In 1967 Lancer began the tide of Sword & Sorcery publishing with the purple-edged paperbacks of Conan. These original volumes (and I chuckle as I use that term because there is little original about them, other than they were the first Conan books I saw) took the old Gnome collections and added new pastiches written by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter and Bjorn Nyborg.
The twelfth volume in this series, Conan of Aquilonia is placed at Number 11 chronologically. Conan of the Isles would be Conan’s finale, though written earlier. Conan of Aquilonia follows the events of The Hour of the Dragon (#9 Conan the Conqueror) which places Conan on the throne of Aquilonia and after the Hyperborians kidnap his queen Zenobia in The Return of Conan (#10 Conan the Avenger). A new character is introduced, Conan’s twelve-year old son, Conn. It also sees the end of one of Conan’s greatest enemies, Thoth-Amon.
Conan of Aquilonia has a twisted history of its own. First off, it was written as four novellas, each sold to Ted White’s Fantastic. This might sound like a good place for these stories but in fact it was virtually the only place. Fantastic was a low-paying market with a small audience. Better than a fanzine but far below the magazines of even the 1960s. But where else was there to publish? The Science Fiction markets like Analog and Fantasy & Science Fiction would not touch it, while others like Galaxy, IF and Fantastic Universe had all bitten the dust. There was Amazing Stories, but that too was edited by Ted White and of no real difference than Fantastic other than genre. There may have been a boom in S&S books between 1967 and 1978; there was no boom in magazines.
“The Witch of the Mists” (Fantastic, August 1972 – with a nice Jeff Jones cover) opens the novel with Conan hunting on the edge of Aquilonia’s borders. His son Conn, who has accompanied him, is lead astray by a white deer. The deer turns out to be a witch who kidnaps him and takes him to Pohiola in Hyperborea. A trail of white painted hands is left for Conan to guide him to the keep, as a warning note tells him to come alone. While imprisoned Conn learns that it is his father’s old enemy, Thoth-Amon who is behind the witch’s actions.
Conan follows the trail, battling with the degenerate beastmen, in-breed offspring of murderers and bandits, and traversing swamps. He arrives in Pohiola to find four of his enemies (sorcerers of The Black Ring, a conclave of evil magicians) waiting, Louhi the witchwoman , Pra-Eun, Lord of the Scarlet Circle, Nenaunir, Lord of Zembabwei and Thoth-Amon. The wizards want Conan killed immediately but Louhi offers a presentation to show how small the Cimmerian really is.
A circle of witchmen, seven foot tall men, pale of skin and hair who dress in skin tight black clothes with white ivory masks, attack Conan with their weird rods. Conan defeats all three of them and upsets a giant copper dish full of coals onto Louhi and Pra-Eun. Thoth-Amon and Nenaunir teleport away. Louhi bursts into flames and goes running off to her death. Pra-Eun uses his magic to freeze Conan and he is about to crush his heart with another spell when a crossbow bolt penetrates his head. Prospero and the cavalry show up in the nick of time to save Conn and Conan.
There are small Mythos correlations (probably from Carter) as well as a lot of references to previous stories (in particular Conan the Avenger). The authors build up Conan’s past to resemble a long campaign against evil (and Thoth-Amon in particular) that isn’t truly Howardian. The random career of Conan is just that– random. This book attempts to tie it all up in a nice package that may or may not be to the reader’s taste. The comic adaptation is pretty close though as Roy Thomas says in an editorial, they opted to forego the graying moustache that deCamp/Carter gave Conan.
The second installment is “Black Sphinx of Nebthu” (Fantastic, July 1973) receiving a lackluster cover by Harry Roland. After crushing an invasion by Duke Pantho of Zingara, Conan is visited by the head druid of Pictland, a drunk old man named Diviatix. He tells Conan that the failed assault by Pantho was spawned out of Thoth-Amon’s sorcery. Conan also learns where Thoth-Amon is hiding after his butt-kicking in the last story.
Conan takes his army in the direction of Stygia to find and destroy the wizard once and for all. He brings with him Conn and a secret weapon in a box of orichalc. They cross the Styx and then a desert to the abandoned city of Nebthu. There they find a ruined metropolis that bears a sphinx of black stone carved in the image of the ghoul-hyena of Chaos. The army camps out and Conan, several officers, Diviatix and Conn go off chasing a spy and enter a secret door in the sphinx.
While this is happening the Stygian army surrounds and attacks the Aquilonians. Conan finds a labyrinth inside the sphinx as well as Thoth-Amon and his bevy of black sorcerers. Thoth-Amon strikes with his magic at the king but is not prepared for the white magic of the druid. They battle and Thoth-Amon and his coven are beginning to win when Conan produces the secret weapon, the box of orichalc. Inside is the Heart of Ahriman, a powerful gem that Thoth-Amon has coveted for decades. With it, Diviatix is able to kill off most of Thoth-Amon’s sorcerers.
In direst need, Thoth-Amon unleashes his own weapon of mass destruction from the black gate, behind which lurks the Black Beast, a gigantic hyena, embodying the forces of chaos, older than Set and the gods. Thoth-Amon, once again, hops it. Conan and his men run for it, leading the monster after them. Outside the sphinx, the Aquilonians are besieged by the Stygians until Conan leads the monster into their midst. The hyena shatters the Stygian forces. Done with the army, the beast squeezes back into the sphinx and slams the door behind it. Conan, his forces victorious, has won the day but instead of returning to Aquilonia, they are off to Zembabwei, where Thoth-Amon has fled.
