The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Not knowing what he should encounter there, he set his feet upon the narrow steps and clambered down. Within the tower the air was hot and stifling, and the smoke obscured parts of the circular chamber in which he found himself.

  Here was luxury indeed. The polished wooden floor, inlaid with lighter woods in curious designs, was embellished with small silken rugs in which were woven pentacles and circles and other mystic patterns. The chamber's curved stone walls were hung with tapestries and rich brocades; and worked into the fabric Conan saw threads of gold and silver gleaming brilliantly in the slanting rays of sunlight that, by some strange arrangement of mirrors, lit the room as if the sun itself shone in upon it. To one side stood a lectern of carved and polished wood upon which rested an open book of ancient parchment leaves. Farther along the wall an idol leered, its wolfish mien a frozen mask of menace.

  Conan moved quickly around the room, searching for a weapon; but he found nothing. The circumferential chamber had several curtained alcoves, that he ascertained; and choosing one at random, he flung the curtains back. And stared.

  The centre of the alcove was occupied by a high-backed I chair of creamy marble, intricately carved into a labyrinthine tangle of serpent bodies and devil's heads; and seated on I this throne was Siptah the sorcerer, his expressionless eyes returning Conan's stare.

  IX

  Slave of the Crystal

  Conan, who had tensed, prepared to fight again, let his oath out with a sign of satisfaction. Siptah was dead. His ryes were dull and shrivelled, and the flesh had fallen, in upon his visage, so that his face was but a skull over which wiry skin was tightly stretched. Conan sniffed but could not, above the odour of the wood smoke, detect any taint of carrion. Siptah had sat for months upon his throne while Ins muscles and organs dried and shrivelled.

  The shrunken figure wore a gown of emerald cloth; and on the bony upturned hands resting in its lap was cradled a huge, unfaceted crystal, which glowed with topaz fire. This, Conan surmised, was the demon-dreaded gem whose quest had brought him and his comrades to this death-haunted isle.

  Conan stepped forward to examine the crystal. To his untutored eyes it seemed but a glimmering sphere of glass lit by an inner glow. Yet so many men desired it that it must I Live value far beyond imagining. Demons were somehow bound to this pale sphere and could not be released from service save by this orb. But Conan knew not how. He didn't understand such matters, and all that was clean and pure within him shrank from it with the powers of evil.

  ' I he scrape of a clawed foot on flagstones roused the Cimmerian from his contemplation. He whirled. The creature did not descend the stairs in human fashion, but on half-opened wings dropped down the well to the floor below. Amazed, Conan saw the arrow still transfixing its shoulder mill his poniard still sunk into the muscles of its breast; and yd it showed no lessening of its preternatural vitality. A ii1.1ii, however strong, or a wild jungle beast would have Km rendered helpless by such wounds; but not, it seemed, (In guardian of Siptah's tower.

  Hie creature raised a clawed forelimb and advanced upon him. Frantically, Conan leaped to the left and seized the lee-

  tern on which rested the ancient tome. The book crashed to the floor as the Cimmerian raised the heavy piece of furniture, like an unwieldy club.

  As the winged demon lurched toward him with taloned feet outstretched, Conan swung the clumsy weapon above his head and brought it down upon the monster's skull. The force of the blow sent the devil reeling back and smashed the lectern into a dozen shattered fragments.

  Mewling and leaking blood from its crushed skull, the bat-man staggered slowly to its feet and once again advanced. Conan felt a momentary thrill of admiration for any being that sustained such crippling punishment and yet fought on. Still, his own plight was dire - a thing that would not die and Conan weaponless!

  And then an idea, simple and audacious, exploded into consciousness; and Conan cursed, himself for past stupidity. He turned and snatched the crystal from the mummy's lap, then hurled it at the oncoming monster.

  Although Conan's aim was true, the wily creature ducked the missile; and it hurled through the smoky air to land at last upon the lowest step of the stone staircase. And there, with a tinkling crash and a flash of amber light, the crystal shattered into a thousand pieces.

