The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Nabonidus drew back, shaking like a leaf. He gripped Conan’s shoulder. 'Man, do you dare pit your knife against his fangs?'

  The Cimmerian’s eyes blazed in answer.

  'Quick!' the Red Priest whispered, thrusting him behind the curtains, close against the wall. 'As he will find us soon enough, we will draw him to us. As he rushes past you, sink your blade in his back if you can. You, Murilo, show yourself to him, and then flee up the corridor. Mitra knows, we have no chance with him in hand-to-hand combat, but we are doomed anyway when he finds us.'

  Murilo felt his blood congeal in his veins, but he steeled himself, and stepped outside the doorway. Instantly Thak, on the other side of the chamber, wheeled, glared, and charged with a thunderous roar. His scarlet hood had fallen back, revealing his black misshapen head; his black hands and red robe were splashed with a brighter red. He was like a crimson and black nightmare as he rushed across the chamber, fangs bared, his bowed legs hurtling his enormous body along at a terrifying gait.

  Murilo turned and ran back into the corridor, and quick as he was, the shaggy horror was almost at his heels. Then as the monster rushed past the curtains, from among them catapulted a great form that struck full on the apeman’s shoulders, at the same instant driving the poniard into the brutish back. Thak screamed horribly as the impact knocked him off his feet, and the combatants hit the floor together. Instantly there began a whirl and thrash of limbs, the tearing and rending of a fiendish battle.

  Murilo saw that the barbarian had locked his legs about the apeman’s torso, and was striving to maintain his position on the monster’s back, while he butchered it with his poniard. Thak, on the other hand, was striving to dislodge his clinging foe, to drag him around within reach of the giant fangs that gaped for his flesh. In a whirlwind of blows and scarlet tatters they rolled along the corridor, revolving so swiftly that Murilo dared not use the chair he had caught up, lest he strike the Cimmerian. And he saw that in spite of the handicap of Conan’s first hold, and the voluminous robe that lashed and wrapped about the apeman’s limbs and body, Thak’s giant strength was swiftly prevailing. Inexorably he was dragging the Cimmerian around in front of him. The apeman had taken punishment enough to have killed a dozen men. Conan’s poniard had sunk again and again into his torso, shoulders, and bull-like neck; he was streaming blood from a score of wounds, but unless the blade quickly reached some absolutely vital spot, Thak’s inhuman vitality would survive to finish the Cimmerian, and after him, Conan’s companions.

  Conan was fighting like a wild beast himself, in silence except for his gasps of effort. The black talons of the monster and the awful grasp of those misshapen hands ripped and tore at him, the grinning jaws gaped for his throat. Then Murilo, seeing an opening, sprang and swung the chair with all his power, and with force enough to have brained a human being. The chair glanced from Thak’s slanted black skull; but the stunned monster momentarily relaxed his rending grasp, and in that instant Conan, gasping and streaming blood, plunged forward and sank his poniard to the hilt in the apeman’s heart.

  With a convulsive shudder the beast-man started from the floor, then sank limply back. His fierce eyes set and glazed, his thick limbs quivered and became rigid.

  Conan staggered dizzily up, shaking the sweat and blood out of his eyes. Blood dripped from his poniard and fingers, and trickled in rivulets down his thighs, arms and breast. Murilo caught at him to support him, but the barbarian shook him off impatiently.

  'When I can not stand alone, it will be time to die,' he mumbled, through mashed lips. 'But I’d like a flagon of wine.'

  Nabonidus was staring down at the still figure as if he could not believe his own eyes. Black, hairy, abhorrent, the monster lay, grotesque in the tatters of the scarlet robe; yet more human than bestial, even so, and possessed somehow of a vague and terrible pathos.

  Even the Cimmerian sensed this, for he panted: 'I have slain a man tonight, not a beast. I will count him among the chiefs whose souls I’ve sent into the dark, and my women will sing of him.'

  Nabonidus stooped and picked up a bunch of keys on a golden chain. They had fallen from the apeman’s girdle during the battle. Motioning his companions to follow him, he led them to a chamber, unlocked the door, and led the way inside. It was illumined like the others. The Red Priest took a vessel of wine from a table and filled crystal beakers. As his companions drank thirstily, he murmured: 'What a night! It is nearly dawn, now. What of you, my friends?'