This story seems to be inspired by two of the great masters of Fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien and H. P. Lovecraft (suggesting it was largely written by Lin Carter who wrote books about both authors). The sphinx setting is reminiscent of Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned With the Pharaohs” while “the black gate” is from Tolkien. The combination is weirdly appropriate for a tale of Stygia, Howard’s version of ancient Egypt.
The next piece, “Red Moon of Zembabwei” (Fantastic, July 1974) appeared a year later with a poor cover by Ron Miller. Conan and his army pursue Thoth-Amon to the jungles of Zembabwei, hacking their way through the jungle. Their camp is attacked by black warriors on flying creatures called wyverns. They capture Conan and Conn and take them to the city of Zembabwei, a place of towers without doors or windows. The only openings are at the top and are used for housing the wyverns.
Conan and Conn are thrown into a pit and await the coming of the Red Moon, at which they will be given in sacrifice to Damballah, the jungle version of Set. Thoth-Amon is in Zembabwei but he is a broken shell of what he once was, pushed around by Nenaunir, one of two twin kings of the city. The other twin, Mbega, is also a prisoner and becomes Conan’s ally. If Conan can get free Mbega can rally the people against his brother.
Count Trocero wants to save Conan so he sends Sir Murzio, a former thief to crawl through the sewers of the city and into the prison. Conan has Murzio give him his dagger and take Mbega to safety and his people. The snake-worshippers take Conan and Conn to the temple to sacrifice them. They are chained in a vast bowl that sits under a gigantic black stone statue of Damballah. Conan snaps their chains but the serpent god begins to materialize. He fights the god with all his will but begins to falter. He then feels the snake-god turn to mist. Conn has taken his dagger and thrown it at Nenaunir, killing him. The king is the high priest and channel through which Damballah appears. Mbega arrives with his forces and the Aquilonians. Thoth-Amon escapes on a lone wyvern and flees to the Edge of the World. Conan swears to follow.
L. Sprague deCamp’s influence can be seen in this story for the descriptions of the city of Zembabwei are based on fact. The authors also suggest the original city was built by the Serpent Men, tying it to Kull and the Cthulhu Mythos. The warriors astride the flying beasts must be popular for the magazine, the book and the comic all chose that image for illustration. In the last tale Conan and Conn get to ride one of the beasts. The authors use the actual word “pterodacyl” as well.
Perhaps because Carter and de Camp anticipated the paperback release, “Shadows in the Skull” (Fantastic, February 1975) appeared only seven months later. Conan enlists the Shemitish seer Rimush, to find Thoth-Amon using his magic. He sees the wizard fleeing past a waterfall and a mountain carved like skull to the Edge of the World, then dies.
Following Thoth-Amon, Conan leaves his army in favor of Mbega’s men and Nzinga’s Amazons. Using the wyverns, the king and a few others, including Conn, scout out positions from the air. Conan discovers the waterfall and then the skull mountain. Some form of gas or magic knocks out the riders and their flying mounts, sending them to the ground. There they discover the skull mountain is actually a beautiful temple with meadows and flocks. The beautiful people of the castle ply the visitors with wine and song, drugging them.
The queen of the castle is about to stab Conan when she is interrupted by Thoth-Amon, her secret guest. The queen dies with a spear in the back as Nzinga and the Amazons show up. Conn meanwhile is about to lose his virginity except he sees the dancing girl in the reflection of his cuirass and sees she is a Serpent woman. He stabs her with his sword that has been blessed by Diviatix with the sign of Mitra. (Much as Conan’s had been marked in “The Phoenix on the Sword”).
Thoth-Amon, using a demon and a spell of invisibility, flees with the unconscious Conan, taking him through a secret door to the beach. There the two embrace in a battle of spirits that Conan begins to lose. Thoth-Amon suddenly dies, for Conn has followed them out to beach (being able to see through the spell because of his sword) and stabs Thoth-Amon to death. Father and son return to the castle to help the Amazons finish off the Serpent Men, the last remnants of their race.
The last story of Thoth-Amon, the final battle between Conan and his forty year rival is reminiscent of Harry Potter and Voldemort, kind of disappointing. At the end of it, Thoth-Amon does a Dracula and falls to dust. The weakest of the four tales in Conan of Aquilonia, it relies on rescue from outside to defeat the Serpent Men and Thoth-Amon. Conan seems largely a spectator.
Before all the stories were in print, Carter and de Camp had wanted to get the twelfth volume of Conan into paperback. That’s where the money was. The only problem was Lancer, even with millions of books sold, went bankrupt, leaving the Conan rights locked up. A three-year battle over who would pick up Conan’s fallen crown began. Each year in Year’s Best Fantasy, Lin Carter would lament that the book still wasn’t in print (along with Tolkien’s The Silmarillion). Finally in 1977, Ace Books took over the property and Conan of Aquilonia appeared with a spanking brand new Boris cover. Ace also reissued all the old books again as well.
After Conan of Aquilonia there would be other books. Conan the Swordsman, Conan the Liberator, Conan and the Flame Knife... But none of these felt like they were part of that original twelve. Things would pretty much go on this way for a while new novels from writers like Andrew Offutt, Poul Anderson, Karl Edward Wagner and more de Camp. This was the tail end of the Ace years. In 1982, the Conan film would finally arrive and a young Fantasy writer named Robert Jordan would write the novelization for Conan the Destroyer (1984), before he and the new publisher, Tor, would begin the next age…
