it wobble! He felt it move!
It rocked—as a loose tooth might twist in its socket. As by a levin-bolt of
revelation, vistas of possibility were illuminated for him. They spread out
like those regions of freedom he had a moment before beheld. Men
experiencing far less in the way of illumination have claimed unmediated
converse with the god.
Conan leaped to the opposite aide of the boulder and set his back against it.
He dug in his heels and heaved.
Muscles of back and legs knotted like ship’s cables under his sun-bronzed
skin. The veins lay like tangled ropes on hia brow and sweat slicked his
straight, black hair to gleaming rat-tails.
The bones of his hack crackled audibly.
One more effort—only one more... and then another.
“Crom,” he croaked, “it moves—it gives—way—!”
Nearly blind and numb with the titanic expense of strength, he hardly knew
what progress he made—if any at all. The air seemed suffused with murky
redness, or did the very veins of his eye-stones leak under the pressure?
Then there was a sudden great rending like the bursting of his vitals. He
thought the effort had been too much, had killed him: for in void and
emptiness he floated, permeated with unendurable ecstasy.
 Chapter 2

The return of his spirit found him stretched on his back under a night sky
throbbing with monstrous stars. Thunder and squealing filled his ears,
which might have been the tumbling of the boulder and the dying of Laxil’s
men... or only ghosts of his disordered senses.
Slowly the blackness leaked out of the sky. The monstrous stars faded.
Conan, staggering a little, descended to the shambles. Broken bodies
sprawled about like pieces of a chess game that had ended in a fit of temper.
The boulder, horribly smeared, choked the narrow entrance of the cleft.
It was grisly work rummaging among the mashed company. Nevertheless,
be would need provisions for his journey. And he thought it fitting that the
Raja Laxil should render up the parting gift he had so oafishly forgotten.
Conan was far too familiar with the red fruit of battle to let superstitious
dread stay him.
But something very like terror lunged in his guts when a voice nearby
moaned out:
“Conan... strange one... hated of Father Set... you will die.”
In a moment, the Cimmerian regained his composure. “How is this?” he
asked “You still live? But not for long, I think.”
How did the crumpled thing on the ground draw breath for speech? Its skull
was soft and pulpy, a single great bruise, and the tormented eyes stared
divergently from puffed slits.
“You will not outlive me long,” the thing panted, each word a pink bubble
bursting. “You dare not return the way you came, and beyond the ridge lies
the valley of the sorcerer Morophla, and the hellcat Usthacht.”
“Be quiet, man.” Conan growled. “Get your dying done.”
“I will be silent long enough. You will pay for my death. You will suffer
worse than I. Evil dwells in that valley, in the tower of Berkubane. Terrible
evil. Monstrous forms and hellish tortures long drawn out. Ugly, ugly. Vile
transformations of body and spirit. Things hideously awry. You will suffer it
all. You... will pay for my death. You will—will—”
The pain of his injuries overwhelmed him, his voice dissolving into
blubbering
“Slay me, Conan! Quickly!”
The Cimmerian bit his lip, then picked up the man’s sword and struck off
his head.
~~~
Little enough had Conan liked the valley on first seeing it from above. He
liked it still less as its ugly slopes rose above his head. The threats of a man
half a corpse did not make it more attractive.
Almost wilfully, crawling weeds impeded him. The tough, tangled stalks
clung to his ankles with a kind of lechery.
Even the rocks and pebbles had a kind of inherent wrongness. They seemed
not to have sprung from any normal processes of weathering and flaking.
They might have been formed in some long-gone age when even the
powers of air and frost were different. They resembled the broken forms of
dreams, the haunting shapes of delirium.
Of this sick stone were built the ruined walls that rose like the backs of
snake out of the long, yellow grass.
The air grew cold as he went lower. The sun hid behind the mountain range
and let the valley sink in gloomy twilight.
A clammy mist distilled itself from the heavy air to freight the landscape
with dire ambiguity.
He didn’t like it, walking blind into that auspicious terrain. In the sudden
fog he could hardly make out the cruel tower that struck like a fist from a
grave at the dismal sky,
Conan unsheathed his sword. The weapon gave him no reassurance. It cut
easily through the fog-phantoms that crowded close upon him—too easily
to have any effect.
He preferred fighting something which, when cat, stayed cut.
Nearby, pebbles rattled on the path. But the mist was too thick, he could not
see the spot where his ears placed the disturbance.
Which way was he going now? Which way out of this valley of nightmare?
The filthy chill of the malefic fog penetrated his bones, causing a dolor like
the remembrance of mortality What was that? Something panted close by.
“Who is it?” he challenged. “Man or devil, come no nearer—”
Squealing laughter. He heard the slithering movement of many bodies,
supple as rats.
Something big and black fluttered past him and its stinking wing brushed
his face. On its second pass he was ready for it and struck it out of the air
with his sword.
Softly throbbing it lay at his feet. At first Conan thought it was a man with a
dark cloak crumpled about him. But the cloak was actually part of the
creature, a leathery membrane that made its longer-than-human arms into
the wings of a bat. Its face also was a bat’s, a blunt snout; but there was
human intelligence dying in its tiny red eyes.
He saw then that the valley was no natural place. It was part of the old
domain—a chaotic region left over from the confused realm of the demons
who held sway before the coming of man’s gods.
The mist parted a little to reveal the terrible form that loomed over.
Well, now he knew. He had been driven here by the soft threatening and
prodding of shapes in the darkness—herded like a sheep by phantom dogs.
The tower hung over him.
The door swung open, A figure stood outlined against the green. decaying
glare from within.
Conan saw no advantage in flight. Nor was it to his liking to be hunted
down in the crawling fog, hounded by stinking bats.
Sword raised, he charged.
Light exploded in his face, a fierce glare that drove like cold iron through
the portals of his eyes, deep into his brain, flooding it; and all sense, all
impression rushed away from him... away... away...
 Chapter 3

For the second time in too brief an interval, Conan had to drig together his
scattered senses. At first only cool touches and confused sounds reached
him in the humming void.
Then a pale oval framed in darkness moved across the quivering red veil
that hung before his eyes.
He moved his hand through the veil. Strangely, it felt like many thickness’s
of cobwebs. But that was only the tingling in his finger. The redness
cleared.
An avid face moved back from his, hung over him.
“You are awake. You are indeed strong—to recover so quickly.”
Conan, too sick to care, regarded her. He saw no need to act until he had
better appraised the situation. He did not doubt it was bad, filthy bad.
“You are very self-possessed, aren’t you?” the woman said. “You stir not,
neither do you question me. You would press the burden of speech on me, is
that it, dear Conan?”
She laughed, lightly but not sweetly.
“You are surprised? But I know many things about you, not just your name.
Am I not Usthacht?”
“Are you?” he said, and that made her laugh.
He knew that she was. A man more than half a corpse had promised him
this meeting—and worse.
Tall and well-shapen, that was the fashion of her, and smooth of skin, which
was like the snow drifted against a gravestone. Her hair was black and
fragrant as the smoke of herbs that burn on a demon’s altar. But her eyes: he
was reminded of those nameless gems, dusky and translucent, employed by
desert tribesmen in their malignant rites.
For all her comeliness, Conan disliked her. The gaze she bent upon him was
avid, too hungry to bode well. And he had heard ill rumours of her.
When he spoke it was more for relief of the discomfort he felt in her gase
than for desire of conversation with her.
“You have an ugly way of greeting wayfarers. It was not my intention to
intrude, and bad you not stricken me I would have passed quickly.”
Usthacht bared small, white teeth. Perhaps she meant to smile, but there
was no kindness in it.
“That would not have pleased me, Conan,” she purred. ‘But if the choice
had been mine, a softer way would have been found of gaining your
company.”
“Then... there are others here?”
“One other. Now hush—he comes.”
She pressed him back on the couch and closed his eyes with a pass of her
pale, cold fingers.
The door opened with a soft hiss
“Has he awakened?”
“Not yet, Morophla.”
“That is as you say,” he sneered. “I know your ways, lady.”
When the man called Morophla laughed, it was not an expression of mirth.
If he had mirth, it was thin and cruel as a blade, and he kept it within for his
own pleasure. His laughter served only to indicate contempt for the one he
addressed. A sharp expulsion of breath through his nostrils sufficed.
“Let him feign unconsciousness all he likes—though he does it. But let him
plainly understand that I can at will make the fiction a fact.”
Usthacht said, “I see that my brother is pleased to have another on whom to
hone his sharp tongue. Open your eyes, Conan. Gaze on the author of your
discomfort.”
Conan did as he was bidden, not gracefully. His smouldering glance
engaged with that of the tall newcomer.
His eyes. Almost, Conan's fell before them. A plenum, paradoxically, of
emptiness harboured there. Conan had seen their like only once before, in
the eyes of a moon-priest of Ishtar, who claimed to have shared that
sphere’s monthlv decline into non-being. Morophla, too, had eyes that had
been scoured by the obscene mysteries of the Void.
Warily, Conan rose from his pallet. In n low crouch, like a wrestler stalking
his adversary, he eased forward. He advanced dubiously, for he suspected
the other’s powers. But at least he would take their measure.
“Stop, Conan” Usthacht said, “you cannot overcome him”
Morophla smiled sourly, “I know you regret that lady. But he will not
believe you—”
Conan’s huge hand shot out. He intended to tangle it in the black locks of
the wizard’s beard and haul him off balance.
He did not do that. His hand, extended to the length of his arm, closed on
air several inches before the wizard’s face. But the man had not moved at
all!
Conan jerked back from his unbalanced position. He had seen a comrade, a
swordsman who had lost an eve, make similar errors. His own eyes seemed
all right, although he was suddenly aware of an obscure malaise somewhere
behind them. And yet, when be grabbed he was accustomed to getting...
Desperately, he lunged straight at his opponent, forgetting all caution, with
his arms flung wide.
The lunge prolonged itself as in a nightmare, but he got no closer to the
mocking form. Just in time, Conan pulled up, barely avoiding a stunning
collision with the wall.
Usthacht caught his hand. “Stop it. Can't you see he enjoyed tormenting
you?”
“The room is—twisted, is that it?” he growled.
“You know a great deal,” she marvelled. “But no, this is not one of those
illusion chambers in which the mystery priests befool the initiated.
Morophla tangles your seeing with his magic.
Morophla laughed, training to expel a bit of lint from his nostrils, and said,
“While you are explaining matters to you dear friend, why not tell him what
task we have of him?”
He added bitterly, “He must already divine yours.”
Usthacht's eyes glittered with pain and anger. Conan still did not like their
crazy intensity, but he sensed that in her lay his only hope. He pressed her
hand confidently before he started again toward her brother.
“Again? Amusing as your antics are—”
Conan could not properly here what he then uttered. Guttral and sibilant at
once, the strange syllables were instantly swallowed up by the rattling and
chuckling of their own echo.
Instead of dying away, the echo mounted to an ear-shattering intensity.
Conan was enveloped by a formless, crushing pressure. The syllables
themselves seemed to take substance and beat like the sea against him. He
was borne back against the wall and held there.
“He is strong, Usthacht,” the wizard commented. “I can feel the force he
exerts against the words of power. There must be good blood in him.”
Usthacht began haughtily, “Your thoughts flow always in one channel—”
But her voice broke and she grew pale.
“It is well that it does—for both of us. You would not he half so lickerish,
lady, did I not strive to keep the pens filled. What would you be? Not white
wanton flesh and rounded limbs of lust, no—”
“Hold your tongue!”
She turned from him, hands in her ears, eyes wide with fright and pale lips
that trembled.
“Bones and dust in some dry tomb!” raged Morophla. “That is all we are,
dear sister—save that I sustain us with my science. What good hen your
juices and your heated belly?”
Usthacht cringed under his words, then blubbered outright. With a howl,
she fled the chamber.
Morophla turned to his captive.
His strange eyes flashed.
“She hankers for you, man. It’s been ages since she’s had a stranger see to
her. So it galls her you should know that her plump flesh, which doubt not
she has shaken in your face, scarce belongs to her at all.”
Conan gazed at him blankly. The wizard flicked him sharply on
“Don't play at being stupid. You're not intelligent enough for it. You must
know that the life in us, unnaturally prolonged, is but the stolen life of
others.”
“You are vampyrs!”
Morophla expelled, perhaps, an inturning beard hair, he said: “There is an
analogy yes. But ours is not such a simple case. I prefer not to acquire in the
manner prescribed by legend, the vampyr's ability to assimilate
straightaway his victim's red life. Not at the price of assuming his
limitations.
“No, I choose a more complicated method that science teaches me,
althought it needs red lakes of human life and innumerable complex
operations. There are incubations and putrefactions and distillations; rare
extracts to be divided out during the relevant phases of the moon. Elusive
essences must be exposed, prior to recombination, under various conditions
to the streamings of certain nameless stars.
“There is prepared an amber elixir which has preserved our lives through
interminable ages that men hereabouts believe there has never been a time
when we did not inhabit this lonesome tower.”
Conan shuddered. Mere vampirism had been homely by comparison.
“And that is why you must needs waylay travellers...”
“Not exactly my friend. Vast dungeons scooped out of the rock beneath this
tower contain a population ample for my needs.”
“Then what use am I to you?”

“Nothing so terrible as you might imagine. Lately—as time is seen by us—I

have noticed that my herd grows feeble and anemic, the result of excessive
inbreeding. Their blood has become as watered and degenerate as that of
the ruling family of the raja's and pasha's of ancient Kosala.”

Morophla smiled tenderly at Conan. “Well, in such event the effete

aristrocrat seeks aliance with a younger, mor vigorous house... and the cattle
breeder requires... a stud animal.”
“Yes—yes, I feel you struggling against the spell. What strength! What
vigour!”
When the wizard said come, Conan went. Something invisible, inpalpable
except when he sought to resist it, move him this way, that way, wherever
Morophla wished.
 Chapter 4

Morophla took him through tapestried corridors and down winding flights
of stone stairs. Once he saw Usthact's pale, sick face peering from behind
an arras. The Wizard did not notice, or so pretended.
Soon they entered the winding tunnels under the tower, where they
frequently encountered the things that had attacked Conan in the fog. With a
cringing aspect that was nine parts fear, the creatures made way for the
wizard and his captive
“I call them afterlings,” said Morophla, “because they spring from a later
creation than the first spawning of men and demons that populate our
sphere. Mere trifles that I dashed together to do my bidding, from mine
experiments as it were.”
“It makes me wonder why you are at such pains to prologon an existence
conducted amon filth and vileness,” said Conan.
“Indeed? You would get along well with my sister. It would be a meeting of
minds, such as it were. It is her inceessant complaint that our establishment
is gloomy and not conducive to delight. She would have me, by magic,
cojure here some eastern court for her to queen it over, replete with her
personal harem of Conan's, I doubt not. Not from the her joy of knowledge
and wisdom that need never perish, the solemn delight of a mind able to
grow through endless ages beyond the limits that morality imposes... well, a
thousand years of my lecturing have not sufficed to change her, she remains
what she always was.”
“You are a great magician,” sneered Conan, “but are a great coward. Your
dread of death is measured by the scope of your sorcery, If you delight in
your mind so much, why not die and be free of the flesh altogether? Why
not be mind only?”
The wizard dismissed that with a sniff. “Surely you are not one of those
who imagine that we persist as airy confections in a shadowy realm beyond
death? Mind, sir, is but a certain form imposed upon matter. Although this
form or pattern can be projected forth from its material basis, as when in
certain dreams of which I am capable I wander among the beings of other
stars and spheres in search of wisdom, it must always retain Its connection,
however tenuous, with the flesh that harbours it. For if the flesh perishes,
like a flower torn from the soil, so does the mind. When a man dies, he
becomes nothing—forever!”
Conan shivered. He would have stood still and marvelled but for the
compulsion that was on him. Death and non-being: it was a gulf that
yawned at his feet, drawing him as much as it repelled him.
“Nothing is left when the meat dies and begins to rot?”
Morophla smiled at the Cimmerian. “No, barbarian, it is not. The motion of
mind apart from flesh is but a delusion that our languages impose upon us.
As are most of the questions that philosophers debate age after age.
“And yet,” the sorcerer mused, “if my mind be but a certain—form or
image wrought in the matter of my flesh, might it not be reproduced in
some more durable material? None of the strange beings whom I have
visited out among the stars knows this secret, true. But who knows? I have
not journeyed far in my search for wisdom—and the universe!”
Morophla fell silent, lost in, musings, and let Conan puzzle over his speech.
It all sounded like clown’s patter to the fighting man, like words used to
mock the pattern and flow of language but convey no meaning at all.

Abruptly they entered a great, vaulted chamber at the end of the tunnel.
Conan found himself on a narrow lip of rock that overlooked the gloomy
pit.
In the murky dawn there he saw pale figures moving. White bodies
clustered like knots of worms. He shuddered and drew back as far as the
crowding power would permit.
Morophla took down a torch from the wall. Vacuous faces, flabby and
indefinite of contour, lifted to follow its slow arc.
“Regard the creatures, Conan.”
Their huge eves blinked repeatedly at the unaccustomed light, unable to
turn away. But when the sorcerer withdrew the torch, all interest subsided.
The listless milling resumed, as if with the fading of the faint memory trace
left by the light. A squeaking chattering fight broke out, and a pair of man-
bats, swooping low, drove the quarrellers apart. Once separated, they
quickly forgot one another and their contention.
“You will grow used to the darlings, Conan.”
Without much confidence, Conan said, “Whatever your wizardry, you will
find there are some things in which man’s cooperation cannot be
compelled.”
Morophla snickered.
He had reason to laugh his dirty laugh.
 Chapter 5

The days that followed became a series of nightmares, or one long

nightmare interrupted by sleep. And sleep itself was no respite, only the
piling of nightmare upon nightmare. The events and images of wakefulness
were then reduced to rubbish and built into crazy towers that tottered,
crumbled and fell.
For the wizard was entirely adequate to deal with his captive’s reluctance.
There was a demon of lust that dwelt in a crusted stone jar, and when
Morophla poured it forth, straight it flew to Conan’s flesh. It did him on like
a cloak, and Conan, released from his cage. The control of some smoky
demon, descended into the pit to join the mating-dance of the pale herd. The
bamboo flute wailed and the drum rattled, and be knew their cold flesh.

Stung out of sleep by some recollected horror, he awoke in his cell. Or had
some strange sound penetrated and burst his sleep? Was someone near? “It
isn’t time yet,” he protested. But he could not know what time in that place
was determined entirely by alternating abominations. He steeled himself,
knowing it was useless, against the demons.
It did not come.
Nor did he hear the fife, preparing the herd for the descent of the nosferatus'
sabbath.
A husky voice whispered, “Are you sleeping, Conan?”
“How came you here?” he snarled. “I did not hear the gate.”
Uathacht laughed. “Then I must not be here at all. For I could not pass
through the strong ours that cage you, my magnificent animal.”
He hurled himself off the pallet and drove his fist at her taunting mouth.
Then howled with rage and pain. His hand felt broken.
“Nay, be careful!” she cried. “It is only a sending. You cannot touch me, for
I am far from here.”
Conan cursed her, a round soldierly oration full of footras and strange gods.
She said softly, “Do not curse me, dearest. I wish that I could bring you...
all of me, not just my voice and seeming. For I think I love you, Conan.”
“Yon are strange people, you and your brother. Your hospitality is strange,
but your love is most strange indeed.”
“Oh, please; it is not well that you are used thus, wasted I should say, on
those who arc incapable of appreciating you. But you know the Strength of
my brother’s magic. I have a little sorcery, hut it is a pitiful thing compared
with his.”
He studied her image for a moment. It was only her likeness that Stood
before him after nil. Her figure, on close examination, seemed flat and
followed the contour of the rugged wall, like a painted image that somehow
moved and spoke.
When he answered her, he spoke craftily: “Well... if you had no part in my
loathesome captivity, I will admit I grew angry all too hastily. You are too
fair for me to find it easy to hate you.
Her face went soft and vacuous at this flattery. There might be hope yet...
“But what good is any understanding we might come to?” be asked bitterly.
“Your sending is not yourself, and we can have little joy of such
assignations as this.”
Suspicion shadowed her eyes, but Conan smiled inwardly. He did not fear
that she would divine his true motive; no, not if her magic were thrice as
great. As Morophla said, she was vampiric, and her headlong infatuation
would sweep aside all misgivings.
“And is it for the great love you bear me that you ask this? Or would you
merely use me to gain your freedom, then abandon me to my brother’s
wrath?”
“I admit that I like not this subterranean life,” he replied, nor its pale, cold
companions.” He cast her as moony a glance as he coold contrive. “But one
of the kindest memories I have from the world of sunlight is of the touch of
your hand.”
While he hated himself somewhat, she mused: “What you suggest is not
impossible... Morophla’s magic is not impregnable... His sorcery could be
used as well by another.
“Can I rely upon you in this, my lady? After all, he is your brother and—”
A masterful move, he congratulated himself: to shift the burden of proving
good faith to her!
“What good is that to me?” she spat. “I have no love for him, for he is
insanely jealous and thwarts me always. Nor is It meet that man should use
his sister in that fashion—”
Conan’s skin crawled at the implication. Too slowly, he recomposed his
features, for she read the horror in his look.
“It is not at all as you think!” she stammered. “Let me go now... I must
think on this... it will take time to prepare the spell. But do I dare? Do I
dare?”
Her image rippled like a reflection on water; then the sending was gone.
 Chapter 6

In the days that followed he underwent alternations of hope and despair.

Had his unwelcome insight into her odd way of life caused her to repent her
resolve to aid him? Indeed, had she ever had any such notion? And was
there anything she could do? Against the might of Morophla” s sorcery?
Meanwhile the monotonous horror of his existence proceeded in its
accustomed channels. At intervals that made no sense to him, the lusty
demon entered into him and he went to enact the vile sabbat.
But not really he, for he was only a small screaming thing, an anguished
shred of consciousness, thrust far back into some cranny of the brain. He
was only that tiny corse of revulsion against the abominations that his flesh
worked with the subhuman cavern dwellers.
Afterwards, only images and sensations remained to him. Nor could he bear
to dwell on them and order them in recollection. So they grew steadily more
confused, becoming like a wrack of sickly dreams such as may vaguely
poison the ensuing day.
He sword the wizard would pay for making his own flesh detestable to him.
But when? When?
At length, Usthact returned to him.
Conan regarded her, carefully, very carefully, not to betray his eagerness.
He knew that he must remain unreadable to her and give her fancy all
possible scope.
“I came back,” she said.
“Yes, and this time you need a key to enter—like a proper person—don't
you?”
She hesitated, “I have the key, but now I don't know if I dare use it. And
yet, everything is in readiness. Three days at noon I gazed at the sun with
tear-streaming eyes and gathered the gleaming strands of the Sun Spider’s
web, gathered them in my own smarting eyes so that at the appointed time I
might bind down my brother’s soul. Now he is like a fly in that unbreakable
web and cannot throw his spells against us.”
“What the bat-things?”
“Oh, them! He rules them by spells and forces, which he cannot use in his
present state. They would not act on their own to aid him.” But her eyes
were wild and confused. With uncertain fingers, she turned and turned the
key on its ring. “Nothing to hinder us, then,” he pressed. He did not trust
himself to snatch the key.
“I am afraid,” she whimpered.
Conan said nothing. Anything he might say could only arouse her
resistance, but her own hot blood would he his most effective advocate.
Let her carry on the debate within herself.
“You... would not betray me?”
He made her answer her own question. “Don’t be angry,” She pleaded. “I
didn’t really doubt you.”
With the abruptness of one racing against the onset of misgivings, Usthacht
unlocked the cell and ran in to him. Her long white arms snaked round his
neck. The suddenness of the onslaught was her undoing.
The dregs of a hundred revulsions past, thwarted in their time, swarmed in
his nerves. The shame of a hundred unwilled embraces cried for vengeance
—suddenly it seemed—was not there. Involuntary as thought itself, his
huge hands twisted about her neck.
Neck broken, she lay at his feet. Her last breath sighed from her lips like a
ghost fleeing, and before it was entirely free, she was dead.
Conan shook his head, more amazed than sorry. No, not sorry at all. The
only regret he felt was at not having waited until she had led him out of the
caverns.
Still, he would manage.
He looked back once before he left her forever, and wished he had not.
Dissolution, so long frustrate, hastened obscenely: already her face had
darkened, as with a crow's shadow.
In the dismal, cresset-lighted corridors, he encountered one of Morophla's
Afterlings. He watched the creature closely as he wrapped his cloak around
his left arm. It was small and fragile looking, but he feared its teeth.
Softly, it said: “Do not slay me, Conan. I offer no resistance. Escape if you
can.”
“If you do not attempt to stop me, the wizard will be angry with you.”
“No; even as the god who created men know them, our creator knows us.
We are but instruments of his so he would not have to bargain for our
loyalty.”
“I intend to slay him. Does he not will that you prevent me?”
“He may. But he is bound by his sister’s spell. His will cannot force us to
act.” The nosferatu hesitated. “Nevertheless, he still has resources. Go
cautiously, Conan.”
Conan passed on.
Eventually he found his way into the tower proper. A feeling of surveillance
had grown upon, though he could not indicate its source, only guess it
uneasily. His skin crawled, as it does before a summer storm. The rising
tide of dread almost drove him to flight now that he had the chance; but his
fear of the magician’s inevitable pursuit was greater.
While he could, he must seek out the wizard where he lay entranced and
slay him. He thought of the horrors the magician had already visited upon
him; and that had been only casualty, as a means to an end. Only a demon
of perversion could imagine what he might conjure up in a vengeful spirit!
But how long would Uathacht’s spell retain it power? The uncertainty of it
was maddening.

The tower was large, the arrangement of its rooms complex. He was soon
confused by the innumerable turnings its corridors took., and became
increasingly uncertain, because of their bizarre shapes, that he had
thoroughly searched every room. His eyes burned and leaden exhaustion
weighed his feet. Sometimes he thought that he was dreaming, trapped in
delirium; sometimes it seemed that the tower, and he himself, were dreams
in a madman’s skull. The feeling of surveillance grew.
He had searched a hundred rooms, corridors, closets. In rooms fitted like
laboratories, filled with strange instruments and papered with
Incomprehensible diagrams, he hunted frantically. He had found curiously-
shaped vessels filled with blood in various stages of decomposition, flagons
in which Afterlings took form in the midst of unspeakable corruption, and
innumerable manuscripts, some of them crumbling with age, in what he
took to be Morophla s hand. But nowhere could he find the wizard himself.
He left off tearing the tapestries from the walls of an unused audience
chamber. “Enough of this!” he muttered.
He suddenly understood that his increasing confusion, the feeling of
surveillance, were the doing of the wizard. Even bound by a prepotent spell,
he could still watch and subtly twist Conan’s seeing—
The Afterling had said Morophla had resources.
“And so have I, damn it.”
He went quickly to the storeroom adjoining one of the laboratories, in haste
lest the unseen Watcher divine his purpose and prevent him. Prying open
the strange-figured urns of chemicals, he soon found what he wanted.
He carried the heavy vessel to the ground floor and began to dash its
contents on the wooden flooring and walls. A sharp, resinous odor filled his
nostrils.
And suddenly Morophla was there!
The wizard’s rage-distorted countenance glared down upon him. Conan
shrank hack. In a moment that terrible will would enter into him like the
fingers of those puppeteers you saw in bazaars.
But that did not happen, and he understood why. “So you are come to this,
Morophla. No longer do you come like a mighty wave, to toss the wills of
your victims like shells on a beach. No; the worst you can contrive now is
to project your image and trouble me with your ugly face, or twist my
seeing a little like a hairless old woman engaged in glamoury.”
The wavering form spoke: “Beware, Conan. Though limited by that slut’s
spell, I might yet overcome you.”
Conan laughed and capered.
“But why speak of that?” Morophla said, as one who would dismiss harsh
words spoken thoughtlessly between friends. “Surely it was no insult, rather
a compliment, that you were chosen. And were the labors enforced upon
you so terrible?
From a heart charred black with horror, Conan answered: “Yes—more than
filth like you could conceive. I have reason enough to slay you,
Morophla...”
“Be lenient, man, and see if I do not reward you. I can give much with my
magic.”
He promised much, but Conan only continued to pour out the flammable
liquid, a little lingeringly now. When the urn was empty, he took a torch
from its socket and moved to the door. “I cannot find you, but the fire
will...”
Morophla, beside himself with rage and frustration, seemed almost to lose
control of his sending. His grotesque figure, now swelling, now shrinking,
writhed and twisted across wall and ceiling. It danced like a flame already.
“How can you?” he raved. “Darken eyes that have looked on the distant
marvels of other stars and spheres? Burn the brain that harbors the lost
secrets of the gods, the most interior mysteries of matter and energy? No;
put up the torch and I will make you co-equal with me, share my power and
my immortality with you.”
Conan hurled the torch. Flame leaped up with a snarl like a lunging beast.
The wizard shrieked.
The hot glare brought tears to Conan’s eyes. He backed towards the door,
watching the flames mutter sod gnaw at the wooden panels. The tapestries
turned to falling, flaming.
“You animal, you cretin!” the wizard gibbered. “You’ve destroyed me, but
you will die with me!”
Conan reached for the door, but before he touched it, it burst inward. A
great, threatening confusion bore down on him—something that thundered
like a stampede, or roared and clanked like a host of men-at-arms. He
couldn’t put a name to it; he could only give way before it.
He was driven back through the wall of flame and up the smoky stars.
The attack—but what attacked?— came on and on, continuously squealing
and gibbering. Its high-pitched wail paralysed thought; only the instinctive
reaction of flight was possible.
And suddenly it became an enormous mouth in which innumerable teeth
clashed and ground together. But when it overtook him, it only gnashed
impalpably around him for a moment...
Then vanished!
“Yes, Conan; only an illusion,” said Morophla. “But you know that too late.
The fire has already cut off your escape and you must perish with me.”
He smiled sourly. “But don’t bother to repent having rejected my offer. I
should not have kept that bargain anyway. This is the only fellowship we
two can have—in the Are, which has a trick of levelling all flesh. I could
not have raised you to my level, although you have reduced me to yours.
Conan, no philosopher, ignored him. Before a wall of hot gases he fled up
the tower stairs. He could hardly draw breath to curse the sorcerer, whose
sending drifted always before him.
The projected image changed from moment to moment. Not only did it
ripple and flicker as it drifted like a shadow or a flame along the walls and
stair-treads, but it underwent other transformation, more painful to see as
well.
“Yes, murderer, it is your work. The flames have found my body where it
lies bound by the Sun Spider. Oh, you cannot imagine how painful it is. But
I need not describe it; you will learn soon enough. Of course, you have the
option of leaping from the roof. No option really; you will inevitably do so
when the fire touches you...”
Conan could scarcely see the stairs and corridors along which he fled. But
the image of Morophla’s disintegrating corpse remained with him always,
sealed within his closed eyes; its voice droned in his ears.
“I hate you, murderer!” the thing screamed. “Not just for the agony I
endure. Even if I had to endure it as long as I lived, I would still choose to
survive. For there is much that I would yet learn in the vastness of the
cosmos and the vastness of the mind, matters that you and that bitch with
your little, animal minds could not conceive of. I hope you don’t die
outright when you leap from the tower. Be a long time dying with the ache
of mangled nerves, bone splinters piercing your guts—”
The oozing, blackened horror shimmered and faded.
“No... I can’t follow you any more. Wanted to see you dying, but I can’t,
not strong enough—any more...”
Gone: leaving only a dying curse.
 Chapter 7

Conan crawled onto the roof, gasping. Night. Those stars whose marvels
the wizard regretted appraised him and found him of little worth. Already
the boards were hot under his feet. From the trapdoor through which he had
come, the flames leaped: a pillar of fire which, like Morophla’s spirit,
clutched at the stars. While he watched, a cluster of strange instruments,
gleaming copper tubes and lenses, sank through the roof, engulfed by a
muttering mouth of fire.
The tower was high and its walls of closely fitted stones appeared almost
smooth. Staring hopelessly down, Conan felt the clutch of the gulf at his
loins. His belly crawled with its cold stroking.
Nevertheless, he had to attempt that impossible descent. Better to have his
last moments absorbed in some arduous task than to sit waiting for the fire
to eat through the roof.
Lowering himself over the edge, he sank almost to the length of hi arms
before his foot found what purported to be a toe-hold. With one hand on the
ledge, he supported himself while he fitted blunt finger into a narrow
cranny. The effort was tremendous: it seemed that bone must crack, muscle
or tendon tear.
He flattened himself against the wall like a vine or lichen. It was insane, he
knew that already, sinews stuttered their plea for release from a task beyond
their capacity. And still he persisted, relinquishing each impossible toe-hold
only to seek another...
He knew that eventually he must fall—drop like a dead fly. But it would not
be willingly. Never would his soul cry, enough! and order his cramped
fingers to open.
It came as no surprise, however, when his bleeding fingertips slid from their
precarious clutch.
He fell.
It was strange when you fell. At such a time, when your weight was most
active, you felt no weight at ell. Almost you were bodiless, as in dreams
when you drift like smoke across some broken landscape. The wind, like
his own cry, sang in his ears.
There came a beating of leathery wings round his head. Clawed fingers
sank into the muscles of his arms and bore him up. His fall was not halted,
only slowed, and he dropped, struggling in the hand of his rescuers, until
the earth smashed his knees up into his chest. When be could breathe a
little, Conan gasped out, “I thank you for my life.”
The Afterling said, “We thank you for ours, now truly ours. In slaying our
creator, our god, you set us free.”
“God-slayer...” Conan smiled. “Among my people it is the bestow vaunting
titles: but never have I heard one so grandiose. You account my deed a
boon?”
“Of course. Wouldn’t you?”
Conan glanced skyward and did not answer.
They gave him food and drink, and would have had him remain with them,
but this last he refused. “You might come to look on me as your god.”
He departed along the winding road, the road downward out of the
mountains. As the stars faded and morning came, his thoughts returned to
Morophla. He did not understand why he should be at such effort to prolong
a life which, to Conan, seemed only a mounting confusion and horror.
He shook his head and tried to think of other things.
The Slave Princess

- Robert E. Howard
 Chapter 1

Outside the clamor mounted deafeningly. The rasp of steel on steel mingled
with yells of blood-lust and yells of wild triumph. The young slave girl
hesitated and looked about the chamber in which she stood. There was
resigned helplessness in her gaze. The city had fallen; the blood-drunk
Turanians were riding through the streets, burning, looting, slaughtering.
Any moment might see the victorious savages running red handed through
the house of her owner.
From another part of the house a fat merchant came running. His eyes were
distended with terror, his breath came in gasps. He bore gems and worthless
gew-gaws in his hands—belongings snatched blindly and at random.
“Zuleika!” His voice was the screech of a trapped weasel, “Open the door
quickly, then bar it from this side—I will escape through the rear. By Mitra!
The Turanian fiends are slaying all in the streets—the gutters run red—”
“What of me, master?” the girl asked humbly.
“What of you, hussy?” screamed the man, striking her heavily, “Open the
door, open the door, I tell you—ahhhhhh!”
His voice snapped brittle as glass. Through an outer door came a wild and
fearsome figure—a shaggy, ragged Turanian whose eyes were the eyes of a
mad dog. Zuleika in frozen terror saw the wide glaring eyes, the lanky hair,
the short boar-spear gripped in a hand that dripped crimson.
The merchant’s voice rose in a frenzied squeaking. He made a desperate
dash across the chamber but the tribesman leaped like a cat on a mouse and
one lean hand gripped the merchant’s garments. Zuleika watched in dumb
horror. She had reason to hate the man—reasons of outrage, punishment
and indignity, but from the depths of her heart she pitied the howling wretch
as he writhed and shrank from his fate. The boar-spear ripped upward; the
screams broke in a fearful gurgle. The Turanian stepped over the ghastly red
thing on the floor and stalked toward the terrified girl. She shrank back,
unspeaking. Long she had learned the cruelty of men and the uselessness of
appeal. She did not beg for her life. The Turanian gripped her by the breast
of the single scanty garment she wore and she felt his wild beast eyes burn
into her’s. He was too far gone in the slaughter-lust for her to rouse another
desire in his wild soul. In that red moment she was only a living thing,
pulsing and quivering with life, for him to still forever in blood and agony.
She sought to close her eyes but she could not. In a clear white light of
semi-detachment she welcomed death, to end a road that had been hard and
cruel. But her flesh shrank from the doom her spirit accepted and only her
attacker’s grasp held her erect. Grinning like a wolf he brought the keen
point of the spear against her breast and a thin trickle of blood started from
the tender skin. The tribesman sucked in his breath in fierce ecstacy; he
would drive the blade home slowly, gradually, twisting it excruciatingly,
glutting his cruelty with the agonized writhings and screamings of his fair
victim.
A heavy step sounded behind them and a rough voice swore in an
unfamiliar tongue. The Turanian wheeled, beard bristling in a ferocious
snarl. The half fainting girl stumbled back against a divan, her hand to her
breast. It was a mailed Cimmerian who had entered the chamber and to the
girl’s dizzy gaze he loomed like an iron clad giant. Over six feet in height
he stood, and his shoulders and steel clad limbs were mighty. From his
heels to his heavy vizorless helmet he was heavily armored and his sun-
darkened, scarred features added to the sinister import of his appearance.
There was no stain of blood on his mail and his sword hung sheathed at his
girdle. The girl knew that he could be but one man—Conan of Cimmeria,
the Cimmerian mercenary who hunted at times with the Turanian pack.
Now he strode ponderously toward them, growling a warning at the warrior,
whose eyes burned with a feral light. The Turanian spat a curse and leaped
like a lean wolf, thrusting fiercely. A mail clad arm brushed the spear aside
and almost with the same motion, Conan caught the Turanian’s
throat with his left hand in a vice-like grip, and with his clenched right
struck his victim a mallet-like blow on the temple. Beneath the mailed fist,
the tribesman’s skull caved in like a gourd and Conan let the twitching
corpse fall carelessly at his feet. Zuleika stood silent, head bowed in
submission, as resigned to this new master as to the other, but the
Cimmerian showed no signs of claiming his prey. He turned away, with a
single casual glance at the girl, then stopped short as his brief gaze rested on
her pale face. His eyes narrowed and he approached her. She stood before
him, like a child before his overshadowing bulk.
He laid his mailed hand on her frail shoulder and her knees bent beneath the
unconcious weight of it. She raised her head to look into his face. His
blazing blue eyes seemed to her like those of a jungle beast.
“Girl, how are you named?” he rumbled in the Turanian tongue.
“Zuleika, master,” she answered in the same language.
He was silent, as if he pondered. His scarred face was inscrutable but she
caught the new glint in his volcanic eyes. Without a word he picked her up
in his left arm as a man might take up a baby. His captive voiced no protest
as he carried her out into the street. Kismet. No woman knew what Fate
held in store for her and Zuleika had learned submission in a bitter school.
Smoke was blown through the streets in fitful gusts; the Turanians were
burning the city. Still rose the wails of terror and agony and the yells of
gloating rage. Conan stepped over the body of a Zamoran that lay in a
crimson pool. Zuleika noted with a shudder that his fingers had been cut
away—even in death the Zamoran clung to his pitiful treasures. A wave of
nausea surged over her and she pressed her face against her captor’s mailed
shoulder, shutting out the sights of horror. A sudden fierce shout caused her
to look up again.
Conan was striding toward a huge black stallion of savage mien that stood
with reins hanging in the street, and a tall warrior in heron plumed helmet
and gold-chased mail was running toward him, holding a dripping scimitar.
Zuleika realized that the warrior desired her, and even in that moment felt
that he was mad to dispute possession of a slave with the grim Cimmerian,
when so many women could be had for the taking. Conan shifted her so his
body shielded her, and drew his heavy sword. As the warrior leaped in the
