The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Amalric felt a dim stirring of uneasiness. This desert, seemingly empty of life, nevertheless contained some of the fiercest tribes on earth: the Ghanatas, who ranged far to the east; the masked Tibu, who he believed dwelt further to the south; and, somewhere off to the south-west, the semi-mythical empire of Tombalku, ruled by a wild and barbaric race. It was strange that a city in the midst of this savage land should be left so completely alone that one of its inhabitants did not even know the meaning of war.

  When he turned his gaze elsewhere, strange thoughts assailed him. Was the girl touched by the sun? Was she a demon in womanly form, come out of the desert to luxe him to some cryptic doom? A glance at her, clinging childishly to the high peak of the camel's saddle, was sufficient to dispel these broodings. Then again, doubt assailed him.

  Was he bewitched? Had she cast a spell on him?

  Westward they steadily forged, halting only to nibble dates and drink water at midday. To shield her from the burning sun, Amalric fashioned a frail shelter oat of his sword and sheath and the saddle blankets.

  Weary and stiff from the tossing, bucking gait of the camel, she had to be lifted down in his arms. As he felt again the voluptuous sweetness of her soft body, a hot throb of passion seared through him. He stood momentarily motionless, intoxicated with her nearness, before he laid her down in the shade of a makeshift tent.

  He felt a touch almost of anger at the clear gaze with which she met his, at the docility with which she yielded her young body to his hands. It was as if she were unaware of things that might harm her; her innocent trust shamed him and pent a helpless wrath within him.

  As they ate, he did not taste the dates he munched; his eyes burned on her, avidly drinking in every detail of her lithe young figure. She seemed as unaware of his intentness as a child. When he lifted her to place her again on her camel, and her arms went instinctively about his neck, he shuddered. But he lifted her up on her mount, and they took up the journey once more.

  II

  It was just before sundown when Lissa pointed and cried out: 'Look! The towers of Gazal!'

  On the desert rim he saw them—spires and minarets, rising in a jade-green cluster against the blue sky. But for the girl, he would have thought it the phantom city of a mirage. He glanced at Lissa curiously; she showed no signs of eager joy at her homecoming. She sighed, and her slim shoulders seemed to droop.

  As they approached, the details swam more plainly into view. Sheer from the desert sands rose the wall that enclosed the towers. And Amalric saw that the wall was crumbling in many places. The towers, too, were much in disrepair. Roofs sagged; broken battlements gaped; spires leaned drunkenly. Panic assailed him; was it a city of the dead to which he rode, guided by a vampire? A quick glance at the girl reassured him. No demon could lurk in that divinely moulded form. She glanced at him with a strange, wistful questioning in her deep eyes, turned irresolutely toward the desert, and then, with a deep sigh, set her face toward the city, as if gripped by a subtle and fatalistic despair.

  Now, through the gaps in the jade-green wall, Amalric saw figures moving within the city. No one hailed them as they rode through a broad breach in the wall and came out into a wide street Close at hand, limned in the sinking sun, the decay was more apparent Grass grew rank in the streets, pushing through shattered paving; grass grew rank in the small plazas. Streets and courts were likewise littered with a rubbish of fallen stones. Here and there, the ruins of a house had been cleared away and the space given over to vegetable gardening.

  Domes rose, cracked and discolored. Portals gaped, vacant of doors.

  Everywhere, ruin had laid its hand. Then Amalric saw one spire untouched: a shining, red, cylindrical tower, which rose in the extreme southeastern corner of the city. It gleamed among the ruins. Amalric indicated it.

  'Why is that tower less ruined than the others?' he asked. Lissa turned pale, trembled, and convulsively caught his hand.

  'Do not speak of it!' she whispered. 'Do not look toward it—do not even think of it!'

  Amalric scowled; the nameless implication of her words had somehow changed the aspect of the mysterious tower. Now it seemed like a serpent's head, rearing amid ruin and desolation. A stream of black specks—bats on the wing—poured from its high black apertures.

