Part 69 (2/2)

One of the elements from the prototypical phase of the series had apparently disappeared: the remembrance/reincarnation theme that had been present in People of the Dark, Cimmeria and the early drafts of The Phoenix on the Sword This was surprising given the importance we have ascribed to this theme in the very inception of as to become the Conan series In fact, as he had just completed the first Conan tales, Howardon a mythical period of prehistory hat is now the state of Texas was a great plateau, stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the sea before the country south of the Cap-rock broke down to forion” The story alluded to here was Marchers of Valhalla, in its first version The story would be rejected in May by Farnsworth Wright Marchers of Valhalla was the first of the James Allison stories

Allison is a crippled Texan of the post-oak country, condemned to a drab life, who acquires the ability to relive his past, heroic, lives In October 1933, Horote to Clark Ashton Smith that The Garden of Fear another Ja with one of my various conceptions of the Hyborian and post-Hyborian world” To fully understand the implication, Smith would have had to be familiar with one of the drafts for Marchers of Valhalla, where Ishtar's dialogue was quite different than in the published version of the tale:

”Listen, and I will tell you!” she cried, hitching towardat the skirt ofI ask! I aulped so long ago Thoth-aia, hated my father, and to spite hi!

”Oh, es! I saw Atlantis and Lemuria sink below the waves, and the rise of the Hyborians But for over a thousand years I have dwelt in this doolden doalley of distant Khitai bore e” was thus on the verge of beco much more than just Conan's world, and would have been included in the Jaan, but didn't complete, a story set in ment published in The Howard Collector, 1979), and soldThe Haunter of the Ring, yet another reincarnation story, whichof 1932, Howard began work on The Scarlet Citadel (Weird Tales, January 1933)

The story was the second to concern Conan's reign as king of Aquilonia, but it had much more of the medieval to it than The Phoenix on the Sword The Scarlet Citadel is the first Conan story to display Howard's interest in history and epic It seems probable that an anecdote in Bulfinch furnished the idea for the beginning of the story, in which Conan and his ar the Battle of Roncesvalles, Bulfinch writes:

403”Marsilius began by la, not as to the ambassador, but as to the friend, the injuries which Charles had done hi to take his kingdoth he plainly uttered his belief that, if that ahts Gan [] exclaimed: ”Every word you utter is truth; die he must, and die also must Oliver, who struck , I have settled everything already with their besotted master Orlando will come to your borders, to Roncesvalles, for the purpose of receiving the tribute Charles will await hi but a small band with him: you, when you meet him, will have secretly your whole army at your back You surround him, and who receives tribute then?” (Bulfinch, p 801) Fro to Bulfinch Why borrohen the whole purpose of the creation of the Hyborian world was precisely to be free froboards from which he crafted tales that were entirely his: who could detect, for instance, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Coel very probably provided Hoith so of the published version of The Scarlet Citadel ? In a letter received August 9, 1932 by Lovecraft, Howard casually mentioned: ”Like Samkin Aylward, I warm to a man with the bitter drop in him” Samkin Aylward is a character in Doyle's novels, both books taking place in Medieval England and France during the Hundred Years War In the published version of The Scarlet Citadel, there is a cryptic mention of ”the land torn with the war of the barons” In the first drafts of the story, the passage wasave freely to Conan's cause, they would remember the sturdy yeomen hich Conan had broken the power of the feudal lords in the War of the Barons” (fro down is siland, in the thirteenth Century, alluded to by Doyle in Sir Nigel A similar example is found in the ation of protest, were seized and their heads slashed off without ceremony” (The Scarlet Citadel, p 108) This is probably derived frohers of Calais, though these actually escaped death The fact isthe six burghers of this very town [ie Calais], and yet he pardoned they, notably that for armor and weapons, may very well have come from Doyle's novels

