Conan the Adventurer.
by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague DeCamp.
Introduction.
Robert Ervin Howard (1906-36) was born and lived most of his life in Cross Plains, Texas. In his short lifetime he turned out a large volume of general pulp-magazine fiction: sport, detective, western, and Oriental adventure stories, besides his many tales of fantasy. Of Howard"s several series of heroic fantasies, the most popular have been the Conan stories. These are laid in Howard"s imaginary Hyborian Age, between the sinking of Atlantis and the beginnings of recorded history.
Howard was a natural story-teller, whose tales are unsurpa.s.sed for vivid, colorful, headlong, gripping action. The Conan stories are the ultimate in tales of swashbuckling adventure with a strong and sinister flavor of the supernatural.
Howard wrote over two dozen Conan stories, ranging in length from 3,000 to 66,000 words. Of these, eighteen were published during his lifetime.
Several others, from mere outlines to completed ma.n.u.scripts, have turned up in Howard"s scattered papers during the last twenty years. It has been my good fortune to edit these for publication, to complete those that were only partly written, and to rewrite several other unpublished Howard stories to fit them into the Conan saga.
One of the stories in this volume, "Drums of Tombalku," was recently discovered by Glenn Lord, the literary agent for the Howard estate, in the form of an outline and a rough draft of the first half. I have finished the story in accordance with the outline. The other three stories, except for a few very small editorial changes, are in the form in which they appeared in Weird Tales in the early 1930"s.
As nearly as such things can be calculated. Conan flourished about twelve thousand years ago. 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. Farther south yet, beyond deserts and veldts, were barbarous black kingdoms.
North of the Hyborians lay the barbarian lands of Cimmeria, Hyperborea, Vanaheim, and Asgard. West along the ocean were the fierce Picts. To the east glittered the Hykanian kingdoms, of which the mightiest was Turan.
Conan, a gigantic adventurer from backward Cimmeria, arrived as a youth in the kingdom of Zamora, between the Hyborian lands and Turan. For two or three years he made his living as a thief in Zamora, Corinthia, and Nemedia. Growing tired of this starveling existence, he enlisted as a mercenary in the armies of Turan. For the next two years he traveled widely and refined his knowledge of archery and horsemanship.
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 on 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, where the natives called him Amra, the Lion. When his partner, the Shemitish she-pirate Belit, was slain, he became a chief of one of the black tribes. Then he served as a mercenary in Shem and among the most southerly Hyborian kingdoms.
Later still, Conan appeared as a leader of the kozaks, 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 spell as a mercenary captain in the army of the king of Iranistan, he arrived in the foothills of the Himelian Mountains, a vast stretch of broken country separating Iranistan, Turan, and the tropical kingdom of Vendhya. At that point, the present volume begins.
L. Sprague de Camp
The People of the Black Circle
Declining the offer of Kobad Shah"s successor, Arshak, to return to the service of Iranistan and defend that kingdom against the incursions of King Yezdigerd of Turan, Conan rides east into the foothills of the Himelian Mountains, on the northwest frontier of Vendhya. Here he next appears as a war-chief of the savage Afghuli tribesmen. He is now in his early thirties (about thirty-three, in fact), at the height of his physical powers, and known throughout the civilized and barbarian worlds, from Pictland to Khitai.
1. Death Strikes a King
The king of Vendhya was dying. Through the hot, stifling night the temple gongs boomed and the conchs roared. Their clamor was a faint echo in the gold-domed chamber where Bhunda Chand struggled on the velvet-cushioned dais. Beads of sweat glistened on his dark skin; his ringers twisted the gold-worked fabric beneath him. He was young; no spear had touched him, no poison lurked in his wine. But his veins stood out like blue cords on his temples, and his eyes dilated with the nearness of death. Trembling slave-girls knelt at the foot of the dais, and leaning down on him, watching him with pa.s.sionate intensity, was his sister, the Devi Yasmina. With her was the wazam, a n.o.ble grown old in the royal court. She threw up her head in a gusty gesture of wrath and despair as the thunder of the distant drums reached her ears.
"The priests and their clamor!" she exclaimed. "They are no wiser than the leeches, who are helpless! Nay, he dies and none can say why. He is dying now-and I stand here helpless, who would burn the whole city and spill the blood of thousands to save him."
"Not a man of Ayodhya but would die in his place, if it might be, Devi," answered the wazam "This poison--"
"I tell you it is not poison!" she cried. "Since his birth he has been guarded so closely that the cleverest poisoners of the East could not reach him. Five skulls bleaching on the Tower of the Kites can testify to attempts which were made-and which failed. As you well know, there are ten men and ten women whose sole duty is to taste his food and wine, and fifty armed warriors guard his chamber as they guard it now.
No, it is not poison; it is sorcery-black, ghastly magic---"
She ceased as the king spoke; his livid lips did not move, and there was no recognition in his gla.s.sy eyes. But his voice rose in an eery call, indistinct and far away, as if he called to her from beyond vast, wind-blown gulfs.
"Yasmina! Yasmina! My sister, where are you? I can not find you. All is darkness, and the roaring of great winds!"
"Brother!" cried Yasmina, catching his limp hand in a convulsive grasp.