  'I’ll dress Conan’s hurts, if you will fetch me bandages and the like,' said Murilo, and Nabonidus nodded, and moved toward the door that let into the corridor. Something about his bowed head caused Murilo to watch him sharply. At the door the Red Priest wheeled suddenly. His face had undergone a transformation. His eyes gleamed with his old fire, his lips laughed soundlessly.

  'Rogues together!' his voice rang with its accustomed mockery. 'But not fools together. You are the fool, Murilo!'

  'What do you mean?' The young nobleman started forward.

  'Back!' Nabonidus’s voice cracked like a whip. 'Another step and I will blast you!'

  Murilo’s blood turned cold as he saw that the Red Priest’s hand grasped a thick velvet rope which hung among the curtains just outside the door.

  'What treachery is this?' cried Murilo. 'You swore –'

  'I swore I would not tell the king a jest concerning you! I did not swear not to take matters into my own hands if I could. Do you think I would pass up such an opportunity? Under ordinary circumstances I would not dare to kill you myself, without sanction of the king, but now none will ever know. You will go into the acid-vats along with Thak and the nationalist fools, and none will be the wiser. What a night this has been for me! If I have lost some valuable servants, I have nevertheless rid myself of various dangerous enemies. Stand back! I am over the threshold, and you can not possibly reach me before I tug this cord and send you to hell. Not the grey lotus, this time, but something just as effective. Nearly every chamber in my house is a trap. And so, Murilo, fool that you are –'

  Too quickly for the sight to follow, Conan caught up a stool and hurled it. Nabonidus instinctively threw up his arm with a cry, but not in time. The missile crunched against his head, and the Red Priest swayed and fell face-down in a slowly widening pool of dark crimson.

  'His blood was red, after all,' grunted Conan.

  Murilo raked back his sweat-plastered hair with a shaky hand as he leaned against the table, weak from the reaction of relief.

  'It is dawn,' he said. 'Let us get out of here, before we fall afoul of some other doom. If we can climb the outer wall without being seen, we won’t be connected with this night’s work. Let the police write their own explanation.'

  He glanced at the body of the Red Priest where it lay etched in crimson, and shrugged his shoulders.

  'He was the fool, after all; had he not paused to taunt us, he could have trapped us easily.'

  'Well,' said the Cimmerian tranquilly, 'he’s travelled the road all rogues must walk at last. I’d like to loot the house, but I suppose we’d best go.'

  As they emerged into the dimness of the dawn-whitened garden, Murilo said: 'The Red Priest has gone into the dark, so my road is clear in the city, and I have nothing to fear. But what of you? There is still the matter of that priest in The Maze, and –'

  'I’m tired of this city anyway,' grinned the Cimmerian. 'You mentioned a horse waiting at the Rat’s Den. I’m curious to see how fast that horse can carry me into another kingdom. There’s many a highway I want to travel before I walk the road Nabonidus walked this night.'

  Conan the Victorious

  Robert Jordan

  Prologue

  The Vendhyan night was preternaturally still, the air weighty and oppressive. No slightest breeze stirred, leaving the capital city of Ayodhya to swelter. The moon hung heavily in the sky like a monstrous yellow pustule, and most of the few who ventured out to see it shuddered and wished for even a single cloud to hide its sickly m
alevolence. There were whispers in the city that such a night, such a moon, were omens of plague, or of war, but certainly of death.

  The man who called himself Naipal gave no heed to the whispers.

  Watching from the highest balcony of a vast palace of alabaster spires and golden domes, his by royal gift, he knew the moon was no omen of any sort. It was the stars that gave the night its promise, the passing of configurations that had blocked his way for months. He laid long, supple fingers on the long, narrow golden coffer held beneath his arm.

  Tonight, he thought, there would be one moment of transcendent danger, a moment when all his plans could crumble to dust. Yet there was no gain without risk, and the greater the gain, the greater the danger.

