The Hour of the Dragon - Robert E. Howard (great reads .TXT) 📗

The Hour of the Dragon

 

by Robert E. Howard

 

Alternative Title: Conan The Conqueror, featuring Conan

 

First appeared as a serial in Weird Tales: Part 1, December 1935; Part 2, January 1936; Part 3, February 1936; Part 4, March 1936; Part 5, April 1936

 

The Lion banner sways and falls in the horror-haunted gloom;

 

A scarlet Dragon rustles by, borne on winds of doom.

 

In heaps the shining horsemen lie, where the thrusting lances break,

 

And deep in the haunted mountains, the lost, black gods awake.

 

Dead hands grope in the shadows, the stars turn pale with fright,

 

For this is the Dragon’s Hour, the triumph of Fear and Night.

 

Chapter 1: O Sleeper, Awake!

 

THE LONG TAPERS flickered, sending the black shadows wavering along

the walls, and the velvet tapestries rippled. Yet there was no wind in

the chamber. Four men stood about the ebony table on which lay the

green sarcophagus that gleamed like carven jade. In the upraised right

hand of each man a curious black candle burned with a weird greenish

light. Outside was night and a lost wind moaning among the black

trees.

 

Inside the chamber was tense silence, and the wavering of the shadows,

while four pairs of eyes, burning with intensity, were fixed on the

long green case across which cryptic hieroglyphics writhed, as if lent

life and movement by the unsteady light. The man at the foot of the

sarcophagus leaned over it and moved his candle as if he were writing

with a pen, inscribing a mystic symbol’ in the air. Then he set down

the candle in its black gold stick at the foot of the case, and,

mumbling some formula unintelligible to his companions, he thrust a

broad white hand into his fur-trimmed robe. When he brought it forth

again it was as if he cupped in his palm a ball of living fire.

 

The other three drew in their breath sharply, and the dark, powerful

man who stood at the head of the sarcophagus whispered: “The Heart of

Ahriman!” The other lifted a quick hand for silence. Somewhere a dog

began howling dolefully, and a stealthy step padded outside the barred

and bolted door. But none looked aside from the mummy-case over which

the man in the ermine-trimmed robe was now moving the great flaming

jewel while he muttered an incantation that was old when Atlantis

sank. The glare of the gem dazzled their eyes, so that they could not

be sure of what they saw; but with a splintering crash, the carven lid

of the sarcophagus burst outward as if from some irresistible pressure

applied from within, and the four men, bending eagerly forward, saw

the occupant—a huddled, withered, wizened shape, with dried brown

limbs like dead wood showing through moldering bandages.

 

“Bring that thing back?” muttered the small dark man who stood on the

right, with a short, sardonic laugh. “It is ready to crumble at a

touch. We are fools—”

 

“Shhh!” It was an urgent hiss of command from the large man who held

the jewel. Perspiration stood upon his broad white forehead and his

eyes were dilated. He leaned forward, and, without touching the thing

with his hand, laid on the breast of the mummy the blazing jewel. Then

he drew back and watched with fierce intensity, his lips moving in

soundless invocation.

 

It was as if a globe of living fire nickered and burned on the dead,

withered bosom. And breath sucked in, hissing, through the clenched

teeth of the watchers. For as they watched, an awful transmutation

became apparent. The withered shape in the sarcophagus was expanding,

was growing, lengthening. The bandages burst and fell into brown dust.

The shiveled limbs swelled, straightened. Their dusky hue began to

fade.

 

“By Mitra!” whispered the tall, yellow-haired man on the left. “He was

not a Stygian. That part at least was true.”

 

Again a trembling finger warned for silence. The hound outside was no

longer howling. He whimpered, as with an evil dream, and then that

sound, too, died away in silence, in which the yellow-haired man

plainly heard the straining of the heavy door, as if something outside

pushed powerfully upon it. He half turned, his hand at his sword, but

the man in the ermine robe hissed an urgent warning: “Stay! Do not

break the chain! And on your life do not go to the door!”

 

The yellow-haired man shrugged and turned back, and then he stopped

short, staring. In the Jade sarcophagus lay a living man: a tall,

lusty man, naked, white of skin, and dark of hair and beard. He lay

motionless, his eyes wide open, and blank and unknowing as a newborn

babe’s. On his breast the great jewel smoldered and sparkled.

 

The man in ermine reeled as if from some let-down of extreme tension.

 

“Ishtar!” he gasped. “It is Xaltotun!—and he lives! Valerius!

Tarascus! Amalric! Do you see? Do you see? You doubted me—but I have

not failed! We have been close to the open gates of hell this night,

and the shapes of darkness have gathered close about us–aye, they

followed him to the very door—but we have brought the great magician

back to life.”

 

“And damned our souls to purgatories everlasting, I doubt not,”

muttered the small, dark man, Tarascus.

 

The yellow-haired man, Valerius, laughed harshly.

 

“What purgatory can be worse than life itself? So we are all damned

together from birth. Besides, who would not sell his miserable soul

for a throne?”

 

“There is no intelligence in his stare, Orastes,” said the large man.

