Conan of the Isles Part 1

Conan OF THE ISLES.

De Camp, L Sprague.

INTRODUCTION.

There is a kind of story laid, not in the world as it is or was, but as - to an armchair adventurer - it ought to have been. It is an adventure-fantasy, laid in an imaginary prehistoric or medieval world, where magic works and the scientific revolution has not taken place. Or perhaps it is in some parallel universe, or in this world as it will be in the distant future, when science has been forgotten and magic has revived.

In such a world, gleaming cities raise their s.h.i.+ning spires against the stars; sorcerers cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs; baleful spirits stalk crumbling ruins; primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets; and .the fate of kingdoms is balanced on b.l.o.o.d.y broadswords brandished by heroes of preternatural might and valor. In such a world, men are mighty, women are beautiful, life is adventurous, and problems are simple. n.o.body even mentions the income tax or the dropout problem or socialized medicine. Such a story is called 'heroic fantasy' or, sometimes, 'sword-and-sorcery.'

The purpose of heroic fantasy is neither to solve the problems of the steel industry, nor to expose defects in the foreign-aid program, nor to expound the questions of poverty or intergroup hostility. It is to entertain. It is escape reading in which one escapes clear out of the real universe. But, come to think, these tales are no more 'unreal' than the many whodunnits wherein, after the stupid police have fallen over their own big feet, the brilliant amateur - a private detective, a newspaper reporter., or a little old lady - steps in and solves the crime.

Heroic fantasies combine the color, gore., and lively action of the costume novel with the atavistic terrors and delights of the fairy tale. They furnish the purest fun to be found in fiction today. If you read for fun, this is the genre for you.

The heroic fantasy traces its ancestry back to the myths and epics of ancient times - to the stories of Odysseus and Rustam and Sigurd and Cuchulainn. Down the centuries, many civilized writers like Ovid, Firdausi, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Spenser, and James Stephens have collected these tales, edited or rewritten them, and composed pastiches based upon them.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, stories of the supernatural were neglected in Europe. Then, however, fantasy re-entered the main stream of Western literature through three channels: the oriental fantasy narrative, which first appeared in the form of Galland's translation into French of the Arabian Nights; the Gothic novel, brought from Germany to England by Horace Wai-pole with his Castle of Otranto (1764); and the child's fairy tale, originally based upon the peasant tales written up and popularized by Andersen and the Grimm brothers.

At the same time, Walter Scott launched the modern historical novel with his Waverley (1814) and its many successors. Although people had long written stories laid in periods before their own - Homer's Iliad is an obvious example - Scott was the first to realize that the past had been drastically different in many ways from the present and that these differences of costume and custom in themselves had entertainment value, which a skilled storyteller could exploit. Scott's novels were so influential that they touched off a wave of British medieval romanticism.

In the 1880s, William Morris, the versatile British artist, decorator, poet, reformer, publisher, and novelist, created the modern heroic fantasy. In his pseudo-medieval novels like The Well at the World's End, Morris combined the antiquarian romanticism of Scott and his imitators with the supernaturalism of Walpole and his imitators. After Morris, Lord Dunsany adapted heroic fantasy to the short-story form early in the present century, while Eric R. Eddison composed his long Zimiamvian novels in the same genre.

The appearance of the American magazines Weird Tales in 1923 and Unknown Worlds in 1939 created new markets for heroic fantasy. Many notable tales of swordplay and sorcery appeared in them - notably those of Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, L. Ron Hubbard, and Fritz Leiber. The market for such fiction shrank after these magazines ceased publication (in 1943 and 1953 respectively) and it looked for a while as if heroic fantasy had become a casualty of the machine age.

