Conan Of The Isles

CHAPTER ONE RED SHADOWS

King Conan sat on the judgment throne in the Hall of Justice in his palace at Tarantia, the royal capital of Aquilonia. Beyond windows of stained glass, blue skies curved over green gardens bright and fragrant with blossoms. And beyond the gardens, square towers of white stone thrust into the sky, and domes of green copper, and the shapes of houses, temples, and palaces roofed with red tiles. For this was the most princely city of the world's West in these ancient days of the Hyborian Age.

And beyond the gardens, too, the well-scrubbed streets of Tarantia swarmed with traffic; men and women afoot, on the backs of horses, mules, and asses, in litters and chariots and oxcarts and carriages. Along the waterfront, river boats plied the Khorotas like swarms of water insects. For two decades of the firm but tolerant rule of Conan the Great had made Aquilonia not only the most powerful but also the most prosperous land which that dawn world had ever seen.

Within the pillared hall richly clad nobles, silken courtiers, and. stout burghers in plain cloth, with the medallions of the guilds on silver chains about their necks, stood in clusters while the king dispensed justice. Since the docket carried some cases of exceptional importance, half the high-born of Aquilonia were here. They included young Gonzalvio, Viscount of Poitain, and his father, old Trocero, slim and elegant as ever in scarlet velvet, with the golden leopard of his province broidered in stiff, silver-gilt wire on the breast of his jupon. Here, too, were Count Monargo of Couthen, Baron Guilaime of Imirus. and -a lean, snowy-bearded ancient - the wise and learned Dexitheus, snowy-bearded ancient - the wise and learned Dexitheus, Archpriest of Mitra.

Grim-faced warriors of the king's black-mailed legions stood at arched door and portico, the sunlight flashing from their dragon-crested helms and glittering spear points. All eyes were fixed upon the central dais, where two thrones loomed above the throng; and upon the fat, bejeweled merchant who stood, fidgeting nervously, as his advocate in robes of dusty black glibly argued on his behalf before the taller of the two thrones.

On the throne, Conan glowered down upon the quivering litigant. From the depths of his soul he loathed these tiresome, wordy, labyrinthine tax cases, with their plausible lies and their mathematical calculations of skull-cracking complexity. How he would have liked to hurl his crown at the fat face of the greedy fool before him, stride from the hall, clamp his legs about a stallion's barrel, and ride off for a day's hunting in the forests of the North!

A pox upon this business of kinging it! he thought. It drained every last drop of juice from a man's tissues, leaving him a querulous old hairsplitter without enough red blood in his veins to swing a broadsword. Surely, after twenty weary years of wearing the crown, a man was entitled to throw over honors and titles and set out toward dim horizons for one last, gore-spattered adventure before Time's all-felling, implacable scythe cut him down ...

Conan stole a glance at the second throne, whereon sat his son, Prince Conn, the heir of Aquilonia. The lad was twenty - old enough, surely, to take the throne of the mightiest kingdom of the West. With a slight smile on his grim lips, the old king studied the bored, mutinous glower of dissatisfaction on the face of young Conn. Doubtless the lad was also dreaming of flinging off these stifling robes of state and riding off for a day's hunting, or perhaps a night of wenching in waterfront dives. Remembering his own hard-drinking, hot-blooded youth, Conan chuckled.

In truth, Prince Conn was the very image of his sire in his younger days: the same scowling black brows over deep-set eyes of volcanic blue; the same swart, square-jawed face, framed by a square-cut mane of straight, coarse black hair; the same burly blacksmith's body, sheathed in massive muscles that bulged the silks and velvets at tne broad shoulders and deep-arched chest; the same long, steel-thewed legs. Scarce out of his teens, the son of Conan towered head and shoulders over most of the men in the hall, save only his titanic sire, the greatest warrior the world had ever known.

As for King Conan, even that mightiest of champions, Time, had not yet broken him. True, sixty-odd years had strewn abundant silver in the thick, black mane and the stiff, grizzled beard, cut short and square, that now clothed his grim lips and iron jaw. Some flesh had fallen from his mighty frame, leaving him gaunt as a savage gray wolf of the northern steppes. And Time's cold hand had etched deep grooves in his somber brow and scarred cheeks.

But still unquenchable vitality surged within his titanic form. Hot flames of leashed fury smouldered in his eyes. And Time's palsying grip had sapped but little of the strength from his viselike hands - now wrinkled and corded - and his supple sinews and massive thews.

He sat on the silver throne is if he bestrode some deep-chested war stallion on the foughten field. One massive hand gripped the black-and-silver mace of justice as if it were an iron-spiked battle mace that he would heave up at any moment to strike down a foe. And the rich robes, crusted with gems and hung with golden medallions and chains, which clothed his lean but mighty form., bore somehow the look of battle harness. For wherever he went - in mirthful banquet hall, in quiet library of ancient, dusty tones, or in silken boudoir - this somber barbarian from the cloud-cloaked wastes of northern Cimmeria carried with him the grim, dangerous atmosphere of the battlefield.

