Malureon’s enraged eyes turn towards you. “Fool!” he snarls. “That sword was consecrated by the elven gods themselves. And I am their champion, I am their avenger, it is I who shall burn away the blight of the lesser races that corrupts their world. That sword cannot harm me!” Green fire crackles around his fingers, and he points a hand at you. “And you shall watch as I burn…”

Malureon’s shadow snaps like an overstretched cord, lines of silver flame erupting from the sword and soaking into the shadow. The end of the shadow holding Sidorna frays into nothingness, and she falls to her knees, coughing and wheezing. The other end of the shadow, still rimmed in silver flame, snaps back into Malureon’s chest, the impact flinging him against the parapet.

He’s right. The silver fire does not harm him.

It does, however, set the black veins beneath his skin ablaze.

Malureon screams as silver fire bursts from his skin, erupts from his eyes and nose and mouth. He stumbles, loses his balance, and topples backwards over the battlements. You see him plummet towards the earth, streaming silver fire like a comet, screaming all the way down, until he strikes the roof of the Prince’s palace, a long, long way below, and the silver flame winks out.

You look at the burning sword in your hand. Apparently the elven gods did not share Malureon’s opinion of himself.

On the altar, Lady Miranda shivers, stirs, and sits up.

“I say,” she says to no one in particular. “I have a terrific headache.”

As you go to help Sidorna up, you hear something rasp against the battlements, and to your astonishment you see Ankylon haul himself up. Your rope and grapnel, you realize. It’s still attached to the parapet, and Ankylon must have grabbed it after Malureon knocked him from the griffin’s back.

“Lady Miranda,” says Ankylon. “Are you all right?”

“I am,” she says. “Thank to you. And to Sidorna. And this clever thief here.”

You hand Ankylon his sword back.

“That was clever work,” he says, sliding the blade into its scabbard. “Stabbing his shadow like that. And you, master bard. That song…how could you have known?”

Sidorna shrugs and rubs at her throat. “Well I know the power of song to soften even the hardest of hearts. But since that seemed unlikely, I was hoping to distract him until you could take him.”

“Malureon’s wife used to sing it, in the days before the elven kingdom fell.” Ankylon shakes his head, eyes distant. “So long ago…”

A thunderclap interrupts his reverie. Green lightning leaps from cloud to cloud overhead, each stroke louder than before, and the clouds begin to rotate faster and faster. The wind whips to a gale, and it is all you can do to keep your balance.

“What’s happening?” shouts Miranda.

“Malureon’s ritual!” says Ankylon. “He summoned vast power to release the Great Dragon, but now that he’s dead, it’s spinning out of control. It’s going to discharge, explosively.”

That sounds bad.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” says Sidorna.

Ankylon nods, lifts his hand to his mouth, and whistles, the shrill sound clear even over the howling wind. A moment later his griffin and Sidorna’s griffin appear, fighting against the wind, and perch upon the battlements.

“Go!” says Ankylon, and he helps Lady Miranda onto his griffin, and swings up after her. You are only a few steps from Sidorna’s griffin when a blast of green lightning arcs down, shattering the stone altar, spraying hot rubble in all directions. The blast knocks you against the parapet, and for a terrifying instant you think you’re going to follow Malureon over the edge, but you recover your balance.

The griffins, however, panic, rising into the air with a shriek. You hear Lady Miranda shouting, see Ankylon fight against his griffin, but the panicked beasts pay no heed, fleeing towards the city below.

The wind speeds even faster, and a pulsing green light begins to shine from the writhing clouds.

“Jaeger!” shouts Sidorna. “What now?”

You might be able to race down the Tower’s stairs, but you doubt that you and Sidorna will get far enough away to escape the impending blast.

But your rope and grapnel are still attached to the battlements, and the rope is just long enough to reach one of the lower towers of the Prince’s palace. If you and Sidorna jump, and swing around Red Dragon Tower to absorb your momentum, you might be able to land neatly atop the lower tower.

Or you’ll miscalculate, and splatter yourself all over the cobblestones of the street.

