Shadows Out of Time

Crom-Ya’s Triumph ROBERT M. PRICE

On the War Path

Bloodlust stirred among the Picts again. Their war drums thundered in the night. It was not unprecedented; they had become restive and ambitious plenty of times before. They were fierce, fanatical fighters, even when they had no particular goal in mind, at least none that anyone not of their number could understand. But it was different this time: the body had a head. This time they had strategy, tactics — and a gifted leader. He was Rang-Thalun, a mighty shaman. Many miracles were ascribed to him. All shamans were credited with healings, communications with the ancestors, predictive visions; these were their stock-in-trade. But this one was reputed to wield control over storms, to lengthen or shorten the hours of a day. All of his colleagues could exorcize devils, but Rang-Thalun could command them. It was, then, no surprise that, once he had appeared, he had united the usually feuding Pictish clans into an advancing tidal wave, sweeping cities and armies before them. The few and only victories against them, albeit no more than tenuous dykes erected against the flood, had been achieved under the direction of Crom-Ya, a powerful Cimmerian war chief gifted with matching brains and brawn, a combination without which there remained no chance to withstand the Pictish swarm.

Just now, the hour was growing late in the Bossonian Marshes, and Crom-Ya was conferring with his baffled lieutenants. The camp fire cast bright orange shadows on the broad cheek bones, high brow, hawk nose, and firm jaw. His mane of black hair was square cut. His eyes, seen in daylight, were glacial blue. His many scars and nicks from years of battling somehow did not spoil his rugged good looks. Just now his brow was furrowed, his eyes squinting in concentration as he and his advisors considered their dire position.

“Where can he have derived such powers?” This question, mostly a rhetorical one, an exclamation of exasperated wonder, had been repeated several times in the last two hours. Almost as often parroted, as if repetition might coax an answer out of the void, was the query, “What can have stirred the damn Picts to an assault on this scale?”

Crom-Ya broke his silence. “Brothers, where Rang-Thalun gets his sorcerous might, I know not. But as to what motivates him and his hordes, and what may be done to turn back his wrath, the two questions may have the same answer.”

Had their enemy himself stepped into the fire-lit circle the astonishment of the small council could not have been greater. All mouths stopped; all eyes widened as their chieftain leaned to one side and retrieved a plain-looking bag of coarse cloth, then pulled from it a strangely angled black stone, inscribed with unfamiliar glyphs.

“Ixaxar.”

“Is…is that…?”

“It is. This is the great totem, years lost, of the Pictish people. It is believed to possess very great powers. It was I who stole it from a guarded cave in my youth when I made my living by thievery among the so-called civilized kingdoms. A Stygian wizard hired me to secure it for him, but once I returned with the Black Stone, I found he had disappeared. Some claimed he had been devoured by some being he had summoned from another world. It seemed he had told no one of my errand or of his plans for the relic. Since no one coveted the thing, I decided to keep it against the day I might learn to unlock its powers. Little did I ever find out, but it might be enough to turn this weapon back against its rightful owners.”

“Crom and Mitra! My lord, forgive me, but why have you not brought the stone into play before now? Before so many of our people were slain?”

“Many times I considered it, my friend, but I felt it posed too great a risk. There is no way to be sure the powers unleashed could be controlled. We might be inviting an even swifter doom. But now I see no alternative. I judge that it is time to invoke the Four Brothers of the Night.”

At this, the faces of Crom-Ya’s lieutenants blanched, though the firelight hid the fact.

The Picts appeared en masse at dawn. The small force of Cimmerians were ready, or hoped they were. Their priest had been killed weeks before, but Crom-Ya had taken the precaution of learning from him the words and voice tones of an invocation. He knew he must grasp the Black Stone as he chanted the unaccustomed syllables. As the enemy sped to the charge, the Cimmerians drew their swords and weighed their dulling axes. Most of them felt a sweeping chill as soon as the chant commenced. Was it the effect of the rousing energies their chief had summoned? Or was it simple superstitious dread — if there was a difference?