  Then as Conan watched, slit-eyed and empty-handed, his adversary fell headlong to the floor. There was a puff of dust, an acrid odour. When the air cleared, he witnessed an amazing transformation: the monster's skin shrivelled, curled up, and crumbled into powder. It was as if the process of decay were speeded up ten thousand times before his wondering eyes. He watched the membranes of the bat wings vanish and saw the bones disintegrate beneath the leathery hide. In a few minutes, nothing was left of the creature but an outline of its shape marked on the floor by little heaps and ridges of dust. And a spent arrow and Conan's dirk.

  X

  Siptah's Treasure

  The midday sun beat on the yellow sand when Conan's shaggy mane appeared above the parapet. A blood-stained bandage wound about his head.

  He waved to the cheering men below and, using a knotted strip of bedding for a rope, he lowered a small chest into their eager hands. Then, grasping that self-same rope a trifle gingerly, he stiffly slid down into the ashes of the burnt-out bonfire.

  'Gods and devils, is there aught to drink in this accursed place?' he croaked.

  'Here!' cried several corsairs, thrusting leathern wine skins toward him. Conan took a hearty swig, then greeted Borus, the first mate of the Hawk.

  'While you were in the tower, the lads sent back for food and drink,' explained the Argossean. 'From what they told me., I thought it best to come ashore. What in the nine hells happened in the tower, Conan?'

  'I'll tell you once I get these scratches cleaned and bandaged,' growled the Cimmerian.

  An hour later, Conan sat upon a stump, eating huge mouthfuls of brown bread and cheese and gulping red wine from the ship's stores.

  'And so,' he said, 'the monster crumbled into dust in less Mine than it takes to tell of it. It must have been an ancient corpse kept living by Siptah's sorcery. The old he-witch laid Mime command upon it to drive all uninvited callers from the island; and under Siptah's spell, it followed the command long after its master's death.'

  'Is that the only treasure in the tower?' asked Abimael, pointing to the chest.

  'Aye, all but the furnishings, and those we could not carry. I went through every alcove - where he cooked and worked Ins spells, where he stored supplies, even in his narrow bedchamber, but I found naught save this. 'Twill, furnish all a good share-out - naught fabulous - and a good carouse in port.'

  'Were there no secret doors?' said Fabio, when the men had ceased their shouts of laughter.

  'None that I could find, and I hunted the place over. It stands to reason Siptah gained more gold than's in this little chest, but I saw no sign of it. Perhaps it's buried somewhere on this island, but without a map to guide us, we could dig a hundred years in vain.' Conan took a gulp of wine and looked at Siptah's spire. 'Methinks this tower was built centuries before the Stygian came with his black arts to conquer it.'

  'Whose was the tower, then?' asked Borus.

  'My guess would be it was the winged man's, and others of his kind.' said Conan sombrely. 'I think the devil was the last of a tribe that walked the earth - or flew the skies before mankind appeared. Only winged men would build a tower with neither doors nor windows.'

  'And Siptah with his magic enslaved the bat-man?' asked Borus.

  Conan shrugged. That were my guess. The Stygian bound him to the magic crystal in some occult manner; and when the crystal broke, the spell was ended.'

  Abimael said: 'Who knows? Mayhap the creature was not, hostile after all, until the sorcerer compelled it to obey his cruel commands.'

  'To me a devil is a devil,' said Conan, 'but you may be I right. That we shall never know. Let's get back to the Hawk Borus, and trim sail for the Barachas. And
once aboard, if any dog wakes me before I've slept my fill, I'll make him wish the bat-man had cut his throat instead!'

  The Pool of the Black One

  Robert E. Howard

  Into the west, unknown of man, Ships have sailed since the world began. Read, if you dare, what Skelos wrote, With dead hands fumbling his silken coat; And follow the ships through the wind-blown wrack – Follow the ships that come not back.

  I

  Sancha, once of Kordava, yawned daintily, stretched her supple limbs luxuriously, and composed herself more comfortably on the ermine-fringed silk spread on the carack’s poop-deck. That the crew watched her with burning interest from waist and forecastle she was lazily aware, just as she was also aware that her short silk kirtle veiled little of her voluptuous contours from their eager eyes. Wherefore she smiled insolently and prepared to snatch a few more winks before the sun, which was just thrusting his golden disk above the ocean, should dazzle her eyes.