  The young Aquilonian looked warily about him. After all, he had no assurance that the people of Gazal would receive him in a friendly manner. He saw people moving leisurely about the streets. When they halted and stared at him, his flesh for some reason crawled. They were men and women with kindly features, and their looks were mild. But their interest seemed so slight—so vague and impersonal. They made no move to approach or speak to him. It might have been the commonest thing in the world for an armed horseman to ride into their city from the desert; yet Amalric knew that this was not the case, and the casual manner with which the people of Gazal received him caused a faint uneasiness in his bosom.

  Lissa spoke to them, indicating Amalric, whose hand she lifted like an affectionate child. 'This is Amalric of Aquilonia, who rescued me from the black people and has brought me home.'

  A polite murmur of welcome rose from the people, and several of them approached to extend their hands. Amalric thought he had never seen such vague, kindly faces; their eves were soft and mild, without fear and without wonder. Yet they were not the eyes of stupid oxen; rather, they were the eyes of people wrapped in dreams.

  Their stare gave him a feeling of unreality; he hardly knew what was said to him. His mind was occupied by the strangeness of it all: these quiet, dreamy people, in their silken tunics and soft sandals, moving with aimless vagueness among the discolored ruins. A lotus paradise of illusion? Somehow that sinister red tower struck a discordant note.

  One of the men, with a smooth, unlined face but hair of silver, said:

  'Aquilonia? There was an invasion—we heard by King Bragorus of Nemedia.

  How went the war?'

  'He was driven hack,' answered Amalric briefly, resisting a shudder.

  Nine hundred years had passed since Bragorus had led his spearmen across the marches of Aquilonia.

  His questioner did not press him further; the people drifted away, and Lissa tugged at his hand. He turned and feasted his eyes upon her. In a realm of illusion and dream, her soft, firm body anchored his wandering conjectures. She was no dream; she was real; her body was sweet and tangible as cream and honey.

  'Come,' she said, 'let us go to rest and eat.'

  'What of the people?' he demurred. 'Will you not tell them of your experiences?'

  'They would not heed, except for a few moments,' she answered. 'They would listen a little, then drift away. They hardly know I have been gone. Come!'

  Amalric led the horse and the camel into an enclosed court, where the grass grew high and water seeped from a broken fountain into a marble trough. There he tethered them; then he followed Lissa. Taking his hand, she led him across the court into an arched doorway. .Night had fallen. In the open space above the court; the stars clustered, etching the jagged pinnacles.

  Through a series of dark chambers Lissa went, moving with the sureness of long practice. Amalric groped after her, guided by her little hand in his. He found it no pleasant adventure. The scent of dust and decay hung in the thick darkness. Under his feet were sometimes broken tiles and sometimes worn carpets. His free hand touched the fretted arches of doorways. Then the stars gleamed through a broken roof, showing him a dim winding hallway, hung with rotting tapestries. They rustled in a faint breeze; their noise was like the whispering of witches, causing the hair of his scalp to stir.

  Then they came into a chamber dimly lighted by star-shine streaming through open windows, and Lissa released his hand. She fumbled for an instant and produced a faint light It was a glassy knob, which glowed with a golden radiance. She set it on a marble table and indicated that Amalric should recline on a couch thickly littered with silks. Groping into some hidden recess, she produced a golden vessel of wine and ot
hers containing food unfamiliar to Amalric. There were dates; but the other fruits and vegetables, pallid and insipid to his taste, he did not recognise. The wine was pleasant to the palate but no more heady than dishwater.

  Seated on a marble seat facing him, Lissa nibbled daintily.

  'What sort of place is this?' he demanded. 'You are like these people, yet strangely unlike them.'

  'They say I am like our ancestors,' answered Lissa. 'Long ago, they came into the desert and built this city amid a great oasis, which contained a series of springs. The stone they took from the ruins of a much older city—only the Red Tower—' (her voice dropped, and she glanced nervously at the star-framing windows) '—only the red tower stood there. It was empty—then.

  'Our ancestors, who were called Gazali, once dwelt in southern Koth.

  They were noted for their scholarly wisdom. But they sought to revive the worship of Mitra, which the Kothians had long since abandoned, and the king drove them from his kingdom. They came southward, many of them: priests, scholars, teachers, and scientists, with their Shemitish slaves.

  'They reared Gazal in the desert; but the slaves revolted almost as soon as the city was built and, fleeing, mixed with the wild tribes of the desert. They were not ill-treated; but word came to them in the night—a word that sent them fleeing madly from the city into the desert.

  'My people dwelt here, learning to produce their food and drink from such material as was at hand. Their learning was a marvel. When the slaves fled, they took with them every camel, horse, and ass in the city. Thenceforth, there was no communication with the outer world.

  There are whole chambers in Gazal filled with maps and books and chronicles, but they are all nine hundred years old at the least; for it was nine hundred years ago that my people fled from Koth. Since then, no man of the outside world has set foot in Gazal. And the people are slowly vanishing. They have become so dreamy and introspective that they have neither human passions nor human appetites. The city falls into ruins and none moves a hand to repair it. honour—' (she choked and shuddered) '—when horror came upon them, they could neither flee nor fight.'

  'What do you mean?' he whispered, a cold wind blowing on his spine. The rustling of rotten hangings down nameless black corridors stirred dim fears in his soul.

  She shook her head. She rose, came around the marble table, and laid hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were wet and shone with horror and a desperate yearning that caught at his throat. Instinctively his arm went around her lithe form, and he felt her tremble.

  'Hold me!' she' begged. 'I am afraid! Oh, I have dreamed of such a man as you. I am not like my people; they are dead men walking forgotten streets; but I am alive. I am warm and sentient. I hunger and thirst and yearn for life. I cannot abide the silent streets and ruined halls and dim people of Gazal, although I have never known anything else.

  That is why I ran away; I yearned for life—'

  She was sobbing uncontrollably in his arms. Her hair streamed over his face; her fragrance made him dizzy. Her firm body strained against his.

  She was lying across his knees, her arms locked about his neck.

  Straining her to his breast, he crushed her lips with his. Eyes, lips, cheeks, hair, throat, breasts—he showered her with hot kisses, unto her sobs changed to panting gasps. His passion was not the violence of a ravisher. The passion that slumbered in her woke in one overpowering wave. The glowing golden ball, struck by his groping fingers, tumbled to the floor and was extinguished. Only the starshine gleamed through the windows.

  Lying in Amalric's arms on the silk-heaped couch, Lissa opened her heart and whispered her dreams and hopes and aspirations—childish, pathetic, terrible.

  'I'll take you away,' he muttered. 'Tomorrow. You are right; Gazal is a city of the dead. We will seek life in the outer world. It is violent, rough, and cruel, but better than this living death—'

  The night was broken by a shuddering cry of agony, horror, and despair.

  Its timbre brought out cold sweat on Amalric's skin. He started upright from the couch, but Lissa desperately clung to him.

  'No, no!' she begged in a frantic whisper. 'Do not go! Stay!'

  'But murder is being done!' he exclaimed, fumbling for his sword. The cries seemed to come from across an outer court. Mingled with them was an indescribable, tearing, rending sound. They rose higher and thinner, unbearable in their hopeless agony, then sank away in a long, shuddering sob.

  'I have heard men dying on the rack cry out like that!' muttered Amalric, shaking with horror. 'What devil's work is this?'

  Lissa was trembling violently in a frenzy of terror. He felt the wild pounding of her heart.

  'It is the horror of which I spoke!' she whispered. The horror that dwells in the Red Tower. Long ago it came; some say it dwelt there in the lost years and returned after the building of Gazal. It devours human beings. What it is, no one knows, since none has seen it and lived to tell of it. It is a god or a devil. That is why the slaves fled; why the desert people shun Gazal. Many of us have gone into its awful belly. Eventually, all will have gone, and it will rule over an empty city, as men say it ruled over the ruins from which Gazal was reared.'

  'Why have the people stayed to be devoured?' he demanded.

  'I do not know,' she whimpered. 'They dream…'

  'Hypnosis,' muttered Amalric; 'hypnosis coupled with decay. I saw it in their eyes. This devil has them mesmerized. Mitra, what a foul secret!'