And before you can do anything else, Malureon’s shadow boils from floor and wraps itself around you. It lifts you into the air, its coils holding you immobile, and struggle as you might you cannot break free. Malureon straightens up, coughing, while the wound on his back closes and his shadow holds you immobile.

“You,” says Malureon, blinking his mercury-colored eyes in surprise. “The thief Coriolus planned to frame for his crime.” The magician’s lip twitches. “He was so concerned about escaping the Prince’s wrath. Little did he know that he and the Prince would have burned with all Cintarra.” He shakes his head. “It has been centuries since anyone wounded me. You are valorous, for human vermin, and such valor should be repaid. So you shall have a quicker death than the rest of this filthy city.”

The shadow ripples, and you realize that he is simply going to throw you off the Tower and continue his spell to raise the Great Dragon.

Then silver light falls over the Tower, and you see a griffin descending in a battle dive. Ankylon rides the griffin’s back, his sword ablaze with silver flame, and another shiver – perhaps fear? – goes through the shadow holding you in place. The griffin plummets towards Malureon, and you see Ankylon draw back his sword for the kill.

But Malureon is faster. His shadow coils like a spring and throws you into Ankylon. You crash into Ankylon with bone-jarring force, knocking the elven High Captain from the saddle of his griffin.  The griffin squawks and circles away in confusion. Ankylon tumbles over the battlements and vanishes, his sword clanging against the floor next to Malureon. You almost follow Ankylon over the edge, but you seize a battlement and hang on, clawing for purchase. The wind tugs at your cloak, and you feel yourself losing your grip, emptiness yawning up beneath you…

“Still alive?” murmurs Malureon. He shakes his head, and his shadow rises up behind him like a serpent ready to strike. “You humans. How you struggle to protect your meaningless, useless little lives. As if the pathetic thirty or forty years of life you still possess have any value or purpose.”

He crooks his finger, and his shadow swoops towards you.

And then it stops.

You hear someone singing.

You turn your head, and see Sidorna’s griffin perched on the far side of the Tower’s crown. Sidorna sings, her voice ringing over the Tower, and you recognize the song. It is an ancient elven aria, the lament of an elven woman whose husband and sons went off to war against the Dark Powers, and never returned. Grief and despair and unutterable longing fill the song, brought to life by Sidorna’s powerful voice, and even as you struggle to get a better grip on the battlement, you feel a brief wave of sorrow.

But the song strikes Malureon like a thunderbolt.

Malureon stares at her, his hands clenching, and for a moment hideous anguish fills his face, pain without limit, without end. A dozen expressions flicker over his black-veined face, grief and despair and perhaps even a hint of regret.

And then they all vanish beneath volcanic rage.

He screams his fury, and the thunder overhead echoes him. He throws out his hands, and his shadow leaps across the Tower’s crown to wrap around Sidorna, dragging her from the griffin, which flees with a shriek of terror. Sidorna struggles, and you see her face turn red and then purple as the shadow wraps around her throat, choking her.

“You dare!” screams Malureon. “You dare to defile that song with your filthy lips! Human maggot! You will suffer for this, you suffer, suffer, suffer…”

His ranting dissolves into an incoherent howl of rage, and Sidorna’s eyes roll up into her head. But all of Malureon’s attention is bent upon Sidorna, and the magician seems to have forgotten you in his fury.

You heave yourself over the battlements, and your eye falls upon Ankylon’s sword, the blade still burning with silver flame.

It is a long way down.

Fortunately, the Tower’s top is no more than sixty or seventy feet above you. You haul yourself hand over hand over the rope, the scabbard of your rapier bouncing off your leg. As you climb, a flare of green light bursts in the sky overhead, and a tremor goes through the Tower.

You reach the Tower’s crown, and crouch for a moment behind the low battlements to take in the situation.

Lady Miranda Aventine lies upon a stone slab, conscious but apparently frozen with some sort of spell. Malureon stands over her, a dagger in his hand, his black robes streaming in the wind. His shadow also billows behind him like a loose cloak, or perhaps the wings of a hunting dragon.