Certain trends of the time in mainstream fiction were against heroic fantasy. These included the vogue for stories presenting a strongly subjective, sentimental, or psychological view; stories about an anti-hero - a dull, pathetic little twerp who could do nothing right; stories concealing their lack of an interesting narrative by a pyrotechnic display of stylistic eccentricities; and stories with an intense and absorbing interest in contemporary politics or in s.e.x, especially in its more bizarre manifestations. A lecturer lately has said that, if a fiction writer wants sales, he should write exclusively either about politics or about s.e.x. (A novel called The President's Boyfriend ought to be a lead-pipe cinch.) There are still, however, many readers who read, not to be enlightened, improved, uplifted, reformed, baffled by the writer's obscurity, amazed by his cleverness, nauseated by his scatology, or reduced to tears by the plight of some mistreated person, cla.s.s, or caste, but to be entertained. To please such readers^ heroic fantasy has been revived in recent years. The first sign of this revival was the surprising success of J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy. The Lord of the Rings., which appeared in the middle 1950's.

Of course, to enjoy heroic fantasy, one needs some slight imagination. One must be able to suspend one's disbelief in ghoulies and ghosties and other denizens of the worlds of fantasy. If, however, the reader can believe in international spies who race about in superpowered cars from one posh gambling joint to another and find a beautiful babe awaiting them in bed at each stops a few dragons and demons ought not to daunt him.

Of all the stalwart heroes of heroic fantasy, the most vigorous, virile, brawny, and mettlesome is Conan the Cimmerian. Conan was the invention of Robert E. Howard (1906-36). Howard was born in Peaster, Texas, and lived most of his life in Cross Plains, in the center of Texas. During his last decade, he turned out a large volume of what was then called 'pulp fiction' - sport, detective, western, historical, adventure, weird., and ghost stories, as well as his poetry and his many fantasies. He was influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert W. Chambers, Harold Lamb, Jack London, H. P. Lovecraft, Talbot Mundy, and Sax Rohmer among others. At the age of thirty, he ended a promising literary career by suicide.

Although he had his faults as a writer, Howard was a natural storyteller, whose narratives are unmatched for vivid, gripping, headlong action. His heroes - King Kull, Conan, Bran Mak Mora, Solomon Kane - are larger than life: men of mighty thews., hot pa.s.sions, and indomitable will, who easily dominate the stories through which they stride. In fiction, the difference between a writer who is a natural storyteller and one who is not is like the difference between a boat that will float and one that will not. If the writer has this quality, we can forgive many other faults; if not, no other virtue can make up for the lack, any more than gleaming paint and sparkling bra.s.s on a boat make up for the fact that it will not float.

Howard wrote several series of heroic fantasies, most of them published in Weird Tales. Of these, the longest single series comprised the Conan stories, which have also proved the most popular. In reading the Conan stories, one gets the illusion that one is listening to the mighty adventurer himself, sitting before a fire and reeling off tales of his exploits.

Eighteen Conan tales, from a 3,000-word short story to a 66,000-word novel, were published in Howard's lifetime. Eight others, from complete ma.n.u.scripts to mere fragments and outlines, have been discovered among Howard's papers since 1950.

Late in 1951, it was my fortune to find a cache of Howard's ma.n.u.scripts in the apartment of the then literary agent for Howard's estate. These included a few unpublished Conan stories, which I edited for publication. Other ma.n.u.scripts have been discovered during the last few years, in other collections of Howard's papers, by Glenn Lord, literary agent for the Howard estate. (Howard seemingly never threw anything away; even his high-school examination papers still exist.) The obviously incomplete state of the Conan saga has tempted me and others to add to it, as Howard might have done had he lived. Besides editing the unpublished Conan stories, I undertook, in the early 1950's, to rewrite the ma.n.u.scripts of four other unpublished Howard adventure stories to convert them into Conan stories. These stories were laid in the Orient in medieval and modern times. The conversion did not prove difficult, since the heroes were all cut from the same cloth as Conan. I had merely to change names, delete anachronisms, and introduce a supernatural element. The stories remained about three-quarters or four-fifths Howard.

Since then, in company with my colleagues Bjorn Ny-berg and Lin Carter, I have been engaged in completing the incomplete Conan stories and in writing several pastiches, based upon hints in Howard's notes and letters, to fill the gaps in the saga. The present story, by Carter and me, is based upon a paragraph in a letter that Howard wrote, three months before his untimely death, to the educator and science-fiction writer P. Schuyler Miller, an old Conan fan. Howard wrote: [Conan] travelled widely, not only before his kings.h.i.+p, but after he was king. He travelled in Khitai and Hyrkania, and to the even less known regions north of the latter and south of the former. He even visited a nameless continent in the western hemisphere, and roamed among the islands adjacent to it. How much of this roaming will get into print., I cannot foretell with any accuracy...

