The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  It had not been the sword of an immortal god that had crushed down the Snake of Old Night, but ordinary men, battling the hissing minions of Set in a million-year war. The first men, newly sprung from their apelike forebears, had at first groveled beneath the lash of their serpentine masters. From this state of thralldom the heroes of the dawn had risen to break their shackles and to lead their people to many hard-fought victories.

  The serpent-folk, the old myths whispered, had received from their father, Set, the power to becloud the minds of men, so that to human eyes they looked like ordinary human beings. Kull, the hero-king of ancient Valusia, had narrowly triumphed over the arisen serpent, when he discovered that the reptile folk were living unsuspected amidst the very cities of men.

  Now, it seemed, the last survivors of this age-old war had fled the length of the world to its uttermost rim. Here, in the unknown mountains between the jungle and the sea, they had bided their time unmolested.

  The boy's eyes flashed with the realization that he, alone of all men living, had guessed the secret.

  VI

  The Skull-Faced Man

  'Hold!' thundered a deep voice.

  Lilit's hand was arrested in midair as the resonant command rolled through the incense-misted hall. The point of the dagger halted inches from Conan's breast.

  Queen Lilit turned to confront the gaunt, stooped figure, swathed in robes of faded and spotted emerald-green, who had interrupted her slaying of the unconscious Cimmerian. Her lips writhed back, exposing sharp white teeth. Eyes like dark gems lashed malignant fires. The pointed tip of a pink tongue flickered between her teeth.

  'Who commands here, Stygian? You or I?'

  Thoth-Amon faced the queen unblinkingly. Age had come upon the archimage since Conan had smashed the Black Ring in the battle at Nebthu months before. With the loss of his power base, the earth's mightiest sorcerer had been harried south before the iron legions of Aquilonia—south to Zembabwei, where his last human ally reigned on a bloody throne.

  Now the sanguinary reign of the wizard-king Nenaunir had been toppled in flame and thunder. Again Thoth-Amon fled before the Cimmerian's vengeance. Conan had pursued him to the world's uttermost edge.

  With each defeat, Thoth-Amon's centuries bore more heavily upon him. Now his form was old, shrunken, and frail. His face was like a skull, the dusky skin wrinkled and leathery. But still his burning gaze held terrific power; still his voice, backed by the unyielding iron of a disciplined will, was an insidious tool of persuasion.

  Hither he had fled to take refuge with his last allies, the prehuman serpent-folk. For centuries he had held them pent in this southern realm. He held them back by bribe and division and magical spell; for, though he and they both worshiped mighty Set, he had no intention of letting them regain their rule over the human race. The empire of evil he dreamed of rearing over the West, he intended to rule alone.

  Now, however, he had lost all his human confederates. In desperation had he sought the homeland of the serpent-folk, offering himself as an ally instead of an opponent. They had taken him in—not, he knew, from friendship or compassion, for these sentiments were alien to their kind—but to use him in rebuilding their long-vanished empire. His sovereignty over the servants of Set he had lost; but Conan of Aquilonia he was determined not to lose.

  'Vengeance is mine, Lilit,' he said, his somber gaze unreadable. 'In all else, I yield to you; but in this I am adamant. The Cimmerian is my captive.'

  The serpent-woman eyed him obliquely. 'I know your cunning heart, jackal of Stygia,' she hissed. 'You think to sacrifice him to Father Set and thus, by offering the greatest champion of Mitra on earth, to regain the favoured position your failures in the past have lost to you. But I, too, have plans for the Cimmerian—'

  Those plans, however, were never revealed. Even as the queen opened her mouth to utter them, she staggered from a sudden blow from behind. With unbelieving eyes, she stared down at the point of a bronze-bladed spear protruding… scarlet and dripping… from between her breasts.

  Her spine arched, while her frozen features blurred and dissolved into the head of a serpent. She fell forward on the dais, writhing in slow, undulant spasms of death. Thoth-Amon turned quickly to confront the band of gigantic black women who had burst suddenly into the shadowy hall.

  'By Mamajambo's war club!' exclaimed the princess Nzinga, wrenching out the spear she had thrown. 'We have come just in time!'