Cimmerian struck as a lion strikes and the Turanian’s head rolled in the
bloody dust. Kicking aside the slumping body, Conan reached his steed
which reared and snorted with flaring nostrils at the scent of blood. But
neither his steed’s restiveness nor his captive hampered the Cimmerian who
swung easily into the saddle and galloped toward the shattered gates.
The smoke, the blood and the clamor faded behind them and the upland
desert closed in about them. Zuleika glanced up at the grim, inscrutable face
of her new master and a strange whimsy crossed her mind. What girl has
not dreamed of being borne away on the saddle bow of her prince of
romance? So Zuleika had dreamed in other days. Long suffering had
cleansed her of bitterness, but she wondered helplessly at the whim of
chance. “On the saddle-bow she was borne away” but her garments were
not the robes of a princess but the shift of a slave, not to the lilt of harps she
rode, but the slavering howls of horror and slaughter, and her captor was not
the prince of her childish dreams but a grim outlaw, stark and savage as the
mountain land that bred him.
 Chapter 2

Castle Crimson was set in the midst of a wild land. Built originally by
Kothians, it had fallen to the Shemites, from whom it had again been
captured by the craft and desperate courage of its present owner. It was one
of the few wasteland holds that remained to Shem, an outpost that rose
boldly in hostile land. Leagues lay between Malthom’s keep and the nearest
Shemite castle. South lay the desert. To the east, across the sands loomed
the wild mountains wherein lurked savage foes.
Night had fallen and Malthom sat in an inner chamber listening attentively
to his guest. Malthom was tall, rangy and handsome with keen grey eyes
and golden locks. His garments had once been rich and costly but now they
were worn and faded. The gems that had once adorned his sword hilt were
gone. Poverty was reflected in his apparel as well as in the castle itself,
which was barren beyond the wont of even the feudal castles of that rude
day. Malthom lived by plunder, as a wolf lives, and like a desert wolf, his
life was lean and hard.
He sat on the rude bench, chin on fist and gazed at his guests. His was one
of the few castles open to Conan of Cimmeria. There was a price on the
outlaw’s head and the slim holdings of elsewhere were barred to him, but
here beyond the border none knew what went on in the isolated hold.
Conan had quenched his thirst and satisfied his hunger with gigantic
draughts of wine and huge bits of meat torn by his strong teeth from a
roasted joint, and Zuleika had likewise eaten and drunk. Now the girl sat
patiently, knowing that the warriors discussed her, but not understanding
their speech.
“And so,” Conan was saying, “when I heard the Turanians had laid seige to
the city, I rode hard to come up to it, knowing that it would not long
withstand them, what with that fat fool of a Yurzed Beg commanding the
walls. Well, it fell before I could arrive and when I came into it, the desert
men had stripped it bare—the lucky ones had all the loot in sight and the
others were scorching the toes of the citizens to make them give up their
hidden wealth—but I did find this girl.”
“What of her, then?” asked Malthom curiously, “She is pretty—dressed in
costly apparel she might even be beautiful. But after all, she is only a half
naked slave. No one will pay you much for her.”
Conan grinned bleakly and Malthom’s interest quickened. He had had much
dealings with the Cimmerian warrior and he knew when Conan smiled,
things were afoot.
“Did you ever hear of Zalda, the daughter of the Sheikh Abdullah bin
Khor?”
Malthom nodded and the girl, catching the words, looked up with sudden
interest.
“She was about to be married, three years ago,” said Conan, “To Khalru
Shah, chief of Kizil-Bezzin, but a roving band kidnapped her, and since
then no word has been heard of her. Doubtless they sold her far to the East
—or cut her throat. You never saw her? I did—these women go unveiled.
And this girl, Zuleika, is enough like the princess Zalda to be her sister, by
Crom!”
“I begin to see what you mean,” said Malthom.
“Khelru Shah,” said Conan, “will pay a mighty ransom for his bride. Zalda
was of royal blood—marrying her meant alliance with the Roualli—the
Sheikh is more powerful than many princes—when he summons his
warmen, the hoofs of three thousand steeds shake the desert. Though he
dwells in the felt tents of the Bedouin, his power is great, his wealth is
great. No dowry was to go with the princess Zalda, but Khelru Shah was to
pay for the privilege of wedding her—of such pride are these wild Rouallas.
“Keep the Arab girl here with you. I will ride to Kizil-Bezzin and lay my
terms before the Turanian. Keep her well concealed and let no Arab see her
—she might be mistaken for Zalda, indeed, and if Abdullah bin Kheram
gets wind of it, he might bring up against us such a force as to take the
castle by storm.
“By continuous riding I can reach Kizil-Bezzin in three days; I will waste
no more than a day in disputing with Khelru Shah. If I know the man, he
will ride back with me, with several hundred men. We should reach this
castle not later than four days after we depart from the hill-town. Keep the
gates close barred while I am away, and ride not far afield. Khelru Shah is
as subtle and treacherous as– ”
“Yourself,” finished Malthom with a grim smile.
Conan grunted. “When we come, we will ride up to the walls. Then bring
you the Arab slave upon the walls of the tower—somewhere you must
contrive to find clothing more suited to a captive princess. And impress
upon her that she must bear herself, at least while on the wall, with less
humility. The princess Zalda was proud and haughty as an empress and bore
herself as if all lesser beings were dust beneath her white feet. And now I
ride.”
“In the midst of the night?” asked Malthom, “Will you not sleep in my
castle and ride forth at dawn?”
“My horse is rested,” answered Conan, “I never weary. Besides, I am a
hawk that flies best by night.”
He rose, pulling his mail coif in place and donning his helmet. He took up
his shield which bore the symbol of a grinning skull. Malthom looked at
him curiously, and though he knew the man of old, he could not but wonder
at the wild spirit and self-sufficiency that enabled him to ride by night
across a savage and hostile land, into the very strong hold of his natural
foes. Malthom knew that Conan of Cimmeria was outlawed by the
Shemites for slaying a certain nobleman, that he was fiercely hated by the
Kothians as a whole, and that he had half a dozen private feuds on his
hands. He had few friends, no followers, no position of power. He was an
outcast who must depend on his own wit and prowess to survive. But these
things sat lightly on the soul of Conan of Cimmeria; to him they were but
natural circumstances. His whole life had been one of incredible savagery
and violence.
Malthom knew that conditions in Conan’s native land were wild and
bloody, for the name of Nordheim was a term for violence all over southern
Hyboria. But just how war-shaken and turbulent those conditions were,
Malthom could not know. He had followed kings and won a red name for
himself in the blind melees that followed. Returning again to Khoraja to pay
a debt of gratitude, he had been caught in the blind whirlwind of plot and
intrigue and had plunged into the dangerous game with a fierce zest.
He rode alone, mostly, and time and again his many enemies thought him
trapped, but each time he had won free, by craft and guile, or by the sheer
power of his sword arm. For he was like a desert lion, this giant Cimmerian,
who plotted like a Turanian, rode like a Hyrkanian, fought like a blood-mad
tiger and preyed on the strongest and fiercest of the outland lords.
Full armed he rode into the night on his great black stallion, and Malthom
turned his casual attention to the slave girl. Her hands were soiled and
roughened with menial toil, but they were slender and shapely. Somewhere
in her veins, decided the young lord, ran aristocratic blood, that showed in
the delicate rose leaf texture of her skin, in the silkiness of her wavy black
hair, in the deep softness of her dark eyes. All the warm heritage of the
Southern desert was evident in her every motion,
“You were not born a slave?”
“What does it matter, master?” she asked, “Enough that I am a slave now.
Better be born to the whips and chains than broken to them. Once I was
free; now I am thrall. Is it not enough.”
“A slave,” muttered Malthom, “What are a slave’s thought? Strange—it
never before occurred to me to wonder what passes in the mind of a slave—
or a beast, either, for that matter.”
“Better a man’s steed, than a man’s slave, master,” said the girl.
“Aye,” he answered, “For there is nobility in a good horse.”
She bowed her head and folded her slender hands, unspeaking.
 Chapter 3

Dusk shadowed the hills when Conan of Cimmeria rode up to the great gate
of Kizil-Bezzin, which gave its name to the town it guarded and dominated.
The guardsmen, lean, bearded Turanians with the eyes of hawks, cursed in
amazement.
“By Bel, and by Bab! The wolf has come to put his head in the trap! Run,
Yusef, and tell our lord, Ali Bey, that the infidel dog, Conan, stands before
the gates.”
“Ho there, you upon the walls!” shouted the Cimmerian. “Tell your chief
that Conan of Cimmeria would have speech with him. And make haste, for
I am not one to waste time in dallying.”
“Hold him in parley but a moment,” muttered a man, crouching behind a
bastion, and winding his cross-bow—a ponderous affair captured from the
Shemites, “I’ll send him to dress his shield with the damned.”
“Hold!” this from a bearded, lean old hawk whose eyes were fierce and
wary, “When this chief rides boldly into the hands of his enemies, be sure
he has secret powers. Wait until Ali comes.” To Conan he called curteously,
“Be patient, mighty lord; the prince Ali Bey has been sent for and will soon
be upon the walls.”
“Then let him come in haste,” growled Conan, who was in no more awe of
a prince than he was of a peasant, “I will not await him long.”
Ali Bey came upon the great walls and looked down curiously and
suspiciously upon his enemy.
“What want ye, Conan of Cimmeria?” he asked, “Are you mad, to ride
alone to the gates of Kizil-Bezzin? Have you forgotten there is feud
between us? That I have sworn to sever your neck with my sword?”
“Aye, so you have sworn,” grinned Conan, “And so has sworn Abdullah bin
Kheram, and Ali Bahadur, and Abdallah Mirza. And so, in past years and in
another land, swore many other men in their time, yet I still wear my head
firmly on my shoulders.
“Harken till I tell you what I have to say. Then if you still wish my head,
come out of your stone walls and see if ye be man enough to take it. This
concerns the princess Zalda, daughter of Sheikh Abdullah bin Kheram—on
whose name, damnation!”
Ali Bey stiffened with sudden interest; he was a tall, slender man, young,
and handsome in a hawk-like way. His short black beard set off his
aristocratic features and his eyes were fine and expressive, with shadows of
cruelty lurking in their depths. His turban was scaled with silver coins and
adorned with heron plumes, and his light mail was crusted with golden
scales. The hilt of his slender, silver chased scimitar was set with gleaming
gems. Young but powerful was Ali Bey, in the hill town upon which he had
swooped with his hawks a few years before and made himself ruler. Six
hundred men of war he could bring to battle, and he lusted for more power.
For that reason he had wished to ally himself with the powerful Roualla
tribe of Abdullah bin Kheram.
“What of the princess Zalda?” he asked.
“She is my captive,” answered Conan.
Ali Bey started violently, his hand gripped his hilt, then he laughed
mockingly.
“You lie; the princess Zalda is dead.”
“So I thought,” answered Conan frankly, “But in the raid on the city, I
found her captive to a merchant who knew not her real identity, she having
concealed it, fearing lest worse evil come to her.”
Ali Bey stood in thought a moment, then raised his hand.
“Open the gates for him. Enter, Conan of Cimmeria, no harm shall come to
you. Lay down your sword and ride in.”
“I wore my sword in the tent of Brian of Brythunia,” roared the Cimmerian,
“When I unbuckle it in the walls of my foes, it will be when I am dead.
Unbar those gates, fools, my steed is weary.”
Within an inner chamber of silk and crimson hangings, crystal and gold and
teak-wood, Ali Bey sat listening to his guest. The young chief’s face was
inscrutable but his dark eyes were absorbed. Behind him stood, like a dark
image, Belek the Stygian, Ali’s right-hand man, a big, dark powerful man
with a satanic face and evil eyes. Whence he came, who he was, why he
followed the young Turanian none knew but Ali, but all feared and hated
him, for the craft and cruelty of a black serpent was in the abysmal brain of
the Stygian.
Conan of Cimmeria had laid aside his helmet and thrown back his mail coif,
disclosing his thick, corded throat, and his black, square cut mane. His
volcanic blue eyes blazed even more fiercely as he talked.
“Once the princess Zalda is in your hands you can bring the Sheikh to
terms. Instead of paying him a great price for her, you can force him to pay
you a dowery. He had rather see her your wife, even at the cost of much
gold, than your slave. Once married to her, then, he will join forces with
you. You will have all that you planned for three years ago, in addition to a
rich dowery from the Sheikh.”
“Why did you not ride to him instead of to me?” abruptly asked Ali.
“Because you have such things as we desire, my friend and I. Abdullah is
more powerful than you, but his treasure is less. Most of his belongings
consist of cattle—horses—arms—tents—fields—the belongings of a nomad
chief. Here in this castle you have chests of golden coins looted from
caravans and taken as ransom for captive soldiers. You have gems—silver
—silks—rare spices—jewelry. You have what we desire.”
“And what proof have I that you are not lying?”
“Ride with me tomorrow,” grunted Conan, “To the castle of my friend.”
Ali laughed like a wolf snarling.
“You would lead us into a trap,” said the Stygian.
“Bring three hundred men with you, bring as many as you like, the whole
band of thieves,” said Conan, “Where do you think I would get enough
warriors to trap your whole host?”
“Where is she being held?” asked the man.
“In Castle Crimson, three, four days ride to the west,” said Conan, “You
could never take it by assault.”
“I am not sure,” muttered Ali, “The lord Malthom has only some forty men-
at-arms.”
“But the castle is impregnable.”
“So I have heard.”
The Stygian’s eyes narrowed.
“We might seize you and hold you for ransom,” he suggested, “And force
Malthom to return the girl.”
Conan laughed savagely and mockingly.
“Malthom would laugh at you and tell you to cut my throat and be damned,
or he would cut the throat of the girl as it struck him. Besides, though I am
in your castle, surrounded by your warriors, I am not entirely helpless. Seek
to take me and I will flood these walls with blood before I die.”
It was no idle boast as they well knew.
“Enough!” Ali made an impatient gesture, “You were promised safety—
what’s that?”
A commotion had arisen without; a scuffling, shouts, threats and
maledictions in the Arab tongue. The outer door was thrust open and a
bearded Turanian who had been guarding the door entered, dragging a
struggling victim whose beard bristled with wrath. He clung to a pack from
which spilled various trinkets and ornaments.
“I found this dog sneaking about in an adjoining chamber, master,” rumbled
the guardsman, “Methinks he was eavesdropping. Shall I not strike off his
head?”
“I am Ali bin Nasru, an honest merchant!” shouted the Shemite angrily and
fearfully, “I am well known in Kizil-Bezzin! I sell wares to shahs and
sheikhs and I was not evesdropping. Am I a dog to spy upon my patron? I
was seeking the great chief Ali Bey to spread my goods before him!”
“Best cut out his tongue,” growled Belek, “He may have heard too much.”
“I heard nothing!” clamored Ali, “I have but just come into the castle!”
“Beat him forth,” snapped Ali Bey in irritation, “Shall I be pestered by a
yapping cur? Lash him out and if he comes again with his trash, strip him
and hang him up by his feet in the marketplace for the children to pelt with
stones. Conan, we ride at dawn, and if you have tricked me, make your
peace with the gods!”
“And if you seek to trick me,” snarled Conan, “make your peace with
yours, for you will swiftly meet them.”
It was past midnight when a form climbed warily down a rope let down
from the outer wall of the town. Hurriedly making his way down the slopes,
the man came soon upon a thicket where was securely hidden a swift camel
and a bulky pack—for the man was not one to trust all his belongings in a
town ruled by Turanians. Recklessly casting aside the pack, the man
mounted the camel and fled southward.
 Chapter 4

Malthom rested his chin on his fist and gazed broodingly at the Arab girl,
Zuleika. In the past days he had found his eyes straying often to his slender
captive. He wondered at her silence and submission, for he knew that at
some time in her life, she had known a higher position than that of a slave.
Her manners were not those of a born serf; she was neither impudent nor
servile. He guessed faintly at the fierce and cruel school in which she had
been broken—no, not broken, for there was a strange deep strength in her
that had not been touched, or if touched, only made more pliable.
She was beautiful—not with the passionate, fierce beauty of the Turanian
women who had lent him their wild love, but with a deep, tranquil beauty,
of one who’s soul has been forged in fierce fires.
“Tell me how you came to be a slave,” the voice was one of command and
Zuleika folded her hands in acquiescence.
“I was born among the black felt tents of the south, master, and my
childhood was spent upon the desert. There all things are free—in my early
girlhood I was proud, for men told me I was beautiful, and many suitors
came to woo me. But there came others, too—men who wooed with naked
steel and me they carried off.
“They sold me to a Turanian, who soon wearied of me and sold me again to
an Iranistani slave-dealer. Thus I came into the house of the merchant of the
city, and there I toiled, a slave among the lowest slaves. My master once
offered me my freedom if I would return his love but I could not. My body
was his; my love he could not shackle. So he made of me his drudge.”
“You have learned deep humilty,” commented Malthom.
“By scourge and shackle and torture and toil I have learned, master,” she
said.
“Do you know what we mean to do with you?” he asked bluntly. She shook
her head.
“Conan thinks you resemble the princess Zalda,” said Malthom, “And it is
our intention to cheat Ali Bey with you. We will show you to him on the
wall, and I think he will pay a high price for you. When we have delivered
you to him, you will have your chance. Play your cards well and perchance
you may bewitch him, so when he learns of the trickery, he will not put you
aside.”
Again Malthom’s eyes swept over her slim form. A pulse began to thrum in
his temple. For the time being, she was his; why should he not take her,
before he gave her into the arms of Ali Bey? He had learned that what a
man wants he must take. With a single long stride he reached her and swept
her into his arms. She made no resistance, but she averted her face, drawing
her head back from his fierce lips. Her dark eyes looked into his with a deep
hurt and suddenly he felt ashamed. He released her and turned away.
“There are some garments I bought from a wandering band of gypsies,” he
said abruptly, “Put them on; I hear a trumpet.”
Across the desert a distant trumpet was faintly sounding. Malthom had his
men in full armor lining the walls, weapons in hand, when the horsemen
rode up to the castle gate, which was flanked by a tower.
Malthom hailed them. He saw Ali Bey in heron plumed helmet and gold
scaled mail, sitting his black mare. Close behind him sat Belek the Stygian
on a bay horse, and beside the chief, Conan of Cimmeria on his great
stallion. And Malthom grinned. Was it not strange to see the man riding in
the company of those who had sworn to cut his throat? Some three hundred
riders were ranked behind the chief.
“Ha, Malthom,” said Conan, “Fetch forth the princess—let her be shown
upon the wall of the tower that Ali Bey be convinced; he thinks us liars!”
Malthom hesitated, as a sudden revulsion shook him, then with a shrug of
his shoulders he made a gesture to his men-at-arms. Zuleika was escorted
out upon the wall above the gate and Malthom gasped. Rich clothes had
wrought a transformation in the slave girl; indeed she wore them as if she
had never worn the flimsy rags of a serf. She did not carry herself with the
haughty pride of a princess, thought Malthom, but there was a certain quiet
dignity about her, a certain proud humility that many of royal blood might
well copy.
Ali Bey gasped also; he gazed at her in bewilderment and reined closer.
“By Allah!” he said in amazement, “Zalda! Is it she? No—yes—by Bel, I
cannot say! She does not carry her chin as she did, if it be she, and yet—yet
—by the gods, it must be she!”
“Of a surety it is the princess Zalda,” rumbled Conan, “By Ymir, do you
think there is no faith in Shemites? Well, chief, what say you? Is she worth
ten thousand pieces of gold to you?”
“Wait,” answered the Turanian, “I must have time to consider. This girl is
alike the princess Zalda as can be—yet her whole bearing is different—I
must be convinced. Let her speak to me.”
Malthom nodded to Zuleika, who gave him a pitiful look, then raising her
voice, said: “My lord, I am Zalda, daughter of Abdullah bin Kheram.”
Again the Turanian shook his hawk-like head.
“The voice is soft and musical like Zalda’s, but the tone is different—the
princess was used to command and her tone was imperious.”
“She has been a captive,” grunted Conan, “Three years of captivity can
change even a princess.”
“True—well, I will ride to the spring of Mechmet which lies something
more than a mile away, and there camp. Tomorrow I will come to you again
and we will talk on the matter. Ten thousand pieces of gold—a high price to
pay, even for the princess Zalda.”
“Good enough,” grunted Conan. “I’ll remain at the castle—and mark you,
Ali—no tricks. At the first hint of a night onset we cut Zalda’s throat and
throw her head to you. Mark!”
Ali nodded absent mindedly and rode away at the head of his riders, in deep
converse with the dark faced Belek. Conan rode in through the gate which
was instantly barred and bolted behind him, and Zuleika turned to go into
her chamber. Her head was bent, her hands folded; again she had assumed
the manner of the slave. Yet she paused a moment before Malthom and in
her dark eyes was a deep hurt as she said: “You will sell me to Ali, my
lord?”
Malthom flushed darkly—not in years had the blood thus suffused his face.
He sought to reply and groped for words. Unconciously his mailed hand
sought her slim shoulder, half caressingly. Then he shook himself and spoke
harshly because of the strange conflicting emotions within him: “Go to your
chamber, wench; what affair of yours is it what I do?”
And as she went, head sunk on her breast, he stood looking after her,
clenching his mailed fists until the fingers cracked, and cursing himself
bewilderedly.
 Chapter 5

Conan of Cimmeria and Malthom sat in an inner chamber, though the hour
was late. Conan was in full armor, except for his helmet, as was Malthom.
The mail coifs of both men were drawn back upon their shoulders,
disclosing Malthom’s yellow locks and Conan’s raven mane. Malthom was
silent, moody; he drank little, talked less. Conan on the other hand, was in a
mood of deep satisfaction. He drank deep and his gratification led him into
a reminiscent mood.
“Wars and massed battles I have seen in plenty,” said he, lifting his great
goblet, “Aye—I fought in the battle of Venarium when I was but a child, by
Crom! We were men of iron in an iron age. Their leader, who had been
driven into the north in disgrace, came marching up into our lands with
thousands of men—against our joined forces, whose chief was the berserk
Jorgun the Mad—and mad he was, by Ymir! So Hasculf came back to win
this would-be city again, with his Cimmerian brothers, and his allies from
the north and the Isles.
“Word of the war came into the west, where I was a boy running half naked
on the moors, in the land of my father. We had a weapon-man whose name
was Wulfgar and he was a Nordheimer. ‘I will strike one more blow for the
sea-people,’ he said, and he went across the frozen fens as a wolf goes, and
I went with him with my boy’s bow, for the urge of wandering and blood-
letting was already upon me. So we came upon Venarium just as the battle
was joined. By Crom, my people had been driven back by the Aquilonians,
away from the city whose gates they fell upon but could not shatter, when
Hasculf made a sortie from the postern gate and fell upon them from the
rare. Whereupon Jorgun sallied from the main gates with his soldiers and
the ravens fed deep! By Crom, there the axes drank and the swords failed
not of glutting!
“So Wulfgar and I came into the battle and the first wounded man I saw was
an Aquilonian man-at-arms who had once crushed my ear lobe to a pulp so
that the blood flowed over his mailed fingers, to see if he could make me
cry out—I did not cry out but spat in his face, so he struck me senseless.
Now this man knew me and called me by name, gasping for water. ‘Water is
it?’ said I, ‘Its in the icy rivers of the beyond you’ll quench your thirst!’
And I jerked back his head to cut his throat, but before I could lay dirk to
gullet, he died. His legs were crushed by a great stone and a spear had
broken in his ribs.
“Wulfgar was gone from me now and I advanced into the thick of the battle,
loosing my arrows with all the might of my childish muscles, blindly and at
random, so I do not know if I did scathe or not, or to whom, for the noise
and shouting confused me and the smell of blood was in my nostrils, and
the blindness and fury of my first massed battle upon me.
“So I came to the place where Jorgun the Mad was leagued with a few of
his warriors by the Aquilonian soldiers—by Bel, I never saw a man strike
such blows as this berserk struck! He fought half naked and without mail or
shield, and neither buckler nor armour could stand before his axe. And I
saw Wulfgar—on a heap of dead he lay, still gripping a hilt from which the
blade had snapped in an Aquilonian soldier’s heart. He was passing swiftly,
his life ebbing from him in thick crimson surges but he spoke to me, faintly
and said: ‘Bend your bow, Conan, against the big man in chain mail armor.’
And so he died and I knew he meant their leader.
“But at that moment Jorgun, bleeding from a hundred wounds, struck a
blow that hewed off a soldier’s leg at the hip, though cased in heavy mail,
and the axe haft splintered in the man’s hand, andtheir leader gave him his
death stroke. Now all the men were dead or fled, and the men-at-arms
dragged Hasculf before rgwie leader, who had his head severed on the spot.
Now that sight maddened me, for though I loved not the man, I hated the
Aquilonians more, and running forward across the torn corpses, I bent my
bow against him. It was my last arrow and it splintered on his breast plate.
A man-at-arms caught me up and held me high for all to view, while I
cursed him and broke my milk teeth on his mail-clad wrist.
“By the gods,’ said their leader, “It’s a Cimmerian wolf-cub!”
“Shall I crush him?” asked the man, “He’s been killing our men.”
“Take him captive,” said he, “He’ll make a good soldier one day.”
“Well, both were right, but that man came to curse the day he spared me. He
lost Venarium eventually, when I met him again in battle, years later. When
we took our country back.
“Barren fighting, in a barren land. It seems though that now we are to be
rewarded for our zeal. Did you station all the men-at-arms on the walls? It’s
a dark, star-less night and we must beware of Ali Bey. Ha, we’ve cozened
him! We are as good as richer by ten thousand gold pieces! Then you can
rebuild this castle—hire more men-at-arms—buy armor and weapons. As
for me, I’ll gather together a band of cut-throat ruffians and fare east in
quest of some fat city to loot.”
“Conan,” Malthom’s eyes were dull and troubled, “What think you that Ali
Bey will do with the girl Zuleika when he finds we’ve tricked him? Will he
not slay her in his anger?”
“Not he,” Conan drank deep, “He’ll use her to trick old Abdullah bin
Kheram as we’ve tricked him. If the girl plays her cards right, she may be a
queen yet.”
“Conan,” said Malthom abruptly, “I cannot do it.”
The Cimmerian glared at him in bewilderment.
“What are you talking about?”
Malthom spread his hands helplessly. “I am sorry. I realized it while she
was on the wall—I cannot let this girl go—I love her—”
“What!” exclaimed Conan, completely dumfounded, “You mean you will
keep her—not give her up to Ali Bey—why—!”
“I love her,” said Malthom doggedly, “That is the only excuse I can give.”
Blue sparks of Hell’s fire began to flicker in Conan’s eyes. His mailed
fingers closed on the goblet and crunched it into ruin.
“You’d trick me, eh?” he roared, “You’d cheat me! Its wolf bite wolf, is it,
with your damned lust? You dog, I’ll send you to your grave!”
Malthom reached swiftly for his sword as Conan lunged from his seat, but
the giant Cimmerianman plunged full at his throat, splintering the heavy
table to match-wood. Before the young man could clear his blade, the
impact of Conan’s hurtling mail-clad body knocked him staggering and he
was fighting desperately to keep the Cimmerian’s iron fingers from his
throat. One of Conan’s hands had locked like a vise in a fold of Malthom’s
mail at his neck, barely missing the throat and the other hand snapped for a
death-hold. Malthom’s face was pale for he had seen Conan tear out a giant
Turanian’s throat with his naked fingers and he knew that once those iron
hands closed on his gullet, no power on earth could loosen them before they
tore out the life that pulsed beneath.
About the room they fought and wrestled, those two great, mailed fighting
men, in a strange, silent battle. Conan made no attempt to draw steel and
Malthom had no time to do so. With all his skill, swiftness and power, he
was fighting a losing fight to keep clear of those terrible, clutching hands.
Malthom struck with all his power, driving his clenched, iron guarded fist
full into Conan’s face and blood spattered, but the terrific blow did not
check the Cimmerian in the slightest—Malthom did not even think Conan
blinked. They crashed headlong into the ruins of the table and as they fell,
close-clinched, Conan roared short and thunderous, as his fingers locked at
last in the hold he had sought. Instantly Malthom’s head began to swim and
the candle-light went bloody to his distended gaze. Conan’s fingers were
sunk in the loose folds of his coif which, thrown back from his head, lay
loosely about his neck, and only this saved him from instant death, but even
so he felt his senses going. He tore and ripped futiley at Conan’s wrists; his
head was bent back at an excruciating angle—his neck was about to snap—
there came a swift rush of feet in the corridor without—a wild eyed man-at-
arms burst into the chamber.
“My lords—masters—the enemy—they are within the wall and the castle
burns!”
 Chapter 6

The sounds of the castle faded as the guardsmen took up their posts and the
rest composed themselves for sleep. In the great hall the beggar stirred;
from his rags eyes strangely unsuited to a beggar glinted; eyes like a
basilisk’s. With a swift motion he rose, throwing off his filthy, tattered
garments, revealing the evil countenance and pantherish form of Belek the
Stygian. Clad only in a striped loin cloth and with a long dagger in his hand,
he stole through the great hall and up the winding stair like a ghost.
Over all the castle silence reigned; before Zuleika’s door the sleepy man-at-
arms yawned and leaned on his pike drowsily. What use for a guard before
an inner chamber? What man could win through the walls without rousing
the whole force of the defenders? The guard did not hear the naked feet that
stole noiselessly along the flags. He did not see the dusky figure that glided
behind him. But he felt suddenly an iron arm encircle his throat strangling
the startled yell that sought to rise to his lips, he felt the momentary agony
of a hard driven blade that pierced his heart, and then he felt no more.
Belek eased the limp body to the floor and swiftly detached the keys from
the belt. He selected one and opened the door, working with speed but
silence. He slipped inside, closing the door.
Zuleika wakened with the realization that some one was in her chamber, but
in the utter darkness she could see no one. But Belek could see like a cat in
the dark. Zuleika felt a sudden hand clapped over her mouth and as she
instinctively lifted her hands to ward off that attack, her slim wrists were
pinioned together.
“Keep still, princess,” hissed a voice in the gloom, “If you scream, you
die.”
The hand was withdrawn from her lips and Zuleika felt her hands being
bound; next a gag was placed in her mouth. Belek the Stygian had his own
ideas about handling women. He had been sent to rescue Zuleika, yes; but
he knew that women quite often prefer not to be rescued from their captors
and he was taking no chances that the girl might prefer to remain with her
present masters than to ride away with Ali Bey. Belek did not intend that a
woman’s scream should bring him to his doom.
He lifted his slender captive and carrying her carefully over one shoulder,
stole down the corridor cautiously, dagger ready. He descended the stair and
stole through the great kitchin. He heard the cook snoring in the pantry.
Ordinarily it would have been impossible for a man to steal through the
castle of Malthom without detection, but tonight all the men were on the
walls, or else sleeping soundly awaiting their call to guard-duty.
Belek warily unbolted a small door and slipped outside, keeping close to the
walls. It was dark as pitch, low hanging clouds obscuring the stars, and
there was no moon. Belek hesitated, for the moment uncertain; then he
crossed the courtyard swiftly and entered the stables. He knew that Conan’s
great black stallion was quartered here, and he trembled lest he rouse the
full passion of the savage brute, which might make enough noise to wake
the whole castle. But Belek’s stealthy entrance caused no commotion; the
great beast had his stall in another part of the stables. The Stygian laid the
girl in an empty stall, first tying her ankles, then stole swiftly back to the
castle. Entering the kitchin he crossed to the small room where firewood
was kept piled, and busied himself a few moments. Then he shut the door
and hurriedly left the castle once more. A faint, grim smile played over his
thin lips.
And now he was ready for the most dangerous part of his daring night’s
work. Crouching like a panther he stole across the courtyard to the postern
gate. A single man-at-arms stood there, leaning on his spear and half asleep;
it was the hour of darkness before dawn when vitality is at a low ebb. Belek
crouched and leaped, silent and deadly as a panther. His mighty hands
locked about his victim’s throat and the man died without a cry.
Belek worked cautiously at the gate, felt it move beneath his hands and
swing inward. He crouched silently, almost holding his breath, straining his
eyes into the night. He could make out the dim somber reaches of the desert
knifed with ravines and gulches; were men moving out there? Not even the
keen eyed Stygian could tell for the clouds hung low and deep darkness
rested over all. He thought of returning for the girl and slipping out with
her, then abandoned the plan. The men on the wall above him were not
asleep. Their low voiced snatches of conversation reached him from time to
time. He had stolen to the postern gate and killed his man almost beneath
their feet, but it was behind their back. Their gaze was turned outward; they
would see anything that moved just without the wall and if he stole forth,
arrows would fall like rain about him. Alone he would have taken the risk;
but he dared not take the chance with the girl.
Out among the ravines a jackal yapped three times and ceased. Belek
grinned fiercely; Ali Bey had not failed to carry out his part of the plan.
Behind him he heard a cracking and snapping that grew and grew; a lurid
light became apparent through the aperture of the castle and the men on the
wall began to talk loudly
and nastily as a sudden wild yell went up from inside the keep. As if in
answer a clamor of ferocious shouts sounded from the desert outside and
suddenly the darkness was alive with charging shadows.
Belek shouted once himself, in fierce triumph, and ran swiftly to the stable
where he had left the girl.
 Chapter 7

The old seer shut the book.

“Of this it is known: he concealed her in the stable, then slayed the soldier
guarding the postern gate and opened it, then sets fire to the castle. Khelru
Shah’s men, who had stolen up on foot in the darkness, rushed through the
postern gate. Meanwhile, Conan and Malthom had quarrelled. Malthom
declared he would not let the girl go, and while the two were fighting hand
to hand, a soldier rushed in shouting that the courtyard swarmed with
Turanians. The handful of men in the castle cut their way out of the blazing
hold, but were surrounded in the court-yard and about to be cut to pieces,
when Abdullah bin Kheram rode up with a thousand men. The trader Ali
had told him his daughter was captive there. Fighting ceased as all learned
in wonder that Zuleika was indeed the princess Zalda. Khelru Shah was
slain by Conan who hacked his way through the Turanians and escaped, and
Zalda made known her love to Malthom. The Sheikh gave his consent that
they should marry and a powerful alliance was formed between the two
peoples, for life.”
Atlas of the Serpent Men

- Chris L Adams
 Chapter 1

Somewhere on the outskirts of Greshahla, a town lying in northern

Brythunia along the Hyperborean border...
~~~
Taking an overgrown path to the top of a windswept bluff, a man reined-in
his horse in a clump of trees where he might remain hidden. The wind,
ripping through the brittle brush lining the path, was biting, the force of it
instantly tearing away the exhaled vapors issuing from the steady breathing
of him and his steed. Yet, for all its cold the horseman did not outwardly
seem to suffer from it.
The man was massive, seeming almost out of scale with the world around
him. His expansive shoulders were nearly as wide as were two normal men
standing side-by-side. His entire frame seemed to have been fashioned by
the gods to careen into war, so powerful his body appeared even at rest—as
it was as he sat his mount. His steed, an immense draft horse that would
have been considered large even for its breed, snorted, catching the salty
scent of blood on the air; the man tensed.
From his vantage point he scouted the frozen road below. He narrowed his
eyes against the wintry gusts to better focus on a bend in the dirt track. He
had expected to rendezvous with a rider along this stretch of road this
morning. Instead, a ragtag band of ruffians was rifling the slaughtered body
of him whom he was to meet.
Keen, blue eyes, overhung by a brooding, square-cut black mane shot with
tendrils of gray, took in the scene of carnage at a glance. He loosened his
sword in its scabbard, one calloused thumb unconsciously caressing the
well-worn grip. He recognized the bandits and cursed, not bothering to
stifle the oath. He could care less if they heard him or not. In moments they
would be beyond caring about anything at all.
The man was Conan, King of Aquilonia. Here on clandestine business,
these men had known him for weeks as Korma, a Cimmerian thief; Conan
knew from of old that the less lies one told, the less one had to remember.
“Yrdihz, you filthy dog! This will cost you, by Crom. Heeyah!”
His shout was accompanied by the sudden planting of his heels in the ribs
of the black. With a startled snort the horse launched itself over the edge of
the bluff and thundered down the precipitous slope to careen into the dozen
or more men below.
The rider on its back barked a ragged laugh at the surprised looks on their
faces. The man’s previously relaxed posture exploded into action. Rising in
his stirrups his sword cleared the well-worn scabbard with a smooth,
upward sweep terminating in an arcing slash that beheaded the first brigand
he passed.
Momentarily stunned, the remaining bandits’ eyes went wide. As soon as
they saw who attacked them they knew they must fight, but it was with
bowels as weak as suckling babes that many of them launched their efforts.
They had come to know this enraged savage, having had dealings with the
man in recent weeks that had benefited both parties, although the aloof
barbarian typically operated alone, as a wolf without a pack.
They’d learned he was to come here this morn, the thought of all the gold
and secrets a royal courier might possibly carry overcoming their good
sense. Yrdihz, the leader of the band, assured them they could waylay the
Kingsman and disappear before the barbarian arrived. Later, he claimed,
they would listen to his tales of misfortune at the pub while they secretly
smiled in their cups. Unfortunately for them it hadn’t panned out as Yrdihz
promised.
“It’s Korma!” one cried.
“We were supposed to be gone before he got here!” ripped another. Sharp
fear and desperation tainted his quivering voice.
One of the bandits was wrestling the saddlebags from the slain Kingsman’s
horse. He looked nervously over his shoulder as he ran for his own steed,
staggering beneath the weight of gold coin filling the bags, but unwilling to
drop his load. As well flee from the gods! The Cimmerian ran him down
with his horse, the great hooves of the black stomping the man into red ruin,
leaving glittering gold dancing across the frozen track in the wake of its
passage.
“Erlik eat your bowels, Cimmerian!” Yrdihz, their captain, scowled. “You’d
of done no less and you know it!”
“You’re right,” ripped the Cimmerian. “But I wouldn’t’ve been caught with
my breeches around my ankles unless a tasty morsel of flesh was involved,
you scurvy-ridden, flea-bitten mongrel!”
Four of the bandits rode straight at Conan with lowered lances while Yrdihz
drew his bow and awaited an opening; another four horseman waited with
him. If he expected to see Conan fall beneath the charge of his men the stoic
expression on his face revealed no hint of disappointment when this did not
happen.
Typically, a mirthless smile might play at Conan’s lips while he battled, he
finding visceral fulfillment in the spilling of blood and the cracking of
bone; but not this morning. His eyes were slits of anger and his lips were
pressed into a tight line across his angled features. His brow was furrowed
and his body had become as tense as a sword bent nearly to its snapping
point. The sweeping, lightning fast strokes of his blade caused his steel to
sing as it slung droplets of blood that flew chaotically amidst the falling
snow that was fast becoming a blinding white-out from the furious gusts of
a growing storm.
Conan, however, was far too crafty to lose himself to anger and focus solely
on the lowered spears of these bandits, while ignoring Yrdihz. The man was
a Hyrkanian, an expert archer, and it would be a deadly mistake to ignore
the reach of his bow. Conan prudently maneuvered his horse to keep the
enemy between himself and their leader but heard arrows whistle by his ear
or thunk into his buckler more than once.
His wooden buckler he used to fend off the spear thrusts of the nearer
horsemen and swat any that came within reach. Shortly, it was riddled with
arrows and fresh notches. In the bustle of conflict a bandit rode in close and
received the steel-rimmed edge of Conan’s shield across his nose and teeth.
It mattered little. Moments later the man’s head rolled from his shoulders
and his ruined features were of no further concern to him—nor was he of
any further concern to the barbarian.
He lopped off the tip of a spear, shortening its reach by a good cubit.
Grasping the severed end of the spear shaft he side-stepped his black until,
knee-to-knee with the spearman, he shoved three feet of steel through the
man’s tunic, grunting in satisfaction as he felt ribs popping in-half along the
edge of the blade. The man’s lungs sucked along the entire length of his
sword as he withdrew it, the body tumbling to the ground beneath the
stomping hooves of the electrified mounts.
Two more of Yrdihz’s men fell to Conan’s savagery, the remaining
horsemen now becoming more wary, as might a pack of wild dogs
attempting to drag down an old and seasoned wolf. Although they knew
him from the local pubs and had heard talk of his prowess in the red
districts of Kör, a remote city lying close to the Hyperborean border, this
was the first time they’d seen him in action. Only last night they’d eaten
and drained wine skins together at The Scarlet Lass, laughing drunkenly
when one would grab a serving wench and drag her into his lap for a kiss.
The dead and dying men lying in the road were mute testimony to the
capacity of a sword arm who’s like they’d never seen. Seated upon a
powerful roan, Yrdihz cursed. “I believe this is what you were wanting?”
The Hyrkanian mockingly held aloft a leather cylinder, a device to carry
official documents. This he slung cross-wise over his back, calling out
instructions to two of his men while those who remained he ordered to rush
the barbarian.
 Chapter 2

