The Heroic Legends Series - Conan: Black Starlight E-Book

John C. Hocking

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Savage Tales Short Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 94

Beschreibung

Capturing the electric short fiction energy that led Robert E. Howard to be one of the top fantasy writers of the century, with exclusive serialized eBook stories starring Conan, Solomon Kane, and more by many of today's top writers in fantasy and sword-and-sorcery. Seeking to avoid the Stygian border guard and cross the River Styx, Conan, the sorceress Zelandra, her scribe Neesa, and bodyguard Heng Shih discover a town that seems to be deserted. To preserve his own life, the town's lord had bargained with a demon that still lurks there. It wants Zelandra's cache of Emerald Lotus and will kill anyone who tries to stop it. Conan and his allies must defeat the demon and its minions—human and inhuman—in order to survive. Originally published as a twelve-part serial in Marvel'sConan the Barbarian comic book (2019-2020), this is a direct sequel to CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS, re-released this month in the new volume CONAN IN THE CITY OF THE DEAD.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Map

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

About the Author

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CONAN: BLACK STARLIGHT

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803366340

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

Second edition: October 2023

Originally serialized in the comic book series Conan the Barbarian(2019–2020), issues 1–12.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 2023 Conan Properties International LLC. CONAN, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, HYBORIA, and related logos, names and character likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of Conan Properties International LLC. ROBERT E. HOWARD is a trademark or registered trademark of Robert E. Howard Properties LLC. All Rights Reserved. Heroic Signatures is a trademark of Cabinet Licensing LLC.

John C. Hocking asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Typeset by ePub KNOWHOW Ltd.

FOR ROY THOMAS

BLACKSTARLIGHT

JOHN C. HOCKING

The four riders passed down from the dry wastes of Stygia, astride weary mounts painted gray with dust. The long miles of desolation finally fell behind them like a dreary dream. The land began to show signs of life, of greenery, fields and undergrowth, unseen in weeks. The breeze carried a freshness, an occasional coolness that stood in sharp contrast to the relentless, oppressive heat that had haunted every hour, day and night for so long.

They came over a low ridge and the land dropped away in a vast swath, a horizon wide decline, opening out into the vast river valley of the world girdling Styx.

“We cross a branch of the Caravan Road at last,” said the man riding at the forefront of the little party. He was almost a giant, a wide shouldered man in a tarnished mail shirt, faded blue breeches and worn boots. He rode tall and straight, his blue eyes as bright as bits of ice in his scarred, bronze face. The long miles he had traveled had not dulled his steady observation of the land around them. He was a northern barbarian, a Cimmerian, perhaps out of place in this desert, so distant from his homeland, but his wilderness bred senses, his easy but eternal wariness, ensured that he was never truly out of place in any environment.

“How can you tell, Conan? I see no path.” This from the woman riding near his side. Her silver-threaded hair was tied back and the warm wind, rising as they moved down the gentle slope, drew it back in a briefly fluttering pennant.

“The earth here has been hardened by the passage of horses and men. Look.” The barbarian lifted a long arm and pointed. “See where the brush has been pushed back.”

The woman, the sorceress Zelandra of the Shemitish city of Akkharia, could see where the clump of dry bushes the barbarian pointed out was seemingly compacted on one side, but could not tell how the earth beneath her horse’s hooves was any different than that they traversed an hour or a day ago. She smiled faintly, for although she had grown accustomed to the Cimmerian’s uncanny powers of observation, his effortless immersion in any environment was still a wonder to her. She was well schooled and knew something of magic, but the barbarian had a deep, almost instinctive understanding of the natural world unlike any she had previously encountered.

“If this is the Caravan Road it seems little used.” This from the younger woman who rode behind Zelandra. She was young and brightly aware in her riding garb, slim and lissome with three throwing daggers affixed to her belt.

“This must be a branch of the main road, Neesa,” rumbled Conan, “and we have moved far enough west that traffic here is diminished. The town of Quenah should be before us by nightfall.”

“Too bad we couldn’t cross at Bel-Phar. It would have been much more convenient,” said Neesa.

This drew a deep laugh from the last member for the quartet, a brawny Khitan with a shaven head. His hands drew swift pictures in the air, fingers spelling out words in a sign language known to his mistress Zelandra and her scribe Neesa, but still obscure to the Cimmerian.

“Heng Shih allows as it is your fault we couldn’t cross the Styx at Bel-Phar,” said Zelandra wryly. “If you hadn’t slain so many of the border guards there, passage back across the river would be a simpler matter.”

