Читать книгу The Hour of the Dragon - Robert E. Howard - Страница 9
ОглавлениеPART II
Weird Tales, January 1936, with second part of "The Hour of the Dragon"
"Over it, floating like a giant mirage, hovered the bearded countenance of Xaltotun."
A stirring and exciting weird story about a barbarian adventurer who made himself a king, and the strange talisman jewel that was known as the Heart of Ahriman.
The Story Thus Far
CONAN, a barbarian adventurer who has made himself king of Aquilonia, finds himself pitted against Xaltotun, an ancient sorcerer and adept of black magic who has been dead for three thousand years. The priests who poisoned Xaltotun had mummified his body with their dark arts, keeping all his organs intact. He is revived by means of a flaming jewel, known as the Heart of Ahriman, which had been stolen from the wizard during his life.
With Xaltotun's aid, the conspirators who had brought him back from death place Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia and invade Aquilonia in an attempt to overthrow Conan and make Valerius king of Aquilonia in his place. Xaltotun causes the cliffs to fall on Conan's army and captures Conan, who is mourned as dead by his countrymen. Valerius ascends the throne of Aquilonia.
Xaltotun confines Conan, heavily chained, in the dungeons of horror beneath his palace in Belverus, capital city of Nemedia, from which he is rescued after a weird and gruesome adventure, by Zenobia, a girl of the king's seraglio, who had fallen in love with him when she saw him from a distance on his visit to the Nemedian king the year before.
The story continues:
