The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Conan took up the tale and he spoke of the strange sights he had seen in the ruined temple in Zamora. Achilea looked at him sharply as he described the actions of the twins, and the majestic, white-bearded man upon the temple altar, and the utter silence that had enveloped all within the temple walls.

  'You did not speak to me of this before,' Achilea said accusingly.

  'Sometimes it is wise to maintain silence,' Conan said.

  'Do not seek to hold secrets from me,' warned the mage, 'for I will unfailingly detect prevarication.

  Continue.'

  Conan spoke of their trek into the desert lands, the fight with the bandits and the discovery of the massacred tribe. 'Were the bandits your hirelings?' Conan demanded.

  The mage nodded. 'Aye. It was a probing assault, intended to test your mettle and that of my

  Adversary. You see, I have for long followed him from a great distance. Never before had I seen him or had the opportunity to contest powers with him.'

  'You keep speaking as if there were only one of them, not two,' Achilea protested.

  'All shall be made plain in time,' he said. 'That is, if I think you are worth the effort of explanation.'

  Seething, Conan told of the last stages of the journey, of his fight with the whirlwind-demons in the sandstorm, and of the terrible trek afoot in the desert that had almost been the death of Achilea.

  Throughout, the mage listened without comment or change of expression, his eyebrow quirking only when the Cimmerian described Arnram and the little chameleon’s story. Conan almost thought he detected a smile upon the wizard’s lips at this point in the tale; then it vanished.

  Achilea resumed and told of their scaling of the gate and exploration of the city, hurrying through this part for she knew that it was not a matter of great importance. When she described their capture in the great temple, the wizard placed his palms upon his knees and leaned forward, listening intently. On the carpet before him, the little heap of violet crystal pulsed softly with its lifelike inner light When they reached the point of Conan’s interview with Omia, the Cimmerian resumed the recitation. He repeated Omia’s tale of the history of Janagar, relaying her word for word, and the wizard nodded as it’ what he heard was that which he expected.

  Achilea finished with me story of their escape, telling of how Amram had released them and accompanied them as far as the temple, where they lost him. 'The rest,' she finished, 'I take it you know already.'

  'All but one thing.' He turned to Conan. 'Did Abbadas truly slay Omia? My homunculus was so high up in the idol that I could not see clearly, and I have told you that it cannot relay sounds.'

  'He did,' Conan affirmed. 'Slit her throat as if it were a caress.'

  'Good riddance,' said Achilea, her words echoed by a chorus of agreement from her women.

  'You’d not say that if you’d seen it,' Conan told her. 'Abbadas is not truly human. But then, none of them are.

  Now, Arsaces,' he bent his sulfurous, blue-eyed gaze upon the wizard, 'we have spoken true words to you, and we’ve done naught to threaten you. Will you in turn explain some things to us?'

  'Very well. Know, then, that the tale of Janagar related to you by the late Queen Omia is true, at least insofar as she knew the tale. The epic of each nation is told as if that were the sole nation in all the world. But always there are others. So it was with Janagar. The empire of Janagar was great, but it contained city-states of a lustre little dimmer than that of the queen city, and in the ages of misrule by the late priest-kings of Janagar, these cities grew restive, and they were fearful of the course taken by the overweening wizards. One of these was the city-state of Pulawar, which lay near what is now the northern border of Zamora.'

  'Where I saw the temple,' Conan said.

  Arsaces nodded. 'That roofless hulk and its shattered tower are all that remain of magnificent Pulawar, which in its day rivaled Janagar herself in splendor, the most powerful of the mages of Pulawar formed the Guild of Murghal, named for the Powers they conversed with on the plane of such beings.'

  'Then others trafficked with these Powers?' Conan asked.

  'Aye, they did, although unlike the mages of Janagar, they accomplished this without polluting themselves with nonhuman blood. The elder you saw in the temple was the last Master of the Guild. That is, you saw his specter, for he has been dead for eons.'

  The gaze of the mage’s eyes grew fixed, as if he were in a trance. 'Countless years have passed since the wizards of Janagar sought to save themselves with the Great Spell of Unchanging. The rival Guild of Pulawar sought to shut all the doors to the higher planes and then attempted the same spell, but they were not as accomplished in earthly magicks and Pulawar crumbled to the pathetic remnant you beheld. When they knew that they could not last, they set in place numerous safeguards. These were spells and writings that would appear,. at least in fragmentary form, if the folly of Janagar should ever again threaten the world.'

  'Abbadas!' Conan said. 'He spoke of rejoining the real world when he slew Omia.'

  'Once again your wit belies your appearance,' said Arsaces. 'He is the last descendant of the royal line of Janagar, and in him have been reborn the vaunting, blasphemous ambitions of the ancient wizards of that accursed nation. Years ago, he began to ponder the likelihood of restoring its fortunes, and from that moment, the ancient safeguards began appearing. Scholars discovered them, but so fragmentary were they that it took years and many consultations to piece together the story and decide what must be done about it A few lone-wolf wizards of this decadent age sought to discover the city for themselves in hope of reaping its arcane riches, but most of mem perished in the attempt'

  'And the twins discovered some of these safeguard documents?' Achilea asked.

  He shook his head. 'No. They are one of the safeguards!'

  'That is nonsense!' she protested.

  'Is it?' queried me wizard. 'You yourself noted their uncanny behaviour―how they spoke as one person, bow they never seemed to eat or drink.'

  'Aye.' Conan said, 'but how could―'

  'Think!' snapped Arsaces. 'Your own camels are out there with the herd. Did you see their strange beasts among them?'

  'I did not,' Conan admitted.

  'That is because they were not camels, any more than your twins were human beings, hi fact, what you accompanied hither was a single being that took the form of four a man, a woman and two camels.'

  'It is not possible!' Achilea cried.

  'And wherefore not?' the mage demanded. 'What know you of beings from worlds beyond? When the safeguards reappeared, the creature was drawn from its proper plane to this. Its bulk is great, and there are reasons you would not understand why there must always be a balance between mass and energy. It could not reduce its size, but it has the power to subdivide itself, within limits. For purposes of credibility, it settled upon two humans and two beasts. We are accustomed to twins being closer to one another than other persons are. The twins and the camels made more sense than ten humans all acting exactly alike, do you not agree? Even then, it was not capable of wholly human behaviour.' His hearers

  were by now beyond astonishment 'You call it your Adversary,' Conan said. 'Why?'

  'It is here to destroy Janagar,' he answered.

  'And so, it seems, are you,' the Cimmerian countered. 'Why are you not allies instead?'

  'Because we seek to destroy the city for differing reasons. It wishes to throw open the last gate and admit the Powers to our world. I seek to shut it forever. You see, none of the wizards of ancient days, not those of Janagar or those of Pulawar, understood the nature of the Powers. They have been the subject of ages of study by the highest scholars of the thaumaturgic arts in the time since, and all now know that they are not to be trifled with, they cannot be dealt with in any fashion possible to humans, nor even to half-humans such as those ancient wizards of Janagar.

  'The thaumaturges of Pulawar called their Power ‘Murghal’―although actually the Powers have no names
in the human sense―and they thought it to be beneficent. They were wrong. They had merely not yet attracted from it something they would recognise as hostility. But in truth, the Powers are hostile to all things, including each other. They fight and devour one another continually, hi their last contact with Murghal, the Guild obtained from it the creature you knew as the twins. It arrived in this world ignorant and unaware of how to locate the well-hidden city of Janagar. It had to search, like the rest of us.'

  'Why did a creature like that need guards?' Achilea asked.

  'In this world, it is vulnerable. It needs much of its strength just to maintain its spurious appearance.

  Also, it strove for a realistic appearance, and scholarly, well-born folk would never travel in the wild lands without an escort.'

  'The whirlwind-demons seem to be at your command,' said Conan, 4 yet they also seem to figure in the ancient tale of Janagar, How is this?'