  Naipal was not his true name, for in a land noted for its intrigues, those who followed his path were secretive beyond the ordinary. He was tall for a Vendhyan, and they were accounted a tall people among the nations of the East. That height gave him a presence that he deliberately diminished by wearing robes of somber hue, such as the dark grey he now wore, rather than the rainbow silks and satins affected by men of fashion. Also the shade of charcoal was his modestly small turban, with neither gem nor plume to set it off. His face was darkly handsome, seeming calm beyond the ability of any disaster to shatter, with heavy-lidded black eyes that spoke of wisdom to men and of passion to women.

  Seldom did he allow himself to be seen, however, for in mystery there was power, though many knew that one called Naipal was court wizard to King Bhandarkar of Vendhya. This Naipal, it was said in Ayodhya, was a wise man, not only for his good and faithful service to the King since the strange disappearance of the former court wizard, but also for his modest lack of ambition. In a place where every man and woman brimmed with ambition and plotting, the lack was considered praiseworthy, if peculiar. But then, his sort did peculiar things. It was known, for instance, that he gave great sums to the poor, to the children of the streets. This was a source of some amusement to the nobles of the court, for they thought he did it to assume a guise of kindness. In truth he had thought long before giving the first coin. He had come from those streets and remembered well wretched nights crouched in an alley, too hungry to sleep. The truth would have showed a weakness; therefore he fostered the cynical rumours of his motives, for he allowed himself no weakness.

  With a last look at the sky, Naipal left the balcony, firmly clutching the narrow coffer. Golden lamps, cunningly wrought in the shapes of birds and flowers, lit the high-ceilinged corridors of his palace.

  Exquisite porcelains and fragile crystal vases stood on tables of polished ebony and carven ivory. The carpets layered thickly beneath his feet in a welter of colour were beyond price, and any one of the delicately-woven tapestries on the alabaster walls could have been exchanged for the daughter of a king. In public, Naipal made every effort to efface himself; in private, he reveled in all the pleasures of the senses. This night, however, after waiting so long, his eye did not touch any of the ornaments of his palace nor did he call for wine, nor musicians, nor women.

  Down he went, into the depths of his palace and beyond, to chambers with walls that glowed with a faint pearlescence as though glazed by the hand of a master, chambers hewn from the bowels of the earth by his powers. Few of his servants were allowed to enter those deep-buried rooms and passages, and those few could not speak of what they did or saw for the simple lack of a tongue. The world at large did not know of those chambers, for those servants who did not descend into them, and so were allowed to keep their tongues, fearfully and wisely averted their eyes and would not so much as whisper of them on their sleeping pallets.

  A downward-sloping corridor opened into a great square chamber, thirty paces on a side, with softly-gleaming canescent walls that were all of one piece, without join. Above, a pointed dome rose twenty times the height of a tall man. Centered beneath that dome was an arcane pattern in silver, buried in the near translucence of the floor and encompassing the greater part of the room. That silver graving gave off its own unholy radiance of frosty paleness. At nine precisely chosen spots on the perimeter of that figure were tripods of delicately worked gold, no higher than Naipal's knee and placed so that each leg seemed to continue a portion of the pattern. The air seemed sharp with dire forces, and the memories of foulness done.

  Incongruously, the sixth part of the length of one wall was taken by a large grille of iron bars, with a locked door, also of iron, set in it.

  Near the strange latticework a table of polished rosewood held the implements and ingredients he would need this night, all arranged on black velvet as a gem merchant might display his wares. A large flat box of ornately carved ivory stood atop faceted crystal legs at one end of the velvet. The place of honour on that table, though, was held by a small, finely crafted ebony chest.

  Setting the golden coffer beside a silken cushion before which stood another golden tripod, Naipal went to the table. His hand stretched toward the small black chest, but on sudden impulse he raised the ivory lid instead. Carefully he brushed aside layers of blue silk, as soft as the finest down, revealing a silvered mirror, its polished surface showing no image at all, not even a reflection of the chamber.

  The mage nodded. He had expected no different, but knew he must not allow his certainties to stop him from proper precautions. This mirror was not so very unlike a scrying glass, but instead of being used to communicate or spy, it had very special properties. That silver surface would show no images save those that threatened his designs.

  Once, soon after he became wizard in the court of King Bhandarkar, Mount Yimsha, abode of the dreaded Black Seers, had appeared in the mirror. It had been only curiosity at his ascension, he knew. They saw no threat in him, more fools they. In a day the image was gone, and never since had anything been reflected there. Not so much as a flicker. Such was the efficacy of his planning.

