Conan the Barbarian: Black Colossus
()
About this ebook
Read more from Robert E. Howard
The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Start Conan the Barbarian Super Pack Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian: The Complete Weird Tales Omnibus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Conan Saga Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Occult Detective Megapack: 29 Classic Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Nails: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Complete Works of Robert E. Howard (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®: 40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Horror Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Adventure MEGAPACK ®: 25 Classic Adventure Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Weird Fiction MEGAPACK ®: 25 Stories from Weird Tales Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Adventures of Solomon Kane Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales of Cthulhu Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Christmas Stories: 120+ Authors, 250+ Magical Christmas Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Robert E. Howard Western Super Pack Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Conan the Barbarian
Related ebooks
Kellory the Warlock Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Weird Tales of Conan the Barbarian Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Valley of the Worm: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Vol. 5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAgainst That Shining Darkness: Complete Trilogy: Against That Shining Darkness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amra, Vol 2 No 59 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmra, Vol 2, No 18: December, 1961 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Obanaax: And Other Tales of Heroes and Horrors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSwords & Knives & Sorcery & Magic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTides of War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Spectre Cycle [The fifteenth Dray Prescot omnibus] Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sword and Sorcery Adventure: Winter's Cold Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Valley of the Man Vultures: Thurvok, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShadows in Zamboula Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConan and Old Crem (A Tale of Conan of Cimmeria) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Amra, Vol 2, No 10 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sleeping Tyrant Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmra, Vol 2, No 15: May, 1961 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeigh Brackett: Golden Age Space Opera Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Colossus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Colossus: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Black Colossus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJewels of Gwahlur Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJewels of Gwahlur, Reboxed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Suppressed Gospels and Epistles of the Original New Testament Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil in Iron, Respawned Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJewels of Gwahlur Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCusp Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJewels of Gwahlur: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil in Iron Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Black River and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Classics For You
The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden (Original Classic Edition) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quiet American Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Conan the Barbarian
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Conan the Barbarian - Robert E. Howard
Published by Ali Ribelli Edizioni.
www.aliribelli.com - redazione@aliribelli.com
Conan the Barbarian
Black Colossus
by Robert E. Howard
Index
I
II
III
IV
I
Only the age-old silence brooded over the mysterious ruins of Kuthchemes, but Fear was there; Fear quivered in the mind of Shevatas, the thief, driving his breath quick and sharp against his clenched teeth.
He stood, the one atom of life amidst the colossal monuments of desolation and decay. Not even a vulture hung like a black dot in the vast blue vault of the sky that the sun glazed with its heat. On every hand rose the grim relics of another, forgotten age: huge broken pillars, thrusting up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; long wavering lines of crumbling walls; fallen cyclopean blocks of stone; shattered images, whose horrific features the corroding winds and dust-storms had half erased. From horizon to horizon no sign of life: only the sheer breathtaking sweep of the naked desert, bisected by the wandering line of a long-dry river course; in the midst of that vastness the glimmering fangs of the ruins, the columns standing up like broken masts of sunken ships—all dominated by the towering ivory dome before which Shevatas stood trembling.
The base of this dome was a gigantic pedestal of marble rising from what had once been a terraced eminence on the banks of the ancient river. Broad steps led up to a great bronze door in the dome, which rested on its base like the half of some titanic egg. The dome itself was of pure ivory, which shone as if unknown hands kept it polished. Likewise shone the spired gold cap of the pinnacle, and the inscription which sprawled about the curve of the dome in golden hieroglyphics yards long. No man on earth could read those characters, but Shevatas shuddered at the dim conjectures they raised. For he came of a very old race, whose myths ran back to shapes undreamed of by contemporary tribes.
Shevatas was wiry and lithe, as became a master-thief of Zamora. His small round head was shaven, his only garment a loin-cloth of scarlet silk. Like all his race, he was very dark, his narrow vulture-like face set off by his keen black eyes. His long, slender and tapering fingers were quick and nervous as the wings of a moth. From a gold-scaled girdle hung a short, narrow, jewel-hilted sword in a sheath of ornamented leather. Shevatas handled the weapon with apparently exaggerated care. He even seemed to flinch away from the contact of the sheath with his naked thigh. Nor was his care without reason.
This was Shevatas, a thief among thieves, whose name was spoken with awe in the dives of the Maul and the dim shadowy recesses beneath the temples of Bel, and who lived in songs and myths for a thousand years. Yet fear ate at the heart of Shevatas as he stood before the ivory dome of Kuthchemes. Any fool could see there was something unnatural about the structure; the winds and suns of three thousand years had lashed it, yet its gold and ivory rose bright and glistening as the day it was reared by nameless hands on the bank of the nameless river.
This unnaturalness was in keeping with the general aura of these devil-haunted ruins. This desert was the mysterious expanse lying southeast of the lands of Shem. A few days' ride on camel-back to the southwest, as Shevatas knew, would bring the traveller within sight of the great river Styx at the point where it turned at right angles with its former course, and flowed westward to empty at last into the distant sea. At the point of its bend began the land of Stygia, the dark-bosomed mistress of the south, whose domains, watered by the great river, rose sheer out of the surrounding desert.
Eastward, Shevatas knew, the desert shaded into steppes stretching to the Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, rising in barbaric splendor on the shores of the great inland sea. A week's ride northward the desert ran into a tangle of barren hills, beyond which lay the fertile uplands of Koth, the southernmost realm of the Hyborian races. Westward the desert merged