  'They, like my Adversary, are another of the safeguards. They have lain buried deep beneath the sands of the deserts since the fall of Janagar, but a few times since, one or two have been accidentally called to the surface to ravage and destroy, thus the legends among the desert nomads. The demons stirred when the other safeguards were activated, and have grown active in recent months. They are unintelligent and undiscriminating without guidance, hence that massacred tribe you came upon. There have probably been others.

  'Incidentally,' he said with a look of frosty approval, 'it is a great feat to kill one. For a lone man to fight two in the dark and to slay one and severely would the other … that is the work of a true hero. One of the safeguard fragments contained their leash-spell, and I control them now. They can do more than kill. Their claws can tear apart stone, and the acid fluids of their bodies are capable of dissolving not only stone, but metal and glass as well. My scum out there,' he gestured contemptuously toward his escort, 'are good for killing, but they abhor hard work. The whirlwind-demons can function only in the dark, so they rend the city to pieces at night.'

  'How long will they need to complete the work?' Conan asked.

  'Not long. It will not be necessary to demolish the city utterly, just enough to break the Spell of Unchanging. Already it is seriously weakened.'

  'A moment,' Achilea said. 'When we found Amram, or rather, when he found us, he spoke of a wizard named Firagi whom he had led hither. Was this just another of his lies?'

  Again they saw that hint of amusement. 'Nothing he says is an utter lie, and he is never to be believed utterly. The man you know as Amram is the wizard Firagi.'

  'Crom!' Conan said in exasperation. 'Is nothing here ever as it seems? I had rated myself a good judge of men, and I would have sworn that he was a runaway slave, an unhung rogue, from Koth!'

  'He is that indeed, and many other things. You recall that I spoke of lone-wolf wizards who sought Janagar on their own? Firagi was one of them. In his checkered career, he was once the salve of a Stygian wizard, and from him he learned some of the thaumaturgic arts. He has a nimble mind a a knack for taking on roles. For many years, be has been a gadfly wizard, almost an outlaw among us, save that we have no laws. He is tolerated among the fraternity because he is amusing and sometimes he is useful.

  A genuine rogue can oft discern possibilities where a traditional mage is stymied.

  'At any rate, Firagi-Amram found one of the very first fragments to appear an engraved vessel dredged up in the net of some lake-fisherman in Keshan five years ago. He bought it, hid and deciphered it, and it turned out to contain one of the best descriptions of Janagar and its location, By the time it came into the hands of the fraternity and was pooled with the other information we had, he was well on his way.'

  'Why did be not keep or destroy it?' Achilea asked.

  'That be could not do. These fragments are swathed in the most powerful spells. He could not bear its proximity for long, and he abandoned the thing in the wilderness once be had plumbed its secrets. In the fashion of such objects, it was found within days and soon rested in the hands of the fraternity.'

  'What is this fraternity?' Conan asked.

  'There is a sort of loose brotherhood among the masters of the thaumaturgic arts. We usually toil alone and often we are at odds, but in matters of very great peril, we cooperate and pool our knowledge.

  This we call the fraternity, and many of us have been at work on this problem since the safeguards were activated. Almost all that is known about Janagar is the product of our researches since that time, I was chosen to represent the brotherhood all during the final stage of the Sealing of Janagar, not because I am the greatest, far from it, but because I am unknown in the lands roundabout.

  'Now I arrive to find that not only has my Adversary preceded me, but Firagi has been here for a long time. In his customary fashion, he turned his situation to good account. He was captured and soon won himself a place as counsellor to Omia and Abbadas. He probably instructed them on the nature of the world outside the desert. Doubtless this further inflamed the ambitions of Abbadas. By my arts, I can also detect that they used him for the same purpose they had intended for you.'

  'Crom!' Conan said. 'They must have been desperate for breeding stock!'

  'Why did he guide the twins―your Adversary―to the city?' Achilea asked.

  'He may have had little choice. He was never much of a wizard, as I have intimated. He was probably sent out by Queen Omia to lure wayfarers into the city. They must have had their ways of knowing when any such were nigh. He could not have known what the Adversary was, although he surely would have understood that he did not conduct a pair of ordinary twins and their camels. And, as always, he was playing some game of his own. It is probably as crackbrained as all his doings.'

