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Black Colossus Hugh B WEIRD TALES BLACK COLOSSUS BY ROBERT E. HOWARD HUGH B. CAVE-CLARK ASHTON SMITH- Do You Read The MAGIC CARPET Magazine? THE BRIDE OF GOD By SEABURY QUINN The current issue of the Magic Carpet contains another thrilling episode in the life of Carlos de la Muerte, that swashbuckling soldier of fortune. This is the sec¬ ond story in "The Vagabond-at-Arms” series and it is crarnmed to the brim with action—the bite of sharp sword-blades and the tang of exciting adventures in the valiant days of yore. Each story in this series is complete in itself. Book your passage now aboard the Magic Carpet and fly with us to Spain to share in the exploits of this swaggering grandee—see him in action as an amazing fighter and a rescuer of the downtrodden and oppressed. In Carlos de la Muerte, Seabury Quinn has created a fictional character that looms as a close rival to his lova¬ ble little Frenchman, the ever popular Jules de Grandin, whose exploits have thrilled you in Weird Tales. —ALSO— ROBERT E. HOWARD H. BEDFORD-JONES E. HOFFMANN PRICE WARREN HASTINGS MILLER GEOFFREY VACE JAMES W. BENNETT CLARK ASHTON SMITH AFPLING- MYSTERY TORIES GIVEN THEILLIMG FREE 1/You Act Now! HERE THEY ARE . the baffling mystery of "Disappearing Bullets"—a Valley of Mlssinp Men— swift-action story with dramatic situations. Each one an the^regular'^pJlce of°$E00^per "en''^Now,”fo^r^a^'imited time only, we are giving them away absolutely free with MAGIC CARPET MAGAZINE A MAGAZINE OF THE BIZARRE AND UNUSUAL 1 Volume 21 CONTENTS FOR JUNE, 1933 Number 6 | Cover Design _ -_M. Brundage Illustrating a scene in "Black Colossus" Black Colossus_Robert E. Howard 675 A mighty story of a barbarian mercenary who saved a nation from shuddery evil Golden Blood (part 3)_Jack Williamson 700 A powerful novel of weird adventures in the hidden golden land of Arabia The Iron Man_Paul Ernst 719 A powerful weird-scientific story of a robot that ran amuck in the city streets The Crawling Curse_Hugh B. Cave 733 A tale of the East Indies, and the ghastly retribution that drove a murderer to his doom Genius Loci_Clark Ashton Smith 747 The story of a deathly horror that lurked in the scummy pool where old Chapman was found The Dwellers in the House-Sophie Wenzel Ellis 759 A sensational tale of an evil Arab who changed bodies at will to perpetuate himself through the ages A Sprig of Rosemary-H. Warner Munn 773 A tender story about a skinflint whose stony heart was softened after his death The Last Drive-Carl Jacobi 778 A brief story of a grisly ride through a blizstard with a corpse Nellie Foster-August W. Detleth 782 A ten-minute tale about a woman who would not stay quiet in her grave The Eyrie_ 786 A chat with the readers Weird Story Reprint: The Floor Above_M. L. Humphreys 789 One of the most popular stories from WEIRD TALES often years ago 674 Z3lack "Conan sprang clear as the hofte fell, and toilh Colossus a roar Kutamun was By ROBERT E HOWARD A mighty story of the wizard Natohk, and red battle, and stupendous deeds—a tale of a barbarian mercenary who was called upon to Save a nation from shuddery evil "The Night of Power, when Fate stalked throu^ decay. Not even a vulture hung like a the corridors of the world like a colossus just risen ftom an age-old throne of granite--” black dot in the vast blue vault of the sky E. Hoffmann Price: The Girl From Semarcand. that the sun glazed with its heat.'On every ONLY the age-old silence brooded hand rose the grim relics of another, fo^ over the mysterious ruins of Kuth- gotten age: huge broken pillars, thrust¬ diem^, but Fear was there; Fear ing up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; quivered in the mind of Shevatas, the long wavering lines of crumbling walls; thief, driving his breath quick and sharp fallen cyclopean blocks of stone; shat¬ against his clenched teeth. tered images, whose horrific features the He stood, the one atom of life amidst corroding winds and dust-storms had half Ihe colossal monuments of desolation and erased. From horizon to horizon no sign 675 K76 5^EIRD TALES of life: only the sheer breath-taking sweep Bel, and who lived in songs and myths for of the naked desert, bisected by the wan¬ a thousand years. Yet fear ate at the dering line of a long-dry river-course; in heart of Shevatas as he stood before the the midst of that vastness the glimmering ivory dome of Kuthchemes. Any fool could fangs of the ruins, the columns standing see there was something unnatural about up like broken masts of sunken ships— the structure; the winds and suns of three