RED MOON OF ZEMBABWEI

Man, it was kind of rough coming off of "Black Sphinx of Nebthu." I know it's impossible to tell since I post one of these every couple of days (I read a lot pretty quickly back in late summer and early fall, so I've usually read about 15 or 20 stories ahead of whatever I'm posing at the moment), but that story just kind of bummed me out. I didn't read or write anything for like a week and a half after I read it in the last days of September (and I'm currently writing this October 6th). 

It's hard to shake the feeling that Conan's real finale was The Hour of the Dragon and these King Conan stories written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter in the 70s for Fantastic just feel like unnecessary addendums.

​Like "Black Sphinx," there are plenty of allusions to previous Conan stories in "Red Moon of Zembabwei," and it all shakes out a little better than that previous story.

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Our narrative specifically says that Conan is still in his late 50s, which I think is interesting since I've been considering him to be in his 60s by now. It's a small thing, but was a little surprising.

"Although the ruler of Aquilonia was in his late fifties, age and the civilized life of court and castle had softened his rugged physique but little. Time had streaked with gray the thick, square-cut mane of coarse black hair and the heavy mustache that swept out from his upper lip like bull's horns."

One thing that's been vexing me is that on page 107 in Conan of Aquilonia, where I read this story, Conan makes reference to "penetrati[ng] the kingdom of Zembabwei" twenty years prior. He mentions "the twin kings' northern capital" that he became a guard at and went north with a caravan, but I can't for the life of me figure out what story he's talking about. Because of the dual kings, I thought it might be a reference to "Drums of Tombalku," but that took place in Darfar, way to the northwest of here. I figured it might be in a de Camp and Carter novel that had been previously published and I hadn't read at the time, like Conan the Buccaneer, but I can't find anything that matches that description. If anyone is reading this and has insight, I'd love for you to leave a comment below helping me out.

[EDIT: A commenter named Ed down below has helped out! He says the reference to the kings of Zembabwei is from "Jewels of Gwahlur" and I think he's right! I've included a section of "Jewels of Gwahlur" below:]

"The benevolent kings of Zembabwei desired only a monopoly of the trade of Keshan and her tributaries—and, as a pledge of good faith, some of the Teeth of Gwahlur. These would be put to no base usage, Thutmekri hastened to explain to the suspicious chieftains; they would be placed in the temple of Zembabwei beside the squat gold idols of Dagon and Derketo, sacred guests in the holy shrine of the kingdom, to seal the covenant between Keshan and Zembabwei. This statement brought a savage grin to Conan's hard lips."

In an absolute wild turn of events, one of the least-impactful Conan stories ever gets a shoutout here. As Conan looks at the architecture of Old Zembabwei, "The Forbidden City," he makes a mental note that he had seen that style twice before in his career:

"...once in a ruined castle on the grassy plains of Kush; and again years later, on the Nameless Isle in the uncharted Western Ocean, far to the south of the usual tracks of merchant men, naval fleets, and piratical marauders."

That's right: we've got a "Castle of Terror" mention! That brief little Conan interlude was so quick, so inconsequential, and so seldom-remembered that I didn't think I'd ever see a piece of Conan media make note of it ever again. So I suppose that means that the castle of "The Castle of Terror" is some kind of ancient, abandoned, relic of Old Zembabwei? Kind of cool.

The other reference here is to the nameless isle in "The Gem in the Tower," in which the sorcerer Siptah sits dead in a tower with no doors or windows, much like the towers in Old Zembabwei. Whether this is a connection the writer's set out to make or if they realized their idea for this city sounded like what they had written for "Gem" is beyond me. I did think it was funny that when the wyvern creatures were first mentioned, I thought, These sound a lot like either the bat things from "The Hand of Nergal" or the monster in Siptah's tower from "The Gem in the Tower."

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Those flying wyverns, by the way? Pretty nifty. Probably one of the best parts of the story.

There are a few more references contained in "Red Moon," and I'm sure you won't be surprised to see that once again de Camp and Carter have a callback to their then-recent novel Conan the Buccaneer, including the character Murzio, who is apparently the son of Ninus in that novel. He's pretty inconsequential to the plot, though, and seems like he's mostly there to get you to wonder what happened in that story so that you'll go buy it.

"Red Moon of Zembabwei" is a little bit better than its two predecessors, but is still pretty lackluster. L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter's plotting has seriously suffered in these stories- they add lots of elements that don't ultimately amount to anything, and much of the story feels like padding. Now that I'm three-fourths of the way through this quadrilogy, it seems like they were trying to write their own epic a la The Hour of the Dragon and just fell way short. At least Conn isn't a total nothingburger this time.

One of my biggest gripes with these stories is how manufactured it feels that Thoth-Amon is Conan's "greatest enemy." It's like how people want to retire Charlie Blackmon's number for the Colorado Rockies: the only reason to do it is because there isn't anyone better. Yes, I am from Denver, how could you guess?

Conan foes are so often one-and-done that nobody usually sticks around long enough to become an "archenemy." Olgerd Vladislav is in a few, but they're mostly comics published later. King Yezdigerd of Turan is mentioned all over the place, but he's really an unseen character who is Conan's repeated victim. I know I mentioned something similar with "The Witch of the Mists" but I feel compelled to again. Page 99 of this story literally says that Conan is happy to be off to Zembabwei to fight a "lifelong foe," but Thoth-Amon is hardly the Joker to Conan's Batman. Prior to this little late-life series of four stories, here is the sum total of Thoth-Amon's appearances in Conan's life:

• "The God in the Bowl:" Thoth is mentioned a grand total of two times as the one who probably sent the snake god in the bowl to Numalia, but he is unseen in the story.
• "The Phoenix on the Sword:" Jumping ahead about 20 years, Thoth-Amon is indeed the bad guy in "Phoenix." However, he spends much of the story as a lowly slave biding his time, antagonizing Conan from afar. 
• The Hour of the Dragon: Thoth is once again only mentioned in this one.
• "The Treasure of Tranicos:" Thoth is one of several villains in this complex story, but only in the "Tranicos" version and not Howard's original "The Black Stranger." Do Conan and Thoth actually interact in this one?
• Conan the Buccaneer: Yep, you guessed it. de Camp and Carter's apparent favorite of their own work. While Thoth appears in much of this novel, Conan really only becomes aware of him in the last 15 pages of the book.

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It's just a hard sell when Conan's "lifelong archenemy" is mentioned in two whole stories before Conan's kingship and is then a minor character in a few of his adventures as king of Aquilonia. They seem really eager to almost backfill their history together to make this feel like a bigger fight. While I think Thoth definitely seems to be Conan's biggest foe, that's mostly due to comics which were published after this.

Next time, we'll see the epic(?) conclusion to this four-parter, and the last canonical Conan story for my chronology. See you for "Shadows in the Skull!"

★★☆☆​☆