(The entire letter is printed in the volume Conan of the present Lancer series, pp. 16-20.) Of the present Lancer series, six volumes have already been published, with several more to come. Because of legal complications, it was not possible to issue these volumes in chronological order; Conan, the first volume chronologically, was the fifth to appear. Present plans call for a total of at least twelve volumes, of which this one will be chronologically the last.

Readers who want to know more about Conan, Howard, or heroic fantasy generally are referred, first to the list of other Conan books, and other books by Howard published by Lancer, on the page preceding the t.i.tle page, and further to two periodicals and one book. One periodical is Amra, published by George H. Scithers, Box 9120, Chicago, Illinois, 60690; this is the organ of the Hyborian Legion, a loose group of admirers of heroic fantasy and of the Conan stories in particular. The other periodical is The Howard Collector, published by Glenn Lord, literary agent for the Howard estate, Box 775, Pasadena, Texas, 77501; this is given to articles, stories, and poems by and about Howard. The book is The Conan Reader., by the present author, published by Jack L. Chalker, 5111 Liberty Heights Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland, 21207; this consists of articles on Howard, Conan, and heroic fantasy previously published in Amra. I also listed many works by Howard and sword-and-sorcery stories by other writers in my introduction to the volume Conan in the present series.

Conan lived, loved, and fought about twelve thousand years ago, eight thousand years after the sinking of Atlantis and seven thousand years before the beginnings of recorded history. In this time (according to Howard) the western parts of the main continent were occupied by the Hyborian kingdoms. These comprised a galaxy of states set up by northern invaders, the Hyborians, three thousand years before on the ruins of the evil empire of Acheron. South of the Hyborian kingdoms lay the quarreling city-states of Shem. Beyond Shem slumbered the ancient, sinister kingdom of Stygia, the rival and partner of Acheron in the days of the latter's bloodstained glory. Further south yet, beyond deserts and veldts, were barbarous black kingdoms.

North of the Hyborians lay the barbarian lands of Cim-meria, Hyperborea, Vanaheim, and Asgard. West, along the ocean, were the fierce Picts. To the east glittered the Hyrkanian kingdoms, of which the mightiest was Turan.

Conan was a gigantic barbarian adventurer who roistered and brawled and battled his way across half the prehistoric world to rise at last to the kings.h.i.+p of a mighty realm. The son of a blacksmith in the bleak, backward northern land of Cimmeria, Conan was born on a battlefield in that land of rugged hills and somber skies. As a youth, he took part in the sack of the Aquilonian frontier post of Venarium.

Subsequently, joining in a raid with a band of aesir into Hyperborea, Conan was captured by the Hyperboreans. Escaping from the Hyperborean slave pen, he wandered south into the kingdom of Zamora. For several years, he made a precarious living there and in the adjacent lands of Corinthia and Nemedia as a thief. (See the map.) Green to civilization and quite lawless by nature, he made up for his lack of subtlety and sophistication by natural shrewdness and by the herculean physique he had inherited from his father.

Growing tired of this starveling existence, Conan enlisted as a mercenary soldier in the armies of Turan. For the next two years he traveled widely, as far east as the fabled lands of Meru and Khitai. He also refined his archery and horsemans.h.i.+p, both of which had been at best indifferent up to the time of his joining the Turanians, As a result of a quarrel with a superior officer., Conan left Turan. After an unsuccessful try at treasure-hunting in Zamora and a brief visit to his Cimmerian homeland, he embarked upon the career of a mercenary soldier in the Hyborian kingdoms. Circ.u.mstances - violent as usual -made him a pirate along the coasts of Kush, with a crew of black corsairs and the Shemitish she-pirate Belit as his partner. The natives called him Amra, the Lion.