It had been more than a score of years now since a trick of Fate, a whim of the gods, or perhaps his own indomitable will had lifted this black-browed outlander from the ranks of nameless adventurers to a glittering place among the great ones of the world as lord of the richest and most powerful kingdom of the West. Since that night, nearly half a century before, when as a ragged, wild-eyed youth, whirling a length of broken chain, he had fought his way out of a Hyborian slave pen and set forth barehanded on the road that leads but a chosen few to the ultimate heights of power and glory, Conan of Cimmeria had brawled and battled his way across half a world, cutting a red path through a dozen kingdoms from the thundering beaches of the Western Ocean to the misty vales of fabulous Khitai.

As thief, pirate, mercenary, adventurer, chief of barbarous tribes, and general in the armies of kings, he had ventured far and known all that the world afforded of adventure and marvel. With his irresistible sword, the mighty Cimmerian had fought demons, dragons, and shambling horrors of the Elder Dark. A thousand foes had felt the bitter kiss of his whirling blade - bronze-mailed warriors, malevolent wizards, fierce barbarian chieftains, and haughty kings. Even the eternal gods had sometimes fled the fury of his slashing brand.

But the adventure that started here, in the royal Hall of Justice in Tarantia, on this warm spring day, eight thousand years after the fall of Atlantis and seven thousand years before the rise of Egypt and Sumeria, was to be the strangest and most fantastic of all the many that thronged his far-famed and peril-filled career.

It began suddenly and unexpectedly.

One moment, Conan was frowning down upon the fat merchant and his glib, gesticulating advocate. The next, he raised a puzzled glance across the hall to where the elegant figure of his trusted old friend, Count Trocero of Poitain staggered across the polished floor.

'No, no! By all the scarlet fiends of Hell!’

The old nobleman's hoarse voices lifted in harsh tones of terror and despair, broke into the advocate's voluble pleadings. Startled eyes flashed to this stiff-legged, reeling figure. Eyebrows rose. Could it be that the old Count of Poitain had come into the Hall of Justice drunk'?

One look at the stark fear in Trocero's bloodless face banished that idea. Globules of cold sweat glistened on his white features, and his pallid lips worked as if in some inward agony. Black circles ringed his staring eyes.

'Trocero!' barked Conan. 'Are you unwell? What is it, man?'

The king half rose as his oldest friend and closest supporter reeled across the polished marble pave, arms thrust out as if to ward off some unseen attacker. The hall fell silent. Trocero's stalwart son started from the throng, one hand extended to support his sire. In the center of the hall, Trocero halted and stood on trembling limbs, crying:

'Nay, I say! I cannot - you dare not! Oh, Ishtar and Mitra! Mit—' His voice rose to a'screech of anguish.

And then Terror struck.

From the groined and vaulted ceiling above the corners of the spacious hall, shadows flew - shadows as pale and insubstantial as wisps of gauze, dimly red. Shadows of -Terror.

In the blink of an eye, they swarmed about the elderly Poitanian's tottering figure. Dimly through rubescent veils, the others in the hall could glimpse his white, frozen features, fixed in a grimace of torment. It was as if a horde of ghostly vampire bats had swooped to cling about the unwary traveler.

For a long, frozen moment, the red shadows enveloped their victim in rosy veils. Then they and he were gone.

The hall was a motionless tableau. Disbelief was stamped on every face. The old count of Poitain, who for a quarter-century had stood by Conan's throne and fought his wars, had vanished into thin air.

'Father! My Lord—' stammered young Gonzalvio into the ringing silence.

'By Crom's iron heart!' bellowed Conan. 'Black sorcery in my own court? I'll have the head of him who wrought this mischief! Ho, guard I Curse you for a gaping fool - sound the alarm!'

Conan's roar of rage shattered the fragile silence. Women shrieked and swooned. Men swore} rubbed their eyes, and stared blankly at the place where the greatest peer of Aquilonia had stood. Above the babble rose the brazen scream of the war horns. Drums thundered, and the grim-faced warriors of Conan's Black Dragons pushed through the milling confusion, swords in hand, to defend the Lion Banner of Aquilonia, which hung like a canopy over the dais, and the rulers beneath it. But there was no foe to smite: no sly assassin, no skulking spy - or at least none visible.

On the dais, surrounded by his mailed warriors, King Conan searched the hall with the fierce, unwinking gaze of some kingly lion of the veldt. Deep within him, pain lanced his secret heart and a poignant sense of loss assailed him. Trocero of Poitain had been the first to urge Conan's name as leader of the revolt against the degenerate King Numedides. He had led a voyage to the distant shores of Pictland to fetch back the former general of the armies of Aquilonia, then a fugitive from the murderous jealousy of Numedides.

Soon, Conan had ridden out of Zingara at the head of a handful of gallant warriors. Gathering partisans as he moved, he had cut like a red sword through the countryside of Aquilonia to the gates of tower-crowned Tarantia and then to the very steps of the throne. There he had throttled the depraved Numedides with his own hands and set the crown upon his own black head. Deep within him, Conan mourned the loss of his oldest and most trusted friend, the first victim of the Terror...

In the next halfmonth, the Terror struck again and again, until seven hundred citizens of Aquilonia - peer and porter, countess and courtezan, baron and beggar, priest and peasant - had vanished into the weird embrace of the red shadows.