  With a feeling of satisfaction, Naipal covered the mirror once more and opened the ebony chest. Within was that which made his satisfaction grow. In carven hollows in the sable wood lay ten stones, smooth ovals of so inky a hue that the ebony seemed less black beside them. Nine were the size of the last joint of a man's thumb, the last twice so large. These were the khorassani. For centuries men had died seeking them in vain, until their very existence became first part of legends, then the stuff of stories for children. Ten years it had taken Naipal to acquire them, a search filled with adventures and trials to make it fit for epics had it been known.

  Reverently he placed the nine smaller khorassani, one atop each of the golden tripods that bordered the arcane figure within the floor. The tenth, the largest, he set on the tripod before the cushion. All was in readiness.

  Naipal settled cross-legged onto the cushion and began to speak the words of power, commanding forces unseen. 'E'las eloyhim! Maraath savinday! Khora mar! Khora mar!'

  Again the words repeated, again and again unending, and the stone before him began to glow as though with fires imprisoned in its core.

  No illumination did it give, yet it seemed to burn with all light.

  Abruptly, with a hiss as of white-hot metal thrust into water, narrow streaks of fire leaped from the glowing stone, one to each of the nine khorassani surrounding the silver pattern. As suddenly as they were born, the blazing bars died, yet now all ten stones blazed with the same fury. Once more the slashing hiss sounded, and the encircling stones were linked by burning lines, while from each tripod another bar of terrible incandescence stretched both upward and downward. Within the confines of that fiery cage neither floor nor dome could any longer be seen, but only darkness stretching to infinity.

  Naipal fell silent, studying his handiwork, then shouted, 'Masrok, I summon you!'

  A rushing came, as though all the winds of the world poured through vast caverns.

  A thunderclap smote the chamber, and within the flamebarred cage there floated a huge eight-armed shape, twice as tall as any man and more, with skin like polished obsidian. Its only garb was a
silver necklace from which depended three human skulls, and its body was smooth and sexless. Two of its hands held silver swords that shone with an unearthly light. Two more held spears with human skulls hanging below the points for decoration, and another grasped a needle-pointed dagger.

  Each weapon shared the glaucous, other-worldly glow. Large leathery ears twitched on the hairless head, and sharply slanted ruby eyes swiveled to Naipal.

  Carefully the creature stretched to touch one silvery spear to the fiery bounds. A million hornets buzzed in rage, and lightnings flashed along the candent boundary, ceasing only when the spear point was withdrawn.

  'Why do you still seek escape, Masrok?' Naipal demanded. 'You cannot break our bargain so easily. Only lifeless matter can cross through that boundary from the outside, and nothing, not even you, can pass it from the inside. As you well know.'

  'If you make foolish errors, O man, there is no need for bargains.' The booming words were pronounced stiffly around teeth that seemed designed for rending flesh, but a touch of arrogance came through. 'Still, I will keep our pact.'

  'Most assuredly you will, and should from gratitude if for no other reason. Did I not free you from a prison that had held you for centuries?'

  'Freedom, O man? I leave that prison only when summoned to this place by you, and here I am constrained to remain until commanded by you to return once more to that same prison. For this and promises, I aid you?

  I sent the demons to bear away your former master so that you could rise to what you consider power as the court wizard. I shield the eyes of the Black Seers of Yimsha while you attempt that which would draw their wrath upon your head. I do these things at your command, O man, and you dare speak to me of freedom?'

  'Continue to obey me,' Naipal said coldly, 'and you will have your freedom entire. Refuse . . .' He flung open the golden coffer. From it he snatched a silvery dagger like the one the demon carried, even to the glow, and thrust it toward the demon. 'When we made our pact, I demanded a token of you, and you gave me this with warnings as to the danger of its merest touch to human flesh. Did you think with a demon-weapon in my grasp I would not seek the secret of its powers? You hold human knowledge in contempt, Masrok, though it was mortal men who chained you in your adamantine prison. And in the knowledge of mere humans, in the ancient writings of human wizards, I found mention of weapons borne by demons, weapons of glowing silver, weapons that cannot miss what they strike at and slay whatever they strike. Even demons, Masrok. Even you!'