  'And you’ve no idea where your Adversary is?' Conan asked.

  'None. Two years ago, I would have known where to look for it, but it has learned much of the arts and is now adept at concealing itself. When you see it again, I doubt that it will look like your twins. Or their camels, for that matter.'

  'What!' Conan barked. 'Why should we ever lay eyes upon it again? I, for one, intend to go and mount my camel and ride away from here. I am heartily sick of this place and all its doings, and am willing to take my chances with the desert!'

  'You forget that you are unarmed in the midst of my men,' Arsaces snapped. Conan bristled, but Achilea put a hand on his arm.

  'I think we are about to hear what he wants of us,' she said.

  'What is it?' Conan demanded sullenly.

  'Surely you have guessed by now,' Arsaces said. 'I want you to go back into the underground city.'

  XV

  The desert sun lowered, touched the western horizon and began to disappear beneath it. Conan stood upon the rim of the great sand bowl, his eyes taking in its slow demise. The once-perfect contours of the basin had grown ragged as wind and gravity caused sand to sink from the rim into the depression.

  Soon it would be night and time for the whirlwind-demons to resume their work. He knew thai on this night, the proceedings would be different, and undoubtedly a good deal livelier. Below him, he saw Achilea climbing up the face of the bowl-dune with her usual limber, long-legged strides. Soon she stood beside him. Half the globe of the sun was below the horizon.

  'It will be time ere long,' she said, the red blaze from the west illuminating her richly, her long, tawny hair streaming in the evening wind. 'If this is the last sunset I am to see, at least it is a fair one.'

  'I do not like this,' Conan said. 'I care nothing for these wizards and their doings. They have our weapons, but I’ve been without a sword ere now. I am willing to chance the desert. What say you? Just you and I?'

  She smiled wanly and shook her head. 'Nay, I remember last time too well. I’ll not venture out again upon those sands without good robes and a mount, even if it must be a smelly camel. And I could never desert my followers, few as they are.'

  'I suppose that is wisest Well, we’ve come out of that city alive once. Perhaps we
can do it again.'

  As always, he detested not being his own master.

  'Conan,' she said, 'have you not wondered how I came to Jose my throne?'

  This was something unexpected. 'Aye, that I have.'

  'You have heard the tales of how my nation propagates itself? How we take captive men and keep them only long enough to breed children with us?'

  'I have heard this,' he admitted.

  'It is true. Not long after I was made queen, we had such a ceremony. I chose carefully from among our captives. He was an Æsir youth, a wandering adventurer like you, but with sun-coloured hair and a laughing mouth and merry eyes, unlike your sour Cimmerian visage.' She smiled at his look of consternation. 'We were together for the stipulated month, and in that time, I conceived a love for him that surpassed anything I had ever felt before.'

  'That was unfortunate,' Conan said, 'since you had to slay him at the end of it.'

  'That was my first sin,' she told him. 'His name was Aethelwulf, and I could not bear the thought that he would be no more. So before the crone could cut his throat upon the great stone of sacrifice, I stole into the prison cave, knocked his guard unconscious and cut his bonds. I never saw him again and I was not seen doing it, but suspicion fell upon me anyway. It was my sister, Briseis, who began the rumours. They haunted me for months. It was said that Achilea was too tenderhearted to be queen, that she had defied the gods of our people.'

  Conan loosed an honest laugh. ‘1 think that only your tribe or a barbarian like me could ever consider you tenderhearted!'

  'Whatever the case, it was just the beginning. In time, I was brought to the birthing-chair to deliver my child.'

  Conan thought he knew what was coming, but he said nothing. Now only a sliver of the sun remained above the horizon.

  'The child was male. The time of year was a bad one; there would be no passing caravan to take it and the other males off our hands, so it was sent to the House of the Crones to be slain after the ancient custom. I could not stand the thought. I rose from the birth ing-chair and fought my way through the midwives and snatched up my sword. Somehow I found the strength to stagger to the House of the Crones and there I found the eldest sister with her blade poised above the babe’s throat. I hewed her grey head from her shoulders. Then I slew the other crones and I took up the babe.