all dominated by the towering ivory dome thousand years had lashed it, yet its gold before which Shevatas stood trembling. and ivory rose bright and glistening as the The base of this dome was a gigantic day it was reared by nameless hands on pedestal of marble rising from what had the bank of the nameless river. once been a terraced eminence on the This unnaturalness was in keeping with banks of the ancient river. Broad steps led the general aura of these devil-haunted up to a great bronze door in the dome, ruins. This desert was the mysterious ex¬ which rested on its base like the half of panse lying soutlieast of the lands of some titanic egg. The dome itself was of Shem. A few days' ride on camel-back to pure ivory, which shone as if unknown tlie southwest, as Shevatas knew, would hands kept it polished. Likewise shone bring the traveller within sight of the the spired gold cap of the pinnacle, and great river Styx at the point where it the inscription which sprawled about the turned at right angles with its former curve of the dome in golden hieroglyphics course, and flowed westward to empty at prds long. No man on earth could read last into the distant sea. At the point of those characters, but Shevatas shuddered its bend began the land of Stygia, the at the dim conjectures they raised. For he dark-bosomed mistress of the south, whose came of a very old race, whose myths ran domains, watered by the great river, rose back to shapes xmdreamed of bv contem¬ sheer out of the surrounding desert. porary tribes. Eastward, Shevatas knew, the desert Shevatas was wiry and lithe, as became shaded into steppes stretching to the a master-thief of Zamora. His small Hyrcanian kingdom of Turan, rising in round head was shaven, his only garment barbaric splendor on the shores of the a loin-cloth of scarlet silk. Like all his great inland sea. A week’s ride north¬ race, he was very dark, his narrow vulture¬ ward the desert ran into a tangle of barren like face set off by his keen black eyes. hills, beyond which lay the fertile uplands His long, slender and tapering fingers of Koth, the southernmost realm of the were quick and nervous as the wings of Hyborian races. Westward the desert a moth. From a gold-scaled girdle hung merged into the meadowlands of Shem, a short, narrow, jewel-hilted sword in a which stretched away to the ocean. sheath of ornamented leather. Shevatas All this Shevatas knew without being handled the weapon with apparently ex¬ particularly conscious of the knowledge, aggerated care. He even seemed to flinch as a man knows the streets of his town. away from the contact of the sheath with He was a far traveller and had looted the his naked thigh. Nor was his care with¬ treasures of many kingdoms. But now he out reason. hesitated and shuddered before the high¬ This was Shevatas, a thief among est adventure and the mightiest treasure thieves, whose name was spoken with awe of all. in the dives of the Maul and the dim In that ivory dome lay the bones of shadowy recesses beneath the temples of Thugra Khotan, the dark sorcerer who BLACK COLOSSUS (677 had reigned in Kuthchemes three thou¬ to guard the sorcerer's bones. Over all sand years ago, when the kingdoms of myths of Thugra Khotan hung horror and Stygia stretched far northward of the great death like a pall. From where the thief river, over the meadows of Shem, and into stood he could see the ruins of the great the uplands. Then the great drift of the hall wherein chained captives had knelt Hyborians swept southward from the by the hundreds during festivals to have cradle-land of their race near the north¬ their heads hacked off by the priest-king ern pole. It was a titanic drift, extending in honor of Set, the Serpent-god of Stygia. over centuries and ages. But in the reign Somewhere near by had been the pit, dark of Thugra Khotan, the last magician of and awful, wherein screaming victims Kuthchemes, gray-eyed, tawny-haired bar¬ were fed to a nameless amorphic mon¬ barians in wolfskins and scale-mail had strosity which came up out of a deeper, ridden from the north into the rich up¬ more hellish cavern. Legend made Thugra lands to carve out the kingdom of Koth Khotan more than human; his worship with their iron swords. They had stormed yet lingered in a mongrel degraded cult, over Kuthchemes like a tidal wave, wash¬ whose votaries stamped his likeness on ing the marble towers in blood, and the coins to pay the way of their dead over the northern Stygian kingdom had gone down great river of darkness of which the Styx in fire and ruin.
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