As you watch, he slashes the dagger across his palm, and lets some of his black, slime-like blood spatter into a silver goblet.

“Hear me, Great Dragon!” Malureon bellows into the sky. “By my Power and my blood, hear my words! Long have you lain slumbering beneath Cintarra. Let now my power rouse you, let now this spell bring you from sleep! Behold, I bring the blood of King Aventine, he who bound you! Let this blood bring you to life once more. Let your heart pound with life and fury again! Let the blood rush through your veins! Let the blast of your nostrils summon the hurricane! And let your fire, Great Dragon, set all the world aflame!”

Malureon sets the goblet on the altar, next to Lady Miranda. In the distance, you see a glimmer of silver light against the clouds.

Ankylon’s sword.

But even as you see the light, Malureon raises the dagger over his head, the blade pointed at Lady Miranda’s heart. He’s going to kill Miranda and use her blood to summon the Great Dragon out of its sleep.

And if you don’t think of a clever way to stop him – right now – you are going to die, along with a few hundred thousand other people.

“Go!” he yells. His sword lashes out, the silver flames lining the blade flashing, and one of Malureon’s enchanted shadows shivers, shrieks, and shrinks to a normal shadow once more. “We shall catch up to you. Delay Malureon until I arrive!”

Sidorna springs into the griffin’s saddle, and you settle behind her.

“I do hope I can remember how to fly one of these things,” mutters Sidorna, gripping the reins.

You ask if she has ever actually done this before.

“Of course. Well. Once,” says Sidorna, and snaps the reins.

The griffin leaps from the roof of the Magician’s Tomb, spreads its wings, and soars into the sky over Cintarra. Sidorna lets out a delighted whoop as the griffin flies towards the Prince’s palace. You have to admit that the view of the city is grand. Or it would be, if the ridiculous red plume of Sidorna’s hat did not keep blowing into your face.

The Prince’s palace comes into sight, a looming edifice of fortress walls and buttressed tower. But one tower, the Red Dragon Tower, stands higher than all the others. The storm clouds overhead are beginning to swirl around it, and the lightning flashing between the clouds shines an unnatural shade of green.

Evidently Malureon began his spell before he came to steal Lady Miranda.

You see a black shape rising towards the pinnacle of the Red Dragon Tower. Malureon, still riding his nightmare, dragging Lady Miranda in his shadow like a fish caught in a net.

“Now!” says Sidorna, snapping the reins. “Avaunt, villain!”

The griffin lets out a deafening battle shriek and swoops upon the nightmare.

Malureon’s head turns, his mercury-colored eyes narrowed, and the nightmare banks, curving around the Tower, and the griffin turns in pursuit. You fling a dagger at Malureon, and the weapon buries itself to the handle in the elven magician’s shoulder. But again black slime bubbles from the wound, and the dagger crumbles into ash. Malureon doesn’t even seem notice. You wonder why his shadow doesn’t reach out it snap your neck, and you realize that it can’t, not while it’s dragging Lady Miranda through the air.

The nightmare climbs, making for the Red Dragon Tower’s crown, and the griffin pumps its wings in pursuit. But then the nightmare dives, folding its leathery wings, and a blast of scarlet flame lances from its mouth. The griffin swerves to the side to avoid the flames. Unfortunately, it swerves sharply enough that you topple from the saddle, and you see the ground rushing towards you.

Rather quickly.

However, you’re within reach of the Tower’s side, and if you act at once, you might be able to arrest your fall before the ground does.

You hear a brief scream, followed shortly thereafter by a very terminal-sounding crunch.

“Ha! Well done,” says Lady Miranda.

You turn, and see something fly overhead.

Griffins, dozens of them. On the back of each rides one of the Cintarra Guard, and you remember that the Prince maintains an elite band of griffin-riding soldiers for dangerous missions. Ankylon rides the lead griffin, sword in his right hand, and dagger in his left, and even as his mount swoops to a landing on the Tomb’s roof, he leaps free and charges into the melee. The sword in his right hand begins to burn with a strange silver fire, and the ghouls cringe away from the light. The Guards land nearby, dismount, and storm into the battle. You see Mulgo among them, laughing maniacally as he lays about with a nail-studded wooden club.