After Belit was slain, Conan became a chief among the black tribes. Then he served as a condottiere in Shem and among the southernmost Hyborian kingdoms. Later still, Conan appeared as a leader of the kozaki, a horde of outlaws who roamed the steppes between the Hyborian lands and Turan. He was captain of a pirate craft on the great inland Sea of Vilayet and a chief among the nomadic Zuagirs of the southeastern deserts.

After a stretch as a mercenary captain in the army of the king of Iranistan, Conan arrived in the foothills of the Himelian Mountains, a vast stretch of broken country sundering Iranistan, Turan, and the tropical kingdom of Vendhya. In the course of wild adventures, he tried but failed to weld the fierce hill tribes into a united power. Next, he returned westward for another stretch of soldiering in Koth and Argos. During this period, he was briefly co-ruler of the desert city of Tombalku. Then back to the sea, first as a pirate of the Baracha Isles, then as captain of a s.h.i.+p of the Zingaran buccaneers.

When rival buccaneers sank Conan's s.h.i.+p, he served again as a mercenary in Stygia and among the black kingdoms. Then he wandered north to Aquilonia and became a scout on the Pictish frontier. When the Picts, with the help of the wizard Zogar Sag, attacked the Aquilonian settlements, Conan failed to save Fort Tuscelan but did save the lives of a number of settlers between the Thunder and Black rivers.

After rising to command in the Aquilonian army and defeating a Pictish invasion, Conan was lured back to Tarantia, the capital, and imprisoned by the jealous King Numedides. Escaping, he became involved in a three-cornered conflict among the Picts and two crews of pirates on the western coast of Pictland. Then he was chosen to lead an Aquilonian revolution against the degenerate King Numedides. Slaying Numedides on his own throne, Conan, in his early forties, became the ruler of the mightiest Hyborian kingdom.

Conan soon found that being king was no bed of houris. A cabal of discontented n.o.bles almost succeeded in a.s.sa.s.sinating him. By a ruse, the kings of Ophir and Koth trapped and imprisoned him in order to have a free hand with the conquest of Aquilonia. With the help of a fellow prisoner - a wizard - Conan escaped in time to turn the tables on the invaders.

Subsequently, a cabal of rivals plotting to gain the rule of Aquilonia revived the mummy of a long-dead Acheron-tian wizard, Xaltotun, to aid them in their enterprise. Conan was defeated and driven from his kingdom, but again he returned to confound his foes.

In the process, Conan for the first time acquired a legitimate queen. This was Zen.o.bia, a slave girl who saved his life when he was imprisoned in the dungeon under the palace of King Tarascus of Nemedia. He tactfully dismissed his harem of shapely concubines and settled down to the pleasures and pains of wedded life. A Khitan sorcerer kidnapped Zen.o.bia, forcing Conan to travel across half the world, through manifold perils, to recover her. Other plots and adventures involved Conan and his young son, also named Conan but usually known by his nickname of {Conn.'

Time pa.s.sed; Zen.o.bia died. Conan found his son near-ing maturity and old age creeping upon himself. A growing restlessness perturbed and irritated him...

L, sprague de camp

'- And at the last, O Prince, there came to pa.s.s that which all the plots of Ascalante the Rebel had failed to bring about, and for which the grim shade of Xaltotun was conjured in vain from the mouldering dust of his Acherontic tomb, and which even the h.e.l.l-sp.a.w.ned sorceries of Yah Chieng, the Yellow Wizard of nighted and demon-ridden Khitai, failed to accomplish; and Conan of Aquilonia gave over the crown and the throne of the mightiest kingdom of all the West, and ventured forth into the Unknown, wherein he vanished forever from the knowledge of man.'

- THE NEMEDIAN CHRONICLES.

After the events described in the volume Conan of Aquilonia (to be published later) Conan's rule is for several years relatively peaceful. His old foes Thoth-Amon and King Yezdigerd are no more, and turbulent Zingara has been reduced to a quiet client kingdom under the rule of Conan's docile puppet. The savage Picts resent and resist the constant pressure against their forest fastness, but that is to be expected.

