THE STAR OF KHORALA

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nyberg's alright! "The Star of Khorala" is a delightful Conan adventure, written by Björn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp in 1978 for Conan the Swordsman.

In terms of continuity, "The Star of Khorala" is one of the several Conan stories that was written as a direct sequel to another- in this case, it follows "Shadows in Zamboula." Conan picked up the gem of the title toward the end of the last story and has decided to see if he can fetch a ransom for it by returning it to the queen of Ophir, Marala. In Conan the Wanderer, where I've been reading many of these stories, it starts "The Devil in Iron" by saying that it's not known whether the Star ever made it back to Ophir or if it was plucked off of Conan, so perhaps Nyberg and de Camp felt that this was a perfect place to fill in some history. You see the same thing in "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career," with Miller and Clark saying:

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"Whether Conan reached Ophir and redeemed his gem, or lost it to some thief along the road, there is no record.    In any case, the proceeds cannot have lasted him long."

Fortunately for us, nothing goes quite as planned for the Cimmerian, and it results in a really fun adventure.

​The queen is being held against her will in the western tower of the palace against her will. In order to get her out, Conan enlists a fun cast of supporting characters, including the queen's friend and doctor, Khafrates, and a retired thief named Torgrio. Uniquely, the tower is too sheer for even the Hyborian Age climbing world champ Conan to scale, so he uses Torgrio's "dragon's feet," which are claw-like devices that help him dig into the wall.  They're able to free the queen, but are hunted down by the evil Rigello and the armies of Ophir.

Now, the Star of Khorala is said to allow the wearer to strongly influence the will of those of the opposite sex around them, but, in a twist, Marala reveals that it's actually a much more noble charm that's put on the ring: when a good person wears it, they will be able to rally other good folk to their cause. It ultimately allows Conan, Marala, and guard captain Garus to fend off a huge number of pursuers in an ancient castle, aided by the ghosts of generations of men who fought in good faith for Ophir. It's a great scene that reminds me of Lord of the Rings!

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Nyberg and de Camp spin a few excellent lines in this story that really stood out. I quite liked some of their descriptions while in Ophir:

"The young evening wore a wreath of rosy clouds in honor of the coming night."

And there's a hilarious little moment when Conan, through the aid of the Dragon's Feet, bursts through the tower window into the room in which Marala has been held.

"Conan!... You burst in here like a bull in one of the legendary porcelain shops of Khitai!"

That's just an excellent in-universe way to say Conan was "like a bull in a china shop" (an accusation levied at me by my mom more than once when I was a kid). 

Conan is still in what I'm thinking of as his "kozaki period," wandering the deserts, leading bands of raiders, and seeking fortune. The problem I have with the end of this story is that Conan says he's going to go off to Cimmeria again after this tale ends. de Camp's prologue for "The Devil in Iron" says that upon returning to Cimmeria, old friends of his are dead and village life is dull. I just hate these period, off-screen trips to his homeland. They seem to occur extremely randomly, they never have any plot relevance, and they're all the same: Conan goes "Fuck this place; it's boring and I'm out of here." I suppose there may be adventures to be had in Cimmeria, but many of Conan's best stories seem to me the ones where he is in a totally foreign land.

​We're back to the Vilayet Sea following this story, but I've got some doubts about its placement in the chronology. 

★★★★☆