Across the sea of nightmares four entities found their sleep disturbed by words well understood by the recipients if not by the senders. They shifted uneasily, reluctantly leaving behind dreams of realms and beings as alien to them as their own were to the men who now troubled their rest. This was a rare, though by no means new, occurrence, for even unknown kings of unsuspected worlds had duties to fulfill. And this “time” the call that came could not be ignored, as it had the force of mighty Ixaxar behind it.

There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, as if some new element had entered the chemistry of the air. The light had a new shade of color. Crom-Ya had finished his chant, still holding the Black Stone. Now he returned it to the bag and drew the string tight. It would be a nuisance during the imminent battle, knocking against his hip as he moved, but there was no place else to stash it. The Picts did not seem to notice anything amiss, but the Cimmerians had fixed their eyes on the sky, where four spinning vortices had begun to detach themselves from the hitherto smooth vault of the heavens. Four. Could it be?

Crom-Ya and his men, few as they were, stood their ground, resigned to a glorious death in battle should it come to that, but their fading hope began to grow again as they followed a pointing arm to the sky. For suddenly the celestial anomalies became impossible to ignore. Weird displays of jagged lightning, of fiery rays, of wave patterns through the ambient air, and of spectrum-shifting beams, all commenced to break forth like the javelins of the gods. Whoever was casting those spears, they were expert marksmen; every blast found its target. Picts were falling left and right. And not just falling; they were combusting, exploding, something never before seen in a world without gunpowder or land mines. Pictish warriors, resplendent in fresh war paint, halted in terror and confusion. Those behind the stunned front ranks smashed into one another and slid off-balance as they skidded on the puddles of bloody gore.

Crom-Ya’s men broke into applause and cheering, but he thought it premature to join them. The Pictish juggernaut had screeched to a halt. All watched the skies in abject terror, unable to scatter and flee because of their own sheer numbers. But then the mass of cowering savages began to split down the center, making way for a single figure rapidly advancing to the front. It was, of course, the wizard Rang-Thalun, clad in the barbaric finery of exotic feathers, golden hoop ear rings, painted skulls over his eye-lids, and a larger duplicate on his breast. On he charged, shoving his troops rudely aside. Then, with the ground around him cleared, he braced himself and extended his bony arms to the skies, shrieking with a voice no human throat should be capable of. This seemed to calm his men somewhat, especially since the shaman’s words had quickly put an end to the deadly discharges from the heavens.

This was what Crom-Ya had feared: even though Rang-Thalun lacked the Black Stone, he was still the most potent magician of his age. The Cimmerian saw only two outcomes, both dismal, but one considerably worse than the other. At best, Rang-Thalun would simply banish the Four. At worst, he would wrest control of them from Crom-Ya and turn them into supernatural weapons of his own. And that seemed to be precisely what was now happening! Cimmerians were bursting asunder on either side of him, splattering his towering form with steaming entrails. Now it was the Picts’ turn to rejoice. Having stood in place for a few moments, while the magical spirits did their work for them, the painted warriors began to rejoin the fray.

Crom-Ya scowled with battle fury, knowing the next blow he dealt must be his last.

Adrift in Time

The barbarian chieftain swung his axe in a perfect arc at the upturned feathered head of a Pictish warrior. He did not see the blow connect, though in his mind he had already seen his foe’s skull split like a melon. At once he found himself utterly confused. One moment he was amid pitched battle against resurgent Picts; the next he was trying to make sense of an unfamiliar mode of perception, not precisely eyesight as he knew it, and a scene of utter bewilderment. He was surrounded by…things defying description. What sort of creatures were these? They had the form of great, quivering cones. At their tops clustered writhing, boneless limbs or branches. Were they trees of some sort? Or animals from the sea? But then he looked down.

He was one of them.

The others moved themselves back, gliding like great snails. They did not seem to be surprised like him. He was even more surprised at his perception of their lack of surprise. It was as if he now possessed some new sense enabling him to perceive the thoughts of others, others with no facial features, or even words, to convey them. Instinctively he went for his sword, only to feel a shock of soul-draining disappointment. Not only had he no sword, no weapon of any kind; he had no muscled arm, no hip to be wearing a scabbard. He might have fainted, except that the base of his conical body had too wide a base to allow him to tip over.