Fighting off lunging spearmen Conan saw a bandit leap to the ground near
the fallen saddlebags while one of his companions charged with lowered
spear. Hastily, the rogue tossed the bags over his steed’s withers and
scrambled into the saddle.
“It appears I now possess everything you had planned on stealing for
yourself!” Yrdihz grinned, his white teeth gleaming brightly amidst his
thick, black beard.
“You fool!” Conan glared. “I didn’t come here to steal anything.”
“You expect me to believe that? If so it is you who is the fool!” Without
another word the trio of bandits spun and galloped away while the others
kept Conan busy that their chieftain might escape with the bounty. The
survivors would rendezvous later to divide the spoils...
The barbarian eyed Yrdihz’s remaining men. “There’s one thing Yrdihz
obviously doesn’t know.”
“What’s that?” one of them growled.
“I always catch up to them eventually.” Voicing a shout, Conan rushed
them, the black ramming a horse of smaller stature and overthrowing its
slighter bulk. The smaller horse stumbled, its rider flying from his saddle
just as Conan’s sword swished over his head in what was to have been a
decapitating arc.
“Crom and Mitra!” the barbarian cursed at the miss.
Recovering, he followed with a backhand cut that found another target. His
sword buried deeply in the forehead of a horseman’s mount, the steed
rearing with a shrill death-cry before pitching over backward, carrying his
sword and its rider along with it. Not one to suck his thumb and curse the
caprices of fate, the barbarian leaped to his feet in his saddle, drew his
knees up beneath him and sprang for the falling mount the instant its
collapsing body jerked his sword from his hand.
As he leaped the others spun and rushed off after Yrdihz, but Conan was
too busy with the rider he’d fallen on to worry about them. With his sword
stuck fast in the horse’s forehead he wrapped both of his massive hands
around the man’s throat and began throttling him. The man frantically
attempted to free a dagger from his belt but he’d fallen on top of it and
couldn’t reach it. His fingers clawed the frozen ground in desperation.
From the corner of one eye Conan saw the man he’d unseated rushing
forward with drawn sword while the barbarian’s blade remained stuck fast
in the horse’s skull. With an oath, Conan squeezed with all his might,
feeling the bones and flesh in the man’s throat crush and compress to
nothing. Seeing this, the charging man changed direction and ran instead for
Conan’s horse, the black.
Conan rose. The body beneath him was nearly decapitated and bore the
permanent indentations of his hands in its crushed throat. But it was already
too late to prevent the bandit leaping into the saddle. He gouged his heels in
the black’s ribs, causing it to leap forward with a grunt of shocked surprise.
“Yrdihz! Wait for me!” The man thundered off in the wake of his rogue
chieftain.
“Ymir’s balls!” Conan cursed. The barbarian stood alone in the middle of
the road, surrounded by dead men and slaughtered horses. Glancing about
he spotted a rock embedded in the frozen mud. With a wrench that no other
might have performed he ripped it from the ground by fingertips and nails,
the large stone filling his hand. Drawing back his arm until the muscles
swelled with the strain he heaved it at the retreating back of the man who
fled on his horse.
The stone described an arc and struck the man fair between his shoulders.
With a whoosh the air exploded from his tortured lungs. The force of the
impact launched him forward over the galloping horse’s withers where he
hit the ground, head-first. The bandit tumbled and rolled, finally coming to
rest face-down in a snow drift on the edge of the frozen track where he lay
gasping for breath.
Conan strode resolutely forward, having recovered his sword from the
horse’s skull. As he stalked toward his prey he glanced down the road.
Yrdihz and his remaining men had disappeared. They’d be long gone by the
time the Cimmerian caught his steed which, panicked by the body flying
over its head, had galloped down the road and disappeared in the flying
snow.
As he passed the fallen Kingsman he paused, verifying the man was dead
with a grunt. As he stood, a dull glint in the dead man’s clothing caught his
eye. From beneath his jerkin he retrieved a dagger of odd make, overlooked
by the thieves. A relic of bygone days, its design was unfamiliar, with an
oddly configured pommel possessing a void where it was missing its
capstone. Grunting, he slid it into the satchel slung over his broad shoulders
and continued his interrupted path toward the bandit he’d knocked from his
horse.
With one hand Conan grasped the fallen man at the nape of his neck, lifting
him effortlessly from the ground until he dangled with his feet level with
Conan’s knees, facing away. The man started to speak, but coughed
violently as he struggled to regain his breath. The barbarian, his face
merciless and grim, drew his sword back to shove it through the man’s
kidney.
“W—wait!” the rogue finally managed. “I...”
Conan, in an incredible display of raw, brute power, slowly turned the man
around to face him, keeping the rogue’s feet a good three feet off the
ground. An explosive smell caught the Cimmerian unawares. Glancing
down he saw the man’s weak effluence slithering out of his breeches. He
wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“You craven mongrel! Wait for what? There is only one way this ends for
you and the sooner you’re dead the sooner I can go after Yrdihz.”
“I beg you—wait! I know something you’ll wish to hear!”
Conan eyed the rogue. On a whim he decided to hear him out, figuring he
could always kill him after. He dropped him on the ground and stood
waiting, his nose wrinkling in disdain whenever the wind wafted the reek of
the man’s bowels to his nostrils.
“I have a horse to catch, so talk. If I don’t like what I hear you’re going to
be digesting a yard of steel. And talk fast; you reek.”
The man leaned over as if he might lose his stomach, putting his hands on
his knees in a sudden paroxysm. After a few moments he seemed to
recover. “What in the name of Bori the Strong did you hit me with? It felt
like you threw an ox at me.”
Conan drew his sword back. He didn’t have time for this; best to kill this
reeking snake and continue after the others.
Seeing the barbarian’s motion the man spoke quickly. “Yrdihz wasn’t drunk
last night like he pretended! For weeks he’s believed you had something
brewing and wanted to know what it was. He plied you with drink laced
with the root of Shaulum last night until you mentioned you were meeting
this Kingsman this morning on the north pike. You were barely able to
stand after he drugged you, but he got you to tell him all about the
Kingsman, and the map and coin.”
“Curse his eyes! I didn’t drink much last night and wondered why
everything was a blur this morning. What does Yrdihz want with the map?”
“The same thing as you—he wishes to loot the serpent cavern. After you
mentioned the map he seemed to care nothing for the gold, which is unusual
—we were to split the coin amongst us and the map was to be his. You
really should pick your drinking company more carefully—”
Conan shook the man until his teeth rattled and his neck nearly snapped.
When he released him the man was staggering.
“What you’ve told me is enlightening but nothing of any real value,” he
said darkly.
Speechless from the violent shaking, the man held his hands up. “I have
more,” he gasped.
“What is it, by Crom? And it better be something useful this time.”
“I can’t read and I’m not as smart as Yrdihz is but I have a knack for being
able to recall things I see. He made me look at the map before you arrived
in case he lost it. I can take you to the cavern! Every line of the serpent
men’s atlas is as clear in my memory as your sword is right now.”
The bandit, a riby little man, goateed and greasy, gulped loudly as he stared
at Conan’s blood smeared blade.
Conan thought for a second and then said suddenly, “Who killed the
Kingsman?”
The bandit didn’t hesitate. “Yrdihz shot him in the throat with an arrow as
soon as he rounded the bend and then Hordikur stuck him in the gut with a
sword as he lay on the road. That’s Hordikur laying over there.” He pointed
at a beheaded corpse lying a short distance up the road.
“That Kingsman was mine—one I embedded in Herzog’s forces weeks ago
specifically to steal that map which was only a rumor until my man
informed me it was genuine. Do you think I’ve hung around this Crom-
forsaken, Brythunian crap-hole playing catpurse to steal bronze coins for
grog? If it weren’t for the women here I’d of long gone mad. You’d better
thank Mitra it wasn’t you who slew Gallardo; he was a good man.”
Conan again eyed the stiffening corpse that was once Hordikur, a Turanian.
“Put Hordikur’s breaches on. I’m going after Yrdihz and you’re going to
point the way. But I don’t want to risk a stray wind wafting your stench in
my face.”
 Chapter 3

The craggy granite beneath their horses’ hooves was rimed in hoarfrost, the
bits of frozen cloud evidence of their great height. Foremost went Forba,
the Brythunian having led the way for days of near constant riding. Their
steeds were in dire need of rest, as were the men—rest which Conan
allotted in rationed measures.
“How much longer do we ride this Crom-forsaken goat path?” the
Cimmerian asked impatiently.
Forba bolted upright, having nearly fallen asleep in the saddle. He glanced
fearfully over one shoulder where a precipitous drop fell for thousands of
feet, grateful he hadn’t nodded off. “Not long.”
The Cimmerian grunted. They’d easily followed the trail of Yrdihz and two
others in the lowlands but once they entered the mountains, where the
ground became rockier, it’d become more difficult to find the spoor of those
they trailed. Days before he’d become doubtful they were still upon their
trail; but then they came upon a horned helm lying on the side of the rocky
trace they followed, apparently dropped by one of the horsemen.
“Why are you so determined to find Yrdihz? The place he seeks is
accursed.”
It wasn’t the first time Forba had asked. Before, the Cimmerian simply
ignored the question but now it began to make him feel irate. “It isn’t for
you to know, so quit asking. What the—”
Conan drew up short. The track they rode was barely wide enough for a
horse. Now, stepping around a bend in the trail, approached a riderless
steed. Forba, having turned to face the barbarian, jerked his head around at
Conan’s exclamation. There wasn’t room to pass the other mount.
“What are we going to do?” Forba asked.
Conan grimaced. Without reply he leaped from his saddle, his fingers
instinctively finding crevices in the sheer cliff that would have baffled the
lowlander. His leather boots sought purchase as the Cimmerian passed
above both horses to drop to the trail in front of Forba’s mount.
The riderless horse, a thin-framed gelding, whinnied in protest, its eyes
rolled back in fear. The barbarian’s fist collided with the side of the horse’s
head with the force of an avalanche. Knocked instantly senseless, the
unconscious beast tumbled from the path and disappeared from view in the
frozen fog of blowing ice and snow.
Forba’s eyes were as large as meat pies as he watched the Cimmerian
swiftly clamber across the ice-rimed escarpment and leap back into his
saddle.
“It’s getting dark, move out,” barked the barbarian. “I think we’re gaining
on Yrdihz.”
“How can you tell?”
“There was fresh blood on that saddle,” Conan grit.
 Chapter 4

The icy plateau to which the path led was desolate. Nearly flat, and lying at
the highest elevation for a hundred miles in any direction, it offered vistas
of distant, icy peaks and glaciers whose beauty might have wrung sonnets
from bards that would stand the test of time. But the beauty went unnoticed
by the twain riding their weary mounts over the barrenness.
A half-mile away lay a jumble of rocks, amounting to little more than a
protuberance stabbing upward above the otherwise flat landscape. Toward
this they rode, there being nothing else to draw the eye. Drawing closer,
they saw that, other than the grays and whites of stone and snow a warmer
color tinted the mountain top. What it might be neither could guess. Ever
wary, Conan took a tighter grip on his sword.
Forba grunted in revulsion as they drew nearer, but Conan‘s hillsman’s nose
had already caught the scent. Upon closer inspection the cause of the
unusual discoloration was clear. A man—or what had once been a man—
had been reduced to a thick sauce which, at this altitude and its below-
freezing temperatures, was rapidly freezing into ice.
There was not much by which to identify the remains but for the splintered
fragments of habiliments, it being these by which the two horsemen were
able to determine exactly what the crimson muck was through which their
steeds plodded. Scattered about were bits of breeches and jerkin. These had
obviously been torn from their wearer as he was being reduced into pure
gore by an entity of immeasurable power.
Conan didn’t understand the supernatural, but he recognized it when he saw
it. “Crom,” he muttered.
“I told you this place was accursed,” hissed Forba, fearfully. “We were
fools to come here!”
“Shut up, dog!” he barked. “By the color of yon jerkin this is not Yrdihz—
and that gray we met on the track wasn’t his roan. He and one of his men
are still ahead of us.”
Apprehensively, Forba resumed the lead. Conan wasn’t taking any chances
of riding into an ambuscade so he had his guide proceed first. They drew
near the rocky pile where Conan discovered horse tracks in the accumulated
snow trapped between many large fragments of stone; the tracks
disappeared into the darkness of a tunnel. Conan directed Forba to follow
the tracks, the Cimmerian following—but not too closely, in case a stone
should fall from above intended for Forba.
Their path descended into the interior of the mountain, a path that
immediately darkened as the light was cut-off from the stone coming
together over their heads to blot out the sky. A dim radiance reflected from
the snowy plateau outside followed them for a short distance until even this
faded, leaving them in impenetrable darkness.
Ahead of him Conan could hear the clip-clop of Forba’s mount’s hooves on
the icy rock but he couldn’t distinguish his own hand in front of his face for
the blackness of the tunnel. Before they took many more steps a shout
pierced their ears, a cry that could only be rent from one in supreme agony,
or terror. The scream was cut-off abruptly.
Ahead the Cimmerian saw a lessening of the surrounding darkness. The
tunnel soon opened into a cavern whereat a steed immediately collided into
his black in its haste to rush into the twisting tunnel he was exiting; even in
the low light he recognized it as the roan of Yrdihz.
Cursing, Conan pushed forward, noting a greenish glow that seemed to
emanate from nowhere in particular. Only then did he realize Forba was no
longer with him.
 Chapter 5

“What in Zandru’s Nine Hells!” muttered Conan. He suspicioned treachery

was afoot but he had no time to waste looking for the thief. There were any
number of cracks and splits into which Forba might have slipped. He hadn’t
noticed any side branches, but admitted the possibility existed that they
might have become separated by such.
The most likely explanation was that the thief had taken advantage of an
opportunity to evade his captor. It was of no great moment to the barbarian:
Forba had served his purpose in guiding him here. He prodded the black
and proceeded across the cavern. With Forba all but forgotten, he focused
on Yrdihz, seeing no sign yet of the Hyrkanian. The loud clopping of the
black’s hooves on the icy stone echoed loudly in his ears; too loudly.
“Hold,” he whispered, tugging back on the bridle.
Slipping from the saddle he dropped the reins to the ground. The black
would stay there until he returned or something frightened it, an event the
Cimmerian couldn’t see happening since the great beast feared neither man
nor beast. There had been no repeat of the cry he’d heard so, clutching his
sword, he started through an opening, the only such, on the far side of the
grotto.
How can man number the favors bestowed him of the gods, gifted to those
who live closest to the cold wilds of the immortal ones? Clarity of sight
adorn such folk, or hearing that might be the envy of the creatures of the
deep forests and snowy slopes.
Surely the man who entered the eerily lit tunnel had found favor with the
great bearded one in whose name he blessed and cursed and swore, as was
his wont of the moment. As the sticky scalp of a man pealed lose from the
wall of the tunnel to smack wetly on the frozen floor, Conan’s uncanny
hearing heard—and hearing, interpreted.
His backward leap was greater than what most men might accomplish with
a running start. With a spectral roar the stone of the tunnel convulsed like a
cavernous, rocky throat. Having fallen upon his back with the exertion of
his leap, the king of Aquilonia backpedaled while the tunnel, its howl of
frustration thunderous, snapped its mouth shut, the edges of the
subterranean passage extending like distorted, stony lips as it sought to
devour its prey.
That eerie glow for which no source might be located now showed him the
ghostly outline of a serpent man’s face, graven in the stone wall of the
grotto, a face that had not been there moments before. Knowing it had
sprang its trap yet missed its prey, the entity’s wrath knew no bounds.
Straining to stretch its stony face forth to gulp this impertinent morsel who
dared intrude upon its demesne, it gnashed its stony teeth, and writhed in its
efforts.
“Crom’s beard!” The Cimmerian leaped quickly to his feet, his fingers
reflexively loosening then tightening upon his sword’s grip as if debating
the wisdom of trying his mettle against the stone of the serpent
abomination.
The tunnel had been high enough for a man upon a horse to enter. With the
monstrous convulsions of the ensorcelled stone continuing to stretch forth
its tongue in its attempts to snare him, pursing its lips and pealing them
back over its immense teeth in its struggles, the savage from the mountains
of Cimmeria scanned the cavern as he sought another way.
He had no way of knowing if the masticated corpse in the tunnel belonged
to Yrdihz or that worthy’s sole remaining warrior. But as he cast his eyes
quickly over the stone of the serpent cavern, Conan saw somewhat that
gave him a clue as to the identity of him whom the mountain had devoured.
The roarings and actions of the serpent throat had caused bits of flesh and
bone and other various pieces to spew across the yawning opening of the
tunnel, much as the phlegm of an angry man flies from his open, cursing
mouth. It was the clang of a horse’s bit that Conan’s ear and eye caught and
followed.
“That was the warrior of Yrdihz,” he muttered. He’d found the man, then,
just not in the manner in which he’d thought to find him. It did not surprise
him that the wily thief, Yrdihz, had let his warrior enter the tunnel first,
much as Conan himself had forced Forba to take the lead when they entered
the mountain.
“I’d guess the tunnel frightened Yrdihz’s horse and he was unseated. That
would explain why it was racing like mad out of here, riderless. But there’s
no way of knowing if the mouth gulped Yrdihz to boot, or if he’s even now
taking a different tunnel. Blast Forba, that cringing swine! That atlas
would’ve doubtless shown any other route. If I see him again I’ll feed his
hungry belly a yard of steel.”
Glancing over the floor more carefully he discerned something that caused
him to smile triumphantly. In the eerie, green Hell-glow he saw sticky, wet
footprints leading away along the wall toward the left of the tunnel which,
he thanked Crom, had quieted. Careful not to step too close to the tunnel
opening, he crouched and followed the bloody footprints, prints he guessed
belonged to Yrdihz.
Twenty paces from the stony throat he found a slender crack in the wall,
angled such that it would be impossible to see unless standing in front of it.
Here the footprints disappeared. He could not know if the person who left
the tracks entered the crevice in the wall, or continued, with the gore he’d
tracked through possibly having worn off his boots. Never one to debate
such things for long, Conan turned sideways and entered the slender
entrance...
 Chapter 6

