Untitled Synopsis

Amalric, a son of a nobleman of the great house of Valerus, of western Aquilonia, halted at a palm-bordered spring in the desolate vastness of the desert that lies south of Stygia, with two companions, members of the bandit tribe of Ghanata, a negro race mixed with Shemitish blood. The Ghanatas with Amalric were named Gobir, and Saidu. Just at dusk, as they prepared to eat their frugal meal of dried dates, the third member of the tribe rode up – Tilutan, a black giant, famous for his ferocity and swordsmanship. He carried across his saddle-bow an unconscious white girl, whom he had found falling with exhaustion and thirst out on the desert as he hunted for the rare desert antelope. He cast the girl down beside the spring and began reviving her. Gobir and Saidu watched Amalric, expecting him to try to rescue her, but he feigned inidifference, and asked them which would take the girl after Tilutan wearied of her. That started an argument, and he cast down a pair of dice, telling them to gamble for her. As they crouched over the dice, he drew his sword and split Gobir’s skull. Instantly Saidu attacked him, and Tilutan threw down the girl and ran at him, drawing his terrible scimitar. Amalric wheeled about, causing Saidu to receive the thrust instead of himself, and hurling the wounded man into Tilutan’s arms, grappled with the giant. Tilutan bore Amalric to the earth, and was strangling him, and threw him down, and rose to procure his sword and cut off his head. But as he ran at him, his girdle became unwound and he tripped and fell over it. His sword flew from his hand and Amalric caught it up and slashed his head nearly off. Then he reeled and fell senseless. He came to life again with the girl splashing him with water. He found she spoke a language akin to the Kothic, and they could understand each other. She said her name was Lissa; she was a beautiful youngster, white soft white skin, violet eyes, and dark wavy hair. Her innocence shamed the wild young soldier of fortune, and he forwent his intention of raping her. She supposed that he had fought his companions merely to rescue her, and he did not disillusion her. She said that she was an inhabitant of the city of Gazal, lying not far to the southeast. She had run away from Gazal, on foot, her water supply had given out, and she had fainted just as she was discovered by Tilutan. Amalric put her on a camel, he mounted a horse – the other beasts having broken away and bolted into the desert during the fight – and dawn found them approaching Gazal. Amalric was astounded to find the city a mass of ruins, except for a tower in the southeastern corner. When he spoke of it, Lissa turned pale, and begged him not to talk of it. He found the people were a dreamy, kindly race, without practical sense, much given to poetry and day dreams. There were not many of them, and they were a dying race. They had come into the desert and built the city over an oasis long ago – a cultured, scholarly race, not given to war. They were never attacked by any of the fierce and brutal nomadic tribes, because these people looked on Gazal with superstitious awe, and worshipped the thing that lurked in the southeastern tower. Amalric told Lissa his story – that he had been a soldier in the army of Argos, under the Zingaran Prince Zapayo da Kova, which had sailed in ships down the Kushite coast, landed in southern Stygia, and sought to invade the kingdom from that direction, while the armies of Koth invaded from the north. But Koth had treacherously made peace with Stygia, and the army in the south was trapped. They found their escape to the sea cut off, and tried to fight their way eastward, hoping to gain the lands of the Shemites. But the army was annihilated in the desert. Amalric had fled with his companion, Conan, a giant Cimmerian, but they had been attacked by a band of wild-riding brown-skinned men of strange dress and appearance, and Conan was cut down. Amalric escaped under cover of night, and wandered in the desert, suffering from hunger and thirst, until he fell in with the three vultures of the Ghanata. He spoke of the unreality of the city of Gazal, and Lissa told him of her childish yet passionate desire to break way from the stagnating environment, and see something of the world. She gave herself to him as naturally as a child, and as they lay together on a silk-covered couch in a chamber lighted only by the starlight, they heard awful cries from a building nearby. Amalric would have investigated, but Lissa clung to him, trembling, and told him the secret of the lonely tower. There dwelt a supernatural monster, which occasionally descended into the city and devoured one of the inhabitants. What the thing was, Lissa did not know. But she told of bats flying from the tower at dusk, and returning before dawn, and of piteous cries from victims carried up into the mysterious tower. Amalric was unnerved, and recognized the thing as a mysterious deity worshipped by certain cults among the negro tribes. He urged Lissa to flee with him before dawn – the inhabitants of Gazal had so far lost their initiative that they were helpless, unable to fight or flee – like men hypnotized, which the young Aquilonian believed to be the case. He went to prepare their mounts, and returning, heard Lissa give an awful scream. He rushed into the chamber and found it empty. Sure she had been seized by the monster, he rushed to the tower, ascended a stair, and found himself in an upper chamber in which he found a white man, of strange beauty. Remembering an ancient incantation repeated to him by an old Kushite priest of a rival cult, he repeated it, binding the demon into his human form. A