He heard clicking sounds, saw that they came from pincers at the end of one of the snaking limbs of his captors. Again, one startlement opened onto another: he was sure he could understand them.

In the weeks that followed, his captors, or, as he soon came to regard them, his hosts, did everything they could to put Crom-Ya at his ease, to explain what had happened to him, and why. When he had become more or less acclimated, he began to think of them as gods, though they bore no resemblance to the Cimmerian deities represented by the rude wooden effigies carved by the Cimmerian shamans. But perhaps these beings were more like shamans. For these outlandish-looking entities, in pursuit of all knowledge, did what shamans did: they sent their spirits abroad, soaring into far-flung realms to consult with the inhabitants thereof. Then they would return with rare knowledge gained there.

But with this difference: these inhuman shamans not only visited far-off beings; they traded places, or rather bodies, with them. While they secretly moved among the peoples to whom their borrowed physical forms belonged, they dedicated themselves to a systematic inquiry into whatever fields of knowledge in which the culture excelled. Medicine interested them little, given the vast difference between their own physiology and that of those whom they visited. Astronomy was redundant given all that the Great Race, to translate what they called themselves, already knew from their wide cosmic voyaging. In truth, there was no longer much they did not know. But political economy was a subject of great curiosity to them, as, every few centuries, they were accustomed to undertake a mass migration of their mentalities into past or future ages where they should be safe, at least for a while, from various mysterious pursuers. Of these, little was openly spoken, at least not for Crom-Ya’s “ears.” At any rate, it was in the interest of the time and space-faring Great Race to hold in reserve the knowledge of alternative models of social organization potentially appropriate to the new environments in which they might find themselves, as they had many times in the past.

Crom-Ya’s visiting mind listened to abstract debates among the Great Race and the minds, like him, that had been abducted as they explored the ramifications of their voyages into the past and the future, both individually and en masse. The Great Race believed they had obviated the problem of individual minds returning to their accustomed worlds, polluting the flow of history henceforth by sharing knowledge gained from the Great Race and their captives while dwelling among them. To this end they had learned a kind of hypnosis to eradicate, or at least to suppress, all memories of their experiences in the ancient fortresses of the Great Race.

But what might result from the mass migrations? The time-voyagers already had clairvoyant “histories” of the world in future ages, but mustn’t their collective invasions of this or that future of this or that world negate the previous “precord” of those eras? Some argued that their visions of the future must have already taken their own migrations into account. Others countered that such a notion implied an ineluctable determinism. Of this, Crom-Ya understood nothing. He was not a stupid man, but, like the Great Race themselves, he had his priorities. He was interested only in what he might put to use in battle and in ruling once his mind was reunited with his steelythewed body. He understood enough of what he heard to realize that any knowledge or memory of what he had learned during his time here would be taken from him. The purpose of the Great Race’s abductions was to exploit their hostages to add to their vast archives, not to educate them; much less to share their knowledge with more primitive ages. But Crom-Ya felt quite sure he could frustrate their plans for him.

All the captive intelligences spent some of their time in conversations with fellow inmates (for he had again come to view the Great Race that way, despite their generally humane treatment). All of them were glad enough to share information about themselves, but little of it made any sense to Crom-Ya. He had never heard of the places from which his fellows came. What and where were “Yaddith”? “Barsoom”? “Tond”? “Chicago”? Their personal names were scarcely less strange: “Alhazred,” “Curwen,” “Tillinghast,” “Peaslee.” The revelations vouchsafed by natives of other eras and even other planets, were fascinating, but they seemed to Crom-Ya as tall tales told to spellbound children. On the other hand, the undeniable fact of his presence here attested to the truth of their stories. So the barbarian set about learning whatever he could about the weapons and military tactics of other eras and worlds. If he could take it home with him when his sentence was served, he might be able to use this knowledge to achieve greater victories and greater honor than ever before.