With the point of his sword leading the way through the darkness, Conan
stepped rapidly along the jagged split in the rock, hoping it did not turn into
a mouth—or a belly. He was relieved when it opened into an astonishing,
carved room where a man crouched examining the contents of a niche in the
wall.
“Yrdihz!” Conan rushed forward the instant he spotted the killer of
Gallardo. “Fill your fist!”
The barbarian’s own hand was already crushing the leather-wrapped grip of
his blade. At the sound of his voice the Hyrkanian jerked in surprise.
“Korma! I thought you dead!”
“Not hardly, but that’s a claim you’ll be able to boast soon enough. For
Gallardo alone I’d have followed you here. But your actions have imperiled
one whose sandals you’re not fit to tie, and for her I’d follow you to Hell
itself.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the Hyrkanian ripped. Yrdihz
drew a curved scimitar with which to meet the hillman.
“No matter—you won’t have time to!” Conan slashed wickedly with the
straight edge of his broadsword.
Although Yrdihz was no mean antagonist, he faced one who was able to
make up in massive displays of force and speed anything he might have
lacked in skill which, when it came to sword fighting, was a quality in
which he lacked nothing. Yrdihz was an inexperienced coyote nipping at
the heels of a more experienced wolf who had slaughtered many of his likes
and kinds.
Having taken the room in at a glance, Conan now ignored the stone niches
lining the irregularly-shaped walls which climbed into darkness to a point
above their heads– niches holding objects strange to the barbarian’s eyes. It
had been these shelves Yrdihz had been perusing when Conan came upon
him unawares.
The clangor of their blades shattered the stillness of the mountain fastness.
In this place could not be heard the ragged gusts that gripped the stark
plateau outside, with only the sound of their steel and their heavy breathing
breaking what would otherwise be the stillness of the interior of the planet.
Yrdihz grunted at the power behind the older man’s strokes, quickly seeing
he would never survive the continued onslaught of this unbridled savage.
“There’s enough loot here for us to each go away burdened with more than
we can carry. Why don’t we divide it—before one of us loses an eye!”
But Conan was angry. He had lost a good man, and the plans he and
Gallardo had made, causing them to make this perilous journey in the first
place, this man had put in jeopardy. Conan bellowed a war cry, bringing his
blade down in an overhanded swipe that would have split the Hyrkanian
from crown to crotch had the nimble thief not leaped to one side in time.
Diving into a roll, the Hyrkanian came up against the stone shelves, his eyes
widening as he spotted something interesting in the cavity before him.
“Gods, what a jewel—look, Korma! We don’t have to fight over this trove
—we can both be rich!”
In his hands he held a bizarrely shaped stone of glimmering, emerald green,
the unnatural radiance of the cavern catching it strangely.
Conan paused in his attack as he took in the sight of the stone, a fact for
which the Hyrkanian was grateful. In the glimmering of the green glow of
the serpent cavern the stone was indeed captivating to the eye. Both men
ogled it momentarily, before glancing again at one another.
What would have occurred next only the Cimmerian hillman knows. Would
vengeance consume him, causing him to send the icy steel of his sword
through the heart of Yrdihz? Or, having found the jewel he had for months
sought, would he be content to take it and leave, uncaring if the thief lived
or died in those epic heights?
For while Yrdihz yet gripped the stone, holding it aloft to distract the
barbarian, a shimmering occurred on the only section of wall devoid of the
receptacles holding untold numbers of antediluvian artifacts dating before
the Thurian Age of Kull of Valusia. What had moments before been a
surface of roughhewn stone swirled and blended until it became a mirror-
like surface. But it was one in which was reflected a different world from
the dim room in the vertiginous heights of Brythunia in which they stood.
Seeing the snarling face of the barbarian relax in surprise as he directed his
gaze behind him, Yrdihz, overcome with curiosity, glanced over his
shoulder to see what had caught the attention of the Cimmerian. Instead of
the blank wall of stone he expected, he saw pictured there aerie heights and
vapors tossed in a sky of sullen gray from which marched now an army.
Their indistinct faces, eerily snake-like, were obscured beneath cloaks of a
ghostly hue, while their bodies were those of men. As he watched
enthralled their leader stepped through the glimmering surface and without
hesitation clutched Yrdihz about the throat and heaved him off the floor.
 Chapter 7

Yrdihz flashed upward, caught in the chilling grip of the ghostly form upon
whose heels swarmed others of its kind. The atlas, for which many had
perished to find this desolate place, fluttered to the floor, forgotten now that
it was no longer needed.
Like a wintry blast, the specters poured into the chamber, revolving rapidly
about the two men, darting in with swords of otherworldly make in their
ghostly grips. The Cimmerian ran into them thinking to rend them but
found his blade was useless. It was only the great strength of his thews
giving him the speed wherewith to evade their thrusts which saved him, for
he quickly learned his blade wasn’t equal to the task.
As if through a vapor his blade passed harmlessly through theirs while, after
he received a bloody furrow across both his forearms, he saw that his flesh
was not so lucky. From every angle their spectral forms flashed toward him.
Their wraithlike robes, which at first obscured their features, no longer hid
their hideous visage now that they were darting about the chamber.
Peering into the dark recesses of their hoods Conan saw they faced an army
of serpent spirits, ghostly images of the fabled serpent men of the past.
From whence they were summoned, or what dark sorcery made possible
their presence, he did not know, only that they were here with the very real
threat of their spectral blades speeding toward his vitals.
“Crom’s beard!” he swore in frustration. He retreated but they pursued him
hotly.
Yrdihz hung suspended in the air while the ghostly entity, its cloaked face
thrust close to his, whispered sibilantly. In the specter’s fist was gripped an
unearthly blade whose fine point was held over the Hyrkanian’s heart.
Lifted from the floor by supernatural means, for the creature into whose
clutches he had fallen was not corporeal, the archer was held in the
merciless grip of a creature that caused the hairs at Conan’s nape to stand
on end.
“Korma!” The Hyrkanian, still clueless as to Conan’s identity, choked from
where he was held in the clutches of the specter. “Quick—take it!”
“Take what, you fool?” ripped the Cimmerian, not daring to take his eyes
off the swirling serpents. The entities were relentless, haranguing him with
their swords while his own was ineffectual to deflect their blades, let alone
pierce their hides.
He was by now covered in gashes. But although painful, he began to
suspect their cuts were not designed to kill by cutting flesh alone. An
insidious chill had begun to invade his veins, creeping along his limbs—a
chill that should not be there from these shallow scratches. He guessed their
cuts were drawing out his life into those ensorcelled blades... the way they
glowed now...
“It wants to know of the map... who’s seen it... it wants me... to release the
stone...”
He knew his last moments were upon him. Wishing, as might most
vagabonds, to exact some form of revenge on his enemy, Yrdihz tore his
gaze from the hideous and hypnotic visage staring at him from deep within
the cloak to seek out the Cimmerian who was confronted by a brood of the
beasts. Fading fast, his sight darkening, the Hyrkanian tossed an object at
Conan.
The barbarian caught it, immediately receiving several fresh cuts along his
outstretched arm as he did so. But whereas before each painful gash would
send a burst of cold lethargy along his limbs, this time their blades had no
such effect, as if the jewel were an elixir against such. “It’s mine, by Crom!
The green gem of the serpent men—the wizard was right.”
“What wiz—” The Hyrkanian never finished his sentence. The specter
shoved its spirit blade through him until it protruded out his back. Bright,
red gore ran down the fist and elbow of the haunt gripping the sword upon
which Yrdihz was impaled, his blood pooling in an ever widening puddle
beneath him.
Now the entity holding Yrdihz aloft turned its cowled head to face Conan.
From deep within the veil of its cloak he saw slitted eyes more inhuman
than any living beast’s. Without any perceptible effort it lowered its sword
arm, allowing the body of Yrdihz to slide from its blade where his corpse
dropped gruesomely to the floor. Now it drifted toward the Cimmerian who
stood holding the glaring, green gem.
Reflexively Conan palmed the gem as he eyed the entrance to the chamber,
the distance swarming with spectral serpent men. Something in the shape of
the gem caused him to glance at it. The dagger of Gallardo instantly came
to mind. This stone wasn’t an uncarved piece of rough shaped ore—it was
part of a setting! He had a hunch based on his quick examination of the
dagger days before, yet it was a hunch based on the calculating eye of a
master thief.
The entity drew back its blade, it taking nearly all of Conan’s self-control
not to run, his hillsman’s nerves being easily shattered in the face of the
weird and the uncanny. From his leathern satchel he withdrew the
mysterious blade Gallardo must have discovered along with the map. There
was the pommel with the void he’d noticed earlier with the missing
capstone. It took Conan but a glance to note it was similar in shape and size
as the base of the gem. He inserted it without delay, grunting as he felt it
snap into place.
Now to his ear the sibilant whisperings and hissings in which the ghosts
fought became the curses of the guardians of the serpent cavern. No longer
were their forms so ghostly. Whatever glamour or spell had summoned
them no longer held Conan’s senses in captivity. Before him they recoiled at
sight of the blade from whose pommel the green stone glowed
promiscuously. Conan, roaring a wordless cry, leapt at the foremost serpent-
ghost.
 Chapter 8

“Thus it came to pass that as the king returned to Sargassa from the hunt
with empty hand he paused at the edge of the forest to pay homage to
Wicanna in hopes she might bless him ere he regained his city. As he
uttered the last word of his supplication a strange figure of a man exited the
wood not distant. His mien was such that the king feared for himself and his
retainers and so unleashed him a quarrel that sped true. On approach of the
man, slain by the king’s arrow, it was beheld to be a snake that walketh
upon legs, that masqueradeth as a man. In its hand it clutched a dagger of
unusual make, which had lost its capstone...”
~ From the chronicles of King Vizagroth of Brythunia
~~~
Conan instantly perceived something had changed when he attached the
gem to the dagger’s pommel. As if understanding they would need
reinforcements, their leader—the specter who’d slain Yrdihz—turned
toward the mirror in which was reflected an otherworldly scene rather than
the stone walls of the chamber one might have expected.
With a deafening roar the entity cried out. In an instant there poured
through the mirror-like surface another swarm of haunts. The Cimmerian
charged for the doorway, his ensorcelled dagger slicing the spirits as if they
were of flesh and bone. In spite of his horrific surroundings he laughed
darkly at the familiar feel of a keen blade cutting flesh and notching bone.
He felt a tingling and realized it extended to his extremities; balling up his
ham-fist he caved-in the face of a ghost, his fist sumping to his wrist in its
skull.
“So they can die!” he roared triumphantly. Conan went mad then...
smashing... cutting... stabbing. As he slashed the heavy, ensorcelled blade
across a spectral throat the ghost gurgled its last and disappeared in a
vapory ichor that instantly began dissipating. A resurgence of the spirits
whirling around the chamber like dervishes forced Conan back several steps
until he stood above the skewered corpse of Yrdihz who lay all unknowing
of the tempest being enacted above his dead clay.
With the brushing of his boot against the hacked corpse of his erstwhile
drinking companion and fellow thief, Conan was reminded why he was
standing in this icy room atop a Brythunian mountain top. Contrary to what
Yrdihz believed, the barbarian was not here to plunder—at least not in the
sense a thief might assume.
Stooping quickly, he thrust the dagger’s pommel with the green stone over
the heart of the slain thief. Hesitating but a moment, the Cimmerian
muttered the arcane words that would unleash the power of the stone—a
phrase wrung from entities who had been ripped from their heathens’ hells
and tortured by an Aquilonian wizard until one was found who knew the
forbidden words.
“Sappho pthalo sodin Sptha!” hissed Conan. The hairs on his arms rose
eerily as taking part in sorcery went against his primitive nature, it creeping
him out much as a sudden encounter with an insect might another.
Savagely he wrenched himself upright in time to catch the descending blade
of a ghost, the specter hissing in protest. With a massive upheaval of power
he shoved the dagger through its lower mandible to protrude out the top of
its hooded skull. Conan followed by kicking it in the gut, sending its
evaporating corpse flying into its comrades.
He heard a deep intake of breath, followed by a curse. It was Yrdihz—the
man lived! The Cimmerian was relieved to see that the stone did indeed
hold the power to restore life, as he had been told.
Resurrected by the ancient, arcane arts of the serpent men, Yrdihz struggled
to sit up, venting curses all the while. “May Erlik eat your balls in a
pudding, Korma! Why did you have to come to Greshahla?”
“Shut up,” growled the Cimmerian, “and fight!” Seeing that the gem had
restored the hacked corpse of Yrdihz to life, Conan was reassured that it
would perform another marvel—he having been guaranteed of the stone’s
efficacy by the wizard, Melkronias, who understood such matters.
“What can I do against these things?” The thief staggered upright, fumbling
in the floor for his curved blade which he finally found.
“Link arms!” cried Conan. “Now, you fool, before they kill us both! Only
by contact with me may your blade find their vitals!”
The Hyrkanian did as bidden, linking his right arm with Conan’s left, the
two then standing back-to-back as the whirlwind of ghostly assailants
hissed and cursed and darted at them. More than once did they feel the sting
of those unearthly blades. But now they fought on a more equal footing,
with the aura of Conan’s gem-blade extending to Yrdihz, giving the
Hyrkanian’s scimitar the capacity to hack through specter flesh.
The two men battled, inch by inch, toward the doorway leading to the outer
cavern, fighting desperately for each footstep, with each step bringing them
closer to escaping the chamber. The mirrored wall reflected a foreboding
sky broiling with dark clouds, while haunt after haunt flew into the cyclone
of whirling spirits seeking the lives of these plunderers of the serpent
chamber. The foremost among these, the one who had slain Yrdihz, was
their commander. It eyed Conan malevolently.
“Twasss you ordained the torment of the brethrennn at the hand of the
wizard—Melkroniasss! Ssslayyy themmm!” he hissed, his long fingers
pointing oddly at the twain. “Don’t allow them to leave the
chammmberrrr...”
 Chapter 9

The leader dove at Conan. Behind him the barbarian heard the grunts of
Yrdihz who, although hampered by the immense thews of Conan, yet used
his scimitar to good effect. With as little effort as if the Hyrkanian had been
a babe in swaddles, Conan dragged the thief about the chamber in his
efforts to come to the doorway. And everywhere they went the vapors of
slit-throated and gutted demons dwindled into nothingness while others of
them reinforced their seeming never-dwindling ranks.
“You want this?” Conan brandished the jewel-fitted dagger and glared at the
commander directing the haunts. “Come and take it!”
The serpent ghost’s face wrinkled in hatred at Conan’s mockery. “I wish I
neverrr made that map!” it hissed.
Conan barked a ragged laugh, enjoying the baiting of an enemy. “So ‘tis
you I have to thank for the map. Melkronias tortured many a snake ghost
before he found one that could sing like a siren!”
The serpent snarled and leaped, claws and spectral-sword gnashing and
slashing at Conan’s innards. “Yes, I made the map. And ‘twasss I brought
these icons of power and supremacy here that they might remain guarded
until such time as our people were ready. You upset our scheme in waysss
you cannot imagine, barbarian!”
“I’ve got quite an imagination.” Conan sliced a painful furrow along the
ribs of the ghost of the ages-dead serpent sorcerer with a powerful swipe it
was barely able to deflect. “I just don’t care . . . about you . . . or your
plans!”
Each sentence was ripped out between the colossal efforts of mighty thews.
Conan’s arm, tipped with the ensorcelled dagger, rent dozens of haunts in
his efforts to slaughter the sorcerer shade. The doorway seemed further
away than ever and each passing moment saw the ghostly forces further
augmented. Conan began to sense his bones might soon lie here in state, for
even such as he might not fight forever against an army that never found its
ranks depleted.
Wielding its ghostly sword with both hands the sorcerer swept in, with
Conan catching its heavier blade on his dagger. Snarling, the hooded
sorcerer reared, towering over the Cimmerian, his otherworldly power
slowly forcing the poniard closer and closer to Conan’s face until the man
could see his own reflection in it.
Was this his own death-mask he was staring at, a precursor to what might
befall in the next moments? Did all men see some vision of their face
staring at them at the time of their death, a reflection arranged by the gods
in mockery of man’s mortality? How many dead had seen their own horror-
filled visage in the sheen of a wet axe? How many slain had seen their faces
reflected in the swords and maces wielded by the Cimmerian?
“Ha!” the King of Aquilonia barked aloud at the thought. Countless!
“You dare laugh?” intoned the serpent. Even at this close proximity, yet
were its features obscured beneath its hood. One hand left its sword to seek
Conan’s throat. The barbarian, with equal effort, sought to push the sword
away that he might thrust at its innards.
“I dare anything,” Conan grit through compressed teeth. The chords in his
neck stood out in stark contrast, like the distant edges of jagged mountains,
as he reflexively tautened his muscles against the choking fingers. With a
massive upheaval he shoved the sword away from his face.
Like lightning the sorcerer slashed his sword downward in a wicked cut.
With his gaze fixed on Conan’s face, his own eyes widened in anticipation
of cleaving this hated human through and through. From nowhere appeared
a descending blade, lopping off the sorcerer’s hand at the wrist, the
specter’s sword flying from evaporating fingers. In the flashing arc of the
blade that severed its member it recognized the jeweled dagger wielded by
the leering Cimmerian.
The serpent ghost roared in agony, its thrashings causing the hood of its
cloak to fall away. In desperation it thrust its hideous face toward him, its
mouth opening wide as if it would snap his face off his skull. With a snarl
the King of Aquilonia thrust the serpent dagger down its throat, its eyes
going wide in surprised shock as the dagger exploded out the back of its
neck. The ghost army recoiled as the sorcerer began evaporating like a gray
fog before the sun.
“Quick, Yrdihz!” the Cimmerian shouted as the haunts hesitated at their
general’s demise. With arms yet linked and their blades never ceasing to gut
and maim, the two bolted for the doorway, diving through the opening to
land painfully upon the ice-rimed stone of the cavern.
Behind them all was silence, the only sound being that of the roar of the
wind which came to them distantly down the narrow path to the plateau.
Inside the chamber they’d just fled a darkness had settled and nothing could
be seen.
~~~
Yet standing where he’d left it was the black. Conan approached the horse,
smiling as it turned its soft muzzle to him, expecting a treat. “Sorry old
man; but later—I promise.” The steed nickered. Taking the reins, Conan
motioned for Yrdihz to precede him and together they started into the dark
passage that led to the outer fastnesses.
“We just fought for our lives together, barbarian, and yet you still mistrust
me?” Yrdihz offered from ahead.
“You’re a thief; I’d be a fool to.”
“Mayhap. But in this instance you have nothing to fear. I’ve never met such
a man as you. You’re no mere thief. Who are you—really?”
Conan saw no reason to continue the subterfuge. The alias had allowed he
and Gallardo to snoop unsuspected, he in the town of Greshahla while his
cohort he had sent to Kör, fifty miles away. Being a younger man than the
Cimmerian, Gallardo had been a more natural fit to join the military of
Herzog whom he had been told possessed the Atlas—the map that would
lead to the stone, the stone he now possessed.
“I am Conan of Cimmeria, late of Aquilonia where many there call me
king.”
“Conan!” The name was known across the breadth of Hyborea; few there
were who had not heard it.
“Aye.”
Yrdihz fell quiet for several steps as he pondered this revelation. “I believe
you now when you said you were not on the pike to slay the Kingsman. For,
what need would have the King of Aquilonia for a few paltry coins? Why
all this, then?”
Behind him, Conan pondered distant things, recollections that caused his
brow to furrow with disquiet, and with rage. “My youngest granddaughter,
Vasa, who is naught but a small child, has fallen ill. For weeks has she lain
in a dark stupor, creeping closer day-by-day to death’s door. The greatest
healers of the realm were impotent to forestall what they one and all assured
me must eventually come to pass.”
“I was unable to accept their predictions. Having exhausted the healers I
next sought the counsel of shamans and sorcerers, although it greatly taxed
my simple upbringings to do so. One and all sought to scry some manner to
alter Vasa’s destiny. Yet only one of these saw a chance wherewith she
might be saved—the fabled green stone of the serpent men.”
The stone had disappeared in the dim past. It had for a time been housed
amongst the trove of Kull of Valusia. Yet, as it was secretly stolen from the
Temple of the Serpent Men so, too, came it to disappear from the annals of
history until eventually no man knew its whereabouts.
Very few there were who knew it existed. Many of these believed it had
been reclaimed by the serpent men and returned to their world long ago.
Others guessed it had been destroyed, or that those who came to possess it
knew not its heritage and thus its identity had become obfuscated over time.
“Melkronias, a wizard of dark lore, knew of the stone’s existence,” Conan
continued his tale. “As he explained it to me, with the evocation of certain
spirits he eventually came to possess the forbidden lore I needed, and for
which I offered to fill his coffers.”
“But it wasn’t gold or jewels he wanted. Instead it was certain other items
I’d come into possession of through war and plunder which the wizard
demanded for remuneration, items the uses of which only one of his kind
might comprehend.”
In order to obtain the lore to barter for the items Conan possessed, the
sorcerer summoned spirits from the underworld. Upon racks such as only
one the level of Melkronias might conjure, he tortured out of them
information for the telling of which they would die a thousand deaths when
they returned to the lands they formerly haunted.
It was the location of a map—an atlas—detailing the disposition of many
tokens of power, including the green stone, which these spirits eventually
revealed to the sorcerer. This knowledge, along with the serpent phrase
utilized to summon the power of the stone, he passed on to Conan that the
great king might save the grandchild for love of whom the barbarian would
have eradicated whole nations if needs be.
They exited the long, upward reaching tunnel and stepped out of its
darkness beneath the gray skies of the frozen plateau. Here, Conan paused
and spoke again to the thief. “Heed, Yrdihz: your band is gone. Thanks to
the green jewel of the serpent men you have an opportunity to make a new
life, different from the old. What say you accompany me to Aquilonia? Our
archers could always use a man of your skill.”
Before the Hyrkanian might answer, however, a feminine voice interrupted.
“I say leave the vagabond to his just deserts, Aquilonian, and take me with
you instead.”
 Chapter 10

Stepping alluringly from behind one of the numerous stone outcroppings

proceeded one of the most beautiful women either man had ever beheld.
Her eyes sparkled as sun beams from beneath a mass of hair that was a
veritable forest fire of red locks. Scantily clad, her white limbs were as
purest marble for whiteness while her breasts were revealed to rosy tips
which looked as firm as fresh picked berries.
“Gods, girl, where did you come from?” Conan asked.
But Yrdihz, although his eyes helplessly devoured her with the same relish
his mouth might have a freshly grilled deer haunch, took umbrage at her
comment. “I am no more a vagabond. He asked you a question, girl: what
do you here?”
Her eyes were a vivid green, as green as fresh spring fields. They never left
Conan’s as her lips parted to make answer. “I saw horsemen taking the trail
from my hut near the foot of the mountain; I followed. No one comes here.
Arriving, I saw no one, but then I heard your voices just now, proceeding
from yon cave. Did you find that for which you ventured to this barren
place?”
Conan nodded his head. “I did, indeed. Come, girl, we’ll accompany you to
your hut. Mayhap we’ll have a bite to eat to warm our marrow bones before
we ride for Greshahla.”
The girl seemed to have eyes only for the barbarian. Approaching, she laid
a hand upon his broad chest. “And what is in Greshahla for one of such
repute as thou?”
Yrdihz was staring at the girl’s beauty, which was mesmerizing. Yet, for all
her allure, to find a woman of such beauty wandering icy mountain tops in
such a state was peculiar. A second-story man and a cutthroat, his
suspicions were aroused. “I recall no hut. And where’s your horse, girl?”
As though with great reluctance, the girl slowly turned her gaze upon the
thief. Yrdihz found himself gazing into twin pools of spellbinding, liquid
jade. For pure beauty he had never seen their equal. Across their fluid
surface tiny gray clouds raced in entrancing reflection of the tumultuous
sky. Her lips, redder than a thousand setting suns, parted to reveal teeth so
white they were nearly translucent along the edges.
“You are one with a curious nature, Yrdihz of Hyrkania, Son of Zhaidak,”
she purred. “Many years have passed since you stole the bow for the theft
of which your father lost his hand. Yet, still you wear that gauntlet covering
your left wrist—as a reminder.”
After she finished speaking, Yrdihz glanced at Conan. Her words were icy,
barbed hooks in the Hyrkanian’s heart. His chest rose and fell rapidly,
crimson raced up his neck into his face. To further his guilt, Conan, his eyes
hard as adamantine, heaped further condemnation upon him.
“You allowed your father be punished for your theft? I thought you a brave
man, Yrdihz; it seems I find myself in the company of a thief and a
coward.”
Yrdihz stammered when he started to speak. His mind was suddenly a
jumble of confusion and shame. “No! She lies!” he denied.
“Does she, Yrdihz? Your face is flushed, yet it’s cold enough on this
mountain top to freeze blood into ice.” The Cimmerian placed a hand on the
hilt of his sword. “Get out of my sight. I’ve kept company with thieves and
slayers, but I’ll not abide a gutless coward.”
Mumbling, unable to speak, Yrdihz staggered away, tears streaming down
his flushed face, tears that froze in his beard.
“We’re better off without that fainthearted weakling, King Conan,” the girl
said silkily once he was gone. She stood at his side, one hand upon one of
his massive arms while with the other she turned his face toward hers. “Let
us descend the mountain, my king; my hut awaits! Have you the stone?”
“I’d give my kingdom to spend a single minute in your hut!” the barbarian
cried passionately, his eyes staring. “Yes, I have the stone, although the
taking of it was more difficult that I’d imagined. If it hadn’t been for Yrdihz
—a shame the man turned out to be a spineless twit.”
“Fortunate it was, then, you discovered it before he could inveigle himself
in your good graces—”
The arrow, sped from the rocky path taken by Yrdihz, embedded itself
deeply in the girl’s left breast, the quarrel sped with such force it protruded
a hand’s breadth out her back. She cried out. Conan caught her, easing her
failing form to the icy ground.
“What—” he exclaimed. Turning, he espied the Hyrkanian approaching.
“Yrdihz! Son of a mongrel! Your father’s won’t be the only hand lopped off
at the wrist. I’ll dismember you until you’re nothing more than a torso,
which grisly thing I’ll then topple off this mountain with a kick of my foot.
Now draw steel!”
“Conan—wait!” the man cried. He held a hand up to forestall the enraged
barbarian. But Conan was not to be stopped. Lunging forward, he executed
a vicious swipe that, had it connected, would have cut the Hyrkanian in-
half.
“Enough words,” he yelled. “Fight!”
“Conan, listen to me!” Yrdihz deflected two blows from the Cimmerian’s
blade, grunting as he did so from the sheer force behind the blade of the
King of Aquilonia. He didn’t return the strokes but only parried to guard
himself. “You’re bewitched, you great, lumbering fool! I only told that story
to one man and I was drunk or I wouldn’t have done so. I warned him if he
ever mentioned it, I’d kill him . . . and I now have. That man was Forba.
Look for yourself!”
“You’re crazy!” Conan shouted, staggering. He shut his eyes, blinking hard.
Something seemed important that he was forgetting, something he could not
recall. The point of his sword fell to the frozen stone with a clink. “What in
hell, Yrdihz? Why am I so dizzy of a sudden?”
Warily, the Hyrkanian approached, sheathing his scimitar as he did so.
“Don’t strike me,” he said. Stepping to just in front of Conan, he looked up
at the massive tower of flesh and bone that was this mighty man of myth.
“Gods, you’re a hothead. I believe it now when they say the bigger they are,
the harder they fall. You fell for her hook, line and sinker, you big oaf.”
“Careful,” Conan said, opening his eyes which were beginning to clear.
“I’m still king.”
Together they walked to the crumpled form. Rolling it over, they beheld a
blurring image, somewhere between the mountain girl and—Forba! Slowly
it resolved until it took the form of a serpent man. Conan and Yrdihz each
cursed.
“It seems we were both fooled,” the thief ripped. “This man has rode with
me for months!”
The eyes of the serpent man opened. “For the first time in centuries your
kind looks upon me as I really am.”
“Who are you?” Conan asked. “Why have you done this? Why the
masquerade?”
His eyes half-closed, the serpent allowed a sneer to cross his face. “You
could not pronounce my name if I told you. Suffice to say, I was a servant
in the household of the mage who founded this place. But ancient I have
become. So old, I felt my death creeping upon me. For centuries I sought
the green gem to restore youth and vitality. Years ago, I heard rumors of the
missing atlas that showed the location where Xotaolaianx secreted the
hoard, that selfish fiend—the same map your Gallardo discovered and
sought to bring to you. I didn’t count on him discovering the dagger, as
well.”
“Why didn’t you steal the map and come here yourself?” Conan wondered.
“I was a servant, not a warrior. I feared the wardens. Only a sorcerer may
command them. I only joined a band of thieves out of desperation. You saw
what the outer guardian did to the man. And the ghosts of the mirror—
summoned with ancient sorcery, they guard the talismans of power of
which mankind knows naught. I had hoped to sneak in and plunder the gem
while the guardians were busy with Yrdihz and his men. But I became
fearful at the last and couldn’t make myself enter, so I slipped into a side
passage.”
Yrdihz squatted beside the dying snake man. He gestured toward the dark
entrance that led into the bowels of the mountain. “Whence came the hoard,
Forba?”
”Xotaolaianx, after a century of compiling tokens of power from our
dwindling kingdom, smuggled those items he collected to this place.
Together with two others who were his equals in the dark arts, they cast
powerful spells to fashion guardians to defend the lore until such time as
our kind gained supremacy over mankind.”
“One of the three must have taken the dagger of the green stone when they
left this place, the dagger being a token of power in and of itself.
Xotaolaianx retained the map–the chart your wizard, Melkronias, called the
Atlas of the Serpent Men. It was this which was to lead our kind back into
power after humanity had forgotten us.”
The two men stood there, watching as the serpent man’s life ebbed out.
Each knew it was within Conan’s power, with the use of the stone, to save
him. Yet each knew he would not. At the last his face grew gruesome,
indeed, his slitted eyes at last rolling upward beneath his scaly, wrinkled
brow.
“Crom,” Conan muttered. “They’re a strange race—nearly as strange in
death as they are in life.”
“Who can understand the serpent people? They were sent here by angry
gods in the long ago to destroy us,” claimed Yrdihz. “Come, my king, let us
leave this place.”
They left Forba where he lay and started down the stony path. Not far
distant they came upon the Hyrkanian’s roan. It was from his mount that
Yrdihz had retrieved his bow after discovering the horse alone on the path
when he fled, ensorcelled by Forba’s accusations. Further down the
mountain they found Forba’s mount, grazing from grass protruding out of
freshly fallen snow. Tying the horse to a lead they resumed the trail south.
 Chapter 11