The event of these years that most affects Conan is the death of his queen, Zen.o.bia, in childbirth. Thereafter, Conan finds the routine of a peaceful reign increasingly irksome. He haunts the royal library, finding in dusty scrolls and crumbling codices strange accounts of lands beyond the Western Ocean. He spends time with his children, but the yawning gap in age - he is in his sixties, while they are still infants and adolescents - makes it hard for him to reach any true intimacy with them. And then a sudden catastrophe shatters his mood of vague, half-resigned discontent...

CHAPTER ONE.

RED SHADOWS.

From gulfs profound wherein yet dwell age-old, forgotten, nameless things, The Shadows came on silent wings as crimson as the heart of h.e.l.l.

-- The Visions of Epemitreus

King Conan sat on the judgment throne in the Hall of Justice in his palace at Tarantia, the royal capital of Aquilonia. Beyond windows of stained gla.s.s, blue skies curved over green gardens bright and fragrant with blossoms. And beyond the gardens, square towers of white stone thrust into the sky, and domes of green copper, and the shapes of houses, temples, and palaces roofed with red tiles. For this was the most princely city of the world's West in these ancient days of the Hyborian Age.

And beyond the gardens, too, the well-scrubbed streets of Tarantia swarmed with traffic; men and women afoot, on the backs of horses, mules, and a.s.ses, in litters and chariots and oxcarts and carriages. Along the waterfront, river boats plied the Khorotas like swarms of water insects. For two decades of the firm but tolerant rule of Conan the Great had made Aquilonia not only the most powerful but also the most prosperous land which that dawn world had ever seen.

Within the pillared hall richly clad n.o.bles, silken courtiers, and. stout burghers in plain cloth, with the medallions of the guilds on silver chains about their necks, stood in cl.u.s.ters while the king dispensed justice. Since the docket carried some cases of exceptional importance, half the high-born of Aquilonia were here. They included young Gonzalvio, Viscount of Poitain, and his father, old Trocero, slim and elegant as ever in scarlet velvet, with the golden leopard of his province broidered in stiff, silver-gilt wire on the breast of his jupon. Here, too, were Count Monargo of Couthen, Baron Guilaime of Imirus. and -a lean, snowy-bearded ancient - the wise and learned Dexitheus, snowy-bearded ancient - the wise and learned Dexitheus, Archpriest of Mitra.

Grim-faced warriors of the king's black-mailed legions stood at arched door and portico, the sunlight flas.h.i.+ng from their dragon-crested helms and glittering spear points. All eyes were fixed upon the central dais, where two thrones loomed above the throng; and upon the fat, bejeweled merchant who stood, fidgeting nervously, as his advocate in robes of dusty black glibly argued on his behalf before the taller of the two thrones.

On the throne, Conan glowered down upon the quivering litigant. From the depths of his soul he loathed these tiresome, wordy, labyrinthine tax cases, with their plausible lies and their mathematical calculations of skull-cracking complexity. How he would have liked to hurl his crown at the fat face of the greedy fool before him, stride from the hall, clamp his legs about a stallion's barrel, and ride off for a day's hunting in the forests of the North!

A pox upon this business of kinging it! he thought. It drained every last drop of juice from a man's tissues, leaving him a querulous old hairsplitter without enough red blood in his veins to swing a broadsword. Surely, after twenty weary years of wearing the crown, a man was ent.i.tled to throw over honors and t.i.tles and set out toward dim horizons for one last, gore-spattered adventure before Time's all-felling, implacable scythe cut him down ...

Conan stole a glance at the second throne, whereon sat his son, Prince Conn, the heir of Aquilonia. The lad was twenty - old enough, surely, to take the throne of the mightiest kingdom of the West. With a slight smile on his grim lips, the old king studied the bored, mutinous glower of dissatisfaction on the face of young Conn. Doubtless the lad was also dreaming of flinging off these stifling robes of state and riding off for a day's hunting, or perhaps a night of wenching in waterfront dives. Remembering his own hard-drinking, hot-blooded youth, Conan chuckled.