The rest of their hours were perforce occupied in recording in journals all they knew and remembered of the worlds and peoples they came from. The Great Race’s object in all this archiving was ostensibly simply to amass knowledge for its own sake. But the canny Crom-Ya could not help suspecting there was more to it. What must become of this vast store of accumulated information on the day, should it arrive, when, for fear of their fabled nemeses, they should vacate the rugose cone-bodies their alien minds had long inhabited? It would all be for naught. Surely that must be obvious to beings with such great intelligence. Why would they waste the time? Perhaps they weren’t. It seemed more likely they were gathering information about civilizations they might consider as refuges once Doomsday should arrive.

Suppose, then, that the Great Race chose Crom-Ya’s native world and era for their new environment? The very thought amused him. His world was one of ceaseless conflict, battle, and rapacity. From his observations of the Great Race, he surmised that the unvarnished truth about what they referred to as the Hyborian Age would make it an unlikely choice for them. After all, they lived in terror of an ever-threatening, unseen force, preferring to flee rather than to offer the most basic resistance. So in his chronicling of his era, Crom-Ya made sure to regale the reader with the bloodiest, pitiless, atrocities he knew of. The truth must be more daunting to them than any fearsome tall tales he might concoct.

Crom-Ya began to pay more attention to overheard fragments of conversations about the ancient enemies of the Great Race, whom they called the Blind Beings, whose advent they so feared. It seemed they were already present! They dwelt in the cavernous spaces far beneath the massive complexes of the Great Race. This fact placed everything in a new light. He had gathered that these Blind Beings, blind because invisible since sight requires a reflective optical surface, were pursuing the Great Race across time and space for unknown reasons, and that they had not yet discovered their enemies’ hiding place. But if instead they had already reached the retreat of the Great Race, that meant the Race had somehow been able to defeat and confine them. It was not their arrival upon earth but rather their possible escape from captivity that their cone-shaped captors feared.

It was not in the Cimmerian’s nature merely to wait and hope. He now saw a new course of action opening before him: he must somehow find the guarded portal to the underground realm of the invisible whistling octopi.

Gates to the Graves of the Gods

Crom-Ya embarked upon an exhaustive search throughout the domain of the cone race. He hoped to find one of the sealed doors to the subterranean prison. He dared not inquire about it, nor could he locate any map or records. One day it occurred to him that he had never left the confines of the city of the Great Race. He had not even thought about it. As far as he was concerned, he was twice imprisoned: in the repugnant alien body that he bore, and in the dwelling place of his captors. He had no real idea of what might be seen outside the megalithic structures with their peculiar hexagonal floor tiles and great, wide ramps. The place was alien enough; the outside world must be stranger still. But now he found himself of a different mind. The outside environs, so full of mysteries, might be equally replete with resources and opportunities.

No one sought to prevent his touring the world outside the city of the Great Race. All were free to come and go. Ultimately, where could they go? The day came when Crom-Ya, or the thing that had once been Crom-Ya and should be again someday, exited the shaded compound and emerged into the blazing sunlight and the thick, stifling, jungle humidity of what he did not know to call prehistoric Australia. All was extremely strange to him. And yet the strangeness paled beside that of the alien cone race. But what he now beheld at least answered to certain analogies in Crom-Ya’s mind. He had grown up with tales of dragons and giant beasts surviving to his own day, and of the bloody conflicts between them and his heroic ancestors. He had always cherished such sagas but never knew whether to credit them as fact. This uncertainty troubled him not at all, since, however they originated, they served to inspire courage in the hearts of himself and his fellow tribesmen, courage that, together with early-learned battlefield prowess, had quickly led to his rise to the chieftaincy. And now, though he was unrecognizable to himself, he could feel the old flame of courage igniting within him, preparing him for possible conflict w ith t he h uge reptiles he glimpsed among the giant fronds and boles outside the home structure.

At once, the exile from Cimmeria paused in his mollusklike progress along the smooth megalithic runway and cursed himself for a fool: in this miserable form, he could not defend himself, much less mount an attack! Surely he or anyone like him must be an irresistible target for these jungle dragons, their great maws lined with dripping, knife-like fangs. One such titan started to emerge from the dense greenery. Crom-Ya felt himself crouch into a defensive stance, though it was of course impossible for his body to assume it. He had the sensation common to men who have lost a limb but still feel it as if present.

To his surprise, the dragon abruptly turned away and bounded with a crash back into the primeval forest. Though relieved, the barbarian was astonished. Why did the monster flee? Knowing the mental abilities of the Great Race, he thought for a second that one of them had sent a note of alarm into the brain of the giant reptile. But none of the conical beings was visible, and he had never been successful in cultivating such psychic abilities while resident in their form. Perhaps their bodies emitted a natural repellant scent, like a skunk’s. But it mattered not. Crom-Ya resolved to get back to his quest.

He had managed to learn that, wherever in the great stone city the portals to the netherworld of the Blind Beings were hidden, to find o ne of t hem w ould do h im no g ood s ince a ll were guarded round the clock by members of the Great Race, a special breed who towered several feet above average height and were armed with terrible force-weapons unlike anything Crom-Ya had ever imagined, much less seen on the battlefield. Such measures made all the clearer the fear the Blind Ones inspired in their enemies.

After several such outings, Crom-Ya finally found what he was looking for: what must have been a forgotten, and thus unguarded, gate to the realm below. The metal was a foot thick if it was an inch, and its deep corrosion suggested many thousands of years of disuse. Could it be that those who lurked in the depths beneath it had forgotten it, too?

Crom-Ya had quickly mastered the use of his inhuman limbs with their various pincers and sprouting sensor-funnels. He put them to use now, making a sweep of the vicinity to make sure he was alone. Then he focused on the metal slab before him. How was he to get it open? He had never really tested the strength of his borrowed “arms,” but this seemed the perfect opportunity. First he applied the pincers to the rusting seals, or hinges; he couldn’t tell which. He reasoned that, as the ancient door must have been designed and installed with the same physical anatomy he now possessed, it ought to suffice to remove it. But the pincers managed only to scrape away a bit of the corrosion, albeit without injury. He concluded that the ancients must have used some sort of tools. Now, could he find such instruments— or even recognize them as such?

The mind of Crom-Ya reeled again. At first he thought, and hoped, his sojourn among the Great Race was at an end, that he was about to return to his own time and place, though that was not a bright prospect either. But such speculations were rendered moot in another moment when he found himself in a seemingly airless, lightless void. He felt no physical body at all. But even in the absence of ears, he could hear a voice, though he could not tell whether its source was exterior or interior.

He had heard the voice of the Pictish mage Rang-Thalun only on one or two occasions, but he recognized it now.

Cimmerian, you were a worthy foe. I warned my men not to kill you but only to take you prisoner. This body of yours, as you must by now be aware, has been usurped by one of the farwandering Great Race. Because of the link between you I am able to speak with you.

“And what would you say to me, my lord Rang-Thalun?”

Do you then bear me no ill will?

“I do not. It is part of the great game: someone must win, as you have, and someone must lose, as I have. So be it.”

Good man. I expected as much from you, O Crom-Ya. My business with you is this. I know of the Great Race and their schemes for the simple reason that I, too, was abducted by them. During my years of captivity I took the opportunity to learn what I could from their archives of the magic of wizards from other lands and times, even of other worlds such as I had never suspected. I did not scruple to record my own learning in their metal volumes since my knowledge was crude by comparison with that already recorded there and therefore could be of no real use to them. But my powers grew mightily, and you have seen the results.

Now I propose a plan of action whereby both of us may have our vengeance upon our captors, as well as your escape from them.

“Your powers are truly great! But can even you manage these feats?”

As a shaman, the art of soul travel was already known to me. When I learned all I could from my fellow captive wizards and the metal books of still others, I did what no other had ever done: I effected the mind transfer in reverse, regaining my own body and sending its usurper back to his own. I am sure I can return you, too. Then you shall rule beside me as my general. I am no fool to let such talents go to waste. But first you shall make contact with the subterranean enemies of the Great Race.

“Such is my own purpose, O Rang-Thalun! But I know not how.”

While living among the Great Race I searched their citadel as best I could, and I discovered their armory. Listen closely, and I will tell you how to secure the force-weapons of the Race. With one of them you may easily breach the barrier to the underground world. If you can contrive to take more of the weapons to arm the Blind Ones, do so.