A few days later, on the outskirts of Greshahla near the Hyperborean

border, a strange report was made. A villager, making his rounds to check
his traps, found himself taking a shortcut near a series of cliffs where the
townsfolk were wont to bury their dead.
Unseen, he watched as two men approached a certain tomb. Unaided, the
larger of these scooted a large stone from in front of the entrance in a
miraculous display of strength, both men then stooping low to enter. A
moment later the villager saw a lambent, green shimmering reflected on the
ice riming the rocky surface, for it was yet winter in the lowlands.
Curious, he continued to watch. Eventually, three men exited the tomb,
which they left open. A third horse provided the mysterious third man a
mount; together they thundered off southwest.
~~~
As they rode the southwest pike, Gallardo, his mind filled with questions,
eyed Conan and his new companion. The stranger looked familiar. At last
his curiosity, he found, must be cured of what ailed it.
“My king?”
Conan eyed his man, a half-smile on his face. He needn’t tell him how
relieved he was when, with the serpent stone pressed over the stilled heart
as the barbarian mumbled the words of power, the youth drew a deep breath
and opened his eyes. Well he knew the young man’s mate, a beautiful
Ophirian who anxiously awaited his arrival; were he to return to Aquilonia
without him it would be to face a catamount.
Even so, Gallardo’s resurrection had not been undertaken lightly. Conan’s
lifelong disdain for sorcery made it a difficult decision to visit the man’s
tomb. Yet, in spite of his hatred for the unnatural world of wizardry, he had
felt the need to satisfy himself about something of which he had become
curious. He needed reassurance that the stone’s unnatural powers were not
somehow connected to the serpent chamber. This living, breathing Gallardo
was proof that such was not the case.
“Gallardo?”
Behind the two rode Yrdihz, a Hyrkanian, late of northern Brythunia.
“Who be yon Hyrkanian? He seems passing familiar to me.”
Conan guessed this topic must be broached eventually; so, too, had Yrdihz.
The Hyrkanian girt himself for what he knew must follow.
“My king, allow me,” quoth the bearded archer. Urging his horse alongside
Gallardo’s, he eyed the younger man. Beside him Yrdihz seemed a grizzled
fox. Twenty years his senior, his eyes held intelligence and sobriety of
mien. In his forty years Yrdihz had fought wars and become a professional
catpurse.
“My face seemeth familiar for it was I who sped the quarrel that felled
you,” he admitted.
“I knew it! You killed me, sirrah!” Gallardo swore a wrathful oath, hauling
his steed to a standstill in the middle of the road and drawing his sword.
“My king—we ride with a felon!”
“Hold, Gallardo! Yes, ‘twas the band of Yrdihz who ransacked you on the
pike that day we were to meet. But he’s put that life behind him. He saved
my life when I faced the serpent man disguised as a beautiful siren. He’s a
man of Aquilonia now.”
“But he killed me!” maintained Gallardo.
“Aye,” admitted Yrdihz. “That I did. But as the green jewel brought thee to
life, so too, did it I. I was slain by a serpent ghost after pilfering the green
gem that restored life to you. We are brothers of the stone now, you and I.
You may have my hand on it.”
“We must keep this bit of Gallardo’s death between ourselves,” Conan
warned, looking pointedly at Yrdihz. “Were Sela to learn you slew her
Gallardo we’d never hear the end of it.”
At mention of the buxom, raven-haired Ophirian, Gallardo grinned. “I have
this over you,” he said, extending his hand to Yrdihz. “My king has
forbidden me to kill you. But should you step out of line it might happen
that Sela hears mention of your exploits in Greshahla. And it might be that
not even the greatest king that ever lived could stop her in the
consummation of her wrath!”
Laughing, the three kicked their steeds into a cantor and resumed the trail.
They had miles to go and a young girl to save—a young girl for whom a
grizzled king would venture forth from the comforts of his capital to
confront bandits and serpent specters in the cold of ice-locked mountains
far from home.
After riding several miles, his companions noticed the king had fallen into a
sullen, contemplative mood, as though he pondered the weighty things
awaiting his arrival. Gallardo commented upon the king’s silence, asking
him if ought was amiss—did he dread the return to the politics of rule, or
was he but anxious about Vasa, his granddaughter.
“Certainly, I can scarce wait to pull Vasa’s spirit from where it roams back
to the brightness of the waiting world, Gallardo. Spring comes, and I will
not have her miss it. But it is not this, nor is it the duties of my station,
which you intuitively guessed quite often pale as compared to the life I led
as a common man, which have me thinking.”
The king eyed the dagger Gallardo had discovered with the atlas where it
stuck out of his belt, the serpent gem gleaming from its pommel like green
Hell-fire. “You will keep this between us: I have been mulling this entire
misadventure, brought on by the illness into which Vasa mysteriously fell
prey. In doing so, I have thought much of the solution which only
Melkronias was able to offer.”
“He alone knew of this stone, and in supplying the knowledge of it he came
into possession of objects I had accumulated without understanding their
power and abilities—items similar in nature to the objects I saw in the
serpent cavern, one of which was this gem.”
Conan’s companions immediately caught the insinuation, but it was Yrdihz
who voiced his understanding. “You mean to say you suspicion this wizard,
this Melkronias, of having caused the malady to your granddaughter in the
first place, with the intention of eventually coming into possession of the
serpent stone?”
Conan’s face was dark. His keen eyes scanned the trail and he didn’t bother
turning his head when he made his reply. “Not merely the gem, but the
location of the serpent chamber with the relics. I deem when we return I
shall shortly receive a visit from the wizard, whom has never visited me
before the day I summoned him as a last resort to save Vasa. But when he
comes again, I’m guessing it will be to take the stone—and a man.”
Gallardo asked, “A man? What man, my king? And how would he ever find
the relics? You said yourself the Atlas was lost. Without it, how might
Melkronias find the chamber if he aims to loot it? Only you and Yrdihz
now know its whereabouts—Oh!”
Conan glanced briefly at young Gallardo. “My thought precisely, only you
voiced it with more eloquence.”
Their moods somber, the three rode on in silence. Shortly, they crossed into
Nemedia where they would skirt towns and cities that they might make
their way in secret to their own borders. They currently didn’t war with the
Nemedians, but that could change with the shifting of a single breeze.

Consummatum est
The Queen Of Archeron

- Than Osrules
 “A real hero remains accountable until the end.” — Tiberius Crassus
(Dragon Blade)

Chapter 1

Between the sun and the sapphire twinkle of the reaches, the glimmer of
steel on the surface of the Zingaran Sea was noticeably out of place.
Not far from the jutting mounds of the fortress-like island, coupled with the
blink of metal, the swimming form of a man shaped against the waves. The
swimmer, whose surprisingly eased strokes in the surf would have
reminded anyone of a southern tiger, seemed an impossible contradiction
amidst the wind and warm brine.
The tiger's name was Conan.
As the barbarian worked in the surf of the island, he settled into a natural
eddy of the tides. In turn, the current brought him in to a well-formed draw
in the wall of the isle, not much more than a small bay set between the slabs
of ancient basalt. Of course, the exhausted man came to the confluence with
his sword still in hand.
At last, the sight of land was cause for cheer. He had trailed the wicked
coast for miles, and finally he had found a spot where the waves broke and
the shore had scalable slope of cliffs.
He was soaked and tired beyond words, but the small cove provided some
respite from the open waves and a clear opportunity for landfall. With his
sea-shrunk hands he clawed at the shore like a craven beast. Fortunately for
the barbarian, the cliffs were like carved steps, easy for climbing and stable
rock for both foot and hand. The swim had tired him, but as a proper
Cimmerian who could climb and walk the endless hills of the north for
those same endless stretches, he had some vigor saved to yank himself
between the square ledges and dare death once more. There he settled,
halfway up the wall, where the sea kelp was dried and the water could no
longer touch his feet. Below, the waves lapped softer now, and all the signs
of the ungodly tumult of the night had faded with the sun.
The wreck had been a nightmare flash.
Two days aboard the wide dhow boat set for the deep coves of G'rann bay
in Zingara. They had been armed to their very teeth, ready for another
profitable strike. Their plan was simple; a thief's raid on the nearby Pirate
Isles of the Corsair Lord Mau-Keefe, nothing more. They had robbed his fat
stocks twice already, and the venture had proven plenty worth the while.
Yet, losing the stringy Shemite Kual on the last raid proved a bad omen.
This trip, Conan's party was four, including the supposed sorcerer D'lim,
who had been taken on with Conan's protest to replace the lost Shemite.
Conan knew the seas off the Zingaran coast were no place for a dark
Stygian with hands more silken than the wizards tailored robes. He smelled
of the perfumed parlors of the city more than the sea, and the barbarian had
no love lost for him.
Yet, now none of them surely breathed, crushed on these same strange rocks
across a nameless stretch of land or drowned deeper in the hateful depths of
the Zingaran Sea. Perhaps if the sorcerer had been as skilled with an oar as
his mouth, the group could have beat the storm across the bay, but, alas,
such haste was not to be. No doubt now, all his shipmates were victims of a
strange and violent storm that gave no warning nor ushered any quarter to
the small barge.
Conan spit the salt from his mouth. How many hours had he swam aimless?
The sun was high over his head and the sea was calm now. Dry land felt
good enough. At least it was warm, he thought as he slumped further down
into the rocks. Damned my luck if I had drifted to the waters of the north
off the coast of Pictland, the Cimmerian thought. Or even worse, if the fates
had brought me to the haunted shores of the border lands between Zingara
and Argos. But Conan paused in thought and felt the blood in his veins and
the breath in his lungs. Once again, he squeezed the hilt of his sword. Bah!
Lucky enough perhaps, to still have saved a blade through the swim, Conan
added in his foggy head.
Without control now, his blue eyes dipped low as a sleep set in. Nothing
brought sleep to the north man much like the cold of the sea. If only I had a
drink of water or wine, He added as he licked his baked lips and batted his
eyes.
As the brine dried, the last thing the barbarian saw was the dark glimmer of
a crested hawk sailing wide over his head.
~~~
Hours later, the cool night air rustled the barbarian from his dreamless
sleep. Still, Conan squeezed the hilt of his Argosian blade as he rustled. His
thirst was dire now, and his tanned skin shivered with the cool touch of
night. The breeze was stronger too, and the bite of the open sea had grown
far colder as the depth of night set in. Truthfully, Conan had slept longer
than he had wished, and the moon had already passed to only a few hours
before the morning. Even the Cimmerian knew, it was never wise to dicker
on the shores of the Zingaran coast. Now, as the night peaked, Conan knew
he needed to move further inland lest he face the wrath of the dawn's
scavengers.
Yet, the Cimmerian had little idea where to go. For all he knew, he was on
some false death trap of an island, with no escape but to swim off again or
starve. The Zingaran coast was littered with such haunts, rife with the bones
of pirates and merchant alike. But something about the stepped form of this
isle was strange. The rocks looked carved, and the draw before Conan kept
sliding into darkness, a terraced chasm leading to certain doom. Now, here
at the peak of night, the cove looked like the doorway to hell itself, and only
black shapelessness fluttered in its grasp.
But alas, a light flickered in the gloom. Strangely, the glow was yellow and
green, like an unnatural fire underneath the emerald water of the sea foam.
As Conan peered through the haze of night, he could hear voices too... and
then a strange echoed laughter reached across the isle
By Crom! The way inland reeked of demon magic and smelled of old
Archeron! But Conan had no patience for such things, and besides; voices
meant men and those men would mean a boat or way back to Argos. The
call of Conan's wanderlust was never weak. For now, with a blade still in
his hand and solid cliffs to climb, that was all that mattered to the north
man.
With his guard on high, the Cimmerian put his feet to work and skipped the
terraces of flat basalt into the chasm. If anything, he was born to climb. As
he did, the rock and basalt rose like high pillars above his head. With each
step, they reached high and inverted, so as to form a strange natural series
of arches that looked strangely like time-lost ruins rather than natural caves.
Below the tepid green waters churned as the gap grew narrower. Still, the
pale green light flickered in the depths, and Conan was thankful he had kept
his sword through it all.
Minutes ran to hours, and before long, the horizon of the open sea was well
past him as he cut into the strange island cave.
Finally, as his fingers and legs felt weak, he came to a clearing and the
blaze of green and blue flashed bright off the same blue color of the
barbarian's demon eyes. Even the seawater below was hard to see now.
Yet, in the flicker of odd light, voices were all too clear.
~~~
Despite the signs of eldritch ruins... some type of pirate hideaway stretched
on the plateau below.
In fact, the torches were nothing magic, and yellow flames set in stout
braziers flickered off the blue-green depths of the darkness. Even from here,
Conan saw the inlaid sapphire and emerald on the dark kettle's form.
As Conan clutched the cliff above like a giant ape, he had a solid vantage
on the scene below. An ornate long boat was pulled up forward, docked at a
dingy landing inside the cave, the tepid swirls of water idly slapped against
her hull. A scraggly coxswain, garbed in pirate rags with a rusty rapier
snoozed at the front between two oars.
Worse, behind the gaudy boat was something that nearly jarred the
Cimmerian's sure grip; it was the same battered dhow boat he had departed
from Messantia only a day prior. The same boat he had thought lost during
the unnatural storm and the raiding party's demise!
A stout oaken door lay past the dock, set in the basalt with glyphed carvings
around its form. In front of the arch, a large set of buzzard's cages hung.
There, Conan could see the form of a man was stuffed in one, ragged and
nearly naked. His pasty waxen skin was clearly from the high north, and his
flesh looked sun baked and salted with brine just as the barbarian's.
Below the buzzard cages, two hapless Zingaran pirates scrambled in the dirt
on a meaningless game of dice. Occasionally, Conan could hear the sound
of curses and swears as, no doubt small fortunes were gained and lost.
Next to them an armed man stood, also Zingaran, but clean and fresh,
loaded with the ornate arms and the jewel encrusted armor of a corsair king.
Conan knew it could be no other than Mau-Keefe. A curved scimitar
flickered with its gaudy emerald hilt in the flutter of torchlight and a fist full
of lustrous rings looked like a set of lost stars in his hands. His dark beard
and waxed mustache looked out of place this far from the silks and incense
of his luxury galleon. But Conan knew, despite his dandy looks, the pirate-
king had a ferocious reputation with his emerald hilted blade.
'So, I had stumbled into another dank lair of the pirate lord after all,' Conan
mused. The brigand was supposed to be far to the south, raiding the lands of
Shem. With our dhow boat docked, I'm sure a dark treachery is a foot, the
Cimmerian surmised.
An instant later, the man standing with to the pirate confirmed this
suspicion. The form Conan saw now, was none other than the wizard,
D'lim. Like a happy lark, he stood tall as a welcome guest, loaded with dry
silks and gold necklaces. Over the stench of his cheap perfume, a wry smile
was on his bald head as both men poked and prodded at the caged devil. As
he did, the mage's clean skin spoke little of the surf, deadly storm or a life
and death struggle against the sea's wrath. Conan was right to smell black
magic in this affair. The treacherous dog, Conan swore under his breath.
There was no doubt now; the Stygian had double-crossed the group.
Laughter boomed from the wizard as he played with the poor captive.
Pushing his anger aside, Conan's fingers strained as he struggled to stay on
the ledge. Now, the lip of the higher cliffs was only a few inches wide. As
Conan groaned with effort, the voices gained clarity below.
“D'lim, you dog! I wanted all these pirate raff alive for my queen below,”
Mau-Keefe barked as the wizard harassed the man in the cage with a
sharpened piece of driftwood. The wizard's tongue stuck out in pleasure as
the poor sap squirmed.
Dog! Conan seethed.
“You queen's rage proved too strong, my liege. Perhaps, the last will float
in. As it was she has already taken the thief Carralas below, with this one,
only the savage Cimmerian is unaccounted for.”
Damned, Conan thought. The man in the cage was surely his trusted
oarsman Kothar! The Cimmerian burned with a deep rage now. Worse, his
unbearable thirst worked at his strength. What I would do for a flagon of
wine! He shouted in his slaked brain.
“These ruins will not be denied,” Mau-Keefe answered. “Always, our
power depends on the grace of the queen.”
“Still, two is no small prize,” The wizard remarked, “and thankfully the
raids on your stores will no doubt end and the artifact will be mine as
promised.”
The pirate king twiddled with his moustache as he thought.
“What of that north man? The one they called Conan? I never met a
Cimmerian who couldn't swim like a dread tiger, or climb like a damn
spider. He especially, my queen desired.”
“Dead at sea, no doubt,” D'lim replied with a dour face of certainty. “Food
for the sharks of the Zingaran waters.”
For a moment, the wizard paused.
“Did you say your queen requested him by name?” The wizard asked.
Mau-Keefe gave the wizard a strange expression. “Nay, she does not speak
to me with words, wizard... only vision and thought,” he replied “In a
strange way, she showed me the form of the tanned devil, I saw his azure
eyes glower in blood like something from the pit... in that storm I felt her
want.”
The wizard said nothing in return. Far above, Conan strained to hold his
grip.
“Come let us go below,” Mau-Keefe answered. “Your services are required
to prepare the gifts for our lady.”
The wizard nodded as he took one nasty swipe at the ragged Kothar.
“Worry not, curr... your time will come as well,” The fanged mage growled
at the caged pirate. Poor Kothar could hardly manage a grunt in return.
Conan's fingers and toes felt like they would explode as the two forms
passed under the etched arch.
A few moments later proved too much, even for a master climber from the
north.
With a vulgar swear, the Cimmerian dropped.
~~~
Conan fell to the pad with his sword outstretched, and like any great cat
from the north, he landed on his feet, ready to kill. Yet, at first, not a soul
noticed his descent.
First, the hapless Kothar looked up at the Cimmerian. Surprised at his turn
of fate, a wry smile curled on his blistered lips.
Next, the distracted dice players looked up. Sadly, one half-drunken
scallywag did not even reach for his blade. Like a fool, he rushed Conan
empty-handed with only a silent sputter of his breath at the surprise of it all.
A second later, he felt the greeting of the Conan's nicked blade under his
chin. With the flash of steel, the sound of chokes and spit blood sounded in
the cave.
The weaponless pirate teetered to the water and landed before the gorge,
dead not in the sea, but in a flooding pool of crimson.
Before the body stopped its twitches, his mate grabbed a rough-hewn axe of
pounded metal by his side. As he eyed the crumpled form of his dice
partner, he spit and swore an oath, his axe raised high. Conan did not wait
for his charge. Like a panther, the Cimmerian thrust his steel edge upward,
straight at the pirate's throat. With the clean blow, more blood shot like a
geyser from the Zingaran.
He too, fell dead a moment later.
In fact, the sleepy coxswain proved the most difficult. Already on dry
ground, the pirate had a long awl in his hands and was ready for murder.
With a growl, he gripped the pole arm and swung firm at Conan. As he did,
the barbarian dashed to the side to parry the blow. Yet, the pirate was
quicker than he had expected, and he was able to retreat the spear before
Conan could crash down like thunder on the brunt of the stick.
The pirate brought the far end of his staff up and clubbed Conan sharp on
his brow. With the move, the olive form of the barbarian buckled
backwards, dazed for a moment. But that was it.
As the pirate went for his coup de grace, Conan had already brought his
sword across the brigand's chest. The salted edge of the blade rapped hard
across the upper body of the sea dog and the gash left was deep and sprayed
with awful red ichor. Just as quickly as everything had begun, the mashed
form of the last sentinel slumped soundless into the dark depths of the
remaining tract of sea.
On the pad, there stood Conan, bloodied yet unscathed. Just as Mau-Keefe
had described, his azure eyes glimmered like a demon with the blood
smeared on his tan skin.
 Chapter 2