In retrospect, sending Mulgo to Ankylon with Coriolus’s letters was a very good idea. And as you watch Ankylon mow his way through soldiers and ghouls alike, you are very glad you didn’t try to fight him.

In a matter of moments it is over, with the ghouls destroyed or driven off, the soldiers slain or surrendered, and Baron Coriolus standing with his hands open, two Guards holding their blades at his throat. Ankylon stalks in your direction, his sword still flickering with silver fire, his scarred face stern.

“Lady Miranda,” he calls. “Are you injured?”

“No, I am quite all right,” she says. “Thanks to Sidorna and the master thief here.”

Ankylon’s cold eyes flick in your direction, and he almost smiles. “Indeed. He must be a clever fellow. He got away from me, did he not?”

“Quite,” says Lady Miranda. “Indeed, he saved my life at considerable risk to his own. Now, High Captain, if you would be so good as to deal with the Baron?”

“Of course,” says Ankylon. “Baron Coriolus! In the of the Prince, I arrest you for treason, kidnapping, conspiracy against the lawful government of Cintarra, and attempted murder.”

Coriolus sneers, and opens his mouth to answer…and then his face drains of all color.

The wind picks up.

All at once every single griffin begins to shift and look back and forth, some shrieking as if threatened.

And a black shape drops from the sky.

It looks like a great black horse with enormous leathery wings. Fires dance in its eyes and nostrils, outlining the jagged fangs filling its mouth. You recognize the creature as a nightmare, a horror conjured by magicians steeped in the darkest spells. Malureon sits upon the creature’s back, his robes flying in the wind, the black veins beneath his skin throbbing and pulsing.

Coriolus laughs. “My magician! Kill them, I command you! Kill them all, and Lady Miranda shall be yours as…”

Malureon’s eyes narrow, and his shadow billows out like a wind-tossed cloak. It wraps around Coriolus, and the Baron barely has time to scream before the shadow snaps his neck, dropping him to a lifeless heap against the Tomb’s roof.

“Useless idiot,” mutters the elven magician.

The nightmare hovers over Coriolus’s corpse, and Malureon’s mercury-colored eyes shift to Lady Miranda.

“Malureon!” says Ankylon, astonished. “You are still alive after all these centuries? I had thought you perished in the fall of the elven kingdom.”

“Ankylon,” says Malureon. “We are of the same kindred. And for that, I shall give you this chance. Give Lady Miranda to me, leave Cintarra, and your life shall be spared.”

“What is the meaning of this?” says Ankylon.

“Have you not realized it?” says Malureon. “Lady Miranda Aventine is the last descendant of King Aventine, he who bound the Great Dragon in its sleep below this city. By the shedding of her blood, I shall awaken the Great Dragon, and loose it upon the world once more.”

“Are you mad?” shouts Sidorna. “That would…that would destroy the entire city! Tens of thousands of people would die. And a Great Dragon would not stop there. Everything within a thousand miles would be laid waste!”

“Yes!” hisses Malureon. “I remember when Cintarra was an elven city, a city of music, of light, of beauty and art. And I remember when the elven kingdom stretched from the sunrise to the sunset, and my wife and children lived in eternal harmony with others of our kind. And then the lesser races came. And now look at Cintarra! A stinking cesspit, a slum filled with human vermin and orcish maggots and dwarven rodents! No!” His voice rises to a scream of fury. “I will see the world burn rather than allow this travesty to continue. You will burn! You all will burn!”

“The elven kingdom is lost!” says Ankylon. “It can never be restored. And will you slay tens of thousands, drown your hands in innocent blood, all to stay your pain?”

“You would stand with these maggots against one of your own race?” says Malureon. He draws himself up, hands hooked into claws, his shadow circling like a hunting hawk. “Then perish with them!”

“Take him down!” shouts Ankylon.