In the Dungeon of the Devils

Some weeks later, the cone-thing named Crom-Ya was conversing with three others whose minds had come from cultures in which the hunting of wild animals was an honored sport. He proposed to these fellow “guests” that they venture into the jungles beyond the Great Race’s city for a hunt. Having explained their plans to those in charge, they were able to obtain permission to borrow four of the force wands. No one thought it would be a bad idea to thin the herd of gigantic predators. The cones in authority thanked them for their service. CromYa’s companions half-suspected there was more to their venture than big game hunting, and if some kind of subversion against the Great Race were afoot, they would not object.

By the time the little group reached the clearing where their leader had discovered the barred door to the dungeons of the Blind Ones, Crom-Ya had revealed his plan to them and was relieved to learn of their sympathy. He then had them direct their power wands at the four corners of the huge metal door. The portal soon glowed white and sprang out of its frame. Two of the cones could not evade the hurtling mass nor survive the damage to their bodies. The third, daunted by the tragedy, declared he would wait outside while Crom-Ya descended. If they had been followed and were discovered, the facts would speak for themselves, so his desire to remain “on guard” must be nothing more than fear. The Great Race were bad enough, but how much worse must be the beings whom they so feared?

As the Cimmerian mind had dearly hoped, there was a long ramp leading from the opening to the dark depths below. He began slowly to make his way down. The darkness around him was not impenetrable since his alien sense organs were not precisely like human eyes. They operated more like the sonar with which bats are gifted.

His sense of the passage of time in this realm, even above ground, was fluctuating, unstable. He had not been able to grasp it. So he was not sure how long his descent took, but at length he came to a level floor. He knew he needn’t go any further when he realized that the Blind Beings, a huge mob of them, had gathered to meet him. In a moment he would know their attitude toward him, the only cone-creature any of them could have seen in millennia — if they lived so long. He realized he knew nothing about these beings. Had the original generation imprisoned here eventually succumbed, replacing themselves with new generations? Or were they the originals? Would they slay him, a representative, as they must suppose, of their agelong oppressors?

But he had nothing to fear. They must have had telepathic abilities not dissimilar to those of the Great Race who so feared them. Crom-Ya learned much that day. It is useless to try to represent in words what they said, since their medium of communication was so very different from that of human beings of the Hyborian Age or ours. But we may share the gist.

The Blind Beings conveyed that they were no invaders but rather the original inhabitants of the city, long ago displaced by the invaders from a world called something analogous to “Yith.” None knew what danger or disaster they had fled via mind transference. But the so-called Blind Beings had not been psychically displaced as Crom-Ya and so many others had been, as whole planetary civilizations and species had been, but rather had been driven underground with weapons fashioned by the Great Race. The invaders from Yith had taken up residence in a primitive cone race native to earth, supplying them with an intelligence evolution had denied them. On their own world, those of Yith had existed in the form of sentient gases or vapors. They were thus practiced in mind-jumping, but this had not been needful in the case of the Blind Beings, whose amoeboid forms had not proven suitable for some reason.

To his utter astonishment, the beings welcomed Crom-Ya as their prophesied deliverer! Now that he had opened the way for them, they would emerge from the depths to overrun the Great Race, sending them fleeing into some other world. Well, perhaps, he supposed, they were right! This was exactly his goal! Fleetingly, Crom-Ya wondered if this “prophecy” had somehow been planted in the minds of these creatures or their ancestors by Rang-Thalun from the distant future. After all he had seen and lived through, nothing any longer seemed impossible, or even unlikely.

“I have four of their weapons here. You can use them to blow open the other doors inside the Great Race’s fortress, your fortress! Of course, they possess a stockpile of these force-weapons, but from all I have seen I believe their plan is not to fight you, but only to flee into some future world by mind-projection as they have before. They post armed sentries at all the doors, but I now believe they are intended only to prevent their captives doing what we are doing.” Withal, he held out the four weapons, one in each tentacle; each was taken by a huge, translucent pseudopod. He received no further communication from the Blind Beings, but he measured their excitement from the sudden chorus of eerie flute-like whistling.

The snail-like locomotion of the Great Race body was quite effective against the weight of gravity. It seemed to take less time to ascend the ramp than it had taken to descend it, but who knew? There was, after all, his inconsistent perception of time.