  Lissa pressed her face against his bosom and dung to him.

  'But what are we to do?' he asked uneasily.

  There is nothing to do,' she whispered. 'Tour sword would be useless.

  Perhaps if will not harm us. It has taken a victim tonight. We must wait like sheep for the butcher.'

  'I'll be damned if I will—' Amalric exclaimed, galvanized. 'We will not wait for morning. We'll go tonight Make a bundle of food and drink.

  I'll get the horse and the camel and bring them to the court outside.

  Meet me there?

  Since the unknown monster had already struck, Amalric felt that he was safe in leaving the girl alone for a few minutes. But his flesh crawled as he groped his way down the winding corridor and through the black chambers, where the swinging tapestries whispered. He found the beasts huddled nervously together in the court where he had left them. The stallion whinnied and nuzzled him, as if sensing peril in the breathless night.

  Amalric saddled and bridled the animals and led them through the narrow opening into the street. A few minutes later, he was standing in the starlit court. Even as he reached it, he was electrified by an awful scream, which rang shudderingly upon the air. It came from the chamber where he had left Lissa.

  He answered that piteous cry with a wild yell. Drawing his sword, he rushed across the court and hurled himself through the window. The golden ball was glowing again, carving out black shadows in the shrinking corners. Silks lay scattered on the floor. The marble seat was upset; but the chamber was empty.

  A sick weakness overcame Amalric, and he staggered against the marble table, the dim light wavering dizzily to his sight Then he was swept by a mad rage. The Red Tower! There the fiend would bear its victim!

  He darted back across the court; sought the streets, and raced toward the tower, which glowed with an unholy light under the stars. The streets did not run straight. He cut through silent black buildings and crossed courts whose rank grass waved in the night wind.

  Ahead of him, clustered about the crimson tower, rose a heap of ruins, where decay had eaten more savagely than at the rest of the city.

  Apparently none dwelt among them. They reeled and tumbled, a crumbling mass of quaking masonry, with the red tower rearing up among them like a poisonous red flower from charnel-house ruin.

  To reach the tower, he would be forced to traverse the ruins.

  Recklessly he plunged into the black mass, groping for a door. He found one and entered, thrusting his sword ahead of him. Then he saw such a vist
a as men sometimes see in fantastic dreams.

  Ahead of him stretched a long corridor, visible in a faint, unhallowed glow, its black walls hung with strange, shuddersome tapestries. Far down it he saw a receding figure—a white, naked, stooped figure, lurching along, dragging something the sight of which filled him with sweating honour. Then the apparition vanished from his sight, and with it vanished the eerie glow. Amalric stood in the soundless dark, seeing nothing, hearing nothing; thinking only of a stooped, white figure, which dragged a limp human form down a long black corridor.

  As he groped onward, a vague memory stirred in his brain: the memory of a grisly tale mumbled to him over a dying fire in the skull-shaped devil-devil 'hut of a black witch-man—a tale of a god that dwelt in a crimson house in a ruined city—a god worshiped by darksome cults in dank jungles and along sullen, dusky rivers. And there stirred, too, in his mind, an incantation whispered in his ear in awed and shuddering tones, while the night held its breath, the lions had ceased to roar along the river, and the very fronds had ceased their scraping, one against the other.

  Ollam-onga, whispered a dark wind down the sightless corridor.

  Ollam-onga, whispered the dust that ground beneath his stealthy feet.

  Sweat stood on his skin, and the sword shook in his hand. He stole through the house of a god, and fear held him in its bony fist. The house of the god—the full horror of the phrase filled his mind. All the ancestral fears and the fears that reached beyond ancestry and primordial race memory crowded upon him; horror cosmic and unhuman sickened him. The realization of his weak humanity crushed him as he went through the house of darkness, which was the house of a god.

  About him shimmered a glow so faint that it was scarcely discernable.

  He knew that he was approaching the tower itself. Another instant, and he groped his way through an arched door and stumbled upon strangely-spaced steps. Up and up he went; and, as he climbed, that blind fury, which is mankind's last defence against diabolism and all the hostile forces of the universe, surged in him. He forgot his fear.