  But at that instant a sound reached her ears unlike the creaking of timbers, thrum of cordage and lap of waves. She sat up, her gaze fixed on the rail, over which, to her amazement, a dripping figure clambered. Her dark eyes opened wide, her red lips parted in an O of surprize. The intruder was a stranger to her. Water ran in rivulets from his great shoulders and down his heavy arms. His single garment – a pair of bright crimson silk breeks – was soaking wet, as was his broad gold-buckled girdle and the sheathed sword it supported. As he stood at the rail, the rising sun etched him like a great bronze statue. He ran his fingers through his streaming black mane, and his blue eyes lit as they rested on the girl.

  'Who are you?' she demanded. 'Whence did you come?'

  He made a gesture toward the sea that took in a whole quarter of the compass, while his eyes did not leave her supple figure.

  'Are you a merman, that you rise up out of the sea?' she asked, confused by the candor of his gaze, though she was accustomed to admiration.

  Before he could reply, a quick step sounded on the boards, and the master of the carack was glaring at the stranger, fingers twitching at sword-hilt.

  'Who the devil are you, sirrah?' this one demanded in no friendly tone.

  'I am Conan,' the other answered imperturbably. Sancha pricked up her ears anew; she had never heard Zingaran spoken with such an accent as the stranger spoke it.

  'And how did you get aboard my ship?' The voice grated with suspicion.

  'I swam.'

  'Swam!' exclaimed the master angrily. 'Dog, would you jest with me? We are far beyond sight of land. Whence do you come?'

  Conan pointed with a muscular brown arm toward the east, banded in dazzling gold by the lifting sun.

  'I came from the Islands.'

  'Oh!' The other regarded him with increased interest. Black brows drew down over scowling eyes, and the thin lip lifted unpleasantly.

  'So you are one of those dogs of the Barachans.'

  A faint smile touched Conan’s lips.

  'And do you know who I am?' his questioner demanded.

  'This ship is the Wastrel ; so you must be Zaporavo.'

  'Aye!' It touched the captain’s grim vanity that the man should know him. He was a tall man, tall as Conan, though of leaner build. Framed in his steel morion his face was dark, saturnine and hawk-like, wherefore men called him the Hawk. His armour and garments were rich and ornate, after the fashion of a Zingaran grandee. His hand was never far from his sword-hilt.

  There was little favour in the gaze he bent on Conan. Little love was lost between the Zingaran renegades and the outlaws who infested the Baracha Islands off the southern coast of Zingara. These men were mostly sailors from Argos, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. They raided the shipping, and harried the Zingaran coast towns, just as the Zingaran buccaneers did, but these dignified their profession by calling themselves Freebooters, while they dubbed the Barachans pirates. They were neither the first nor the last to gild the name of thief.

  Some of these thoughts passed through Zaporavo’s mind as he toyed with his sword-hilt and scowled at his uninvited guest. Conan gave no hint of what his own thoughts might be. He stood with folded arms as placidly as if upon his own deck; his lips smiled and his eyes were untroubled.

  'What are you doing here?' the Freebooter demanded abruptly.

  'I found it necessary to leave the rendezvous at Tortage before moonrise last night,' answered Conan. 'I departed in a leaky boat, and rowed and bailed all night. Just at dawn I saw your topsails, and left the miserable tub to sink, while I made better speed in the water.'

  'There are sharks in these waters,' growled Zaporavo, and was vaguely irritated by the answering shrug of the mighty shoulders. A glance toward the waist showed a screen of eager faces staring upward. A word would send them leaping up on the poop in a storm of swords that would overwhelm even such a fighting-man as the stranger looked to be.

  'Why should I burden myself with every nameless vagabond the sea casts up?'snarled Zaporavo, his look and manner more insulting than his words.

  'A ship can always use another good sailor,' answered the other without resentment. Zaporavo scowled, knowing the truth of that assertion. He hesitated, and doing so, lost his ship, his command, his girl, and his life. But of course he could not see into the future, and to him Conan was only another wastrel, cast up, as he put it, by the sea. He did not like the man; yet the fellow had given him no provocation. His manner was not insolent, though rather more confident than Zaporavo liked to see.