In truth, Prince Conn was the very image of his sire in his younger days: the same scowling black brows over deep-set eyes of volcanic blue; the same swart, square-jawed face, framed by a square-cut mane of straight, coa.r.s.e black hair; the same burly blacksmith's body, sheathed in ma.s.sive muscles that bulged the silks and velvets at tne broad shoulders and deep-arched chest; the same long, steel-thewed legs. Scarce out of his teens, the son of Conan towered head and shoulders over most of the men in the hall, save only his t.i.tanic sire, the greatest warrior the world had ever known.

As for King Conan, even that mightiest of champions, Time, had not yet broken him. True, sixty-odd years had strewn abundant silver in the thick, black mane and the stiff, grizzled beard, cut short and square, that now clothed his grim lips and iron jaw. Some flesh had fallen from his mighty frame, leaving him gaunt as a savage gray wolf of the northern steppes. And Time's cold hand had etched deep grooves in his somber brow and scarred cheeks.

But still unquenchable vitality surged within his t.i.tanic form. Hot flames of leashed fury smouldered in his eyes. And Time's palsying grip had sapped but little of the strength from his viselike hands - now wrinkled and corded - and his supple sinews and ma.s.sive thews.

He sat on the silver throne is if he bestrode some deep-chested war stallion on the foughten field. One ma.s.sive hand gripped the black-and-silver mace of justice as if it were an iron-spiked battle mace that he would heave up at any moment to strike down a foe. And the rich robes, crusted with gems and hung with golden medallions and chains, which clothed his lean but mighty form., bore somehow the look of battle harness. For wherever he went - in mirthful banquet hall, in quiet library of ancient, dusty tones, or in silken boudoir - this somber barbarian from the cloud-cloaked wastes of northern Cimmeria carried with him the grim, dangerous atmosphere of the battlefield.

It had been more than a score of years now since a trick of Fate, a whim of the G.o.ds, or perhaps his own indomitable will had lifted this black-browed outlander from the ranks of nameless adventurers to a glittering place among the great ones of the world as lord of the richest and most powerful kingdom of the West. Since that night, nearly half a century before, when as a ragged, wild-eyed youth, whirling a length of broken chain, he had fought his way out of a Hyborian slave pen and set forth barehanded on the road that leads but a chosen few to the ultimate heights of power and glory, Conan of Cimmeria had brawled and battled his way across half a world, cutting a red path through a dozen kingdoms from the thundering beaches of the Western Ocean to the misty vales of fabulous Khitai.

As thief, pirate, mercenary, adventurer, chief of barbarous tribes, and general in the armies of kings, he had ventured far and known all that the world afforded of adventure and marvel. With his irresistible sword, the mighty Cimmerian had fought demons, dragons, and shambling horrors of the Elder Dark. A thousand foes had felt the bitter kiss of his whirling blade - bronze-mailed warriors, malevolent wizards, fierce barbarian chieftains, and haughty kings. Even the eternal G.o.ds had sometimes fled the fury of his slas.h.i.+ng brand.

But the adventure that started here, in the royal Hall of Justice in Tarantia, on this warm spring day, eight thousand years after the fall of Atlantis and seven thousand years before the rise of Egypt and Sumeria, was to be the strangest and most fantastic of all the many that thronged his far-famed and peril-filled career.

It began suddenly and unexpectedly.

One moment, Conan was frowning down upon the fat merchant and his glib, gesticulating advocate. The next, he raised a puzzled glance across the hall to where the elegant figure of his trusted old friend, Count Trocero of Poitain staggered across the polished floor.

'No, no! By all the scarlet fiends of h.e.l.l!'

The old n.o.bleman's hoa.r.s.e voices lifted in harsh tones of terror and despair, broke into the advocate's voluble pleadings. Startled eyes flashed to this stiff-legged, reeling figure. Eyebrows rose. Could it be that the old Count of Poitain had come into the Hall of Justice drunk'?

One look at the stark fear in Trocero's bloodless face banished that idea. Globules of cold sweat glistened on his white features, and his pallid lips worked as if in some inward agony. Black circles ringed his staring eyes.

'Trocero!' barked Conan. 'Are you unwell? What is it, man?'