Once on the surface again, Crom-Ya was dismayed to see the companion he had left topside had now become a shapeless heap of strange flesh. The victim must have drawn the attention of one of the jungle dragons, and he had no defense to offer. Nor could the poor thing flee the great reptile with its churning legs and eager fangs. So much for his guess that the cone race possessed some natural protection or repellant!

Momentarily preoccupied reflecting on the matter, Crom-Ya failed to notice the headlong ambush of a dragon, probably the same one. Its jaws grabbed up his conical form and bit it in half. His last incarnate thought was to hope Rang-Thulan would keep his word.

Any Port in the Immortal Storm

His transition from the Hyborian Age to that of the Great Race had seemed instantaneous, but now he felt duration. He felt somehow that his soul was traveling to its point of origin. And perhaps it was his imagination, but he began to see flashes of a scene containing the familiar shapes of men. As he grew closer, the figures grew clearer. He believed he was seeing the inside of a large and ornate tent. There, cross-legged in a silent trance, was Rang-Thalun, but the wizard was not alone. He sensed that the Pictish shaman was attempting to guide the floating soul of Crom-Ya back home to its body, like a beacon across the sea of eternity. He knew that his freedom was near at hand!

But he was wrong. He began to hear the guttural voices of two Picts, whose words revealed they were subordinates dissatisfied with the plans they must have overheard their master muttering in his trance. Plans about not only keeping the Cimmerian prisoner alive but elevating him to the position of Warlord of the Pictish Horde, a rank one of these men coveted. The other wore a modest head dress marking him as a priestly subordinate, a breed ever bent on ruthless schemes of advancement. The pair were apparently partners in a deadly plot.

Powerless to intervene, the spirit of Crom-Ya watched as the warrior plunged his dagger into the throat of the Cimmerian’s inert form, while the priestling seized the Black Stone and used it as a bludgeon to crush the skull of Rang-Thalun.

Crom-Ya knew he was twice-doomed, as he was no more drawn toward his body, which was now rendered useless to him anyway. Must he drift forever aimless through a cosmos of phantoms? His speed had slowed, but in a few moments something catapulted him though time. Briefly he had a glimpse of the future, the aftermath of the events he had just witnessed. What he now saw was compressed together as if he were remembering a set of past happenings seen long ago. He saw the Pictish Empire, so newly made, crumble under the incompetence of their new Warlord and the lack of RangThulan or any leader like him. There was nothing anymore to hold the clans together, and they quickly went their separate ways, returning to vendettas and petty conflicts between them. It was all to be expected.

And then that world was left behind him. He drifted now, like a message in a bottle lost in the vastness of the ocean. He slept through an unknown number of ages till at long last he felt his vagrant essence descending to solid earth. He found himself taking refuge in the person of a muscular young man with close-cropped black hair, sitting at a device upon which his sturdy fingers tapped and tapped at great speed. He imagined he saw a resemblance between the man and himself, as if they shared a common blood inheritance many generations apart.

The man paused as if suddenly dizzy, but then hunched over his machine and returned to his tapping with renewed vigor and inspiration. Crom-Ya could see he had by no means displaced the fellow’s native mind, though he seemed to share the man’s consciousness somehow.

His host looked up from his finger-drumming to answer a voice from the doorway.

“Bob, your dinner’s getting cold!”

The man seemed reluctant to break off what he was doing, but at last he did. At the sparsely laid dinner table, the man named Bob was talking excitedly.

“Ma, Pa, I think I’ve had that breakthrough I’ve been waiting for. A new character popped into my mind. He’s the damnedest bastard that ever was!”

In successive days, then months, Bob Howard wrote, or rather typed, furiously, almost like a machine himself. He spoke the words aloud as he put them on paper. Many of his new adventure tales achieved publication, and to great reader acclaim. Once a friend asked him, as readers always do, where he got his ideas.

“I didn’t seem to be creating, but rather relating events that had occurred. I tell you, it was as if the man himself had been standing at my shoulder directing my efforts. I didn’t create him by any conscious process. He simply stalked full grown out of oblivion and set me to work recording the saga of his adventures.”