“Conan! Can you hear my words?” The woman's voice called. “I need your
help!”
A twinkle of chimes seemed to ring in the Cimmerian's head.
The barbarian gave a cross glare to Kothar stuffed in the buzzard's cage.
With blood smeared on his skin, Conan's blue eyes looked wide and lost.
“Belit?” Conan called to the dark.
Again, Kothar struggled to understand what was wrong with the barbarian.
“Conan!” He mumbled to his friend.
Gaining his senses, the barbarian snapped back into his place. He looked
over his shoulder, his face in disbelief. “Did you hear that voice?” Conan
asked.
Kothar looked lost.
“Conan? I hear nothing but the sea!” He answered shaking the cage. “Now
let a sword hand out to be free!”
Kothar was Aesir, a lost berserker from the far north. In fact, his native
Asgard was not far from Conan's own roots in Cimmeria. Both men were
odd fits for the sea. So too, Kothar was an odd fit for a pirate; bulky, tall
and blonde with pasty skin that reddened, burned and chaffed under the
sun's fury. He looked at Conan with a northman's blue eyes, milky and grey
with exhaustion. His long face was now dotted with scratches and blisters.
“Let you out? Bah!” Conan chortled with a grin.
Yet, like Conan he was a wanderer and restless spirit. His body was fit and
muscled, and he knew how to fight and climb. Like most of the Aesir, he
had been born with a knack for sword, spear and hopeless battle. Yet,
strangely, the sea had called to him long ago from the icey halls of the north
to the warm foam of the ocean vast.
As it was, Conan liked the oaf. Despite the old rivalries between the
northern lands, the man was a trusted blade hand in a scrap. That paid off in
battle and mead hall alike.
The barbarian slammed the old lock on the cage with his hilt and sent the
device in pieces.
“You couldn't pick this feeble hold?” Conan grumbled.
Kothar smiled, near foaming at the mouth like a dying rat.
“By the cold of the north, I'd thought you'd never slay them fast enough,”
Kothar said with some renewed energy. Already the Asgardian had flopped
to the stone.
Conan balked.
“Hmm... my bones are like jelly Asgardian, but my blade was quick
enough,” Conan replied. “I didn't see you do much good for yourself like a
pet bird stuck in a cage, I'd fancy you were too fat and smelly for the pirate
lord's shoulder?”
Kothar laughed hard, even for a beaten man.
Conan tossed the bulky man the dead coxswain's awl, which was the only
other weapon left on the pad.
“A Zingaran toothpick?” he asked eyeing the spear curiously. “I suppose
you've no mead kegs in that loin cloth of yours as well?”
“No, I would say not. Truth is my throat is dry as well, I could drink an old
frozen lake by now,” The Cimmerian replied. “Tell me, Kothar, how did
you come to be locked in that cage?”
“I can't say, Conan. There was the storm, I felt my bones break. I saw the
very dhow boat before us now splintered and ruined. I heard you and the
others scream as the nightmare waves took me down below. The sky was
black as death. Then... I was here, in a cage like a dirty animal,” He said.
“Worse for us, the man we thought our friend, the black wizard D'lim
tortured me and prodded me with whatever sharp stick he could find while
the cheap perfumes of ripe Zingarans strangled my throat.”
Conan swore under his breath...
“The wizard D'lim betrayed us,” Conan answered. “I'll see that dog stuck on
his own end of a pointed stick.”
“Aye,” Kothar added. “I'd settle for this pike in his soured heart. Damn
Carrelas should have never trusted a Stygian who smelled so false.”
“What is below?” Conan abruptly asked.
Kothar shook his blonde head.
“I don't know Conan,” Kothar answered. “I heard them say something about
a queen, gems and some type of ritual.”
“Gems you say? Did Mau-Keefe bring his men below? Where is his
flagship? His fleet and scores of brigands?”
Again Kothar shook his head.
“Nothing. I've seen only what came in this gilded long boat. A dozen men
less these goons, perhaps the rocks were too deadly for his larger ships.”
“I saw nothing moored to the western shore,” Conan replied. “Only the
rolling foam and gulls.”
Conan looked around the pad. He smelled the foul air and looked again on
the strange writing above the arched door.
“This place stinks of something old and forgotten, friend,” Conan
whispered.
“Acheron itself,” The Aesir nodded. “Conan... in my dreams... I saw terrible
things. Ruins and a blue lady. She whispered things to me about the past
and the future. There was a sapphire unlike any I had seen. In all my days, I
have never felt such evil and lust for power. These are the tainted lands,
Cimmerian, the haunted nowhere whereupon Acheron was said to lay in
ruin. Our boat is here. We should leave the thief, Conan... he'd leave us for
dead, the bastard.”
Conan paused for a moment as he looked at the blue and green of the
dancing braziers. The gems were worth a small fortune alone.
“There's treasure below,” The barbarian added with a wink. “ ...but aside
from rescue the thief, I'd love to sink my blade in that worm D'lim. To see
him squirm would be worth death alone.”
Eyon scoffed.
“Bah, Cimmerian,” He replied. “Revenge is nothing to the dead and gems
are worthless to those who have no soul.”
Conan's eyes lit up as he spotted a treasure on one of the maimed pirates.
Like a beast, he ripped off a bladder of water from one of the dead bodies.
He guzzled a sip and threw the flagon of water to Kothar.
“You don't have to follow me down below, Aesir,” Conan answered with
water dripping down his cheek. “There are two boats.”
Kothar finished off the bottle and tossed it around his neck. Carefully, he
tapped on the blade of the spear to judge its worth.
“ ...but you know I will,” Kothar replied with a dour grimace. Slowly the
expression formed a grin.
Conan smiled as he eyed the door.
~~~
Nearly an hour later and the two had not found what they sought.
In the labyrinth of halls and spacious caverns below, all that awaited were
more warm smoldering braziers of blue-green light and endless halls and
ducts of ruins older than time. As the pair of warriors crossed arches both
natural and constructed, the sheer scope of the catacomb began to concern
the barbarian.
Eventually, the path smoothed and the pair stood gaping on a wide bridge
leading into a deep oblivion of caverns. Here, Conan paused. Gazing into
the hypnotic depths, the subterranean lake of glass and nexuses of hanging
stalactites had no end. For as long as Conan could see the reach stretched
into black crypts of unknown terror.
“These ruins are vast, Kothar,” he said with his blade raised. “Perhaps these
are the fabled ruin of old Acheron itself.”
“Aye, I know what I saw in my dream, barbarian,” Kothar replied. “ ...and
these lakes no doubt lead to the sea.”
“Maybe the pirate king has hidden his fleet inside these depths?”
“Perhaps Conan, perhaps an army of water-ghouls slinks just under the
shadow waiting to throttle us in the dark. Either way, where are they? We've
seen not a soul!”
Conan continued on the smooth path of worn rock. With each lithe step, he
stalked still, like a panther on his guard.
“Someone lights these braziers,” He replied, “and I'd be damned if it's
anything but Zingaran ghouls.”
Behind Conan, Kothar nodded with his spear ready.
Once again, the pair continued through the ruin on to search for the dread
betrayer and their lost companion.
~~~
By the second hour, the sound of a scream pushed the men to a renewed
pace.
With the nightmare shriek came a rush of cold air. Even for their warmed
blood, the call and blast of foul air from the depths startled both men and
chilled their very bones. There was no mistake; the high-pitched cry was
surely someone or something in the throes of a violent death.
Amidst another branch of ruined halls, Conan spotted the pirate before
Kothar could look up. In the shadow, it was no demon the barbarian saw,
but a simple man. The burly man of Kush lurked in the rocks, nearly naked
save for his worn black scimitar and silken shorts, his skin as dark as the
reaches of the expanse.
The dark skinned man was not unlike those who had toured with the
Barbarian in time past, those lost days Conan sailed the southern seas of
Kush with the pirate queen Belit.
Yet, here now near the undersea bowels of hell, this particular Kushite
provided no warm greeting, nor was he a friend. Instead, he raised his blade
and rushed Conan with a scream to rival whatever had sounded in the
depths.
As always, the crafty Cimmerian was waiting. To answer the charge, Conan
blocked the attack with a firm blade and heaved his shoulder into the wide
chest of the Kushite. With dueling grunts, both men pushed backward into a
mess of rocks.
On his cue, Kothar was at the barbarian's side a second later. The
Asgardian's thrust attack of the pointed spear slashed into the side of the
pirate. As the man battered the wooden plank down, Conan was already
across his neck with Argosian steel. The dark man did not scream as the
weapon did its work. Again, the wind rushed hard. Soon after, the man of
Kush's head fell to the path below.
Conan nodded as the rest of the man's body followed and slumped to the
cobbled ground.
“A posted guard,” He said under his breath. “We must be close!”
Suddenly, the wind chimes once again crinkled in the barbarian's mind. He
could smell magic and the breeze of the sea. In his head, Conan heard the
voice. It was woman's tone, soft, yet, commanding. The voice of a queen.
“Come to me, Conan!” She called. “Come and stand by my side to love and
rule all of Hyboria!”
Conan shook his head and looked around madly. Who had said that?
“What did you say?” He asked the Aesir.
“Nothing, Cimmerian? I said not a word!” He replied.
Conan blinked his eyes, swore an oath and continued on.
~~~
Yet, the two did not have to travel far this time.
The path eventually ended in a grand stone stair leading down. Below the
men, a pavilion of ungodly size and scope sprawled before them. At the
base of the steps, more jeweled braziers illuminated a fantastic expanse of
ungodly size and scope. Crumbled statues of forgotten gods and heroes
towered into the black. Throughout the same plaza, other moldered ruins sat
with the salty touch of time.
But there was more motion in the court than just the flicker of fire.
Steps beyond led upward, to a stage set in the end of the pad. Above the
main floor, a sinister altar reached high, set under a large set of stone
columns and masoned walls.
On the demonic altar was something far worse; a fouled stone slab clearly
intended for human sacrifice. Here stalked the wizard D'lim, writing with a
hapless figure bound to the devilish surface. Like a nightmare, D'lim's arms
waved in the air as his shriveled Stygian form cowered in the glow of
demon blue light.
Now, both Kothar and the barbarian knew the source of the deathly scream.
The wizard D'lim wiped a blood drenched dagger on a rag as the bleeding
form of the thief Carrelas lay dead on that same slab, his eyes milky and
lost, a torrent of blood flowing from his naked arm into the very rock of the
slab around him. Worse, another strange ichor was smeared all over the
morbid stone bed.
Weird smoke coursed through the room. The fumes tailed upward, like a
coven of spirits as they patrolled the upper ceiling with no end.
Yet, behind the altar and above poor Carrelas' husk, pulsed a magnificent
prize. A Sapphire, bigger than a man's fist or any blue stone the Cimmerian
had ever imagined, gleamed in the darkness across both wizard and dead
body alike. Inside the gem, the brilliant light of the sea throbbed like a
small star.
“I could buy all Asgard with that stone,” Kothar whispered.
Despite the stench of human sacrifice, once more, the gentle sound of wind
chimes toned in Conan's head.
As Conan gazed into the great stone's twinkling gleam, he saw the form of a
woman blink back at him!
For the Cimmerian, time seemed to end as her black hair fluttered in the
breeze. She was a radiant beauty, garbed in the finest white silks and gilded
with gold clasps and bracelets of blue-green stones. Truthfully, the mystical
woman's clothes hardly concealed her naked curves in the glow of the azure
sun.
Suddenly, Conan felt himself next to her, by her side in a void of time and
space.
“Hello, Conan,” She said with a loving grin. “I've been expecting you.”
In this time-lost expanse, Conan could see her hair was dark and rich, much
like his departed pirate queen Belit. Yet, she was not a woman of any land
around this part. Not Argosian, nor Zingara nor lady of Shem alike. Her
triangular face was elfish and wise, yet her build was wide hipped and stout,
with a full shape and tanned skin that pleased the barbarian.
As she gazed at Conan, her magic eyes twinkled blue, like the same brilliant
flames of the Cimmerian's own stare. On her head, a gold crown encrusted
with sapphires and emeralds of the finest stock sparkled like captive oceans.
While he felt himself near her, the barbarian could smell her enchanted
perfume and thought of the mist of the gentle sea.
Though this woman was unique, all he could see in her was his lost love
Belit. For a moment, his trance flickered. Yet, the unhealed pain of her loss
quickly altered to the ecstasy of the now.
On the top of the stair, Kothar briefly looked at the barbarian. Again, the
Cimmerian looked lost in his head, his eyes glazed with some spell. Now of
all times! Was Conan locked in another daze or dream? The Aesir
wondered.
As it stood, Conan had no concept of this. For him, Kothar, the dead form
of Carrelas, the evil wizard D'lim and the ruined plaza all melted away now.
Instead, Conan stood with the lady of Sapphire alone in some pocket world
of wonder. Here, there was the woman and the barbarian. Nothing else
mattered.
“I have been waiting for you Conan,” She said with a smile as she touched
his shoulder. The twinkle of wind chimes and shells rattled in the
background.
“Who are you?” Conan asked as his hands wrapped around her waist. Her
skin and garb felt like silk from Heaven. He pinched her and she was real.
“Is this a dream?” he asked.
“No, Cimmerian, all of this is real,” She answered. “I am Naria, Lost Queen
of Acheron, and I am for you,” She added.
Looking at her form, he smiled at her. Now, like a great cat would look at a
meal, he lusted for more.
His hands wasted no time, but he paused as he thought of her words.
“Then you would be a ghost, my lady, because Acheron is dust and ruin.”
“Do I seem like a ghost to you?” She asked.
Conan kissed her, and his body flooded with surging urge for the lady's
perfect form. In his hands, he felt the cascade of her soft hair between his
fingers. What magic was this?
The word ghost stuck in his mind. As it did, Belit's face flashed in his head.
“No, my queen,” he answered, smitten beyond logic. “Your skin feels real
enough.”
Naria smiled. Briefly, she pushed back on Conan's grasp.
“I am trapped here, barbarian. A prisoner within this stone you see now.”
“Within the gem?” Conan asked.
“Yes, Conan, trapped like smoke within its blue form,” She answered.
“Then I would smash it and free you, my queen!” he replied as he squeezed
her harder.
“No barbarian! Magic is at play in this realm and yours. To smash the stone
here would only seal my fate to oblivion itself!” She replied.
“Then how can I free you, loved Naria?” He asked.
“Steal me from this pirate and his evil Stygian thrall. They have enslaved
me, and use this stone's powers for their own gain.”
“What power is that, my queen?” Conan asked.
“The sea, Cimmerian. I hold sway over the very oceans and the myriad
depths,” She answered. “With the gleam of my blue light, fair winds and
gentle winds flow through my grace. Yet, so too, this power can forge
storms to ravage ships and waves to assail the very port towns that mock
my coast.”
“I see,” Conan replied.
“To one who knows dark spells, there is limitless power therein,” She
added.
“No wonder the pirate Mau-Keefe has had so much luck these days.”
The queen laughed and pulled herself closer.
“Yes, Conan, but I need you. I have little control over these powers. They
are a dark curse. As you can see, the cost is always the blood of those who
sail these seas. With a fate beyond my grasp, only the blood of those who
have sailed the seas yields the stone's powers. I understand little of it, even
over these strange aeons. Still, I am trapped inside this bauble nonetheless,
bound to watch these foul rites. It is a horrid thing as I watch those die for
the sake of treasure, want and foolish power. In nightmares, I see the sea
swell and take the men and women as the blood drops around this ruin.”
“Blood? Why would these powers need blood?”
“I cannot say barbarian. My husband was a necromancer King. I am trapped
inside this gem by him, the last king of Acheron. He was so jealous of my
beauty, he cast a spell to imprison me in this sapphire for all time. Within
these lustrous walls, no other could have me. Worse, he gave the gem
wicked powers to serve his own lust for conquest.”
“Why would he trap you?”
“So only he could reach me inside, and, in his own feeble way... the only to
love and touch me. Still... I am immortal within this cell. In here I was a
fantasy, nothing more. The love was empty Conan, and an age ago he
shriveled into dust like all the surrounding ruins, a victim of the foul magic
and greed of Acheron's last days.
“I am sorry.”
“Do not be. I shed no tears for him.” She answered.
“What then fair queen? How can I sense you now... and feel your skin?”
“I do not know, Cimmerian. Your form has somehow broken apart the spell.
You are special. But I sensed it, from afar, for long years. All this while, I
have sought you and yearned for your strength to come here and free me.”
“Free you?” Conan asked. “How can this be done?”
“With magic Conan, and with someone brave enough to challenge death for
my sake,” She asked with sparkle of her eyes. “Would you be my
champion? Would you be my king?”
Conan's eyes glazed over in the magic aether of the domain. Again, his
thoughts drifted to his parted Belit.
“Magic is not my domain, woman. But, yes, I will do anything, but how?”
Conan answered.
“Take the great Sapphire beyond the altar,” She asked. “There is a passage
beyond the molded tapestries. It will lead out of this sea-ruin. Take the trail
east, through more wasted lands and through the haunted jungle beyond.
Even further, through the inland, there is another temple, one far larger. In
the heart of the forsaken lands it festers with time and dissolves with age.”
The Cimmerian stiffened.
“Through the border lands? But those lands are plagued with ghouls and
devils! I could not make it far!”
“You can and you will,” She said firmly. As she did, her eyes flashed like
the nearby braziers. “With my grace, the holder of the blue gem and his
party would be unharmed by the things that lurk beyond.”
Conan was lost in thought as he eyed her form. His sudden craving for her
flesh had reached a tipping point.
“I will do this then, my lady,” he answered “But what magic will free you?”
“In the apogee of the temple there is a pedestal. Place the gem on the dais
and I will be free.”
The barbarian nodded as he rubbed her arms.
“That seems simple enough,” He answered.
“Yet, it is not. Conan, there are protectors of this place, a titan of some sort,
a summoned demon-creature of magic, mindless and brutal. It was ushered
forth long ago by my jealous husband, so that the sanctum could not be
violated nor the spell broken. Surely it will still live.”
“He will be no match for a Cimmerian, my lady,” Conan bragged. “I have
laid low my share of foul things from the pit.”
“Conan! You must hurry! The Wizard already plots to steal me away and
take me for his own, you must not let him! He is evil! I can feel the sickness
of his mind.”
“Aye, Lady, I will that,” he said. “I know his sickness all too well.”
“So, too, the pirate Lord Mau-Keefe plots! He will chase you through the
wood to regain the power this gem brings, but he is weak Conan. The stone
has given him the only command he owns. He is nothing without the men in
his employ. You can move swift over land through those horrors and leave
him to flounder against the jungle's wraiths."
“I see,” Conan nodded.
“Conan! There is one more thing,” She said with a smile “Let not revenge
guide your ways, only love...” She asked. “Will you love me Conan? It has
been so long!”
The barbarian smiled as he squeezed her tighter.
Suddenly, Conan felt her warm breath on his neck as they both kissed. His
hands moved fast. While the wind chimes picked up pace, the illusion of the
sea swelled behind him. In that realm, a gentle time passed. He felt her
body underneath his as the two embraced. As he did, the walls of the jewel
seemed to quake with ecstasy.
Then, when the chimes had peaked, more sapphire light sparkled bright and
Conan felt himself back on the terrace of the ruin, his knees weak, an odd
expression of dazed fulfillment on his face.
Conan was bewitched. Exhausted by some magic, he dropped his blade
down the stair and went to his knees.
“Conan!” Kothar shouted as the barbarian rolled down the stone. Metal
clanked like thunder.
As he fell down the ancient stair, the bald head of the vile wizard turned
around with a violent spasm. Unlocked from his foul ritual, D'lim snarled a
curse to the hapless pair of warriors to his back.
He lunged forward now, bloody dagger in his hand, his eyes soaked in some
evil magic.
“Two more for the slab!” He shouted to the ruins.
 Chapter 3

With the smell of blood and incense, the fanged mouth of the Stygian came
wildly at Kothar now. With his hooked blade held high, it was almost easy
to miss the small vial the wizard tossed to the floor as he charged.
Yet, as with most stringy wizards from the south, his eagerness for the fray
was only a feign and before he was within reach of Kothar's awl, the wizard
backed off.
“Come at me wizard!” Kothar grumbled, hardly noticing the tossed
container.
With a crash, the vial smacked against the stone and spit puffs of fumes. As
it did, a viscous green liquid smoldered and formed the cloudy shape of
something demonic and wicked. Another second later, a hell spawned
scream rippled from the curds.
Stygian devilry! Kothar cursed.
The Aesir blinked and the smoke congealed into something terrible before
his eyes. Suddenly there was a face, demonic and filled with the worst
hatred of the underworld. Worse, stiletto-like black teeth formed in the pale,
painted in an evil grin that surely meant to murder. As it gained tangible
shape, the smoke beast snarled at Kothar while he recoiled with his spear in
hand.
Still Conan writhed on the stone floor.
Kothar waved his pole arm through the beast with a stout sweep. Yet,
miraculously the weapon only passed through the image of the face like it
was made of nothing. Stunned, Kothar nearly fell over with the lack of his
pike's impact. Quickly, the shifted smoke reformed the gap of visible fumes
of the twisted face.
“Dwallka of the War Hammer!” Kothar swore on his native god as he
stepped backward. “This thing can't be touched!”
Of equal concern, the Norseman knew the demon wizard stalked nearby.
Conan still swooned on the floor like an invalid. What was wrong with the
Cimmerian? Kothar wondered.
“Conan! Snap out of your fog!” he shouted above the hiss of the demon.
Laughing, the beast formed a great tendril of puffing fumes. The blurred
grey form took on more ominous shape as the creature swiped again at
Kothar.
As he ducked, the Aesir could hear the cackled laughter of D'lim close by.
“Damn you wizard!” He shouted again as he swung aimlessly at the ghost.
Still, his awl went through nothing and slammed the stone on the other side.
Once more, an errant step sent the Aesir buckling, yet this time he lost his
feet and planted on the ruin below. He lurched next to the Cimmerian, who
was at least sitting upward now, but dazed. Shaking his head, Conan wiped
the spit and drool from his chin.
“What is this hell?” Conan asked.
Kothar slammed the tanned shoulder of the Cimmerian. “The last one
before the real if you don't grab your blade!”
Conan's eyes searched the room for meaning. The smoke and fog didn't
help his senses at all and neither too did the musty salted air of the deep
cave. There, in the folds of reshuffled time he regained himself. He recalled
the wizard D'lim. His sword brother Kothar, and worse the dead form of his
comrade bleeding on the cold slab above. With another second, he saw the
form of his Argosian sword not far from his reach.
But it was too late.
The creature, or whatever it was, moved fast. Both Kothar and Conan
looked up to see the devilish face of the smoke-beast in their own. The
massive plume of tendrils and snapping jaws slammed down on the spilled
warriors with a final blow.
But like the wizard himself... the beast was false.
Smoke puffed around their bodies and dissipated harmlessly around the
pair's skin. As the cloud cleared to a wisp, the illusion was at an end. The
air thinned. Whatever the creature had been, it was no more, a foul spell
expired.
Conan looked at Kothar and smiled.
On the altar, D'lim laughed again like the mad monster he was. Once more,
he towered over the pale form of poor thief Carralas, who was now white as
chalk. But the mad wizard gave no heed to the dead thief. Instead, his
curled hooks were around the giant sapphire gem now as he labored to pry
the stone from its perch.
Conan gasped to see the man go for the stone. In an instant, he saw his
Naria revulse.
Without any doubt, the wizard surely knew the stone's power as well. Naria
had told him this. Now, as he wrested the stone from its place, D'lim glared
like a drugged shaman into its azure form. Conan could see, the Sygian's
eyes spoke of the lust and unmistakable intoxication of power. He too,
craved the prize of the blue Queen of Archeron.
“Fools! You will not take my queen from me this day!” He cried. “It was I
who has slaked the stone's thirst for blood! It will be I who set her on the
dais in the near jungle holds, in the forsaken temple of Ilik-Thul! Then, you
will see, the power will flow with us both as a proper necromancer once
again holds sway on the sea, the shattered lands, and all Hyboria!”
“Dog!” Conan shouted as he grabbed his blade and stood up.
With his weapon held high, the Cimmerian charged the altar like an enraged
bull. Kothar brought up his rear, still wary of ambush from the rear.
For a moment, it looked like the wizard was going for his pocket once
more. But instead he tucked his dagger, grabbed the gem, and ran for the
shadows.
“Stay and fight coward!” Conan growled.
But the wizard was nimble, despite his cowardice. Before Conan could
make the altar, D'lim had already disappeared behind a black curtain to the
rear of the sanctum.
The booming voice halted both warriors in their tracks just as quick.
Kothar saw the forms emerge one by one, and soon the top of the mighty
stair behind the plaza was occupied once more.
“Conan! So pleased you could make the swim!” Mau-Keefe chortled with
his emerald handled blade out. At his side, scores of pirates sneered. Dark
skinned Kushites, tanned Shemites and swarthy Zingarans held bow, spear,
and pike ready to rush.
“So much for your dozen,” Conan growled at Kothar.
For a moment, Conan paused as he thought of what move to make next. To
his back, the wizard D'lim lurked in the shadows with the prison vessel of a
dreamy lost queen. At his front, battle and certain death.
Even though the barbarian (and Cimmerian) in him balked at fleeing any
battle, Conan was no fool. With Naria in his head, he had even more to live
for this day.
Like an ocean breeze, the Cimmerian remembered the words of the loved
queen Naria. And as he did, he felt the same fresh sea air rustle the curtain
behind him.
Mau-Keefe gleamed death above.
“Follow me!” Conan shouted to his mate.
Just as quick as the first arrow flew, both men were out the back, under the
span of the rotten tapestry in a salted tunnel leading upward. In the darkness
therein, the fresh wind blasted them as the faint noise of gulls above barely
graced their ears.
“A secret passage!” Kothar grumbled.
Though D'lim was nowhere to be seen, the clank of charging steel and
loosed bolts sounded in the chamber behind them.
“Run!” Conan shouted.
As he moved up the path, Conan could barely hear the call for help from his
Queen of Acheron.
 Chapter 4

The catacombs of the fortress island where Mau-Keefe and D'lim had
planned to sacrifice Conan and his raiders were part natural rock and part
sculpted ruin. For years, sailors had coursed on the windy seas beyond her
and remarked at the size of the structure and what unfathomable caves and
treasure must lay within the basalt.
Yet, fear and good sense kept most away.
Was it a portion of old Archeron? Few knew for certain. Fewer still sought
to explore the place to find out. Nevertheless, the fortress sat on the
shunned border lands between Zingara and Argos, one of the most deadly
and feared plots of soil in all Hyboria.
Zingarans had once called these stretches the “Shattered lands,” for
Archeron was said to have broken there. Now, the sick remains of the
demon-sculpted stone of a people obsessed with the god Set were said to
still poke from the land. Acheron was the greatest empire time had ever
known, but now it was lost and nearly forgotten.
What broke the empire, few knew. Some spoke of invaders from the North.
Barbarians. Raids from races like the Aqualonians or Nemedians when they
were but young and wild. Others said the empire was cursed by those
wicked magics of the serpent god Set. Necromancy, black arts and human
sacrifice doomed the walls of her cities. Such a notion was not far from
belief—black bonds with the dark gods of old rarely went well for very
long.
With such a tainted aura, the lands of the border were beyond haunted.
In the rum soaked taverns of Zingara and Argos, drunk wastrels whispered
about flesh eating ghouls who roamed and marauded in packs through the
lotus branches and thick leaved tango trees. So too, they said demonic
things prowled the bogs here like panthers. At night, weird howls and
godless caterwauls shrieked across the dark tops of the trees.
Unsurprisingly, there were no known roads through such a place of despair.
Travelers gave the area a wide berth. Even game trails were said to be
sparse. As such, the only true way to Argos from Zingara was by sea or
through the Aquilonian lands to the north.
Occasionally, daring sailors would make landfall and claim to see ruins or
wild sights. Most never returned to tell their tale and fewer got close
enough to see anything of substance.
For most, drunk or sober, Aquilonian or Zingaran, The Shattered Land was
the most deadly place in all of Hyboria.
Here now, Conan and Kothar stood.
“The Shattered Land, Conan. We are truly doomed,” Kothar said as his feet
sunk into the sand. He looked to the dark hole in the stone from which the
pair had just dropped. Thankfully, he had not heard his pursuers just yet.
Conan stood on the ground and saw the lush darkness of the jungle spread
before him to the east.
Instantly, he knew; the deep ruin had not been part of an island after all.
Instead, he had made landfall on some isthmus of the border lands. The
Shattered Lands. In a mead-soaked nightmare the Cimmerian had heard of
this place. As such, he gripped his Argosian blade tighter and scanned for
danger.
“Aye, maybe so Aesir. These Border lands are a deadly trap,” Conan
snipped. “But I've been doomed plenty in my days and still stand with a
blade in my grip.”
To the south, Conan saw the blue of the sea, clear waters shallow and full of
fish, a sandy beach stocked with hungry gulls. Beyond that, more dark
jungle. Perhaps the land over to the distant shore was even Argos, Conan
wondered. In that fold of sea, a small cove sheltered the waves from the
high ocean.
What lay moored in the shallows was even more concerning than magic
ghouls of a supposedly haunted jungle. A ship.
“Look!” Kothar shouted. “Damned if that's not the junk rig flagship of the
pirate lord, docked in that bay!”
Conan looked up. Kothar was not wrong. Already the turbaned men on the
decks pointed to the pair and shouted. Around them, bowmen notched
arrows and metal clanked.
“Let's move!” Conan shouted as he bounded for the jungle.
Yet, before the pair could enter the dark jungle, a dubious screech pierced
the air.
Hearing the noise, Kothar looked back for only a moment and noticed the
hole that the pair had dropped down. Now, the dark portal had taken on a
new shape. It was not some smooth rock wall any longer. Instead, from this
distance, the massive shape of the demonic basalt head formed clear as the
bright sun. Snarled teeth and tusk writhed out from its evil grin.
Though weathered with age, the gargantuan stone head looked inward to the
jungle, not out into the sea. Scores of strangling vines and cords of roots
covered the facade. The face looked as if it mocked both Conan, Kothar and
the land inward.
“That's a ward, if I've ever seen one. These lands are cursed,” Kothar
mumbled.
Conan nodded.
“I've never seen a stone head so large!” Kothar gulped, “and look, we
dropped like snot from its cursed nose!”
Conan laughed.
“Let's move! Or else those arrows and bowmen will drop worse things our
way!” Conan said on the run.
More shouts rang again from the nose of the face and the decks of the
docked pirate ship below. Already it looked as if more long boats were
setting for the shore.
Fortunately, D'lim's tracks were all too easy to spot. Yet, instead of head for
the ship and safety of the beach, the footprints clearly went hard east into
the thick brush of the shattered lands.
Perhaps the wizard now sought to betray even the pirate lord? Conan
wondered. Surely a powerful corsair like Mau-Keefe would not be content
to just hand over such a prize to a slimy Stygian.
“I can smell the vile taint of old Archeron in this wood, Conan. If these
jungles are filled with devils, maybe they will finish off the wizard before
we can,” Kothar said.
Conan remembered the words of the Queen. She had said the stone would
safeguard him from the ghouls of this place. But of course, the wizard held
that fetish. As such, the promised protections of the sapphire would surely
belong to D'lim. Still, Conan was unafraid, in fact the notion of the hunt
only strengthen his resolve and desire to move quickly.
“No Stygian dog would escape me,” he vowed.
“Either way, haste is our friend, Aesir,” Conan said as he jumped a thick
root. Within the jungle, the high canopy stretched beyond a nebulous web
of branches. Thick cords of vines hung low and a vile kudzu clung to the
sandy soil. Still, within the trees little light poked through.
Conan had been in many jungles in his life. Despite this, now underneath
the sickly branches of the border lands, he sensed these particular forests
were among the most silent he had known. Ancient evil hung in the air.
So too, both men said little else as they ducked their heads and bounded
over bough and broken vines.
 Chapter 5

Mau-Keefe grimaced as he saw the tracks leading in to the wood. Behind

the Pirate Lord, a platoon of his finest warriors still dropped from the
alcove in the nose of the giant stone head. The irony did not escape his
educated sense of humor.
Still, Conan and the wizard D'lim were nowhere to be seen.
On the lower shore, another long boat of his men had congregated and
marched in a file up the hill. Spears and shields jangled and clanked above
the distant sound of hungry gulls.
The Kushite K'Dar, second in command of Mau-Keefe's forces and a loyal
sailor from the lands of the Ebon Panther, stood proudly by his captain's
side. Legend told K'Dar's loyalty was only matched by the spark of fear he
brought with his gargantuan visage. On the black man's bald head, the
tattoo of the deadly cat sat across his scalp. On his breast, a rusty ring mail
top with sleeves torn at his shoulders. Below the worn top was a red silken
sash and a curved Shemite blade. The wavy silk hung over baggy leather
pants and bare feet. True to the tales, he towered nearly seven feet with
arms thicker than the nearby beech trees.
“The Shattered Lands. We will struggle to catch them with so many,” K'Dar