  The grey-bearded Trocero, followed by a file of Mbega's warriors, crowded into the hall, to see Nzinga bending over the slowly writhing body of the dying serpent-queen.

  'What monstrous sorcery is this?' she demanded of him fiercely. 'We see from a distance a cliff like a great skull; but when we come nigh, it changes to a gorgeous palace, and the dry soil changes to a lush meadow. Now we find the lord Conan snoring like a besotted drunkard, and this woman-thing bending over him with a knife, and an old man in green—'

  'Thoth-Amon, by all the gods!' gasped the count.

  'Oh, aye?' the black girl murmured, absently, her gaze turning again to the figure that writhed slowly in its death spasms on the steps before them. 'And what hell-spawned devil is this?'

  Trocero's fine features were drawn and harrowed. His voice sank to a thin whisper.

  'The—snake—that—speaks!' he muttered.

  The girl turned fierce eyes on him, her hand flashing to hilt of her broadsword.

  'Old man, you speak of that which no man should name aloud! Can it be, though, that the old black myths were—true?'

  'The proof of it lies wriggling at your feet,' the Aquilonian noble said quietly. 'Look! Even as we fence with words, it… changes—'

  The Amazon girl watched as long as she could, then turned away and shut her eyes as if to blot the very memory from her mind. On the steps before them, the unthinkable monstrosity that had been a queenly, radiant, voluptuous woman, died.

  And then it was that the hissing hordes fell on them, quite suddenly, from the shadows of the colonnade. And Trocero and Nzinga had work to do with spear and knife and sword, and were too busy for further speech.

  In the swift succession of inexplicable events, neither the Aquilonian nobleman nor the Amazonian warrior-girl had noticed the strangest and most inexplicable of all.

  For Conan and Thoth-Amon were nowhere to be seen.

  Both the sprawling, unconscious Cimmerian and his sorcerous arch-enemy had vanished, as if they had melted into thin air.

  VII

  At the Edge of the World

  Conan awoke suddenly from his drugged slumber. He came awake all at once, like a cat whose delicate senses have been roused to alertness by the presence of a foe. The Cimmerian had retained this savage trait through all the long years from his boyhood in the northern wastes. Decades of kingship over a sophisticated realm had laid but a thin veneer of civilisation over his primitive soul.

  He lay still while his keen senses tested his surroundings. To his ears came the dull boom of waves pounding a rocky shore .His nostrils tasted the air and detected the salt tang of the open sea.

  Opening his eyes to slits, he saw that he lay sprawled on damp sand amidst huge boulders. Above him arched the purple skies of night, ablaze with huge stars; among these the moon, nearly full, shone like a silver shield. The moonlight silvered the billows of an unknown sea.

  From a brief glance at the starry skies, Conan knew that this sea stretched away to the south. But as far as his smouldering gaze could penetrate the murk of night, he could see no land. It was as if he lay at the world's very edge, and the shore thereof was washed by the endless seas of eternity. How had he come hither?

  He rose to his feet and peered around him. Then his gaze was riveted by a figure that stood on a massive rock above him.

  The man, once tall and commanding, had dwindled and become bent and shrunken. His shaven pate and strong-boned, hawklike face had been stern and kingly; now the flesh had fallen away, leaving his head as gaunt and grim as a skull. His faded,
tattered green robe showed grey in the moonlight.

  A hand like a withered claw clutched a talisman in the form of a carven gem against the bony breast of the silent figure. Around the middle finger of this hand was coiled a massive ring of copper, in the form of a serpent holding its tail in its jaws. Weird fires in the heart of the gem cast a flickering light on his sunken features. From sunken sockets, Thoth-Amon's dark eyes burned into Conan's, who had felt the force of these probing, uncanny orbs before.

  'We meet again, dog of Cimmeria!' said Thoth-Amon in a thin voice.

  'For the last time, jackal of Stygia!' growled Conan.

  He had been disarmed, but the strength that slept along his massive arms and shoulders was enough to break the gaunt, bent, weary figure of his ancient foe. Conan, however, made no move against the other. He knew the powers that Thoth-Amon could command with a word, a gesture, an effort of will, and he respected these powers.

