Part 67 (1/2)

”Let me see her,” commanded Thuthmes, and Shubba left the room, returning a moment later leading a girl by the wrist. She was supple, her white skin almost dazzling in contrast with the brown and black bodies to which Thuthmes was accustomed. Her hair fell in a curly rippling gold stream over her white shoulders. She was clad only in a tattered s.h.i.+ft. This Shubba removed, leaving her shrinking in complete nudity.

Thuthmes nodded, impersonally.

”She is a fine bit of merchandize. If I were not gambling for a throne, I might be tempted to keep her for myself. Have you taught her Kus.h.i.+te, as I commanded?”

”Aye; in the city of the Shemites, and later daily on the caravan trail, I taught her, and impressed upon her the need of learning by means of a slipper, after the Shemite fas.h.i.+on. Her name is Diana.”

Thuthmes seated himself on a couch, and indicated that the girl should sit cross-legged on the floor at his feet, which she did.

”I am going to give you to the king of Kush as a present,” he said. ”You will nominally be his

382.slave, but actually you will belong to me. You will receive your orders regularly, and you will not fail to carry them out. The king is degenerate, slothful, dissipated. It should not be hard for you to achieve complete dominance over him. But lest you might be tempted to disobey, when you fancy yourself out of my reach, in the palace of the king, I will demonstrate my power to you.”

He took her hand and led her through a corridor, down a flight of stone stairs and into a long chamber, dimly lighted. The chamber was divided in equal halves by a wall of crystal, clear as water though some three feet in thickness and of such strength as to have resisted the lunge of a bull elephant. He led [her] to this wall, and made her stand, facing it, while he stepped back.

Abruptly the light went out. She stood there in darkness, her slender limbs trembling with an unreasoning panic; then light began to float in the darkness. She saw a hideous malformed head grow out of the blackness; she saw a b.e.s.t.i.a.l snout, chisel-like teeth, bristles as the horror moved toward her she screamed and turned and ran, frantic with fear, and forgetful of the sheet of crystal that kept the brute from her. She ran full into the arms of Thuthmes in the darkness, and heard his hiss in her ear: ”You have seen my servant; do not fail me, for if you do he will search you out where ever you may be, and you can not hide from him.” And when he hissed something else in her quivering ear, she promptly fainted.

Thuthmes carried her up the stairs and gave her into the hands of a black wench with instructions to revive her, to see that she had food and wine, and to bathe, comb, perfume and dress her for her presentation to the king.

383.

Hyborian Names and Countries

The following is a list of names, countries, kings, etc., that was prepared in March 1932. The two names in italics were typed and later erased by Howard, though they are still visible on the original typescript.384.

385.

Hyborian Age Maps386.

387.

Appendices388.

HYBORIAN GENESIS.

Notes on the Creation of the Conan Stories by Patrice Louinet

In a December 1933 letter to fellow author Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard recounted the creation of his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian:

”I know that for months I had been absolutely barren of ideas, completely unable to work up anything sellable. Then the man Conan seemed suddenly to grow up in my mind without much labor on my part and immediately a stream of stories flowed off my pen or rather off my typewriter almost without effort on my part. I did not seem to be creating, but rather relating events that had occurred. Episode crowded on episode so fast that I could scarcely keep up with them. For weeks I did nothing but write of the adventures of Conan. The character took complete possession of my mind and crowded out everything else in the way of story-writing.

When I deliberately tried to write something else, I couldn't do it.”

Writing that his characters and stories came easily to him was customary with Howard, who almost never mentioned unfinished or unsold stories in his correspondence. In the case of the Kull series, for example, only three tales had been published while a dozen others were either left unfinished or rejected. Yet Howard wrote to Lovecraft:

”Thanks for the kind things you said about the Kull stories, but I doubt if I'll ever be able to write another. The three stories I wrote about that character seemed almost to write themselves, without any planning on my part; there was no conscious effort on my part to work them up.

They simply grew up, unsummoned, full grown in my mind and flowed out on paper from my finger tips.”

In fact, drafts survive for almost every Kull story, indicating that much more work was involved than Howard suggests. How then can we give credence to his intimation that the creation of the Conan stories was virtually a case of automatic writing? Things were not as easy and straightforward as Howard would have Clark Ashton Smith and us believe.

In October 1931, Howard completed the first version of a story t.i.tled People of the Dark and sent it to Clayton Publications' new magazine, Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, a direct compet.i.tor to Weird Tales. Editor Harry Bates liked the story, but asked for some rewriting.

Howard complied and a few weeks later Bates accepted the story, along with another tale Howard had sent him, The Cairn on the Headland.