Shadows in Zamboula

"Shadows in Zamboula"
Author	Robert E. Howard
Original title	"The Man-Eaters of Zamboula"
Country	USA
Language	English
Series	Conan the Cimmerian
Genre(s)	Fantasy
Published in	USA
Publication type	Pulp magazine
Publisher	Weird Tales
Publication date	1935

"Shadows in Zamboula" is one of the original stories by Robert E. Howard about Conan the Cimmerian, first published in Weird Tales in 1935. Its original title was "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula".

The story takes place over a night in Zamboula, with political intrigue amidst streets filled with roaming cannibals. It features the character Baal-pteor, one of the few humans in the Conan stories to be a physical challenge for the main Cimmerian character himself.

Plot summary

“	Conan's low laugh was merciless as the ring of steel. “You fool!” he all but whispered. “I think you never saw a man from the West before. Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to twist the heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man — like this!” And with a savage wrench he twisted Baal-pteor's head around until the ghastly face leered over the left shoulder, and the vertebrae snapped like a rotten branch.	”
	— Robert E. Howard, "Shadows in Zamboula"

Despite a warning received in the Suq by an elderly desert nomad, Conan stays the night in a cheap tavern in Zamboula, run by Aram Baksh. As night falls, a black Darfarian cannibal enters to drag him away to be eaten. All of the Darfar slaves in the city are cannibals who roam the streets at night. As they only prey on travellers, the people of the city tolerate this and stay locked securely in their homes, while nomads and beggars make sure to spend the night at a comfortable distance from its walls. This night, however, Conan finds a naked woman chasing through the streets after her deranged lover; Conan rescues them from an attack by the cannibals. She tells him that she tried to secure her lover's unending affection via a love potion which instead made a raving lunatic of him. Promising Conan "a reward" in return for his assistance, they attempt to kill the high priest responsible for the man's madness.

The woman is captured in the attempt, and forced via hypnotism to dance before the High priest until she dies. Conan, defeating the strangler Baal-pteor, rescues her and kills the priest. At the point of claiming his payment, however, she reveals that she is really Nafertari, mistress to the satrap of the city, Jungir Khan (the mad man). Taking an antidote to Jungir, she promises Conan position and wealth.

Conan, however, leaves the city and reveals to the reader that he had recognised them almost immediately. He takes his revenge on the tavern owner Aram Baksh by leaving him bound for the hungry cannibals to devour and leaves the city with gold and the magic ring that started the night's intrigues (and which Conan had stolen from the mad Jungir on their first encounter), with the intent to sell it to another interested party.

Notes

The evil high priest "sacrifices to Hanuman the accursed!" (again in the words of Nafertari). Hanuman is a deity in the real-world Hindu religion. An idol to the fictionalized version is described as:

Bestial in the uncertain light, Hanuman leered with his carven mask. He sat, not as an ape would crouch, but cross-legged as a man would sit, but his aspect was no less simian for that reason. He was carved from black marble, but his eyes were rubies, which glowed red and lustful as the coals of hell's deepest pits. His great hands lay upon his lap, palms upward, taloned fingers spread and grasping. In the gross emphasis of his attributes, in the leer of his satyr-countenance, was reflected the abominable cynicism of the degenerate cult which deified him.

In Hinduism the God Hanuman is benign and in the Ramayana he and his monkey people are pivotal for Rama to reach Sri Lanka and slay Ravana, probably Howard decided to depict him as a demon after having read Rudyard Kipling's "The Mark of the Beast," a short story where a drunken British officer in India is struck by a curse after having defaced a Hanuman statue with his cigar.

Reprint history

The story was republished in the collections Conan the Barbarian (Gnome Press, 1954) and Conan the Wanderer (Lancer Books, 1968). It has more recently been published in the collections The Conan Chronicles Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle (Gollancz, 2000) as "Shadows in Zamboula" and in Conan of Cimmeria: Volume Three (1935-1936) (Del Rey, 2005) under its original title, "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula."

Adaptation

The story was adapted by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams in Savage Sword of Conan #14.

External links

• Conan wiki • The Man-Eaters of Zamboula • Synopsis, characters, locations, and publishing history
• Conan the Barbarian at AmratheLion.com
• Conan.com: The Official Website