  He was curious to learn why Thoth-Amon had brought him to this beach at the brink of the known world. While he lay in drugged slumber, the master-magician could easily have slain him. But he had permitted him to live and had borne him away to this unknown place with the aid of the unseen demons that still served him. Why?

  As if in answer to Conan's unspoken query, Thoth-Amon began speaking slowly, in a weary, listless voice, as if the fires of life burned low in the wasted figure. As he spoke, however, his voice gained in strength, until it recalled the masterful, resonant tones of the Thoth-Amon of old. Conan listened quietly, his arms folded on his mighty breast and his moustachioed face impassive.

  'You have hounded me down the length of the world, barbarian dog,' said Thoth-Amon. 'One by one, you have sundered from me my most powerful allies. At Nebthu, aided by that drunken fool of a druid, you broke the Black Ring and scattered the wizards of the South —even as you broke the White Hand in dank and wintry Hyperborea. By luck and fate, you toppled the throne of Nenaunir. Now there is no further realm to which I can fly for refuge.'

  Conan said nothing. Thoth-Amon sighed, shrugged, and continued:

  'Here at the world's edge dwell the remnants of the ancient serpent-folk who ruled the world before the coming of men. The earliest human kingdoms strove with them and broke their power. When by magical illusions they sought to prolong their existence in disguise among men, your own ancestor, Kull the Conqueror, discovered their secret and crushed them once more.

  'Long have I known that the last of the primal rulers of the elder world dwelt here in secret, never relinquishing their hope of regaining what they view as their rightful place in the cosmos. From them I gained the knowledge that enabled me to become vicar of Set in the West, charged with the mighty mission of overthrowing the abominable worships of Mitra and Ishtar and Asura. At the same time, I held the serpent-folk in check, knowing their insatiable ambition and having no wish to share my own rule with the children of the Serpent.

  'My splendid plans you alone have thwarted—how, I know not. You are no priest or prophet or wizard. You are but a crude, ignorant, blundering, boorish adventurer, for the moment tossed high by the waves of fate. Mayhap your degenerate, effeminate Western gods have helped you in subtle ways. In any case, you have frustrated all my hopes and driven me from my throne at the centre of a world-wide league of magicians, transforming the would-be conqueror of the West into a harried fugitive.

  'But all is not yet lost! For unto Set himself I shall offer up your immortal soul in sacrifice. The Slithering God will feast well on the living soul of Conan the Cimmerian. Restored to his favour, I shall unleash the uncanny powers of the serpent-folk in one last, great crusade—'

  Then Conan struck. His grim features contorted into a snarling mask, he took two running steps, bounded high, and caught Thoth-Amon's scrawny throat in his massive hands. The impact of his charge hurled the pair off the rock on the other side, to fall locked together to the damp sand below.

  Strange was the battle between the champion of light and the champion of darkness, as they fought at the very edge of the world under the blazing stars.

  VIII

  Requiem for a Sorcerer

  Conan's tigerish charge had taken the gaunt Stygian by surprise. Little strength remained in Thoth-Amon's withered form, and Conan should have been able to break his neck like a dry twig. The Stygian's wizardly powers, however, lent him unearthly resources. Even as Conan's fingers locked on Thoth-Amon's fragile neck, one fleshless claw struck Conan's brow with the glimmering gem that the sorcerer had clutched to his breast.

  The light, feeble blow glanced from Conan's brow, but its touch was like cold fire. The Cimmerian gasped, his senses swimming as a numbing paralysis spread along his nerves. Cold waves of blackness engulfed his consciousness. It seemed to the barbarian that he sank through black waters whose bite benumbed his flesh, until his naked spirit alone rose from the vortex of nameless forces on the darkling sands.

  Still was Thoth-Amon held helpless in Conan's grip. It was as though the sorcerer, too, had left his fleshly integument behind. Two impalpable spirits, locked in conflict, rose from the vortex into a dim region beyond the world. About them, mist swirled and billowed, grey and colorless. Above them, black stars burned against natural skies; the light from them was as cold as the breath of arctic winds.

  To Conan it seemed that the gaunt body of the Stygian had turned into a writhing coil of vapor. His own body had become much the same: a thick, curling tendril of some fiery mist. Without limbs, they somehow clung together in bodiless combat, drifting under the gaze of the black stars.