The king half rose as his oldest friend and closest supporter reeled across the polished marble pave, arms thrust out as if to ward off some unseen attacker. The hall fell silent. Trocero's stalwart son started from the throng, one hand extended to support his sire. In the center of the hall, Trocero halted and stood on trembling limbs, crying: 'Nay, I say! I cannot - you dare not! Oh, Ishtar and Mitra! Mit--' His voice rose to a'screech of anguish.

And then Terror struck.

From the groined and vaulted ceiling above the corners of the s.p.a.cious hall, shadows flew - shadows as pale and insubstantial as wisps of gauze, dimly red. Shadows of -Terror.

In the blink of an eye, they swarmed about the elderly Poitanian's tottering figure. Dimly through rubescent veils, the others in the hall could glimpse his white, frozen features, fixed in a grimace of torment. It was as if a horde of ghostly vampire bats had swooped to cling about the unwary traveler.

For a long, frozen moment, the red shadows enveloped their victim in rosy veils. Then they and he were gone.

The hall was a motionless tableau. Disbelief was stamped on every face. The old count of Poitain, who for a quarter-century had stood by Conan's throne and fought his wars, had vanished into thin air.

'Father! My Lord--' stammered young Gonzalvio into the ringing silence.

'By Crom's iron heart!' bellowed Conan. 'Black sorcery in my own court? I'll have the head of him who wrought this mischief! Ho, guard I Curse you for a gaping fool - sound the alarm!'

Conan's roar of rage shattered the fragile silence. Women shrieked and swooned. Men swore} rubbed their eyes, and stared blankly at the place where the greatest peer of Aquilonia had stood. Above the babble rose the brazen scream of the war horns. Drums thundered, and the grim-faced warriors of Conan's Black Dragons pushed through the milling confusion, swords in hand, to defend the Lion Banner of Aquilonia, which hung like a canopy over the dais, and the rulers beneath it. But there was no foe to smite: no sly a.s.sa.s.sin, no skulking spy - or at least none visible.

On the dais, surrounded by his mailed warriors, King Conan searched the hall with the fierce, unwinking gaze of some kingly lion of the veldt. Deep within him, pain lanced his secret heart and a poignant sense of loss a.s.sailed him. Trocero of Poitain had been the first to urge Conan's name as leader of the revolt against the degenerate King Numedides. He had led a voyage to the distant sh.o.r.es of Pictland to fetch back the former general of the armies of Aquilonia, then a fugitive from the murderous jealousy of Numedides.

Soon, Conan had ridden out of Zingara at the head of a handful of gallant warriors. Gathering partisans as he moved, he had cut like a red sword through the countryside of Aquilonia to the gates of tower-crowned Tarantia and then to the very steps of the throne. There he had throttled the depraved Numedides with his own hands and set the crown upon his own black head. Deep within him, Conan mourned the loss of his oldest and most trusted friend, the first victim of the Terror...

In the next halfmonth, the Terror struck again and again, until seven hundred citizens of Aquilonia - peer and porter, countess and courtezan, baron and beggar, priest and peasant - had vanished into the weird embrace of the red shadows.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE BLACK HEART OF GOLAMIRA.

Whilst age on age went rolling past beyond my phoenix-guarded tomb, In silent halls of somber gloom I slept, but now I wake at last.

- The Visions of Epemitreus

Alone and closely guarded in the great, gold-domed chamber of his palace, Conan slept. It was a haunted, restless slumber, for all that he had not slept a single hour in the last three days and nights while he struggled to cope with the weird plague that gripped his kingdom. Through desperate days and nights of endless council, he had sought the advice of the wisest men of the kingdom - h.o.a.ry sages and learned doctors. He had asked the prayers of the priests of Mitra and Ishtar and Asura. He had listened to the tales of spies and studied the reports of police agents. He had solicited the spells and divinations of wizards and occultists - all in vain.

Now exhaustion had sapped even his iron vigor. The gray, gaunt old wolf lay sprawled in chain mail upon the silken coverlets, his great broadsword near his hand, in a drugged but restless slumber.

And in this sleep, he dreamed.

It seemed to Conan that he heard a distant voice. The echoing call was loud enough to rouse him but so fogged and unclear that he could not understand the repeated phrase that whispered eerily through his chamber.