 

“He has long been dead,” answered Orastes. “He is as one newly

awakened. His mind is empty after the long sleep—nay, he was dead,

not sleeping. We brought his spirit back over the voids and gulfs of

night and oblivion. I will speak to him.”

 

He bent over the foot of the sarcophagus, and fixing his gaze on the

wide dark eyes of the man within, he said, slowly: “Awake, Xaltotun!”

 

The lips of the man moved mechanically. “Xaltotun!” he repeated in a

groping whisper.

 

“You are Xaltotun!” exclaimed Orastes, like a hypnotist driving home

his suggestions. “You are Xaltotun of Python, in Acheron.”

 

A dim flame flickered in the dark eyes.

 

“I was Xaltotun,” he whispered. “I am dead.”

 

“You are Xaltotun!” cried Qrastes. “You are not dead! You live!”

 

“I am Xaltotun,” came the eery whisper. “But I am dead. In my house in

Khemi, in Stygia, there I died.”

 

“And the priests who poisoned you mummified your body with their dark

arts, keeping all your organs intact!” exclaimed Orastes. “But now you

live again! The Heart of Ahriman has restored your life, drawn your

spirit back from space and eternity.”

 

“The Heart of Ahriman!” The flame of remembrance grew stronger. “The

barbarians stole it from me!”

 

“He remembers,” muttered Orastes. “Lift him from the case.”

 

The others obeyed hesitantly, as if reluctant to touch the man they

had recreated, and they seemed not easier in their minds when they

felt firm muscular flesh, vibrant with blood and life, beneath their

fingers. But they lifted him upon the table, and Orastes clothed him

in a curious dark velvet robe, splashed with gold stars and cresent

moons, and fastened a cloth-of-gold, fillet about his temples,

confining the black wavy locks that fell to his shoulders. He let them

do as they would, saying nothing, not even when they set him in a

carven throne-like chair with a high ebony back and wide silver arms,

and feet like golden claws. He sat there motionless, and slowly

intelligence grew in his dark eyes and made them deep and strange and

luminous. It was as if long-sunken witch-lights floated slowly up

through midnight pools of darkness.

 

Orastes cast a furtive glance at his companions, who stood staring in

morbid fascination at their strange guest. Their iron nerves had

withstood an ordeal that might have driven weaker men mad. He knew it

was with no weaklings that he conspired, but men whose courage was as

profound as their lawless ambitions and capacity for evil. He turned

his attention to the figure in the ebon-black chair. And this one

spoke at last.

 

“I remember,” he said in a strong, resonant voice, speaking Nemedian

with a curious, archaic accent. “I am Xaltotun, who was high priest of

Set in Python, which was in Acheron. The Heart of Ahriman-I dreamed I

had found it again-where is it?”

 

Orastes placed it in his hand, and he drew breath deeply as he gazed

into the depths of the terrible jewel burning in his grasp.

 

“They stole it from me, long ago,” he said. “The red heart of the

night it is, strong to save or to damn. It came from afar, and from

long ago. While I held it, none could stand before me. But it was

stolen from me, and Acheron fell, and I fled an exile into dark

Stygia. Much I remember, but much I have forgotten. I have been in a

far land, across misty voids and gulfs and unlit oceans. What is the

year?”

 

Orastes answered him. “It is the waning of the Year of the Lion, three

thousand years after the fall of Acheron.”

 

“Three thousand years!” murmured the other. “So long? Who are you?”

 

“I am Orastes, once a priest of Mitra. This man is Amalric, baron of

Tor, in Nemedia; this other is Tarascus, younger brother of the king

of Nemedia; and this tall man is Valerius, rightful heir of the throne

of Aquilonia.”

 

“Why have you given me life?” demanded Xaltotun. “What do you require

of me?”

 

The man was now fully alive and awake, his keen eyes reflecting the

working of an unclouded brain. There was no hesitation or uncertainty

in his manner. He came directly to the point, as one who knows that no

man gives something for nothing. Orastes met him with equal candor.

 

“We have opened the doors of hell this night to free your soul and

return it to your body because we need your aid. We wish to place

Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia, and to win for Valerius the crown

of Aquilonia. With your necromancy you can aid us.”

 

Xaltotun’s mind was devious and full of unexpected slants.

 

“You must be deep in the arts yourself, Orastes, to have been able to

restore my life. How is it that a priest of Mitra knows of the Heart

of Ahriman, and the incantations of Skelos?”

 

“I am no longer a priest of Mitra,” answered Orastes. “I was cast

forth from my order because of my delving in black magic. But for

Amalric there I might have been burned as a magician.

 

“But that left me free to pursue my studies. I journeyed in Zamora, in

Vendhya, in Stygia, and among the haunted jungles of Khitai. I read

the ironbound books of Skelos, and talked with unseen creatures in

deep wells, and faceless shapes in black reeking jungles. I obtained a

glimpse of your sarcophagus in the demon-haunted crypts below the

black giant-walled temple of Set in the hinterlands of Stygia, and I

learned of the arts that would bring back life to your shriveled

corpse. From moldering manuscripts