“Retaining your head seems a low price for the inconvenience,” said Conan, lips twisting in a hard grin. “But it’s true enough that we’re unlikely to find a working ferry in Quenah. They have no sister settlement on the Shemitish side of the river.”

“Yes,” said Zelandra. “Quenah is a backwater and does little trade. Still, we should be able to find a fisherman willing to take us across. We still have gold.”

“And steel,” said the barbarian. The unlikely quartet had become seasoned travelling companions on a dangerous journey that had led them across the Styx and deep into the unforgiving wastes of Stygia. Now they sought to return to Zelandra’s home city of Akkharia in Shem, discovering in the process that departing Stygia was fully as difficult as entering that hostile, insular country.

The sun moved through the heavens with ponderous ease until it drew near the western horizon where it grew ruddy and sullen, as if suffused with blood. A carpet of gray clouds appeared on the eastern horizon and moved slowly overhead. Shadows lengthened as the party found themselves among saplings and small trees. The earth became rockier and they rode around boulders and outcrops of raw stone.

Then they were at the top of a long rim and below them they could at last see the broad belt of the Styx, an expanse of gleaming water reflecting the sun and the darkening sky like a vast burnished blade laid across this ancient land.

The village of Quenah, an unimposing collection of buildings, was built in a crescent along the shore of a gentle widening of the Styx into a kind of cove. To the east low hills rose beside the little settlement, while to the west bluffs flanked it, rising along the shore into rocky cliffs. In this snug bracket Quenah seemed to slumber quietly, well placed but strangely still.

The red glare of sunset painted the little village below them with scarlet, briefly bathing it in sanguine light before fading to gray as the sun fell beneath the horizon and was buried by onrushing clouds. Darkness fell like a shroud.

Conan’s eyes roved restlessly over the landscape as they started down the long slope toward the village below, but returned repeatedly to the shadowed town. He frowned, jaw growing hard, and felt the comforting weight of the heavy northern broadsword at his waist. Abruptly, his gaze snapped up, lifted into the darkening sky.

Something black and winged shot past a scant 30 feet over their heads. It moved with great speed but left an impression of unseemly size and unnatural shape. Conan thought it trailed a tail behind it, like some kind of airborne serpent.

“Was—was that a bird?” spoke Neesa. Her voice was tremulous.

“I think not,” said Conan. He eased his broadsword in its sheath, but the strange visitor did not pass overhead again.

The slope gentled, the trees became taller and the fields more lush. The breeze off the Styx was cool and bore a precious moisture that felt like a balm after so many days of desert travel. The party found a road, hardpacked earth showing the signs of long use, but no travelers in sight. The dirt road finally gave way into a cobbled one in good repair, which led into the outskirts of town. A shack by the roadside, a larger home of adobe behind a painted wall, and then a long building like a low warehouse all shared one thing in common, each was dark and silent.

When the travelers came into the city proper, on a paved expanse of road overlooking the whole of Quenah, they could see the village laid out before them, little more than a handful of densely packed, roughly parallel streets stacked above a line of docks at the waterside. The riders drew rein wordlessly.

All of Quenah was darkened. No torchlight nor lamp lit the night at any point in the settlement before them. The town might have been a dim extension of the empty countryside. Yet stranger still was the pervasive silence. Nothing moved, and nothing could be heard save the soft sighing of the wind as it rose off the ceaselessly moving ribbon of the Styx.

“It’s a ghost town,” said Conan. “This village is dead.”

Houses, shops, taverns, inns and places of business—all were dark and vacant. Some buildings were closed up, silent behind locked doors and sealed shutters. Others were open as if those who should have been there had abruptly decided to depart or simply vanished.

The horses nickered nervously, but aside from a long-eared desert fox that quickly darted into obscuring shadow, there was nothing in Quenah to disturb them but the emptiness and silence of the town itself.

The party maintained a wary and watchful silence, following the big Cimmerian as he led them unhesitatingly to a destination deep in the dead village. They moved slowly, rounding corners onto deserted streets, each as still and dim as the last.

Conan brought them to a small flagstoned square near the center of town, probably once the site of markets and gatherings. An open-fronted tavern stood on its landward side. Across from the tavern the square was bordered by a low curving wall that looked out across the few streets lowering toward the shadowed docks and the shore of the Styx. The view across the river was vague in the darkness but the open space seemed to breathe and had none of the close, almost claustrophobic feel of Quenah’s abandoned streets.

“Here,” said the Cimmerian. “We can make camp in the tavern.”