The Guards, and even a few of the Baron’s surviving men, raise their crossbows and fire. Some of the bolts strike the nightmare, and bounce harmlessly away. A dozen slam into Malureon’s chest and stomach. But black slime, not blood, issues from his wounds, and the bolts dissolve into ash. Malureon screams an incantation, thrusting his hands to the sky, and dazzling green fire blazes around his fingers, throwing stark shadows behind most of the soldiers and the griffins.

And the shadows come to life and attack. The Tomb’s roof dissolves into chaos as men and griffins struggle against their own shadows. Malureon gestures again, and his shadow shoots out, flying past you, and wraps around the Lady Heir like a rope.

“Miranda!” shouts Sidorna, but the nightmare takes to the sky again, Malureon dragging Miranda behind him like a fish caught upon a hook.

You brace yourself for the attack of your shadow, but nothing happens. You realize that you and Sidorna were standing at the edge of the Tomb’s roof, and were too far away for Malureon’s spell to effect you.

“Jaeger!” says Sidorna, pointing at one of the griffins. The griffin, likewise, seems to have been far enough away to escape Malureon’s spell. “I know where that magician is going to cast the ritual! He has to do it from the top of the Red Dragon Tower in the Prince’s palace. The Great Dragon is imprisoned underneath it. We have to take that griffin and stop him!”

She’s right, but you hesitate. The scepter in your left hand started to vibrate the instant Malureon cast his spell, and you might be able to use it to command the enchanted shadows. And then Ankylon and the Guard would be free to help you against Malureon. Which would be good, as you wouldn’t last very long against Malureon in a direct fight.

But if you delay too long, Malureon will kill Lady Miranda and finish his ritual – and you suspect that would be very, very bad.

The enchanted scepter falls from his grasp, and you snatch it up in your free hand.

At once every last ghoul turns to look at you, their rotting expressions almost expectant.

“No!” roars the Guildmaster.

You shout for the ghouls to attack Coriolus’s men, and they surge forward with a snarl. The ghouls and the Baron’s soldiers clash in renewed battle, talon striking against shadow-draped sword. Within a few heartbeats, every man and ghoul is distracted with the battle, and the way is clear to the stairs.

But the Guildmaster leaps at you, his rapier a steely blur.

“Curse you, Jaeger!” he screams, attacking. “Will you not die already?”

His furious assault drives you to the edge of the Tomb’s roof, and you can retreat no further. Out of the corner of your eye you see Sidorna and Lady Miranda running towards you, and you have the sudden impression of something large and winged circling over the top of the Tomb. But if you don’t think of something to do, right now, the Guildmaster’s either going to skewer you or force you over the edge.

Unfortunately, the wind picks up the green smoke and blows it away from the roof top in short order. You don’t even have time to get to the edge of the roof before the smoke clears, leaving Coriolus and the Guildmaster staring at you in bemusement.

“You know,” says the Guildmaster, “if Jaeger here had only gotten himself captured by Ankylon, we wouldn’t be having these problems.”

“It seems you have a point,” says Coriolus.

“I suggest that we kill him first,” says the Guildmaster. “Then we’ll have Lady Miranda, and I’m sure we can negotiate a reasonable end to hostilities between us.”

“I agree,” says Coriolus.

“I’ll offer you a discount on Lady Miranda if you kill that mouthy bard, too,” says Guildmaster.

“Deal,” says Coriolus, and gestures to his men.

Their crossbows come up, and loose a storm of flashing steel bolts.

A short time later you wake up, lying on your back, in considerable pain from the five (or is it six?) crossbow bolts in your torso and legs. Sidorna lies nearby, studded with bolts – dead or dying, you cannot say. Slain soldiers litter the Tomb’s roof, and to your surprise you see Coriolus and the Guildmaster among them.

There is no trace of Lady Miranda.

Vaguely, you wonder why the ghouls have not eaten you yet.

You stare at the night sky and notice that, oddly enough, the storm clouds appear to be swirling around the highest tower of the Prince’s palace.

Then you hear a deafening roar, so loud it sounds as if the earth itself has split in two. The ground heaves and shakes, and the Prince’s palace disintegrates in a blazing pillar of flame that turns night to hellish day. A wall of flame a thousand feet tall rips through Cintarra, turning stone to lava and wood to ash – and no doubt doing the same to flesh.