said. “No sooner than we march that wood with our army than the ghouls
will be on us.”
Mau-Keefe stared with anger at the treeline. The silence of the wood was
already haunting.
“Damn the ghouls. The sorcerer D'Lim has betrayed me,” He replied. “He
has the gem now. I can see him clutch it in his sweaty hands. I can see his
hands around her waist with lust in his red eyes.”
The pirate closed his own eyes and let the salty breeze tussle his black hair.
He took in the brine from the nearby beach with a deep breath.
“Even if the stone were not here, I would not wish to rustle the jungles of
the serpent god Set. The gem is cursed. The woman is a devil,” K'Dar
answered. “You would do better to leave it well alone.”
“No longer is this about want for the gem, power or a woman, my friend,”
Mau-Keefe boomed.
Mau-Keefe blinked and opened his eyes wide. Yet, instead of rage he
looked at his trusted Kushite and nodded.
“I have just seen it all by some grace, as I dropped to this very sand. Like
before, I saw visions of power and summoned storms. Archeron. I should
have known, K'Dar. Bewitched blood for riches was never my code. Human
sacrifice and Stygian magic?” he said. “You are right, I should have listened
to you.”
“So we make for the sea and leave this place? Perhaps the barbarian will
catch him and flay him still.”
Mau-Keefe shook his head slowly.
“Treachery is one thing. Yet, I have seen the stormy power in the folds of
that gem and it has spoken its dread song in my mind. The song is evil
K'Dar. Wicked power beyond imagination. Even I was seduced by its
scope,” Mau-Keefe said. “I saw it all. With the power of Naria unleashed,
the black taint of Acheron would rise from the pit. The lands of Argos and
Zingara would burn. So too, Aquilonia to the east would fall into slavery
under her shadow, even the lands of Kush and Shem would taint under the
spell of the demon queen. To the north, throngs of bloodthirsty Picts would
swarm into her service. Black Stygia would empty with devils.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head with even more vigor.
“Just now, as the gem left this crypt, I have seen this in a vision of truth,” he
added. “I swore it was Tanit herself who whispered the secret in my ear, but
perhaps it was some other goddess of the sea. For she spoke coarse and
smelled of Shem and pirate spices.”
K'Dar stiffened “Then we could flee westward, to the islands. Surely, no
ship can catch the Dragona, our stores there could last a lifetime.”
“Perhaps,” Mau-Keefe mumbled. “But I doubt there would be any escape
from the forces of that woman. Especially, with the hatred of the Stygian
D'lim at her sway.”
“Then what would you do?”
“I would go with a small crew and dare the bush. I would take only those
who would volunteer, a dozen and no more,” He answered. “We will pursue
the wizard through the wood and slay him. I would smash that blue curse of
a gem on these rocks.”
“But why bother, Mau-Keefe?”
“It's no lie I am a scoundrel and cheat. The code of the settled lands are not
my grace. Yet, despite my own villainy, I could not let the world burn. No,
not knowing what I know now. If I could crush the reign of the Stygian
devil and the witch queen reborn, then I would do my part.”
“But my lord, what would we do without you?”
“Live on as pirates, my friend. Kick and scratch, fight and scavenge as we
always have. You K'Dar. You will captain my ship,” He answered. “Take
the men back to the stronghold on those western islands. The stores, gold
and riches... they are yours if I do not return, as is the Dragona.”
Then, Mau-Keefe turned to his legion and unleashed his emerald rapier. He
held the gilded green edge of his blade high while the razor's jade nooks
sparkled in the mid-day sun.
“I need a tracker and ten swords! Men fleet by foot and ready to fly!” He
asked with a thunderous shout. “Who among you would join me and march
through this cursed wood, a jungle wherein certain death lay? Who would
follow Mau-Keefe to his end and ultimate vengeance into the Shattered
Lands?”
Now, before the pirate, every one of his men, five score strong, raised spear,
bow, shield and sword and boomed a crash of cheers and hands.
“We will my lord!” They yelled.
K'Dar slapped Mau-Keefe on his back.
“We would not leave you to die, Mau-Keefe, not a single man would run,”
K'Dar answered.
The Pirate master smiled under his oiled moustache and nodded again.
“Still, to bring all would be foolish. Pick me the eleven of those I asked,
then and camp the rest of the men here.”
“What of Conan?” K' Dar asked. “The men say he still somehow lives.”
“I do not know. Naria showed me his image and her lust for him. She fears
him and craves his power all the same. It may be, he has some unnamed
role in this tale. We will overtake him... if we can, though the damn
Cimmerian moves like a devil himself,” Mau-Keefe said. “I can sense the
spell of Naria may be set upon him. The witch has set her roots everywhere.
If we cannot break his trance, we will do what must be done.”
K'Dar nodded.
“With my head clear. I would see that gem smashed and this soured spell
lifted, no matter who gets in my way,” Mau-Keefe added. “Let's waste no
more time.”
With burning eyes, Mau-Keefe scanned the three sets of tracks leading into
the dark jungle. As he did, the pirate did not return his blade to its scabbard.
~~~
Conan stopped dead as he bounded over the rotten log. The trail had
thinned now, and D'lim's tracks had been harder to find.
Scrambling between the stalks, critical minutes passed away as the pair
struggled to find a sign of the wizard D'lim.
“I can't find a single track,” Kothar grumbled. “Perhaps the wily old wizard
could turn himself into a great cat.”
“Nor I,” Conan replied. “The damn Stygian moves swifter than I had
hoped.”
“I need water Conan,” Kothar added.
The barbarian nodded as he eyed the trees. While he did, Conan spotted the
wide brimmed foliage of a strange drooping tree that hung with cords of
green and brown vines. Eyeing some of the bottom leaves, his face
brightened, and he smiled.
“Here!” Conan barked as he lifted one of the large leaves. Within the
clumps of baleful foliage were full pools of gathered rain water. He slurped
the water and motioned to the Aesir.
“Clean and fresh!” Conan announced.
Kothar needed no invitation to follow. He plucked a large broad headed leaf
and angled the puddle down his throat slurping the water down like a desert
camel.
“At last,” Kothar said. “I thought my thirst and your blistered pace would
kill me before any ghoul.”
Ghouls, Conan thought. The Cimmerian was about to bark a line about
superstition and how the magics and legends of the land were often lies and
fears. Conan knew, all too often, the monsters of Hyboria were more often
men.
Yet, just as he was about to provide this lecture to the Aesir, the ghouls
attacked.
~~~
The water dripped softly down the barbarian's throat when the noise of a
snapped stick caught his attention. Both men froze.
Then, the nightmare began. The dread horn was distant and shook Conan's
bones. He felt a tingle in the very marrow of his arms and legs while the
trees shook. After, there was a horrid scream and cacophony of yips like a
pack of craven dogs. The whole wood suddenly rapped with shaking trees
and crashing saplings.
Conan dropped his leaf-cup and tensed. By his side, Kothar's awl was up
and at the ready as the tempest around them shook.
Suddenly, the first ghoul rushed.
The man-creature charged through the trees with a dusty sword held back.
Screaming with murder, the thing was a white blur of bone and blade while
foam oozed from a yellow-fanged mouth. The cry would have been enough
to spike terror in anyone's soul. Yet, neither Kothar nor Conan were merely
anyone, and they held firm in place. Still, the Cimmerian had never heard a
sound like it.
The thing was shaped like a man, though sickly white and hunched. Despite
the smaller size, it was gnarled with muscle and sinew. On its back and legs,
bleached furs and skulls dangled from a cracked harness. The face was
skeletal, like a boar picked clean by buzzards. Teeth, sharp and bloody
dripped with spitting froth from a slit of a mouth.
As it came, Conan dodged the charge and lashed out with his sword. Once
more, he did not miss. With Conan's strike, the sound of ripped flesh
scratched across the jungle and the man-thing dropped, dead and gushing
with red blood. There was no scream, but the ghoul choked and gurgled as
it curled into death.
Still, another was right behind it to fill in its charge. Conan saw this one
held a rough-hewn axe and had the face now of a boney lizard-man. Both
northmen moved back to back without command. The wood crashed all
around as other ghouls moved in. Gathering in a circle, the red eyes of the
boney faces all looked somewhat different, but all were menacing and foul.
Even worse, the pack of ghouls smelled of death and rot.
Kothar was on the next and jabbed the spear under its knobby chin. Bone
broke as the skull helm shattered, revealing the gashed face of a squinting
man, bald and pasty white.
A sprinkle of red flew across the green jungle.
“See them? Not devils, but men!” Kothar shouted.
Conan gave no reply as he loosed his blade upward while a smaller one
jumped at him with a jagged short sword. He grunted as the steel sunk into
the pasty skin of the ghoul's harness.
Yet again, the white creature sunk, gasping with no sign of pain nor sound
of a curse.
“Aye, like Picts, but even wilder!” Conan growled.
Now the battle raged in full tempo, the ghouls rushed with hissing shouts
while Kothar surged and plucked another from the air. The fray was a haze
of slicing steel, blood and grunts. The blades shimmered and the fight went
on.
A few mad moments later and all the ghoul-men fell dead. So too, they all
met that bloody end—silent and without a word. In the end, a dozen of
them piled in a smashed mix of battered flesh and wood. While Conan and
Kothar took deep breaths of life, splintered spear and bone lay in a chalky
pile of gore.
Again, the strange horn sounded as both the warriors gasped for breath. The
surrounding wood silenced. Then, the raid was over just as quick as it had
begun.
Conan looked down at the body of one particular Ghoul. He had worn the
stripped skull of a giant ape. In fact, all his tribal armor was made from the
bones of dead animals or beasts. The boney mask hung from a leather strap
across his face, giving the savage the look of an undead wraith. His
bleached skin was gashed with a hundred scars and brands. The teeth had
been sharpened and chipped to be like an animal. True to the tales, this
creature, man or not, was a thing of violence and bloodlust.
“No wonder the legends of this place run deep,” Conan said heaving deep
breaths. “We should move fast.”
Kothar grabbed Conan by the shoulder.
“Conan—as a man who has fought by your side for weeks now, is this
chase worth the effort?” Kothar asked. “Is it all for Vengeance?”
Conan thought of the smell of the Queen Naria and how soft her skin had
felt in his grip. He could hear her whisper into his ear now, distant and light.
“Conan!” She called. “Make haste! For I can hardly see you from my
prison, the vile wizard has nearly stolen me to be his undying thrall! Conan
I need you! All Hyboria needs their King to rise!”
Conan scowled and wiped the blood from his face. He kicked the pile of
dead Ghouls and spit on the stack.
For love? Conan wondered. Still, he could not get Naria's smell out from
his head.
“No. There is more, friend. This, I swear,” Conan answered.
Kothar nodded.
Conan motioned to the pile of dead tribal savages.
“Ghouls, bah... it's just men, same as ever. Wild sure, but still kegs full of
red blood and nothing an Argosian blade can't chop,” He replied. “Trust me,
Kothar, if we move faster we can catch that mage by nightfall.”
Kothar lowered his head and said nothing. He too, wiped the strange
smelling blood from his blade. He shook his head as he rubbed the filth
from his finger. Even a salty Norseman had noticed, the fetishes and
trinkets in the pile below looked weird and alien. Snakes and images of
serpents littered the dead.
Snakes? Perhaps the legends of Archeron were true, Kothar wondered.
“I can still feel the taint of evil in this place,” He said to Conan. “Look
there, at that ring. These snakes worship Set.”
Again, a horn sounded further beyond the tall trees.
Truth was, the Aesir was a loyal friend. He would follow the Cimmerian to
hell itself if Conan would only ask. Yet, here now, in the Shattered Lands,
Kothar wondered if he and the Cimmerian may have finally found the black
doors to that burning realm.
 Chapter 6

Crashing through the broken vines like a maniac, the exhausted wizard
could barely hear the sounds of jungle around him as he looked backward.
The barbarian was not far, he knew. Despite the protection of his ward,
other terrible things loomed nearby, he was certain of this. Already, an
ungodly horn shook the lands more than once.
For hours now, the shadow of the mountain was not far. Through the vines,
the peak had been his guide as he blistered through the wood. Yet,
something worse had mocked him from the edges. He could hear them at
times and, if he listened closely, he could even feel the bouncing of their
feet on the mud floor of the forest. Whatever creatures lay beyond the trees,
the gem and Naria's grace protected him as promised.
Exhausted he pressed on. Squeezing the gem, D'lim wished he could see the
face of the High Priest Nyarlon back in the deeps of Stygia. Vengeance
would someday be mine, he thought.
“Only a fool would seek the powers of old myths among the Shattered
lands,” Nyarlon spoke so long ago. “You have spent too long reading the
tainted scrolls of Acheron,” he had said. D'lim laughed. Who was the fool
now?
Cast out of Stygia for his views, he had wandered the isles and coasts of the
pirate lands searching for the key. Long years later, he was amazed when he
found the gem within the stores of the island of Krell. The scrolls had been
right after all!
Befriending and convincing the pirate lord to raid her shores was not
difficult. Pretending to accept the notion of sharing power was somewhat
more of a challenge.
It was regrettable that Naria seemed to speak with others. Mau-Keefe had
said she came to him with visions yet no words. For D'lim, she had only
come to him with words and sweet smells. She was always distant, but he
could only imagine her touch and dream. Truly, her power was cryptic.
With Conan so near, he knew the only choice was to take the gem and run
for the ruin. Ilik-Thul was finally nearby. Blood had satisfied the dark
powers for the day, and Mau-Keefe's taste for the blood rituals had waned.
Yet, he had seen the eyes of the tan Cimmerian Devil. He, too, looked
enthralled. Could Naria have spoken with him as well?
Raging jealousy spiked through his blood as D'lim smashed a tree branch
aside.
Back in the wood, his Stygian vigor was nearly tapped. Finally, when the
mountain loomed closer and nearly all his strength was gone. The wizard
caught wind of the scent of burning meat and the distant murmur of drums.
He paused for a moment, unsure of himself.
Still, the odor did not appeal to his stomach. Pushing past the thinning wild,
he squirmed at the soured hint of the rotten smell. Despite his ravenous
hunger, something was off by the stench. Then as he neared closer to the
source, the waft of unwashed bodies and rotten trash moved in to his senses.
Again, the sound of drums and savage rattles shook the wood as the mad
wizard clutched the great sapphire tight. With the increased rhythm in the
savage tones, D'Lim pushed aside the thick palmetto as the jungle abruptly
ended.
The sight before him woke him from his haze; it was a clearing in the green
hell, and, at long last it was nothing less than the base of the mad mountain.
All around a grand ruin sprawled, shrouded in the shadow of the giant
mountain. Yet, to D'lim's wonder, the mountain was not that at all... instead,
it was a huge stone temple, weathered with immeasurable age and beyond
any scale D'lim had ever seen.
Ilik-Thul the Stygian whispered, barely keeping his breath.
Now, at the climax of his simultaneous horror and wonder, the drums
stopped.
At the apex of the ruin, the same wicked horn sounded. Like thunder, the
noise shook the very trees and stone around the Stygian. His teeth chattered
with its sound. Leading upward, an endless set of steps ascended the side,
stained with age and foul ichor, the stair seemed to have no end. Even for
one who had seen the horrors of the underworlds to the south, D'lim
trembled for a moment, lost to inaction and questioning his path.
Something closer, however, was now right in that same path.
He saw now the courtyards below were not unoccupied. The sounds and
smells of the lost temple were not products of ghosts or specters. Instead,
before him, it was, instead filled with throngs of bloodthirsty Ghouls.
Unlike ghosts, however, these creatures were very real.
Hundreds of them stood before the wizard now in a cloud of smoky filth
and a sea of rusted metal and bleached bone. Strange offal lay in piles
besides them as they glared, so rudely interrupted in strange tribal routines
and rituals. Glowing red eyes beamed deep into his dark soul.
The fear stabbed him like a knife. Yet, he thought again of Nyarlon's foolish
lecture so long ago and his Stygian blood boiled. With trembling feet, D'lim
held his ground. He closed his wicked eyes and took a long, deep breath.
Swearing an oath to Set, he put his foot out and walked forward. As he did,
he rubbed the Sapphire and thought of Naria and dark power.
“Do not fear these thralls,” He heard her voice say in his head. “They are
the Shattered Ones, broken tribes descended from the last scraps of my
world. They are twisted and evil, but they will not harm you with my boon
in your grasp,”
He walked now, through the sea of undead savages and held the blue gem
tight. As he did, like parting water, the bleached bone men cleared away
from the Stygian's shadow. He heard not a sound from the crowd, only
whispers and strange hisses.
Naria's power was real, he knew.
D'lim could see now, surrounding the plaza were occupied huts and side
buildings of a primal town. Several appeared to be the remains of ruined
buildings, etched with weird glyphs and symbols. Others were stitched huts
forged from palmettos, packed mud, and palm stalks. Plumes of soft smoke
raised from the holes atop the homes. A bubbling cauldron of a brown stew
thrived within one. Yet, the same stench was everywhere and enough to
floor a cow.
Between the thatched yurts, naked children ran and chased small animals
around serpentine totems. Well-fed woman with naked tops sat in circles
around smoldering braziers and threw tiny bones. Some passed snakes to
each other and waved them in the air. One woman held a larger python
upward for the wizard to see and smiled as she shook the creature.
The warriors looked at him from a far, armed with a mix of modern and
ancient weapons at their sides. Sickly bone was laced on their skin
misshaped into crude harness and greaves on their bodies. Nearly all wore
the gruesome portions of an assortment of animal's skulls atop their own
head as a rough helm. Their pale skin had the tell-tale signs of numerous
types of self-mutilation.
D'lim could see the image of snakes everywhere in the ruin. Fetishes,
curios, necklaces, etchings on stone and battered pagodas, carved bone
trinkets around women's necks, even lacquered tablets on wood in front of
the homes all depicted the form of the serpent.
So it was true... this was the land of Set, just as was the bowels of Stygia,
D'lim thought with a smile.
He could see the prison stocks now. Inside were several pale ghosts of men
and woman, weaker faces huddled in a large cage. Strangely, they had the
same bleached white skin and clumped hair as the others of the ruin, clearly
of the same race.
A thicker ghoul lorded over them, capped by a skull of an ox-like creature.
While D'lim passed, he turned his head with glowing red eyes, a leather
whip in his rough hands. The faint shadow of his twisted mouth seemed to
smile underneath the bone mask. The smell was worse now.
Behind the gaoler, none of the meek captives made a noise, nor did they
even look upward from their stupor as they held the wooden bars and
drooped their heads from sight. There were no cries for mercy to the
stranger as D'lim walked by.
Nearby, the Stygian could smell the meat cooking. Next to the prison, the
ovens crackled with heat and burned hardwood. Yet, despite that, the smell
soured sharply. D'lim's own stomach had difficulty remaining straight.
Suddenly it was clear; this building he passed was no prison... it was a
larder.
Before him, a group cleared, and, not far from the red oven, another large
ghoul revealed himself with a massive two-handed cleaver resting on his
shoulder. He was shirtless, with pasty fat rolls and a hanging belly
splattered with red blood. Before him, a large chopping block sat
awkwardly, stacked with red clumps of meat in a trimmed pile.
He nodded to the black wizard in satisfaction, a set of rotten teeth honed to
pointed daggers.
In fact, he had just swiped at something stout, and wiped a streak of sweat
and carnage from his face. On his wooden slab was a disgusting mélange of
human parts; hands next to a torso and detached leg. Worse, what was
hanging on the wooden racks behind him, left little for the imagination to
doubt.
“Cannibals,” D'lim whispered.
Despite their kinship with his lord Set, D'lim's stomach twisted in knots as
the armed men moved away from him. The gem felt warm in his hand now.
He nodded to himself and blinked his eyes.
Past the kitchen, at last the wizard came to the unholy steps of Ilik-Thul.
Yet here, something was in his way.
A massive throne blocked the steps upward. It was tall and hewn from
bones and skulls. With no surprise, D'lim observed nearly all were human
bones. Atop was a huge image of the snake, carved from wood and crusted
with green emeralds and jade.
On the seat a huge savage sat, bleached white with pale skin and rippled
with an impossible musculature. Double the size of even the largest of the
others, the Ghoul King was naked, save for a skirt of stained leather dotted
with more gems. On his brow glinted a gnarled bone crown inlaid with one
of the largest emeralds D'lim had ever seen.
His eyes glowed red like the same coals from the nearby ovens as he looked
up. At his hand, a huge bone handled mace sat up turned down. D'lim could
see mounds of Sapphire, jade and emerald made up the hefty working end
of the club. Like the man, the weapon was large and unwieldy. Yet, to be
bludgeoned by such wealth in such a vile place would have surely been
something ironic. D'lim doubted a man like him could even lift such a
weapon.
“A Stygian rat. Not very meaty. I have not tasted Stygian in some time,
whelp,” The giant spoke. “Good news though—you've arrived just in time.
Abdoullakh has already heated the ovens just right and sharpened his blade.
Tell me, who would come into the home of the Shattered Ones with not
even a spear in his hand?”
D'lim wasted no time with words. He held the Sapphire high and showered
the ogre of a man with its brilliant blue light.
Instantly, the red eyes cowered.
“Silence miscreant! I have come to place what has been lost on the dais!”
he shouted. “Is this not Ilik-Thul? With Naria's gift, I have come to claim
the last throne of Acheron!”
The Ghouls around the court gasped.
The giant stood to his feet, he was at least eight feet tall and rippled with
muscle.
“Ilik-Thul this is, black wizard,” He replied.
Then, just as quick, he sunk to his knees in wonder. A moment later, and the
entire plaza soon followed. Yet, not a word was spoken from the pack. The
very ground shook as the entire town bowed before the wizard.
“Forgive me,” He said as he cowered. “I am Grumm, king of those around.
No one has uttered those names you spoke in a long time. I did not know,
our Lady has returned after all this time, to raise the sea serpent and bring
forth the armies of Set once more. We had thought ourselves forgotten.”
He smiled and began to whimper with joy.
“I knew I smelled the sea as it came back to its rightful place,” He
whispered. “I could feel the breeze of her vengeance as I slept. I could feel
her listless in the deep.”
“Where is the pedestal?” D'lim demanded. “I'll waste no more time!”
“Yes, my master. Up the stair,” Grumm whispered. “But you will have to go
alone. We of the Shattered Ones are forbidden from climbing her steps to
the upper temple, yet the dais waits and her prison lies below.”
“Forbidden?” D'lim asked. “Then who sounds that dread horn from afar?
Who lights those blinking fires I can see?”
“Laron, does,” Grumm answered. “He is a shaman of ours with special
powers and knowledge. He watches all, and tends our horn, only he lives up
at the top and can walk the stair.”
D'lim nodded. He looked at the mountain of steps before him. He knew it
would take nearly half a day to climb the temple to the top. Yet, the flight
through the jungle had tired him. Unfortunately, he needed to replenish his
strength.
“We are yours, black wizard,” Grumm moaned. “What would you have us
do?”
D'lim looked at the larder of gore beyond and cringed. “I will need food and
water,” he quipped. “But, not this raff you would defile yourselves with, but
plain food, a deer or an Ox freshly slaughtered by a clean blade.”
“Yes, my lord,” Grumm replied. “I will slay one of the heifers for your
meal.”
D'lim smiled.
“There are others, my king... two thick barbarians who run through the
wood like wolves, fierce warriors the like of which I have never seen,”
Grumm added. “Beyond that a dozen mixed pirates in silks with curved
blades, a man with a sword trimmed in fine gems and smelling of the city.”
D'lim sat down on the throne of Grumm and glared at him. He looked off to
the throngs of wild men and grinned. As he did, he held the gem in his hand
and peered deep in its walls.
Nyarlon you fool, he thought again.
“Keep your ovens lit and tell your men to prepare for a war,” D'lim snarled.
“Fresh meat comes your way.”
 Chapter 7

As the sun rammed through the choking vines, the crimson form of the
snake slithered across the wide brim of heady leaves, fleeing the beams of
sparse light. Across the venous shape of the sickly foliage, the blood shard
of a brilliant colored serpent regressed into the dark folds of the fetid jungle
floor. As it ducked into the fungi, the snake's thick spade head looked back
at the Aesir Kothar with the sinister gaze of callous deviltry.
“Conan!” Kothar shouted.
The Cimmerian balked and raised his sword. “By Crom! A Red Adder... I
had thought they were all gone,” he answered with slanted eyes.
“They are all gone, Cimmerian... perhaps we are dead and gone as well, and
only now we slowly rot in a cursed prison of... green hell,” Kothar choked.
Conan and Kothar looked at each other as the creature disappeared under
the leaves. The Aesir looked around him and shrugged his shoulders. Then,
something else caught his eye.
“Look there, a mountain nearby,” Kothar huffed. “The thought of high
ground makes me think of home and forget of snakes and the last time these
ghouls struck.”
Conan looked closer, then laughed. “Not like the pine bogs of the north.
Check your eyes, Aesir and look again, that's no crag—that's a ruin,” He
answered. “The greatest fortress of old Acheron, I'd guess- right where I
told you it would be.”
With the word Archeron, the scant wind rustled and the sparse noise of
birds died to nothing. Around the men, the jungle heat sweltered as the
sound of the sparse denizens faded.
Conan knew; a Magic was in the air... or more spirits of some kind. The
barbarian became confused for a moment, as if differing magics battled for
his own soul. Why was I here again? Have I been bewitched? He asked
himself.
Again, Conan dipped his eyes and a vision came to him. Through the desire
to touch the Queen of Archeron once more, some haunted dream pierced
through his black hair to his baked brain.
Over the smell of the moldy jungle, he could catch the faint waft of Shemite
perfumes and sweat. A Shemite? What? How could this be? He asked
himself as he realized the impossible. In the distance, across some
impossible gulf, he saw the outline of a familiar svelte form, one very dear
to him. She stood in a haze of heat and fire, garbed in a shining armor halter
like a pirate goddess born of battle.
Yet, it was not 'his' Naria—somehow. No, despite all possibility, this was
something from his past he had hidden way. Someone special, though only
recently had been taken from him. Truthfully, the wounds had not even
healed.
Belit.
Though her form was clouded in some war fog, Conan knew those wide
hips and slim waist as her wild Shemite hair tossed like coal-smoke about
her shoulders and harnessed back. The pirate queen grunted while she
fought off dark specters in that realm, a curved blade and shield in her arms.
In the distance, he saw some crazed war rage within that realm. Flames
smoldered behind her and shouts were heard. A sea of arrows loosed like
raindrops in the sky. Beyond, some gaunt phalanx of spirit warriors
charged.
From an unbreachable partition, she turned from the clank of swords and
looked to Conan. The same as he had known, her eyes burned like the
tempest hearth. “Fool!” She hissed over the wind and noise of war. “Even
here, in Valhalla, I see you, now, tricked and under some dog's spell.”
“What lies are these?” Conan demanded. “No soul tricks me.”
“No soul indeed. A sucker of souls more like. Conan, your beloved Naria is
a Lamia! A Lich-queen of the Shattered Realm! Evil and twisted! You have
been seduced by her illusions and spells of power. Wake up! Stop this
chase!” Belit said as metal clanked behind her.
Conan shook his head. “This can't be real.”
“Real? Bah, still a fool,” She snipped. “Real or not, when the time comes,
remember this; the bane of the worst devil is often set closest to them, at the
very steps of their own home and is gilded in the baubles the wicked covet.”
Again, Conan shook his head.
“Baubles?” He asked, confused.
“Conan, remember as well, the secret to any lady's heart, even one who is
foul and undead... is with an unmatched gem beyond all others.”
A shout rang and Belit slashed at the approaching tendrils of serpentine
darkness. Again, a hail of arrows volleyed behind her and the flames of
battle scourged.
“Battle calls, Cimmerian. I must leave you. I would wait here for you one
day, though. Goodbye, my love,” She said as her voice tailed off.
Suddenly, the barbarian was back in the jungle. The ruin loomed over his
head, though the faint waft of smoke was still in his nose.
Yet, as he gathered himself, and Kothar eyed him again with puzzled looks,
he could swear he smelled something fouler. Cooking meat?
On cue, the wood crashed around the northmen.
“Ready your spear, Kothar!” Conan snapped.
Again they tensed for another wave of the human wraiths. This time, the
jungle did not disappoint. Fang-toothed berserkers, pasted with the marks of
Set unloaded from the wood by the droves. The white forms surrounded
Conan and the Aesir, and they hissed like craven beasts with their weapons
out and ready.
This time, though, it was no mere wave, instead a legion faced the two men
and poured forth like a gushing wound. Somehow, the mad demon-men had
crept up in staggering numbers without a sound, silent, just like the stalking
Red Adder. With even more behind them, Conan knew the truth; there were
too many to fight. Sneering through bone masks, all had death in those red
eyes and were ready to pounce with a killing blow.
Again the dread horn sounded from the ruin, as it rang, the deathly call
broke timber and bone as it shattered through the wild.
“So this is it,” Kothar said, staring down dozens of the thralls and waving
his spear.
Conan was silent for a moment as he watched the crowd. The ghoul's red
eyes leered through the Eucalyptus leaves as the smell of offal rushed his
nose.
Again plagued by magic, Naria's voice reached him now. Unfortunately, it
was certainly not the strange vision of Belit.
“Conan! Lay down your arms!” She spoke in his ear. “You must trust your
Queen. For I will guide you and your comrade to my embrace atop the
ruin,” She said. “You must hurry! Already the vile Stygian ascends my
temple to lay the stone on the dais and claim my soul. Despite their wanton
visage, these miscreants are my long-lost people, twisted and soured.
Together, we will show them once more the way of power.”
Conan held one hand up and carefully set his blade down. As his sword hit
the musty jungle floor, the same hidden Red Adder came forward from
nowhere and twined itself around the Argosian steel shaft.
Kothar cringed at the sign of black magic necromancy.
“Set himself acts!” he shouted. “Conan, this is madness! Have you lost your
mind?”
Conan shook his head.
“Nay, Aesir, I still claim my wits. Trust me and lay down your spear,”
Conan said to his mate. “We will be safe yet.”
Kothar looked downward at the writhing body of the rare serpent while it
contorted around the blade.
As he did, a young naked ghoul-woman came forward. Her form was fit
and her chest and hips heaved free, unafraid of death. Her pale tattooed skin
and great bone mask depicted some bird-beast. The young nude ghoul-
woman body was riddled with tattoos, brands, paintings and carven fetishes,
a myriad of signs of her fealty to the god Set and the serpent.
Through the sockets of her dead raptor-mask, the red glow of her succubus
eyes glared at the Aesir, who still outstretched his awl. Watching him, she
reached down to the scarlet snake, picked up the thick creature and placed
the serpent around her neck. So too, she grabbed Conan's blade, licked the
poison and blood from the metal and lowered it, too, her side. Rocking her
hips in a strange tribal taunt, she smiled at Kothar with teeth sharpened into
points and a tongue split like a snake's. Kothar cringed. Still, none of the
gaggle made a sound and a sea of demonic eyes relaxed as they stood
around the pair of men.
The Aesir looked at Conan and stared deep into his eyes. Yet, cautiously, he
nodded and set the pike to the ground. The woman smiled again.
“I hope you know what you're doing, Cimmerian,” he grumbled.
~~~
With a torrid grunt, Mau-Keefe hacked across the palmettos with his jade
handled scimitar. His silken shirt was off now and his normally well-tended
moustache dripped with sweat. Behind him, eleven other pirates toiled
through the thicket, covered in perspiration, scratches and the bites of death
flies.
“My lord, I haven't seen a track for an hour now,” Daroof the Flea remarked
as he cursed and hacked at the roughage.
Mau-Keefe stopped and gathered his breath. The depths of this jungle were
like nothing I had ever seen, he mused.
Just then, the guttural horn sounded deep and high over the tops of the trees.
As the canopy trembled and emptied with sparse birds, the pirate felt the
evil course through the dark folds of the wood. He looked back to his men,
who though beleaguered, had a look of exhausted horror in their eyes as
they dripped with grime.
“There it is again!” Mau-Keefe boomed with his hand up. “Damn any sign
of footfall, I'll bet whatever foul ghouls blow on that horn is who we seek.”
“—or the source of our death, Mau-Keefe, there are certainly more of those
ghouls around,” Tallar, a crusty Shemite mused.
Mau-Keefe snickered and wiped his hair away from his face.
“These bug bites have gotten to your brain, Shemite. Since when do you
fear death, Tallar?” Mau-Keefe asked. “Tell me, what part of 'certain doom'
did you not understand about my invitation?”
Tallar said nothing and nodded.
“Look!” The Flea shouted at the point. “A mountain! Not far off, on the
edge of my eyes!”
“A mountain?” Mau-Keefe replied.
The pirate king looked up and saw the same edge of the distant acropolis.
Illik-Thule, he said to himself.
“That's no mountain, Flea. We move onward, then... but watch your back
for snake and ghoul alike,” Mau-Keefe growled as he hacked again at the
jungle.
“Bowman, keep your arrows nocked,” he added.
 Chapter 8