The Scarlet Citadel was the first story to e's equivalent of the African coasts, in a scene in which a jailer recognizes Conan as ”Amra”: ”the name by which the Cimmerian had been known to the Cushi+tes in his piratical days Amra, the Lion” Thus in the same way that The Tower of the Elephant followed the mention of Zamora in Phoenix on the Sword, the next Conan story would take place in an exotic region of the Hyborian world

404

Coust 1932, Queen of the Black Coast is one of the more famous Conan stories, and understandably so Itsfeature is of course the pirate Belit (whose nainally Tameris in the first draft), the first female character of any importance to appear in a Conan story It took four successive drafts for Howard to co from the drafts, that he had little idea as to how the story would end He probably understood that the real force of the tale lay not in its plot, but in the strange relationshi+p binding Conan and Belit

In the first draft of the story, Belit (Tain: ”I am Tameris, queen of the Black Coast, and I have known the embraces of no ift of my lips and my love! Always I have kept myself inviolate for the man I kneould some day meet” (draft a, p 11)

The relations between Conan and Belit, though of an amorous nature, are far frohout the story, and especially so in the early drafts, a very strong undercurrent of sadises To the published version's ”Take me and crush me with your fierce love” corresponds the earlier drafts' ”Take me and crush me and bruisean isolated exaue ”'Very well,' she said absently, hardly heeding hi lines:

”Conan glared at her narrowly, aware of a di on those murky jewels on her ivory bosom He had a primitive impulse to tear them from her throat and cast them into the river And for the first tiers in his companion's black locks and subject her person to moderate violence” (draft c, p 22)

We do not knohether it was Hoho toned down the story in his final draft or if this was the result of Farnsworth Wright's editorial interference A comparison of the few later Conan stories for which definitive typescripts survive and their published versions shows that Wright systeue that he deerilimpse of the Ciion and life after death between Conan and Belit:

”What of your own Gods? I have never heard you call on thereat mountain What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you doorim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul What else shall men ask of the Gods?”

405

”There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of le and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright ray misty realhout eternity”

Froazine ran the serialization of Sax Rohmer's latest novel, The Mask of Fu Manchu It was published in book form a feeeks later, andbeen a favorite of Howard, whose library contained many of his books, so surely he noticed the new story, especially under Collier's particularly attractive cover The Mask of Fu Manchu details the Chinese mastermind's failed attempt to revive the cult of Mokanna, ”the Hidden One, sometimes called the Veiled Prophet”:

”(Mokanna), about 770 AD, set himself up as an incarnation of God, and drew to his sect many thousands of followers He revised the Koran His power becaainst him with a considerable army Mokanna was a hideous creature His features were so mutilated as to be horrible to see He and his staff poisoned themselves in the hour of defeat From that day to this, no one has knohere he was buried” (The Mask of Fu Manchu, chapter 4)

Rohmer's novel opens just after Mokanna's toht, the relics secured, and the toainst fanatics However, ”An outcry 'Mokanna has arisen' swept through Afghanistan None of the tribeshtly, still hold the Mokanna tradition had any idea that you or any human influence had been concerned with the eruption which reduced a lonely shrine to a dusty hollow”

Fro premises, Rohmer built an at around Fu Manchu's vain attempts to secure the relics so he could pose as Mokanna reincarnated Howard very probably saw the unexploited potential of Rohan an epic story that would recount the successful reincarnation of a ”veiled prophet” of the desert, whose first task would be to unite the desert clans in a war of conquest that would soon threaten the Hyborian (ie Indo-European) nations Rohmer was bound by imperatives of historical verisinore, and thus was born Black Colossus :

”There were ruia, far south of the Kothian hills A new prophet had arisen a of vultures

406in the southeast, and a terrible leader who led his swiftly increasing hordes to victory The [Stygian] priests were ht that of the desert sorcerer, whom men called Natohk, the Veiled One; for his features were always masked”

In Rohmer's novel Mokanna's toins in ”Khoraja”; in his synopsis for the story, this was ”Khoraspar”