As the burning wave yawns over the Magician’s Tomb, your last thought is that just maybe the smoke bomb was not the best idea.

###

Looks like the Surgeon General was right; smoking was really bad for Jaeger’s health.*

You flip back to the previous page. What SHOULD Jaeger have done?

Fortunately, you have a lot of experience moving through darkened rooms (you are a master thief, after all) and you race across the crypt to Lady Miranda and pull the gag from her mouth.

“I say!” says Lady Miranda. “Who are you, and what…”

You cut her ropes with your dagger, and murmur that while her ladyship undoubtedly has many questions, now is a really excellent time to shut up and run. Miranda grunts something that sounds affirmative, and you grab her arm and hurry her across the crypt.

You hear one of the ghouls scramble up the stairs to the Tomb’s main chamber, screaming its head off. Undoubtedly it has gone to warn the Guildmaster that something has gone amiss.

That’s not good.

You race up the stairs to the Tomb’s upper levels, Lady Miranda in tow. The stairs end in a basalt door, and you push it open, stumbling back onto the Tomb’s roof. The wind billows and blows around you, tugging at your cloak, and you see black storm clouds writhing overhead, flickering with lightning. Sidorna still stands gazing down into the oculus, and she whirls at your approach, and her face splits into a delighted grin.

“You did it!” she says, hurrying over.

“Sidorna?” says Lady Miranda. “What in the name of thunder is going on here?”

“We’re rescuing you, of course,” says Sidorna.

You point out that while you may have gotten away from the crypt, you are still standing atop a Tomb full of soldiers and ghouls who want Lady Miranda dead, and leaving before Coriolus and the Guildmaster resolve their differences would be a good idea.

“Yes, of course,” says Sidorna, hurrying to the edge of the roof. “The rope…”

A pair of ghouls burst from the rooftop door, followed by the Guildmaster, a rapier in his right hand and the enchanted scepter in his left. More ghouls pour out after him, until a dozen of the creatures stand upon the roof. The Guildmaster sees Lady Miranda, and smiles. Then he sees you, and his face twists with fury.

“Jaeger!” he roars. “I should have known! Whenever anything goes wrong, you’re always involved somehow! Why couldn’t you have gotten yourself captured by Ankylon like you were supposed to?”

You tell the Guildmaster that getting captured didn’t quite fit into your schedule, and he looks on the verge of a rage-induced stroke.

“He seems rather jealous of you,” says Sidorna. “No doubt you make him feel inadequate. And he is rather short…”

“Shut up!” says the Guildmaster, pointing the scepter, and the ghouls lope to his side. “Kill Jaeger, and kill that mouthy bard! Take Lady Miranda alive; we’ll hold her until that idiot Coriolus pays the rest of my fee…”

Baron Coriolus’s soldiers storm onto the Tomb’s roof, shadow-flickering swords in hand, followed by the Baron himself. The ghouls whirl to face the soldiers.

“You double-crossing blackguard!” bellows Coriolus, pointing his sword at the Guildmaster. “You were supposed to have delivered Lady Miranda to me! Did you think you could extort more money?”

“Extort?” says the Guildmaster. “You cheated me! Ten thousand crowns, Coriolus, that’s what we agreed on, and you only paid four thousand. Pay up, or I’ll release the wench, and we’ll see what the Prince has to say about all of this.”

“Or,” says Coriolus, “I’ll just kill you all, right now!”

“Try it!” says the Guildmaster, waving the scepter. “My little pets will enjoy feasting on your innards.”

The two men glare at each other, the soldiers gripping their swords, the ghouls hissing and snarling.

Mulgo does not disappoint. A dazzling flash lights the Magician’s Tomb, followed by a thunderclap, and at once think greenish smoke billows up, filling the main chamber. Both Baron Coriolus and the Guildmaster start howling curses, and the Baron’s soldiers flail about in confusion. Even the ghouls seem disoriented; ghouls hunt through their noses, and apparently the smoke is thick enough to baffle their sense of smell.