terrific battle then ensued, in which he drove his sword through the being’s heart. As it died it screamed horribly for vengeance and was answered by voices from the air. Then it altered in a hideous manner, and Amalric fled in horror. He met Lissa at the foot of the stair. She had been frightened by a glimpse of the creature dragging its human prey through the corridors, and had run away in ungovernable panic and hidden herself. Realizing that her lover had gone to the tower to seek her, she had come to share his fate. He crushed her briefly in his arms, and led her to where he had left their mounts. It was dawn when they rode out of the city, she upon the camel and he upon the horse. Looking back on the sleeping city, in which there were no animals at all, they saw seven horsemen ride out – black robed men on gaunt black horses – following them. Panic assailed them, for they knew those were no human riders. All day they pushed their steeds mercilessly, westward, toward the distant coast. They found no water, and the horse became exhausted just before sundown. All the while the black figures had followed relentlessly, and as dusk fell they began to close in rapidly. Amalric knew they were ghoulish creatures summoned from the abyss by the death cry of the monster in the tower. As darkness gathered, the pursuers were close upon them. A bat-shaped shadow blotted out the moon, and the fugitives could smell the charnel-house reek of their hunters. Suddenly the camel stumbled and fell, and the fiends closed in. Lissa shrieked. Then there came a drum of hoofs, a gusty voice roared, and the fiends were swept away by the headlong charge of a band of horsemen. The leader of these dismounted and bent over the exhausted youth and girl, and as the moon came out, he swore in a familiar voice. It was Conan the Cimmerian. Camp was made and the fugitives given food and drink. The Cimmerian’s companions were the wild-looking brown men who had attacked him and Amalric. They were the riders of Tombalku, that semi-mythical desert city whose kings had subjugated the tribes of the southwestern desert and the negro races of the steppes. Conan told them that he had been knocked senseless and carried to the distant city to be exhibited to the kings of Tombalku. There were always two of these kings, though one was generally merely a figure-head. Carried before the kings, he was doomed to die by torture, and he demanded that liquor be given him, and cursed the kings roundly. At that, one of them woke from his drowse with interest. He was a big fat negro, while the other was a lean brown-skinned man, named Zehbeh. The negro stared at Conan, and greeted him by the name of Amra, the Lion. The black man’s name was Sakumbe, and he was an adventurer from the West Coast who had been connected with Conan when the latter was a corsair devastating the coast. He had become one of the kings of Tombalku partly because of the support of the negro population, partly because of the machinations of a fanatical priest, Askia, who had risen to power over Zehbeh’s priest, Daura. He had Conan instantly freed, and raised to the high position of general of all the horsemen – incidentally having the present incumbent, one Kordofo, poisoned. In Tombalku were various factions – Zehbeh and the brown priests, Kordofo’s kin who hated both Zehbeh and Sakumbe, and Sakumbe and his supporters, of whom the most powerful was Conan himself. All this Conan told Amalric, and the next day they rode on toward Tombalku. Conan had been riding to drive from the land the Ghanata thieves. In three days they reached Tombalku, a strange fantastic city set in the sands of the desert, beside an oasis of many springs. It was a city of many tongues. The dominant caste, the founders of the city, were a warlike brown race, descendents of the Aphaki, a Shemitish tribe which pushed into the desert several hundred years before, and mixed with the negro races. The subject tribes included the Tibu, a desert race, of mixed negro and Stygian blood; and the Bagirmi, Mandingo, Dongola, Bornu, and other negro tribes of the grasslands to the south. They arrived in Tombalku in time to witness the horrible execution of Daura, the Aphaki priest, by Askia. The Aphaki were enraged, but helpless against the determined stand of their black subjects to whom they had taught the arts of war. Sakumbe, once a man of remarkable courage, vitality and statescraft, had degenerated into a mountainous mass of fat, caring for nothing except women and wine. Conan played dice with him, got drunk with him, and suggested that they eliminate Zehbeh entirely. The Cimmerian wished to be a king of Tombalku himself. So Askia was persuaded to denounced Zehbeh, and in the bloody civil war that followed, the Aphaki were defeated, and Zehbeh fled the city with his riders. Conan took his seat beside Sakumbe, but strive as he would, he found the negro the real ruler of the city, because of his ascendency over the black races. Meanwhile, Askia had been suspicious of Amalric, and he finally denounced him as the slayer of the god worshipped by the cult of which he was a priest, and demanded that he and the girl be given to the torture. Conan refused, and Sakumbe, completely dominated by the Cimmerian, backed him up. Then Askia turned on Sakumbe and destroyed him by means of an awful magic. Conan, realizing that with Sakumbe slain, the blacks would rend him and his friends, shouted to Amalric, and cut a way through the bewildered warriors. As the companions strove to reach the outer walls, Zehbeh and his Aphaki attacked the city, and in a wild holocaust of blood and flame, Tombalku was almost destroyed, and Conan, Amalric and Lissa escaped.