First published in the November 1935 issue of Weird Tales, as the cover story.
“Peril hides in the house of Aram Baksh!” a Zuagir nomad tells Conan in the bazaar of Zamboula.
As a tabletop RPG Game Master, when I have an NPC speak that bluntly, it’s so the players won’t get mad at me that a location has a deadly encounter. But Conan laughs it off, saying he has nothing left for such a crook to steal. The nomad goes on:
“Nay, in this accursed city which Stygians built and which Hyrkanians rule — where white, brown, and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds — who can tell who is a man, and who is a demon in disguise?”
So race-mixing produces demons? Ouch. (Less horribly, the nomad establishes that Conan has lived as a Zuagir for many months.)
The inn with the deadly encounter is separated from other houses by palm groves to the east and west, and across the street are abandoned huts. Entering, Conan spends his last copper coin on wine, broke after a week in Zamboula (whatever happened to looting with an army of nomads?).
The door Conan bolted opens, and the combat encounter is… one unarmored dude. Conan IDs his corpse as a cannibal slave from Darfar.
Oh boy. So the story here is that Aram Baksh bought a bunch of slaves from Darfar, and in order to prevent them rebelling, he has to feed them travelers from his inn. Also they’re “notorious thieves” who go around the city stealing…
Not only is this racist, it makes no sense. One citizen buys cannibal slaves who spend their free time stealing valuables, and the whole rest of the population doesn’t banish him? Howard tries to justify it as “they don’t eat locals and locals don’t care about the lives of strangers”, but that doesn’t explain tolerating the stealing. Just run this guy out of town!
Also, “Darfar” is a goofy name. It’s obviously based on Darfur, but the word “dar” for “land” (also “house”) is, famously, Arabic and changing the demonym “Fur” to “far” makes it Arabic for “land of mice”!
Seeing how easy the telegraphed ambush was, Conan runs out and finds three more slaves to fight, who are carrying booty… by which I mean a supple naked woman. He kills them easily, including the third who flees from morale failure.
The woman says she was out in the dark because ““My lover drove me into the streets. He went mad and tried to kill me.” Apparently he was drugged by Totrasmek, the high priest of Hanuman, who wanted her to break up and become his lover.
Wait, Hanuman?
Another group of slaves walks by, and explain that they have different masters, who they steal from to pay Aram Baksh for the travelers he captures. Oh, so I was wrong: lots of people own slaves from this cannibal culture, but apparently only Aram Baksh feeds them Soylent Green-- er, people.
The woman ropes Conan into a quest to find her lover and sober him up. Finding Crazy, Conan knocks him unconscious in a sword fight. Now she tries to hire Conan to kill Totrasmek, which he grumbles would get him the death penalty.
“I worship Set, and the Turanians bow to Erlik, but Totrasmek sacrifices to Hanuman the accursed! The Turanian lords fear his black arts and his power over the hybrid popularion, and they hate him. Even Jungir Khan and his mistress Nafertari fear and hate him.”
Wait, Hanuman the accursed? He’s such a virtuous guy!
They drop Crazy off at a house the woman leads Conan to, then head to Hanuman’s temple. It’s repeatedly narrated that Conan is in lust and may be getting paid only in sex for this job.
“Behind the black stone altar, sat the god with his gaze fixed for ever on the open door, through which for centuries his victims had come, dragged by chains of roses.”
No, Hanuman! How could you?
The woman opens a secret door behind the idol, but someone is waiting and drags her off. Finding it bolted now, Conan goes through another door to look for her. He finds a huge strongman named Baal-Pteor. Ah dear reader, how much of a challenge will this guy be for our hero? The man throws a shining crystal sphere at him! Conan dodges pointlessly: “the globe stopped short in midair, a few feet from his face.” And it causes him to hallucinate. Another trap in the room is a magnet table Conan’s sword gets stuck to. Baal-Pteor then attempts to strangle his disarmed enemy. Conan mirrors his enemy’s tactic, and wins. He retrieves his sword from the magnet and soldiers on.
Meanwhile, the woman Zabibi argues with the priest. It was she who gave her lover the crazy potion, which Totrasmek brewed at her request for a potion of Sleep.
“Why did you wish your lover to sleep? So you could steal from him the only thing he would never give you — the ring with the jewel men call the Star of Khorala — the star stolen from the queen of Ophir, who would pay a roomful of gold for its return. He would not give it to you willingly, because he knew that it holds a magic which, when properly controlled, will enslave the hearts of any of the opposite sex.”
He offers her a phial of golden lotus juice, which restores sanity (that’s lotus color #3, if you’re keeping track). As she steps toward him, he steps back, and she triggers a trap consisting of four cobras in a square around her.
“she could not spring over them or pass between them to safety. She could only whirl and spring aside and twist her body to avoid the strokes, and each time she moved to dodge one snake, the motion brought her within range of another,” Apparently this is how maidens danced in the sacrifice to Hanuman centuries ago. Ook, frown.
Conan saves Zabibi by backstabbing the priest from behind the curtain, whose death turns the cobras to smoke. They return to the house with Crazy. After giving him the potion, Zabibi reveals to Conan that she’s really Nafertari and her lover is really Jungir Khan.
“You see now how impossible is the reward for which you hoped. The satrap’s mistress is not — cannot be for you. But you shall not go unrewarded. Here is a sack of gold.” And now she wants to make him captain of the guard, so he can search Hanuman’s temple for the Star of Khorala and give it to her instead of Jungir Khan. Conan nods and goes to buy a fast horse. Riding it back to the inn, he finds three slaves and tells them “Aram Baksh will give you a man.” Then he goes inside and captures Aram Baksh in his nightshirt, cutting his voice box and shaving his beard so the cannibals won’t recognize him.
And what happened to the Star of Khorala? Conan stole it, and rides west rather than accept Nafertari’s offer.
Well then. This story is very offensive in the surface-level details (Hanuman is a good person!), but if you changed those, it makes a fine Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure. Everyone is scheming to double-cross each other, which keeps things interesting.
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