  'You’ll work for your keep,' snarled the Hawk. 'Get off the poop. And remember, the only law here is my will.'

  The smile seemed to broaden on Conan’s thin lips. Without hesitation but without haste he turned and descended into the waist. He did not look again at Sancha, who, during the brief conversation, had watched eagerly, all eyes and ears.

  As he came into the waist the crew thronged about him – Zingarans, all of them, half naked, their gaudy silk garments splashed with tar, jewels glinting in ear-rings and dagger-hilts. They were eager for the time-honored sport of baiting the stranger. Here he would be tested, and his future status in the crew decided. Up on the poop Zaporavo had apparently already forgotten the stranger’s existence, but Sancha watched, tense with interest. She had become familiar with such scenes, and knew the baiting would be brutal and probably bloody.

  But her familiarity with such matters was scanty compared to that of Conan. He smiled faintly as he came into the waist and saw the menacing figures pressing truculently about him. He paused and eyed the ring inscrutably, his composure unshaken. There was a certain code about these things. If he had attacked the captain, the whole crew would have been at his throat, but they would give him a fair chance against the one selected to push the brawl.

  The man chosen for this duty thrust himself forward – a wiry brute, with a crimson sash knotted about his head like a turban. His lean chin jutted out, his scarred face was evil beyond belief. Every glance, each swaggering movement was an affront. His way of beginning the baiting was as primitive, raw and crude as himself.

  'Baracha, eh?' he sneered. 'That’s where they raise dogs for men. We of the Fellowship spit on ’em – like this!'

  He spat in Conan’s face and snatched at his own sword.

  The Barachan’s movement was too quick for the eye to follow. His sledge-like fist crunched with a terrible impact against his tormenter’s jaw, and the Zingaran catapulted through the air and fell in a crumpled heap by the rail.

  Conan turned toward the others. But for a slumbering glitter in his eyes, his bearing was unchanged. But the baiting was over as suddenly as it had begun. The seamen lifted their companion; his broken jaw hung slack, his head lolled unnaturally.

  'By Mitra, his neck’s broken!' swore a black-bearded sea-rogue.

  'You Freebooters are a weak-boned race,' laughed the pirate. 'On the Barachas we take no account of such taps as that. Will you play at sword-strokes, now, any of you? No? Then all’s well, and we’re friends, eh?'
<
br />   There were plenty of tongues to assure him that he spoke truth. Brawny arms swung the dead man over the rail, and a dozen fins cut the water as he sank. Conan laughed and spread his mighty arms as a great cat might stretch itself, and his gaze sought the deck above. Sancha leaned over the rail, red lips parted, dark eyes aglow with interest. The sun behind her outlined her lithe figure through the light kirtle which its glow made transparent. Then across her fell Zaporavo’s scowling shadow and a heavy hand fell possessively on her slim shoulder. There were menace and meaning in the glare he bent on the man in the waist; Conan grinned back, as if at a jest none knew but himself.

  Zaporavo made the mistake so many autocrats make; alone in somber grandeur on the poop, he under-estimated the man below him. He had his opportunity to kill Conan, and he let it pass, engrossed in his own gloomy ruminations. He did not find it easy to think any of the dogs beneath his feet constituted a menace to him. He had stood in the high places so long, and had ground so many foes underfoot, that he unconsciously assumed himself to be above the machinations of inferior rivals.

  Conan, indeed, gave him no provocation. He mixed with the crew, lived and made merry as they did. He proved himself a skilled sailor, and by far the strongest man any of them had seen. He did the work of three men, and was always first to spring to any heavy or dangerous task. His mates began to rely upon him. He did not quarrel with them, and they were careful not to quarrel with him. He gambled with them, putting up his girdle and sheath for a stake, won their money and weapons, and gave them back with a laugh. The crew instinctively looked toward him as the leader of the forecastle. He vouchsafed no information as to what had caused him to flee the Barachas, but the knowledge that he was capable of a deed bloody enough to have exiled him from that wild band increased the respect felt toward him by the fierce Freebooters. Toward Zaporavo and the mates he was imperturbably courteous, never insolent or servile.