  Conan fought as never before—not with the iron grip of massive thews, but with some impalpable force within his very spirit. Perhaps it was the essence of his strength and courage and manhood that burned in his heart.

  In spirit form, Thoth-Amon, too, had strength beyond that which his withered flesh possessed. His blows were like the blast of cold fires of hatred. Beneath them Conan gasped. His strength ebbed; his consciousness dimmed.

  Locked in battle, the two drifted beneath the black stars, and ever the power of Thoth-Amon grew while that of Conan waned. Still the Cimmerian clung to his foe with a remorseless grip. He fought on doggedly, although he now clutched the very limits of consciousness. Blackness gathered about his dimming mind.

  Then the coil of writhing vapor that was Thoth-Amon's spirit stiffened and writhed in Conan's impalpable clutch. Thoth-Amon shrieked soundlessly—an awful, hollow cry of agony and despair. The bodiless thing melted in his grasp. It disintegrated and faded into the cold mists of the void.

  Conan floated for a time, panting as it were, while strength seeped back into his exhausted spirit. Somehow he knew that the life force of Thoth-Amon no longer existed.

  After a time, Conan came to himself on the sandy shore by the nameless sea. A weeping boy clung to him, begging him to live. He blinked down at the dead thing that lay beneath him, still in the mechanical grip of his aching hands. Then he looked at what the boy had used, and then flung aside:

  The sword, soaked to its hilt in black blood. The sword he had given to Conn for his latest birthday. The sword on whose blade, in an idle moment, the old White Druid, Diviatix, had scratched the Sign of Protection… the looped cross of Mitra, Lord of Light. . .the Cross of Life!

  And thus it was that the Last Battle ended. For forty years, Conan of Cimmeria and Thoth-Amon of Stygia had faced each other across the great gaming-board of the western world. And now, at the world's edge, the long duel was over and done.

  'He was killing you, Father! I didn't know what to do, so I stabbed him… And then I th-thought you were dead, you lay so still!' the boy stammered through his tears.

  Conan embraced his son. 'It's all right, son. I yet live, though Crom knows I was close to the Black Gates of Death. But they have opened to swallow another's soul, not mine. Look!'

  He nodded at the dead man sprawled on the sands. As they watched, the years at last took their vengeance on the remains of the mightiest magician of shadow-haunted
Stygia. Thoth-Amon's flesh dried, withered, and flaked away into impalpable dust, till a fleshless skull grinned up at them. Then the skull itself became cracked and pitted, while the bones beneath the empty green robe crumbled to powder.

  Conan climbed to his feet, turning his back on the remains. He picked up the glimmering gem with which Thoth-Amon had struck him and pitched it far out to sea.

  'So end all magical mummery!' he growled. 'May it stay at the bottom of the sea for a hundred thousand years!'

  IX

  Swords Against Shadows

  'The girl turned into a snake-headed monster and would have bitten me to death with her poison fangs,' Conn was explaining, 'but I put my blade into her and she died. And when I came back into the hall to tell you, Thoth-Amon was there and the Queen was bending over you, and you were asleep. And then the Amazons came in. and the Princess threw a spear through the Queen, and she turned into a snake-thing, too. But Thoth-Amon and a servant—I couldn't see him very well, but he had horns and was strong as a bull—carried you from the hall, and no one seemed to be able to see it except me, as if there was a spell on them that hid what was happening from their eyes.

  'They took you through a secret panel behind a tapestry and down a long black tunnel cut right through the mountain. Then the other serpent-folk came pouring into the hall. I followed as soon as I could, but when I got outside under the stars I couldn't tell where you were, because there were big rocks all around and I had to search and search… and then I found you, fighting Thoth-Amon on the sand, and it was like you were asleep, like you were fighting in your sleep…'

  Conan nodded somberly, letting the boy talk it all out, while they retraced the way Conn had come. They found the entrance to the secret tunnel that led through the mountain and back into the skull-palace where the eerie powers of the serpent-folk had beclouded their minds with shadows and illusions. A distant clamor echoed faintly down the black length of the tunnel; a furious battle was being waged there in the hall of feasting.