First published in the December 1934 issue of Weird Tales. It made cover money!
Queen Taramis is confronted in the middle of the night by her twin sister Salome, who was exposed at birth for having a red crescent birthmark, the mark of a witch. As in myths, exposing a baby isn’t infanticide, because someone comes along to adopt them. In Salome’s case, it was a mage from Khitai, and two decades later, she’s back! Apparently
“the first queen of our line had traffic with a fiend of darkness and bore him a daughter who lives in foul legendry to this day. And thereafter in each century a girl baby was born into the Askhaurian dynasty, with a scarlet half-moon between her breasts, that signified her destiny. … Each was named Salome. I too am Salome. It was always Salome, the witch. It will always be Salome, the witch, even when the mountains of ice have roared down from the pole and ground the civilizations to ruin, and a new world has risen from the ashes and dust—even then there shall be Salomes to walk the earth, to trap men’s hearts by their sorcery, to dance before the kings of the world, and see the heads of the wise men fall at their pleasure.”
Yeah, so this is a prequel to Mark 6/Matthew 14.
Sweet Taramis says “I am queen of Khauran! I shall give you a place of honor, as my sister, but—” But nothing sister, she’s throwing you in the dungeon (iron mask optional). There’s a man in the palace, “Constantius, the Kothic voivode of the Free Companies.” whom Salome has chosen to be his right hand “because of his utter lack of all characteristics men call good.” The moral subjectivist little minx.
Wasn’t “the Free Companies” the name of the mercenary group Conan said he’d served in under a rebel prince of Koth, in “Shadows in the Moonlight”? There seems to be a shared political thread between that story, this, and “The Slithering Shadow” (#11).
Next chapter, a soldier named Valerius narrates that the queen invited 10,000 mercenaries into the city and ordered her own soldiers to disband. Conan, captain of the royal guard, wouldn’t let his unit of 500 obey, roaring “This isn’t Taramis! It’s some devil in masquerade!”
Cut to Conan, who was taken alive just to be crucified a mile beyond the city. Constantius explains that he’s being left unguarded so vultures will start eating him before he dies (there’s too much exposition in this story). Conan finds it hopeless to get any spikes out, but he does scare the vultures off by biting through one’s neck. Four Zuagir nomads ride up to see this. Conan recognizes one as Olgerd Vladislav, former hetman of the Zaporoskan kozaks. I guess Bob’s given up trying to disguise his influences.
He orders Conan’s cross chopped down like a tree, noted as something he might not survive. He does, and once the spikes are removed from his hands and feet, he’s offered a horse but no water for ten-mile ride to the nomad camp.
The next chapter is a Nemedian savant’s letter home! Oh come on. Well it’s been seven months since the last chapter and the false Taramis’ rule is nothing but excess taxation and parties where women are debauched against their will. “She has instituted human sacrifice, and since her mating with Constantius, no less than five hundred men, women and children have been immolated.” I’m not sure this savant knows the meaning of immolated, as he says most of those were eaten by a monster in the temple, not slain on an altar.
There’s also a pretty pointless scene of Salome tormenting Taramis. She doesn’t even use a whip to match the cover.
Meanwhile Conan and his boss Olgerd are arguing about the future. Olgerd thinks their reputation for success can triple their current number of 11,000 within another year, and he’ll start conquering all of Shem one piece at a time. Conan just wants to conquer Khauran for revenge on Constantius. For a man who thinks he can conquer every city in Shem once his force triples, Olgerd acts extremely skeptical of their ability to besiege a city. Conan says they won’t need a siege because he can trick Constantius onto the plain, and he knows how to add to their light cavalry 3,000 shock cavalry, exiles from Khauran. Olgerd threatens to have Conan executed for trying to take over, but Conan convinces him that no one would obey him: the raiders find him just that charismatic. Conan breaks Olgerd’s sword hand and admits he owes him his life, so keep yours. Olgerd rides off.
Later, inside the city, a group of men plot to dungeon delve to free Taramis as soon as Constantius’ army is distracted countering Conan’s siege. And Constantius tells Salome that he’s going to fight Conan on the plain, because his scouts saw that siege engines have been constructed. She tells a priest to take one of two crystal balls to the battlefield so she’ll know what’s going on. Battle is joined, then the priest magically reports that they were lured out by a ruse: “The siege engines are false—mere frames of palm trunks and painted silk, that fooled our scouts who saw them from afar.” and Conan had a milling mass of nomads screen his shock cavalry until the enemy charged, then ordered them to split into disciplined right and left flanks to make way.
Salome plans to feed Taramis to her monster Thaug before she’s captured.
Ah, but Taramis has already been freed by those guys we barely saw earlier! But Salome and Thaug succeed in ambushing them. The rescuer Valerius gets back up and manages to kill Salome and an apish priest who stripped Taramis naked.
“Out of the gloom of the temple behind Valerius wavered a slim white figure, laced with crimson. The people screamed; there in the arms of Valerius hung the woman they thought their queen; yet there in the temple door staggered another figure, like a reflection of the other.” The burghers figure everything out, and there’s nothing left to do to save the city but for Conan and fifty nomads to kill the demon Thaug with mundane arrows. Taramis wants to make Conan a royal counciler, but he says “”No, lass, that’s over with. I’m chief of the Zuagirs now, and must lead them to plunder the Turanians, as I promised.”
Before leaving, Conan has Constantius crucified.
While there are some well-done parallelisms here (two crucifixions, two lives spared), this is kind of a mess of “tell, don’t show” and the demon Thaug is almost a non-entity.
In the Lancer series of paperbacks, this story was included in Conan the Freebooter. The Boris Vallejo cover above seems to represent the main characters and Thaug.
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