D'lim flattened the end of the makeshift stave on the rock as he stepped on
the first stair of Ilik-Thule. Already well past tired from his flight through
the jungle, the wild-eyed sorcerer looked upward and spat with defiance on
the lichen covered blocks of the age-old stone.
“Another accursed stair?” He swore while the spittle hung from his lips and
chin. “The elders of Acheron must have had legs like giants,” he grumbled
with each step.
What point was climbing so high? D'lim wondered in growing agitation.
Especially when Lord Set favored the moist cradles under the darkest
depths Earth?
Daunted at the prospect of an ascent up the forged mountain of stairs, the
dark Stygian scowled at the bustling throng of craven Ghoul-men below.
Pots banged and metal clashed. Their drums were ever pounding in his ear.
For a race of few words, did they not know quiet? He asked himself. Truth
be told, a high born-Stygian was not made for meaningless toil and the
mendacity of labor... and the steps upward were certain work. Stygian
wizards were ill-fit for bursting through poisonous jungles and crawling
haunted ruins. D'lim was no exception.
The conditions of the sprawling ruins made matters worse.
Even now the stench of the unkempt brute denizens wafted to the mage's
keen nose. The vaunted "ghouls" of the Shattered Lands had revealed
themselves to be nothing more than the wayward miscreants of lost
Acheron. Once seeped with magicked undreamed, they were little more
than savage scavengers now. Truthfully, the town stunk of the stable and
dripped with rank offal. Atavistic cravings spread through the ruin like a
fierce wind. Worse, the deeper malodor of cannibalistic traces and roasted
man-flesh tainted the very rock of the old ruin.
This was the Shattered Land now... wicked and soured... and here was its
hellish capitol. Among the rotten souls, Archeron's former glory was now
broken beyond any imagination.
Yet, so too, the greed of power beyond any imagination lusted in D'lim's
brain. With Naria the imprisoned queen of Arcerhon at his disposal, the
Stygian Lord was not to be denied.
I had come so far already, D'lim grumbled in his head. What was one more
uphill climb?
With another glance to the throng below, D'lim laughed and cackled into the
jungle ruin.
Even wicked Set would not save this cesspool! D'lim mused as he placed
his sandaled feet on the next step of lichen-rock. Perhaps the first thing I
will do is burn all of this filth away, he added.
Naria's voice shot through his head; “Yes... it will be cleansed but not by
any fires,” the voice whispered. “The sea shall scour this filth in a layer of
brine. Underneath the cold waters of what you call now the Zingaran Sea...
we will rebuild all of this kingdom in Set's name,” the voice of the queen
Naria hissed in his ear.
“In all our names,” D'lim added with a cruel grin.
D'lim tucked the huge blue gem deeper within his robes as he eyed the
activity by the kitchen stocks. Within that morbid terrace below he could
see the brutish chefs prod at the captive Conan and the pale Aesir with
sharp sticks and metal forks. While the ghouls laughed, the Cimmerian only
scowled with the burning glare of blue eyes. Next to those cages, the clay
ovens flared with heat and a wicked flame. The fires jumped from black
coals, nearly ready to bake the two burly captives. Yet, Conan's eyes burned
with a strange vigor that concerned the wizard.
D'lim shuddered at the thought of eating the flesh of men... especially with
the notion of dining on the dirty raff of such foul game as a Northman. His
stomach churned, though now he also relished in the fact that the annoying
and meddlesome Cimmerian's fate had been sealed.
“Food for the ghouls of the Shattered Lands!” D'lim sneered as he slowly
moved upward. A fair enough end for thieves and pirates, he thought.
Again, he rubbed the gem in his coat and thought of his Naria. To think, the
oafish Conan claimed he could steal my greatest treasure.
Suddenly, the voice of the woman once more spiked in his head, this time
coupled with a sharp pain, like a poisoned arrow; “I would warn you,
wizard, do not let my thralls consume the Cimmerian,” the voice spoke to
him.
D'lim paused on the step... his heart sank with both confusion and anger.
He spoke out loud, as if his queen stood next to him on the stair:
“But why, my lady?” He asked as he looked into the giant corners of the
sapphire. “We do not need his feeble mind!”
Again, the pain spiked in his head.
“Nothing of the Cimmerian is feeble, D'lim,” She snapped. “The ways of
the last queen of Archeron are not to be fathomed by dark Stygians who lust
for cloistered myrrh-soaked depths of the barrows of the south,” She
barked.
“My love, I do not understand...” he pled.
“My rebirth requires ritual, Stygian. As I showed you before, steel, life,
death and blood. The life of the strong must drip wide across the Sapphire
to beckon the seas below. Stone is a curse. Such is the cost. Only then can I
mend this land and ruin. Conan is needed for that. His vigor, blood, body
and fierce soul would all be mine,” Naria answered. “Set's demands are as
resolute as the seas and the snakes that slide beneath them.”
D'lim looked back to the forms of Conan and the Aesir Kothar. The two
giants were crammed in one of the largest of the corrals. In front of him,
another meaty ghoul sharpened his massive blades and drooled.
D'lim seethed for a moment as his teeth ground against each other. “Very
well, my lady,” he said with a sputter to his voice. “He shall be yours to
consume.”
The wizard wheeled around to face the crowds below.
“Grumm!” D'lim shouted from his perch above the plaza.
The pale giant Lord of the Ghouls of the Shattered Land leered up as he sat
up from his throne of human bone. Before, him, most of the entire tribe of
Ghouls readied sword and spear and strung wild bone-hewn long bows.
Others sharpened sticks and boughs and set them across the perimeter of the
forest.
“Bring forth Conan!” D'lim shouted. “I will have need of them at the top.”
With his order, D'lim saw the ghoul-king had a look of sadness in his eyes.
“Very well, master,” Grumm answered, dipping his shoulders. “I had hoped
to eat the tanned Cimmerian before a battle broke out,” He whimpered.
“We've had no fresh meats for months.”
“Dine on the other Northman... our queen does not need the Aesir raff,”
D'lim answered. “Conan's fate is bound as a blood sacrifice to darkest Set
and our forsaken Queen.”
Grumm smiled as he stepped forward, his massive gemmed mace perched
on his wide back.
“My lord, you should know... my thralls cannot enter the temple at the top,”
He answered. “We can bring the thick Cimmerian up the stair to the pad
above... but we may not enter the retreat. There are strong wards that would
split our very bones if we tried.”
D'lim cursed and looked again upward. Suddenly, he looked down to his
belt and thought of an idea. How would I control the wild cat of a man
without guards?
“Very well, secure the panther with a stout rope,” D'lim announced. “I have
a plan to snap the vigor of that wraith.”
D'lim tossed a small vial of blue liquid at Grumm.
“Catch this!” he shouted.
With a huge outstretched paw, the giant caught the blue tube and looked at
the shape of the flask in the hazy sun.
“What is this?” Grumm asked.
The wizard laughed.
“Am I not a Stygian Mage and heir to Shattered crown and Archeron's
throne?” D'lim demanded.
“Yes... Master...” Grumm answered with a whimper.
“Take care! That vessel in your hands is the deviled grace of your beloved
patron Adder,” D'lim said with a villainous smile. “Set's own blessing. Mix
a single drop of the venom with a jug of chicken-blood. Force the barbarian
to gorge on it. Then bring him forward. Rest assured, his mind will be mush
but his muscles will still do as I command.”
Grumm looked again at the container, confused. His simple mind of
feasting and bashing was perplexed by the notion of the Stygian's eldritch
magicks.
“Try not to choke on the Aesir,” D'lim joked. “Asgardians are often boney.”
“I still worry about the Cimmerian,” Grumm answered. “He fought like a
devil.”
Again, D'lim smiled.
“With the poison in his blood, Conan will become a mindless stooge, pliant
and dumbed,” he answered. “No threat to either of us.”
The giant nodded. “Yes, master, I will do this,” Grumm replied as he tucked
the glass phial into his pocket.
Suddenly, the great horn above once more thundered another deathly call.
Not one for blaring war horns and the crash of steel, the wizard jumped in
fear atop the rocky stair. But there was nowhere to cower.
“What is that? Why does the horn sound above?” he demanded.
“The jungle spits more death! More soft foes to feast upon! Eagle-eyed
Laron above has spotted danger at our door from his perch and even now,
he sounds the Shattered horn of Archeron,” Grumm answered with a mouth
full of smiling yellow needles. The warlord licked his lips at the sound, his
wide mace slid off his back, ready to crush.
D'lim thought hard as the dread horn once more rang in his ear.
Mau-Keefe at last, he said to himself. It had to be. The Pirate' lord's
vengeance would never pass up retribution for a double cross.
“The Pirate Lord no doubt.” The wizard snarled. “My former alley. Another
menace who means to thwart the return of our queen. Lord Grumm, this is
why I told your tribe to be ready for war. Now, make haste and do as I
asked,” D'lim ordered. “I will not join you in the battle. But instead, I must
ascend this stair without any more delay.”
“Yes, sire,” Grumm bowed as he ran for the kitchens.
~~~
As the war parties ran and shuffled behind them, the giant Grumm tossed
the vial of liquid to the head chef of the larder. Despite the preparations for
war, the kitchen was still working for a lavish meal.
“Murk!” he shouted to the head cook. “Take this vial!”
The chef dropped his wide cleaver and caught the tube mid-air within the
embrace of his greased paws. On his waist, a bandoleer of human skulls
rattled as the hefty cook moved.
“What's dis spice? I'm awfa' busy Grumm,” The cook mumbled. “Dose'
coals are nearly ready.”
A huge metal plate was already garnished with strange fruits and heady
green leaves. In the center of both massive trays was an area both empty
and flat, yet there was space enough for the severed shanks of a man-sized
figure.
“Fatten the Cimmerian with one drop of this venom,” Grumm ordered.
“One part venom into a jug of fresh milked chicken blood.”
The cook took the small container and eyed it closer.
“It's no spice, Murk. Do not taste that if you want to live another day. Take
care and do not let it spill, it will kill surer than any blade,” Grumm added.
“One drop only. Not a tear more, nor any less, a full jugg of chicken blood.”
“Chickens?” The chef asked.
The fat chef knew the sad reality; the 'conventional' live stocks of the
ghouls were woefully short of foodstuffs these days. Any meat was in short
supply. There was only one bird in the stocks; the aptly named "Mortis the
Mad' who shook and glowered at Murk now with beady red eyes.
“Damn you heard me! I spoke twice! Slaughter them all if you need to!”
Grumm barked. “After he has been doctored, bring forth the Cimmerian,
alive, with two guards at his side. Send them upward to meet the wizard
D'lim,” he added.
The chef was silent as he held up the vial and looked at the angry
Cimmerian in his cage.
“I'll do it,” he said with a nod.
With the vow, his lord Grumm stormed off as he yanked his huge gilded
mace up on his shoulders. Jade and emerald sparkled as he set off to aid in
the coming battle.
Watching his giant master walk off to the war preparations, the chef
scratched his bald head.
“Chicken's blood?” He asked himself with a mumble. He looked down at
his supplies. In his pantry, only Mortis, the half–tied excuse for a chicken
growled and hissed at the man as he scanned the stables. Next to the
bloodthirsty clucker, a skinny goat bah'ed and dipped its shy head, meek
and emaciated. The small goat stumbled in the weak wind, while the red
rooster Mortis was ablaze of claw and beak.
Next to the chef, a smaller Ghoul-aid with a boney calf's skull for a helm
leered at the blood smeared cook with a sarcastic smile. Even for a ghoul,
the aid was stunted like a child and flipped about a wicked, sub-human
smile.
The chef looked again at the hissing rooster as it flared its sharp talons and
ruffled its feathers with rage.
“He wants a chicken, then you gut old Mortis. I'm not touching that fouled
cock,” the small ghoul sneered as he fumbled with a rusted filet knife.
Murk spat on the blood-stained rock of the ruin with a primal arrogance.
“Hah, you think even Grumm, hisself' could tell ol' Murk how to run 'dis
kitchen?” The head cook huffed, his pasty-white chest puffed out.
“He's bigga' 'den both of us together,” The smaller one answered. “So yea,
Murk... I do,” he answered. “So what's it be, boss? The coals are nearly
ready.”
The chef nodded and kicked the blood soaked dirt.
“What Grumm don't know won't kill 'em,” Murk mumbled under his breath,
“'ee's got warr'n to do anyhows.”
For now, Murk gripped his cleaver and took another look at the rabid
chicken. The bird, who was now near frothing at the mouth in anger and
rage, hissed again at both ghoul-men as they eyed his feathery form. As the
cock sputtered, the weak goat next to it stumbled on its own shadow.
“Well...” he grumbled and shrugged. “Goat's blood should work well
enough,” he said to his assistant. “Aside from 'dat, mix it like he say... we
got cookin' to do.”
The smaller ghoul smiled as he grabbed the small goat by the collar. “Here,
here, nice lil' goat,” He sung over the roar of the fires. A second later, the
filet knife came quick and without remorse. [The unfinished manuscript
stops here]
 Conan in Jail - Jay Bowers

A Stygian jail
I had been in this pit for too long—two months to be exact, two months and
some odd days rotting in a Stygian cell. I—Orestes of Zamora—a burglar
master thief—thrown in jail with low bred curs, common street thieves and
cutpurses. The shame was worse for me, almost, than the actual
imprisonment and bad food: I was a prince of thieves from a land that
raised thievery to an art! And here I was, in a dank prison with Kushites,
Shemites, and others from many far-flung inferior lands, when the
Cimmerian was brought into the prison.
Loaded with chains he was, heavy links that not even his mighty thews
might break. So heavy were the chains about his swelling limbs that he was
bodily carried into the jail, and thrown into it by four burly soldiers. And
they looked overly taxed at the carrying of that load of chains and
Cimmerian...
Dropping him with a loud clank in my cell with all the other prisoners, they
left with imprecations, and the jailer slammed the door behind them as they
left. The Cimmerian, Conan, for such I learned later was his name, was out
cold, and his skin bled from numerous flesh wounds, all on the front side of
his body. This last spoke volumes about Conan's valor and reluctance to
turn from battle, more of which I would learn later.
I later learned that this Conan was a corsair, a buccaneer raiding along the
coast with a crew of Black corsairs, robbing the Stygians. The captain of the
ship, at that—he had been the lone survivor of a Stygian attack. Multiple
galleys had been mustered against the pirates, and the blue and black sailed
ships of the Stygians had launched in desperation against the constant
raidings of Conan, who was known to the blacks as Amra, which meant ‘the
lion’ in the language of the blacks.
Rumors of dark arts were implicated in his capture, including a giant glass
of some sort that concentrated the sun's rays into beams of burning light,
burning both pirate's flesh and the boat itself!
Finally, the maimed ship had been boarded, and in the man to man fighting
that remained, only Conan survived, on a deck he left littered with Stygian
corpses.
But all this is in hindsight: now, in these past few hours, Conan had come
to, and was glaring about with his blazing blue eyes, his wild black mane
tangled about his shoulders. And then, in through the prison door came an
imposing figure, and that of one we had never expected to see here in our
lowly cell.
There was a rattle of arms, the noise of voices, and suddenly who should
arrive at our pitiful prison door but Thothmes, the regent king of Stygia
himself! He strode into the prison with a small group of armed soldiers, and
directly to the cell which I shared, along with several others, with this
Conan of Cimmeria.
By the way, Cimmeria, I later learned, is a land far to the north and to the
west of my own warm and sun-kissed land of Zamora—a land of misty,
wintry mountains, chill and bleak. Their only god is Crom, who breathes
the will to strive and slay into his followers upon their birth, and gives them
nothing after that. What a cheerless land!
“And so—THIS is the pirate captain, Conan,” expostulated Thothmes in
wrath. “He shall die as no man has died in ages—this defiler of Stygian
supremacy of the seas! I plotted for months to rid us of his scurvy horde,
and now 'tis done at last!”
Thothmes was an imposing figure, tall and handsome, with a headpiece that
was a Stygian crown of brass and gold, and a long purple robe. His face was
twisted with wrath, and he looked at Conan with regal anger. Conan
regarded him from under black brows, back braced upon the wall as he sat
loaded with chains.
“Come in this cage, dog of Stygia, and loaded with chains as I am, I will
show you who dies!” And he spat meaningfully in Thothmes direction,
raising the chains in his arms to brandish in the ruler's face.
The king, in a paroxysm of rage, reached into his girdle, and then thrust the
contents in his grasp towards the caged Cimmerian! Full in his eyes it flew,
a gray powder, and the Cimmerian cried out- for, upon the touch of the
powder, all vision had fled from his eyes—he was blind!
~~~
Death of Bamula
After being left blinded by King Thothmes, Conan was panicked—I,
Orestes, could tell he was thinking: ‘What if his vision never returned?’
This thought daunted him even more than his upcoming execution had done
—he had been sentenced to die more than once before in his adventurous
life, and he still lived. But blindness... the Cimmerian backed into a corner
of the cell, and I went with him, guiding him with my words to a good spot
to go to bay, as it were. I was not completely without self-interest in doing
this; ever since I had seen the mighty thewed barbarian carried into the jail,
I had been thinking that perhaps an alliance with such a physically
imposing warrior might be a means of myself escaping this foul place...
But whatever the reason—Conan had found an ally in me!
We spoke at length- Conan was a man of few words, but we Zamorans are a
voluble race—we never use one word when three or four will be more
descriptive, and our hands do half (or more) of our talking for us. But, since
the Cimmerian could not see my hands just now- the poorer he for it!—I
tried to paint word pictures of what was going on for him.
Nothing really happened for a time, but I saw the other prisoners eyeing us
appraisingly. There is always a pecking order in jails—I have been in
enough to know—and the Cimmerian had been too new, and too helpless in
his chains to even be considered overly much... but now that he was
blinded, I saw some of the biggest, strongest, and dominant-looking
prisoners looking over at us avidly. They were thinking that if this giant was
freed of his chains, even blinded-he could be trouble!
Bamula, a surly, giant black from deep in Darfar, was undoubtedly the top
prisoner in terms of status—even the guards appeared frightened of him,
with his huge ebon limbs and teeth filed to points. They said his people
were cannibals, and prisoners had been known to disappear from within the
jail, and were never seen or heard of again.
All stayed away front Bamula!
There was a dank of steel, and a rasp against iron bars. The guard, a rat-
faced man with a twisted countenance and perpetual leer had arrived with
the evening rations for our cell—
I told Conan to wait, I would get him some food, and rushed in the melee of
prisoners going to get their share. There was never enough, and Bamula, for
one, always took enough for three at least. Caught up in the press behind
Bamula, I elbowed one prisoner in the belly, and squirmed like an eel
through the throng, winding up right against the bars—we Zamorans are
like acrobats in our contortions!
The rat faced guard, after having warily handed a large tray to Bamula from
afar back, now came right up close to the bars, taunting us with the trays of
food, and then drawing them back again. The pig!
I reached out, and he twisted away, laughing, and held the trays of food out
to the other prisoners, and away from me. But he had forgotten that the
backside of his girdle also contained his jailer's keys, and several were
glinting at me at that moment—in his delight in tormenting us with the hope
of meat and bread, he had forgotten them. As a master thief in my
homeland, where the lowest thief in Zamora is beyond a legendary brigand
of any other land, taking one of those keys was child's play. He felt not a
thing; not the breath of a gnat against his girdle upon which the keys hung
so temptingly—far more so at that moment than any victuals, any ambrosia
of the gods would be!
I never got a tray of food, but two joints of meat I happily filched from two
other prisoners as I made my way back through the crush to the corner I
shared with Conan. What was that key TO? That was all I could think of...
hopefully the main door to our cell, although that would be useless without
the key to the outer gate, which would trap us outside of our cell without it.
Gods, but I was giddy—a path would come, sooner or later, I knew! The
gods of Zamora are capricious, but generous...
Coming back again to Conan, I gave him the joint of meat, which he could
barely get into his mouth with the restrictions of the chains he was bound
with. Suddenly I thought of something to try—I put the key into the lock
holding his heavy chains—it fit perfectly! With a yelp of elation, I turned
the key, and watched in joy as the lock opened. Conan pulled off the chains
in one smooth motion, and rose as they clanked to the floor.
Stretching his mighty limbs, he exulted in his newly regained freedom—
although within a cell, at last he could move. Across the cell, the other
prisoners stared, their food momentarily forgotten—the rankings in the
prison cell had just become much less dear. Conan glared about, sightlessly,
but his eyes blazed a bright blue sheen of menace, and his jaw was
chomping his joint of beef like a newly liberated lion.
The savage Bamula came elbowing through the other prisoners, his eyes
intent on Conan, his filed teeth bared in a grin of rage. Conan was almost as
tall as Bamula, and defined like a panther as opposed to Bamula's vast bulk,
which extended even to his huge belly that was supported by all of his
stolen food. It was as if a gorilla was approaching a tiger, and no one knew
what would be the outcome.
Except, of course, the lion was blind!
I tried to warn Conan, but Bamula had been too quick—he closed the space
between them in a heartbeat, and slammed a huge fist into the Cimmerian's
face, knocking the beef bone from his hand, and toppling the barbarian into
the bars behind his back. He caught himself with one hand on the bars, and
put his other hand out questingly before him. Undoubtedly, the black was
determined to eliminate this rival before there was a chance his sight was
regained. His other dark fist extended with all the power of his mighty left
arm behind it, but I, with the chain I had recently unloosed from Conan's
limbs, looped it quickly about Bamula's ankle and pulled, upsetting his aim
and defusing the blow from dealing full damage.
Even so, the power as that fist struck Conan's face would have felled and
killed a lesser man. Great was the strength of Bamula of Darfar indeed.
But now, Conan had figured the distance he was from his attacker. He
grasped the arm suddenly that had just struck him, pulled back upon it,
forcibly turning the giant Bamula's back to the Cimmerian—and then, he
grasped the savage from behind—and squeezed.
With both mighty arms, Conan crushed the giant black, as that man clawed
and strained against those implacable arms... but those arms... just kept
squeezing.
With rage not just against Bamula, but against all that had happened to him
since his reavers of the coast had been captured and killed—the king's
blinding powder—the chains that had chafed him as nothing else—and now
this senseless attack—a red mist swam before his mind's eye, and he
squeezed as he had never done before. Bamula, his eyes rolling in his head,
was gasping for air now, and trying to turn his head enough to get a good
grip of the Cimmerian's throat with his dagger-like teeth...
But finally, with an effort drawn from when he used to throttle bulls for the
slaughter in his native land...
Conan jerked his arms back, and there was a crack! The Cimmerian opened
his arms, and Bamula of Darfar, the terror of his land, despoiler of Stygia,
and curse of his fellow prisoners, was no more—he lay on the floor of the
cell, his backbone shattered.
~~~
A Long Dead Queen
The next morning I awoke early from my cold spot on the stone floor of the
cell. I saw that Conan was already up, and pacing. By the way his hands
were outstretched before him, I could tell his vision had not yet returned.
But his boundless vitality had not left him—even in his limited pacing, he
moved with feline grace and strength, albeit he was a cat that couldn't see.
The rat faced jailer arrived, along with several heavily armed and armored
guards with curved swords and gleaming helms.
“The king would see you now, blind dog,” he spoke, gesturing at Conan.
“And you,” he quoted indicating Orestes, “come you along to shepherd this
blind man, soon to die for his crimes”.
Conan grimaced, but stoically allowed himself to be shepherded by the
guards, and led by myself, who lightly guided him by touching his massive
arm.
Traveling down long corridors of shining jade, lapis and ebony, we came at
last to a gleaming throne room—the Throne of Stygia itself, upon which sat
Thothmes, king of the land of the worshipers of Set. And beside him sat his
queen, Selena, who was a dusky beauty of perhaps his own age, dressed in
gleaming robes of a dark silk.
She was watching Conan intently, gripping the sides of her own throne
tightly.
“You are to die today, pirate,” said Thothmes, and he smiled slightly as he
said it. The flames from numbers of brightly burning, black candles struck
scintillant gleams from his high crown, adorned with images of serpents
with glowing red eyes of ruby. He was a darkly handsome man of middle
years, but there was a debauched look to his face that spoke of decadence
and self-indulgence.
“Your Zamoran friend can watch, and report back to others what happens to
criminals in Stygia.”
“And you are to be given a great honor—your death will help to aid my
priest, Zukala, in the greatest magic of our age—he will bring back
Nefertari, the great queen of Stygia from two thousand years ago, the
greatest beauty and sorceress of her age. With her as my consort, nothing
can stop me from ruling the whole of Stygia as we did then—from Koth
and Argos in the north, and past Kush, Keshan, and Punt to the south! “ He
spoke these words with a thrill of passion.
“Fresh blood from a northlander, vital and alive from the lands of ice and
snow, that is a potent magic in this rejuvenation of the long dead. The
vitality of such folk can be used... productively!”
“Bind him!” said the king. The guards produced two heavy lengths of chain
that were attached to the floor, and put one about Conan's waist, and with
the other bound Orestes.
“Now, I go to fetch my priest Zukala, and the mummy case of my new
bride, Nefertari,” said the king, glancing sidelong at Selena his wife and
queen, with a mocking smile like that of a cat toying with a mouse.
“I need a younger queen, along with my current older model...” he said, and
then he laughed unpleasantly, leaving the hall in a swirl of dark robes, his
guards marching along behind him.
~~~
The Mummy
As soon as the king left the hall, Selena came down from her throne to
where Conan and I were chained. Her countenance was agitated; she
seemed excited and worried at the same time.
“I can aid you, barbarian, if you will help me! Thothmes seeks to discard
me for a dead queen—I will not stand for it! He is only king by virtue of
marrying me, the highest born in this ancient land. I would slay him and
rule on my own, but I do not dare—the people will not recognize a female
ruler any longer, as they did in ages past.”
“I can restore your sight and freedom—will you aid me?”
And she indicated by her glance that she included both of us in the
proposal; but she scarcely meant me by the way her eyes burned on the
barbarian.
Conan nodded, but the look on his face at the prospect of regaining his sight
was all that she needed. At once, she went to a jeweled chest next to the
king's throne, and withdrew a small vial of powder.
This she threw in the Cimmerian's eyes, and within a few heartbeats he
could see! He shook his head like an awakening lion, and pointed to the
chain attaching him to the floor.
“I will loose you, northlander, and your companion, but you must swear to
aid me in slaying the black priest. Then my cursed king and consort will be
deterred from bringing back this ancient harlot, and abandoning me!”
~~~
At that moment, there was noise from down the hall—the king was
returning! Queen Selena climbed back quickly onto her throne, and acted as
if she had never moved. She looked faintly bored; a natural actress, I
thought.
Conan could see, but we were still in chains, awaiting death. I didn't see
how we could aid ourselves, much less Selena.
Into the hall came the king, and with him was a very tall, very thin man—
the sorcerer Zukala. He had a black mustache, and a small square beard on
his cadaverous face. He brandished a long rod of gold that glowed faintly,
and his feet were almost covered by the long black robe he wore, chased
with scarlet serpents. Behind them were the guards, and two of them carried
between them a large mummy case, decorated with gold and gems, and
obviously of a very great age.
Setting the mummy case down on its end, the guards repaired to the doors
of the hall. The case showed, amidst the gold and gemstones, an exquisite
painting of a woman, probably the most gorgeous woman that I, a Zamoran
had ever seen—and Zamoran women are the most exotic and desired in the
entire world! So this is who Thothmes was bringing back.
~~~
The Serpent
At this juncture, King Thothmes addressed Conan and myself. “Now, you
will be honored by having your blood used to revive my newest queen.”
Thothmes glanced back at the black priest, and Zukala bowed slightly,
opening the case containing the long dead Nefertari!
Inside, held intact by the close walls of the carven case, was a withered, dry
horror. Bandages had slipped from her face, revealing a skull-like visage,
and some wisps of long dead hair. How could that ever live, I thought!
I saw Conan had a similar reaction, but then the priest lifted his golden rod,
and touched it to the breast of the mummy. It glowed with a strange,
unearthly, and not unlovely radiance, and under the bandages the mummy
began to swell. Even the face began to round up some, although it remained
a long dead mask of horror...
And the chest even moved as the thing breathed! Even the hair became
fuller, and less wispy as we watched.
Zukala then spoke, with a sibilant and snake-like wizardly lisp to his
unnaturally loud and low voice.
“Now, we need the blood of the northlander to complete the enchantment!”
Upon saying this last, the black priest of Set again used his golden rod,
pointing it at a thick hanging on the wall furthest from the thrones. There
was a slithering sound, and moments later a huge, fanged serpent slithered
into the chamber from a passage behind the purple fabric.
“My pet will crush the life from you, but leave your blood intact for the rite
of rejuvenation. These things must be done delicately...”
At that, the queen Selena reached over to pull a small lever at the side of
King Thothme's throne. There was a clanking sound, and the chains holding
Conan and I, to the floor detached, and fell to the floor! Obviously a
concealed mechanism to facilitate releasing prisoners easily after execution.
I thought that this priest must be far ahead of his time to devise such a
means, but I'm sure Conan, not one to waste time wondering how, just
chalked it up to further sorcery, and went into instant action.
Selena stood, and reaching behind the throne where ancient decorative
weapons were hung, grasped an old broadsword with a jeweled hilt. This,
she threw with both arms towards Conan and myself, where it clattered
noisily on the floor tiles. Conan was there almost instantly, his bright blue
eyes blazing with the return of his sight, and also the fury that comes from
escaping a trap to any wild thing!
In this brief interlude, Thothmes the king glared with rage at his queen
Selena, and grabbing a dagger from his girdle, headed for her to take
vengeance. Too angry was he to even call for his guards!
He passed directly in front of the half-revived mummy, moving fast, when
suddenly—he stopped dead. A look of horror passed over his face, and he
looked to see what had stopped him. The withered arm of long dead
Nefertari was locked about his arm, imprisoning it in a grip of supernatural
strength. And then, Nefertari reached out with her other bony, undead arm,
and pulled Thothme's face towards her champing, skull like face—for a
kiss?
—Thothmes screamed like a damned soul.
~~~
Meanwhile, Conan had not stopped moving, and neither had the huge snake
—it barreled towards him, a light of unnatural intelligence in its slanted
eyes. It went straight for the barbarian, recognizing its mission very well.
Simultaneously, this Zamoran ran to the wall behind the throne, and
grabbed a sturdy looking poniard. I went to help Conan with the snake,
which was now coiling up into the vast heights of the hall, looking down at
the advancing barbarian with reptilian hate and awful purpose. The guards
had left their posts, and come to join the melee, but they appeared more
frightened of the snake than they did of Conan.
Conan slashed viciously at the serpent, cutting part way through its massive
barrel, and the snake struck downwards, coiling about him and starting to
squeeze! I headed towards him to help, but was cut off by a ball of fire
aimed at my head.
Zukala, the sorcerer, had used his black arts to conjure up a flaming ball,
which hit a hanging behind me that immediately went up in flames! And he
was even now reaching under his robes for another—what? Black flames of
death or something equally as deadly.
In Zamora, many are our talents! Wonderful thieves, wonderful lovers, we
are also—wonderful at knife throwing!
Before Zukala could let fly his latest necromancy, I threw my poniard with
all I could muster. It struck directly into the priest's black heart, his eyes
dimmed, and he slumped to the floor, dead.
I glanced towards Conan, and he was slashing viciously at the snake with
his sword.
Suddenly, the snake uncoiled, and moved back to escape that slashing
blade. It had gone into a panic; used to squeezing and killing unarmed,
imprisoned people for sacrifice, this slashing barbarian was beyond its ken.
It lashed about the hall, voicing a horrid serpent-like hissing cry. The
guardsmen were fleeing the room, and several were crushed by the
monsters wild thrashings, thrown into the stone walls violently enough to
kill.
Selena moved down from the dais where sat her throne, and moved warily
around her former paramour king Thothmes, who was still locked in the
unwanted embrace of his dead queen.
He appeared dead; the horror of his situation appeared to have stopped his
heart—and the thing just kept champing at his face with her bony lips, in a
foul imitation of a kiss! Without the blood of the northlander, her famed
beauty would never be revived, and she could never truly live again—she
was trapped in a halfway position between life and death.
Conan had finally finished killing the snake, having cut its trunk almost
completely in twain! He was sweating profusely, and bleeding from a score
of places where the rough hide of the serpent had rasped off his skin.
Except for the dead ones in the hall, all the guards had fled.
I went to the Cimmerian's side, and Selena came to us, giving wide berth to
the scene of horror by the mummy case, where an undead queen still
pressed her hideous face against that of the dead king, over and over.
Indicating to myself and Conan that we should follow her, she led us out
through the very passage the snake had crawled. It went... downwards—and
I was uneasy, but she had played us fair so far... and then, she glided down a
side passage, and then up. She explained that this was a hidden escape
route, known only to the black priest, the king, and herself.
“And now,” she said without a trace of sadness, “known only to me, and
yourselves.”
The passage let out into a small, side alley off of the palace. Serena looked
at Conan, with her dark, beautiful, mysterious eyes, and her lips parted.
“A worthy King you would be, oh Conan of Cimmeria! I would keep you
for mine, for a man as powerful as you, and as untamed, would be a fit
paramour for the queen of Stygia...but, I cannot—my people would never
accept any but one of their own race. I must select a new king, one without
ambitions of his own, that then I can rule through him. I will never marry
another like Thothmes, although I did once love him.”
She handed a pouch of gold to both Conan and me. The Cimmerian still
held his sword, dotted with serpent blood.
“Go, the both of you—just over there is the seaman's wharf, where you can
hire a ship to take you where you will. The pirate situation is all dear for
now,” she smiled wryly, “and I am free of both Zukala and Thothmes—Set
be praised!” She thought a moment.
“Although, I can't just leave that undead witch champing away at him—I'll
have my men hack her apart with their swords, and then burn what is left. I
never plan to have another rival to my throne!”
And with that, she left them. I looked at Conan, but he was looking towards
the wharves, as if she had never been.
“You know, Orestes,” he said with some enthusiasm. “I've had more than
enough of this benighted land—Bah! Snakes, mummies, and priests—what
say you show me some honest rogues in Zamora? Some good, honest
thieves—Crom, that will be like a tonic to me. I'll show them what it is to
be robbed!”
And with that, we set off for the wharves. But, on the way, the Cimmerian
steered me into a seaside tavern for some dean, honest tankards of ale and
enough good roast beef to sate even Conan the Barbarian!
Consummatum est
 The Defiler in the Tomb - Dan Mauric

The utter darkness was pierced by a single beam of light as the tomb's stone
cover was slowly slid away. The scraping of stone against stone filled the
chamber below as little by little the beam grew into a flood that poured into
the depths, which had not felt the warmth of the sun for thousands of years.
The scraping stopped and there was a dull thud as the stone fell from the
mouth of the opening. Traces of sand seeped through the seams of the brick
and mortar ceiling inside the tomb, shook loose after eons by the vibration
of the cover hitting the ground above.
A rope dropped down through the opening, unraveling as it fell, stopping
with just the tip hitting floor. Dust from the impact wafted into the air and
danced in the shaft of light. The rope flailed wildly as a figure took hold of
it, swung out over the hole and began to descend, momentarily blocking out
the sunlight and plunging the tomb back into darkness. As descent was
made the desert sunlight incrementally reappeared in the tomb, stabbing
around around the massive form.
The figure, a titanic individual, was naked except for a linen lion cloth
girded about his waist, sandals on his feet and a large curved dagger with an
ivory handle strapped to his thigh. His skin was weathered bronze, scarred
and rippled with muscle, the natural, efficient muscle of one who was
accustomed to a life defined by wilderness, hardship and adventure. The
hair was black, shoulder-length and square cut. His brow was low and thick,
jaw set rigid with brutish features spoke to his barbarian blood, but were in
no way indicative of an equally brutish mind. Those steel blue eyes blazed
with craftiness and determination. Equal parts; as cunningest and lethality
are equal parts of a panther. A Cimmerian, born of the cold north, an
unusual sight in the far southern reaches of a Stygian desert.
Conan landed on the floor of the tomb in the circle of sunlight, a cloud of
the ancient dust mushroomed into the air and billowed out away from him.
He crouched warily, ready to strike as he surveyed his surroundings. One
hand was on the hilt of the dagger, the other was still wrapped loosely in the
rope holding on as if to a lifeline for quick egress in the event of sudden
danger from the shadows outside the circle of light.
He scanned the room, all his senses keen, anticipating danger. Looking,
listening, and smelling for any potential threat or surprise. The northlander's
eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, every sinew was tense with caution.
The tomb was rectangular. Its length was easily three times its width. The
light from above was quickly swallowed up, barely illuminating the far
reaches of the chamber. Four pillars, two to a side, supported the ceiling.
The floors, walls and ceiling were all constructed with the same sandstone
bricks. In a few places the bricks had broken loose and desert sand had
poured in through the hole resulting in small piles of sand scattered around
the chamber.
At the opposite end lay a sarcophagus, the light from the entrance barely
touched the grave and beyond was an inky blackness. This was the final
resting place of the ancient tomb's legendary resident; Kah-Amet, a High
Priest of Set who had lived when the kingdom of Acheron was young.
After one last glance around the chamber Conan released the rope and
stepped out of the circle of light toward the sarcophagus. He paused to let
his eyes adjust to the dark. He blinked away the sunspots and then quickly
covered the remaining distance.
Enshrouded with a thick layer of dust, the sarcophagus was plain in design,
slightly wider than a man at the head and tapered to a point at the foot with
slightly rounded corners and smooth edges. It was unadorned, except for a
gold inlaid symbol. The Eye of Set, boasting a large green gem for its pupil.
Conan knelt at the foot of the sarcophagus and quickly set to work finding a
way to open it. He was no stranger to opening things that he ought not.
During the time he had spent in the alleys of The Maul he had acquired the
necessary skills to expedite such a task. The skills of the thief and the
burglar were the civilized man's equivalent to the barbarian's ways of the
hunter and the forager. Conan excelled as both thief and hunter.
He deftly slid his fingers along the seam of the lid, blowing and brushing
dust out of the way. Conan worked from one side to the other, probing for
any latch, gap, hairline crack or any possible means to wedge the lid. The
barbarian shuffled around the corner and began to work his fingers along
the side seam as he approached the head of the sarcophagus he froze.
The dust near the head of the sarcophagus had been disturbed, revealing the
polished black stone beneath the heavy layer. Disturbed, not by human
hands, but as if something had been dragged across the lid. A swath of the
lid, as wide as a man's thigh, was wiped clean. Whatever had been dragged
across the lid pushed the dust up on either side forming a distinct track.
Conan's eyes traced the mark across the coffin lid and down onto dust
covered floor. Conan slowly turned his head, following the track into the
shadows of the recesses of the tomb.
A glimmer in the dark recesses of the tomb caused Conan's barbarian
instincts to take over. His corded muscles tensed and exploded as he dove
from his position just as a giant black serpent shot from the shadows and
crashed headlong into the sarcophagus, knocking it over and spilling the
contents. Conan landed, rolled to a crouching position facing the attacker
and whipped the curved dagger from its sheath all in one fluid motion. The
serpent shook its head briefly dazed from its crushing attack. It spat an
angry hiss at the intruder and coiled back up, facing the barbarian, ready to
strike again.
Conan crouched motionless as the ebony serpent's tongue flicked in and
out, its hideous green eyes locked on the barbarian's location, probing. The
snaky head swaying rhythmically, back and forth, assessing the intruder.
Conan's eyes followed the serpent's hypnotic motions, making evaluations
of his own. The serpent was as thick around as his thigh and twice as long
as the Cimmerian was tall. Its fangs were like needles, sharp and certainly
poisonous. Its skin was inky black, glossy, almost giving the appearance of
being wet. The limbless scaly elongate reptile was directly between Conan
and the ring of light at the entrance of the tomb. His only means of escape
was blocked.
Out of the corner of his eye Conan saw a sparkle of light reflecting. The
mummified arm of Kah-Amet was protruding from beneath the knocked
over sarcophagus. A glint of gold had caught Conan's attention. A large
bejeweled ring adorned the mummy's finger. The treasure that had lured the
Cimmerian from the port of Khemi to this forsaken tomb in the middle of
the Stygian desert lay between Conan and the giant serpent.
Sensing the momentary distraction the serpent seized the opportunity to
attack. Conan barely had time to avoid it's lightning fast strike. He jumped
to his feet and twisted sideways, whirling backwards to face the snake
again.
The snake coiled, with no hesitation, it immediately struck back. This time
Conan was prepared and met the monster with a powerful two handed
plunge of the curved dagger. Piercing skull and brain and out through the
lower jaw, the barbarian's momentum drove the dagger and the serpent's
head into the ground. Conan came down hard, pinning the head with his
weight. The serpent's body flailed wildly about. Thumping and slapping
noises echoed around the chamber. The serpent let out a long, continuous
wheezing as it violently tried to break free of the Cimmerian's crushing hold
on it's head.
The convulsing body kicked up a cloud of ancient dust causing Conan's
lungs to burn and his eyes to water. Blood and ichor splattered the
northlander and the sarcophagus. More dust and sand shook loose from the
walls and ceiling as Conan leaned hard on the serpent's head and pushed the
dagger harder against the ground. The death throes of the serpent reached a
frenzied climax and began to subside. The terrible hissing tapered off and
stopped. Conan jerked the blade once more and the flailing stopped, the
body went limp.
Conan slowly stood, put his foot on the serpent's head and pulled his dagger
free. He cautiously backed away, toward the sarcophagus, keeping his
weapon between himself and the corpse. Satisfied that the monster was
dead, Conan sheathed the blade and quickly scanned for the treasure that he
had come for. Spotting it, Conan bent down and pulled the ring off the
mummy's protruding hand. With a self-satisfied smirk on his face, Conan
stood back up, admiring the green gem set in the ring, holding the gem in
front of his face for inspection.
A sharp sibilant sound snapped the barbarian's gaze from the ring to the
shadowy reaches of the tomb. Conan looked across the sarcophagus to see
several pairs of enormous green eyes flicker in the faint light.
Again, the northlander's wild instincts took over and saved him from certain
doom. With panther like agility Conan turned, sprinted back to the circle of
light and leaped halfway up the rope dangling down. Pulling hand over
hand, the barbarian heaved himself through the portal and out onto the
desert sand that had buried the tomb years ago. The thumping and hissing
of serpents spewed forth from below.
“Crom!” Conan exclaimed, standing and wiping sand and ichor from his
arms and legs. He looked down through the opening and saw four more
giant black serpents writhing below, rasping, tongues darting in and out,
fangs bared. The creatures stretched to their full length in a vain attempt to
reach their escaped quarry, crashed back down and flopped about, enraged,
sending a blast of dust out of the mouth of the tomb.
Conan quickly lifted the stone cover back on, sealing the creatures in
darkness once more, for another thousand years.
As he turned and began walking out across the burning sand into the
blinding sun, he exclaimed to the empty desert, “This ought to buy enough
wine to quench all of Khemi's thirst!”
Flicking the Ring of Kah-Amet straight up into the air, the green gem
caught the sunlight and gleamed. The ring turned once in the air and landed
in his outstretched hand. He smiled and tucked it into the folds of cloth
gathered at his waist.
Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian - Lin
Carter

“The road was long and the road was hard

And the sky was cold and grey:
The dead white moon was a frozen shard
In the dim pale dawn of day:
But thief and harlot, king and guard –
Warrior, wizard, knave and bard –
Rode with me all the way.

The wind was sharp as a whetted knife

As it blew from the wet salt seas;
The storm wind stirred to a ghostly life
The gaunt black skeletal trees:
But I drank the foaming wine of life –
Wine of plunder and lust and strife –
Down to the bitter lees.

A boy, from the savage north I came

To cities of silk and sin.
With torch and steel, in blood and flame,
I won what a man may win:
Aye, gambled and won at the Devil’s game –
Splendor and glory and glittering fame –
And mocked at Death’s skull-grin.

And there were foeman to fight and slay

And friends to love and trust:
And crowns to conquer and toss away
And lips to taste with lust:
And songs to keep black night at bay –
 And wine to swill to the break of day –
What matter the end be dust?

I’ve won my share of your gems and gold,

They crumble into clods:
I’ve gorged on the best that life can hold
And Devil take the odds.
The grave is deep and the night is cold –
The world’s a skull-full of stinking mould –
And I laugh at your little gods!

The lean road slunk through a blasted land

Where the earth was parched and black,
But we were a marry, jesting band
Who asked no easier track:
Rouge and reaver and firebrand–
And life rode laughing at my hand–
And Death rode at my back.

The road was dusty and harsh and long,

Crom, but a man gets dry!
I’m old and weary and Death is strong
But flesh was born to die.
Hai, Gods! But it was a merry throng–
Rode by my side with jest and song–
Under an empty sky.

I’ve heard fat, cunning priestlings tell

How damned souls writhe and moan,
That paradise they can buy and sell
For gold and gold alone.
To the flames with scripture and priest as well–
I’ll stride down the scarlet throat of Hell–
And dice for the Devil’s throne!

I faced life boldly and unafraid,

Should I flinch as Death draws near?
Life’s but a game Death and I have played
Many a wearisome year.
Hai! to the gallant friends I made,
Slave and swordsman and lissome maid–
I begrudge no foot of the road I strayed–
The road which endeth HERE!”
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 THE CONAN SERIES IN EBOOKS

If you are really committed to reading the non-Howard Conan pastiches in

the correct chronological order, duds and all, this list is as definitive as it
gets: Side by side, these Conan stories not penned by Howard should not be
compared or contrasted against Howard's work for quality, but rather be
read separately, but for beginners I recommend you read the CONAN the
Barbarian: complete collection by Robert E. Howard, Nighttime
Editions. — Mary Sue Rey

Vol. 01 Conan of Venarium - Harry Turtledove

Vol. 02 Conan the Bold - John Maddox Roberts

Vol. 03 Conan the Defiant - Steve Perry

Vol. 04 Conan the Hunter - Sean A. Moore

Vol. 05 Conan and the Sorcerer - Andrew J. Offutt

Vol. 06 Conan the Mercenary - Andrew J. Offutt

Vol. 07 Conan and the Sword of Skelos - Andrew J. Offutt

Vol. 08 Conan the Magnificent - Robert Jordan

Vol. 09 Conan the Invincible - Robert Jordan

Vol. 10 Conan the Fearless - Steve Perry

Vol. 11 Conan the Victorious - Robert Jordan

Vol. 12 Conan the Valiant - Roland Green

 Vol. 13 Conan the Valorous - John Maddox Roberts

Vol. 14 Conan the Triumphant - Robert Jordan

Vol. 15 Conan the Guardian - Roland Green

Vol. 16 Conan the Rebel - Poul Anderson

Vol. 17 Conan and the Emerald Lotus - John C. Hocking

Vol. 18 Conan The Road of Kings - Karl Edward Wagner

Vol. 19 Conan Scourge of the Bloody Coast - Leonard Carpenter

Vol. 20 Conan the Raider - Leonard Carpenter

Vol. 21 Conan the Champion - John Maddox Roberts

Vol. 22 Conan the Marauder - John Maddox Roberts

Vol. 23 Conan the Rogue - John Maddox Roberts

Vol. 24 Conan the Liberator - L. Sprague de Camp

Vol. 25 Conan of the Isles - L. Sprague de Camp

Vol. 26 Conan Last Stand of the Dragon - J. Morad

(P.S.). Some novels have been excluded, on the grounds of inferior or

mediocre in quality writing.
 List of books currently available
List of books by Chris L Adams:

The Valley of Despair

On A Winter’s Eve

The Treasure of Akram el-Amin

The Blonde Goddess of Tikka-Tikka (Tales of the Tomahawk Vol. I)

The Cosmos of Despair (Sequel to The Valley of Despair)

Coming soon:

The Banshee of the Atacama (Tales of the Tomahawk Vol. II)

List of books by Jay Bowers:

A Man of Letters

It's a Wonderful AFTERLIFE

Last of the Whites

Wulf And the Son of Man

A Babarian in Chicago-Wulf

The Queen and the King

Wulf the Enternal Warrior

A Western Saga
 A Barbarian in Chicago—A Modern Conan

Lair of the Wulf—A Barbarian in Chicago-part 2