No one looks up. No one ever looks up.

You hook your grapnel to the edge of the oculus and leap down, swinging from the rope. You land near the archway, and slip past the Guildmaster and to the stairs, using the smoke to screen your movements. The stairs end in a gloomy crypt, black marble sarcophagi lying beneath the groin-vaulted ceiling.

Lady Miranda Aventine lies atop one of the sarcophagi, bound hand and found. She’s pretty enough, but nonetheless is quite the largest woman you’ve ever seen. She must stand at least six and a half feet tall, and looks as if she would be more comfortable in field plate and a full helm than a noblewoman’s gown and hat. You’d heard that the Aventines had elven blood in their lineage, but hill giants seem more likely.

Behind the sarcophagus, you see another stairwell leading up. You suspect that it leads to the Tomb’s higher levels. From there you can rejoin Sidorna, and make your escape with Lady Miranda.

Almost too easy.

And even as the thought crosses your mind, a hiss echoes through the crypt. Three ghouls lope out of the shadow, their burning eyes fixed on you, their black tongues rasping over their yellowed fangs.

It seems the Guildmaster had enough foresight not to leave his prisoner unguarded.

You draw your rapier and dagger and consider your next move.

Kull is very obviously an earlier, less-developed version of Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria; in fact, one of the Kull stories, “By This Axe I Rule!” gets transmuted directly into “Phoenix on the Sword”, the first Conan story. Howard obviously improved his skills as a writer by the time he got to Conan, especially with stories like “The Hour of the Dragon” and “Red Nails”.

Despite that, Kull is his own man. Unlike Conan, who has a strong practical intelligence, Kull is more abstract, more cerebral. Like Conan (and Howard himself), Kull suffers from paralyzing bouts of melancholia. Unlike Conan, who deals with his difficulties with frenetic activity, Kull has a tendency to brood, and so in some ways is a more realistic character.

On the other hand, Kull tends to overthink things, which gets him into trouble. In other words, he occasionally picks up the Idiot Ball for the sake of the plot. Conan rarely did so. Part of this was the fact that Howard had progressed as a writer by the time he got to Conan. But a big part of this was Kull’s own habit of overthinking. In “The Cat and the Skull”, he is taken in by an incredible obvious ruse simply by his own tendency to philosophize. In “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, he is enspelled by a wizard’s enchanted mirror, unable to decide if he is real or an illusion. Conan’s response to a wizard threatening him with an enchanted mirror would have been to sensibly smash the mirror, kill the wizard, and then to loot the wizard’s home.

You can see the difference in Kull’s and Conan’s philosophical outlooks quite readily. In “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, Kull says while gazing into the wizard’s mirror:

“He is I, a shadow of myself, part of myself – I can bring him into being or slay him at my will; yet” – he halted, strange thoughts whispering through the vast dim recesses of his mind like shadowy bats flying through a great cavern – “yet where is he when I stand not in front of a mirror? May it be in man’s power thus lightly to form and destroy a shadow of life and existence? How do I know that when I setup back from the mirror he vanished into the void of Naught?

“Nay, by Valka, am I the man or is he? Which of us is the ghost of the other? Mayhap these mirrors are but windows through which we look into another world. Does he think the same of me? Am I no more than a shadow, a reflection of himself – to him, as he to me?”

Conan discusses the same sort of philosophical conundrum to his lover Belit in “Queen of the Black Coast” – and his attitude is quite different:

“I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

That may explain why Howard experienced more success with Conan than with Kull, and why Conan remains fairly well-known to this day – vigorous action makes for more engaging reading than philosophical brooding. The protagonist has to take action, after all, and it’s easier to write epic operatic soundtracks* for characters who take action.

Though you might recall a few weeks ago I looked over the Conan stories to see just how often Conan did, in fact, get the girl. In the Kull stories, Kull doesn’t get the girl even once – no wonder he has a tendency to think too much!

-JM

*Incidentally, I highly recommend the “Age of Conan” soundtrack, even if – like me – you have no desire to play the game whatsoever.