"I am here! Do you not know me---"
Her voice died at the utter vacancy of his face. A low, confused moaning waned from his mouth. The slave-girls at the foot of the dais whimpered with fear, and Yasmina beat her breast in her anguish.
In another part of the city, a man stood in a latticed balcony overlooking a long street in which torches tossed luridly, smokily revealing upturned dark faces and the whites of gleaming eyes. A long-drawn wailing rose from the mult.i.tude.
The man shrugged his broad shoulders and turned back into the arabesqued chamber. He was a tall man, compactly built and richly clad.
"The king is not yet dead, but the dirge is sounded," he said to another man who sat cross-legged on a mat in a corner. This man was clad in a brown camel-hair robe and sandals, and a green turban was on his head. His expression was tranquil, his gaze impersonal.
The people know he will never see another dawn," this man answered.
The first speaker favored him with a long, searching stare.
"What I can not understand," he said, "is why I have had to wait so long for your masters to strike. If they have slain the king now, why could they not have slain him months ago?"
"Even the arts you call sorcery are governed by cosmic laws," answered the man in the green turban. "The stars direct these actions, as in other affairs. Not even my masters can alter the stars. Not until the heavens were in the proper order could they perform this necromancy."
With a long, stained fingernail he mapped the constellations on the marble-tiled floor. "The slant of the moon presaged evil for the king of Vendhya; the stars are in turmoil, the Serpent in the House of the Elephant. During such juxtaposition, the invisible guardians are removed from the spirit of Bhunda Chand. A path is opened in the unseen realms, and once a point of contact was established, mighty powers were put in play along that path."
"Point of contact?" inquired the other. "Do you mean that lock of Bhunda Chand"s hair?"
"Yes. All discarded portions of the human body still remain part of it, attached to it by intangible connections. The priests of Asura have a dim inkling of this truth, and so all nail-tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, hair, and other waste products of the persons of the royal family are carefully reduced to ashes and the ashes hidden. But at the urgent entreaty of the princess of Kosala, who loved Bhunda Chand vainly, he gave her a lock of his long black hair as a token of remembrance. When my masters decided upon his doom, the lock, in its golden, jewel-crusted case, was stolen from under her pillow while she slept, and another subst.i.tuted, so like the first that she never knew the difference. Then the genuine lock traveled by camel-caravan up the long, long road to Peshkhauri, thence up the Zhaibar Pa.s.s, until it reached the hands of those for whom it was intended."
"Only a lock of hair," murmured the n.o.bleman.
"By which a soul is drawn from its body and across gulfs of echoing s.p.a.ce," returned the man on the mat.
The n.o.bleman studied him curiously.
"I do not know if you are a man or a demon, Khemsa," he said at last "Few of us are what we seem. I, whom the Kshatriyas know as Kerim Shah, a prince from Iranistan, am no greater a masquerader than most men.
They are all traitors in the one way or another, and half of them know not whom they serve. There at least I have no doubts; for I serve King Yezdigerd of Turan."
"And I the Black Seers of Yimsha," said Khemsa; "and my masters are greater than yours, for they have accomplished by their arts what Yezdigerd could not with a hundred thousand swords."
Outside, the moan of the tortured thousands shuddered up to the stars which crusted the sweating Vendhyan night, and the conchs bellowed like oxen in pain.
In the gardens of the palace the torches glinted on polished helmets and curved swords and gold-chased corselets. All the n.o.ble-born fighting-men of Ayodhya were gathered in the great palace or about it, and at each broad-arched gate and door fifty archers stood on guard, with bows in their hands. But Death stalked through the royal palace and none could stay his ghostly tread.
On the dais under the golden dome the king cried out again, racked by awful paroxysms. Again his voice came faintly and far away, and again the Devi bent to him, trembling with a fear that was darker than the terror of death.
"Yasmina!" Again that far, weirdly dreeing cry, from realms immeasurable. "Aid me! I am far from my mortal house! Wizards have drawn my soul through the windblown darkness. They seek to snap the silver cord that binds me to my dying body. They cl.u.s.ter around me; their hands are taloned, their eyes are red like flame burning in darkness. Aie, save me, my sister! Their ringers sear me like fire!
They would slay my body and d.a.m.n my soul! What is this they bring before me?-Aie!"
At the terror in his hopeless cry Yasmina screamed uncontrollably and threw herself bodily upon him in the abandon of her anguish. He was torn by a terrible convulsion; foam flew from his contorted lips and his writhing fingers left their marks on the girl"s shoulders. But the gla.s.sy blankness pa.s.sed from his eyes like smoke blown from a fire, and he looked up at his sister with recognition.
"Brother!" she sobbed. "Brother--"
"Swift!" he gasped, and his weakening voice was rational. "I know now what brings me to the pyre. I have been on a far journey and I understand. I have been ensorcelled by the wizards of the Himelians.
They drew my soul out of my body and far away, into a stone room. There they strove to break the silver cord of life, and thrust my soul into the body of a foul night-weird their sorcery summoned up from h.e.l.l. Ah!
I feel their pull upon me now! Your cry and the grip of your fingers brought me back, but I am going fast. My soul clings to my body, but its hold weakens. Quick-kill me, before they can trap my soul for ever!"
"I can not!" she wailed, smiting her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s.