Conan the Barbarian: The Stories That Inspired the Movie Read Free Page A

them,” laughed Prospero. “You laugh greatly, drink deep and bellow good songs; though I never saw another Cimmerian who drank aught but water, or who ever laughed, or ever sang save to chant dismal dirges.”
    “Perhaps it’s the land they live in,” answered the king. “A gloomier land never was – all of hills, darkly wooded, under skies nearly always gray, with winds moaning drearily down the valleys.”
    “Little wonder men grow moody there,” quoth Prospero with a shrug of his shoulders, thinking of the smiling sun-washed plains and blue lazy rivers of Poitain, Aquilonia’s southernmost province.
    “They have no hope here or hereafter,” answered Conan. “Their gods are Crom and his dark race, who rule over a sunless place of everlasting mist, which is the world of the dead. Mitra! The ways of the Æsir were more to my liking.”
    “Well,” grinned Prospero, “the dark hills of Cimmeria are far behind you. And now I go. I’ll quaff a goblet of white Nemedian wine for you at Numa’s court.”
    “Good,” grunted the king, “but kiss Numa’s dancing-girls for yourself only, lest you involve the states!”
    His gusty laughter followed Prospero out of the chamber.

III

    Under the caverned pyramids great Set coils asleep;

Among the shadows of the tombs his dusky people creep
.

I speak the Word from the hidden gulfs that never knew the sun –

Send me a servant for my hate, oh scaled and shining One!

    The sun was setting, etching the green and hazy blue of the forest in brief gold. The waning beams glinted on the thick golden chain which Dion of Attalus twisted continually in his pudgy hand as he sat in the flaming riot of blossoms and flower-treeswhich was his garden. He shifted his fat body on his marble seat and glanced furtively about, as if in quest of a lurking enemy. He sat within a circular grove of slender trees, whose interlapping branches cast a thick shade over him. Near at hand a fountain tinkled silverly, and other unseen fountains in various parts of the great garden whispered an everlasting symphony.
    Dion was alone except for the great dusky figure which lounged on a marble bench close at hand, watching the baron with deep somber eyes. Dion gave little thought to Thoth-amon. He vaguely knew that he was a slave in whom Ascalante reposed much trust, but like so many rich men, Dion paid scant heed to men below his own station in life.
    “You need not be so nervous,” said Thoth. “The plot can not fail.”
    “Ascalante can make mistakes as well as another,” snapped Dion, sweating at the mere thought of failure.
    “Not he,” grinned the Stygian savagely, “else I had not been his slave, but his master.”
    “What talk is this?” peevishly returned Dion, with only half a mind on the conversation.
    Thoth-amon’s eyes narrowed. For all his iron-self-control, he was near bursting with long pent-up shame, hate and rage, ready to take any sort of a desperate chance. What he did not reckon on was the fact that Dion saw him, not as a human being with a brain and a wit, but simply a slave, and as such, a creature beneath notice.
    “Listen to me,” said Thoth. “You will be king. But you little know the mind of Ascalante. You can not trust him, once Conan is slain. I can help you. If you will protect me when you come to power, I will aid you.
    “Listen, my lord. I was a great sorcerer in the south. Men spoke of Thoth-amon as they spoke of Rammon. King Ctesphon of Stygia gave me great honor, casting down the magicians from the high places to exalt me above them. They hated me, but they feared me, for I controlled beings from
outside
which came at my call and did my bidding. By Set, mine enemy knew not the hour when he might awake at midnight to feel the taloned fingers of a nameless horror at his throat! I did dark andterrible magic with the Serpent Ring of Set, which I found in a nighted tomb a league beneath the earth, forgotten before the first man crawled out of the slimy