The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
()
About this ebook
Read more from Robert E. Howard
The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Occult Detective Megapack: 29 Classic Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®: 40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Complete Works of Robert E. Howard (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Conan Saga Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian: The Complete Weird Tales Omnibus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Horror Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Red Nails: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Start Conan the Barbarian Super Pack Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Adventures of Solomon Kane Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTales of Cthulhu Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Weird Fiction MEGAPACK ®: 25 Stories from Weird Tales Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Greatest Christmas Stories: 120+ Authors, 250+ Magical Christmas Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventure MEGAPACK ®: 25 Classic Adventure Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Robert E. Howard Western Super Pack Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Western MEGAPACK®: 25 Classic Western Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
Related ebooks
Xuthal of the Dusk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Slithering Shadow - Conan the Barbarian Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Slithering Shadow: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMurder Point: A Tale of Keewatin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pool of the Black One Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Redemption Falls: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder Point: A Tale of Keewatin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFusion: A collection of short stories from Breakwater Harbor Books’ authors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tears of Dark Water Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ancient Ones: The Ancient Ones Trilogy, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreams in Shadow: Seventeen Stories All Told Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo Renegade Realmsx Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Children of the Frost Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPunch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, November 26, 1892 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Boat Builders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Saxon Outlaw's Revenge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhite Fire: "For death begins with life's first breath And life begins at touch of death" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Obstacle Race Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMary Butts - A Short Story Collection: Popular dark humour and modernist author that has been sadly forgotten by time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWinter of Shadows Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIlluminated: The White Road Chronicles, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Curator Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Kaleidoscope Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Storm Weaver & the Sand Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dark Angel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If You Dare Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret River Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Comstock Club Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNemesis: A Novel of the French Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChildren of the Frost (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Fantasy For You
Empire of the Vampire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5She Who Became the Sun Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tress of the Emerald Sea: Secret Projects, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Picture of Dorian Gray (The Original 1890 Uncensored Edition + The Expanded and Revised 1891 Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Phantom Tollbooth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Sun Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Empire: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Desert: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Pirate Lord: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Underworld: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Immortal Longings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk) - Robert E. Howard
The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
by
Robert E. Howard
Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
The Slithering Shadow (Xuthal of the Dusk)
Robert E. Howard
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. During his youth, his family moved between a variety of Texan boomtowns, and Howard – a bookish and somewhat introverted child – was steeped in the violent myths and legends of the Old South. Although he loved reading and learning, Howard developed a distinctly Texan, hardboiled outlook on the world. He became a passionate fan of boxing, taking it up at an amateur level, and from the age of nine began to write adventure tales of semi-historical bloodshed. In 1919, when Howard was thirteen, his family moved to the Central Texas hamlet of Cross Plains, where he would stay for the rest of his life.
At fifteen Howard began to read the pulp magazines of the day, and to write more seriously. The December 1922 issue of his high school newspaper featured two of his stories, ‘Golden Hope Christmas’ and ‘West is West’. In 1924 he sold his first piece – a short caveman tale titled ‘Spear and Fang’ – for $16 to the not-yet-famous Weird Tales magazine. He published with the magazine regularly over the next few years. 1929 was a breakout year for Howard, in that the 23-year-old writer began to sell to other magazines, such as Ghost Stories and Argosy, both of whom had previously sent him hundreds of rejection slips. In 1930, he began a correspondence with weird fiction master H. P. Lovecraft which ran up to his death six years later, and is regarded as one of the great correspondence cycles in all of fantasy literature.
It was partly due to Lovecraft’s encouragement that Howard created his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian. Conan – a barbarian-turned-King during the Hyborian Age, a mythical period of some 12,000 years ago – featured in seventeen Weird Tales stories between 1933 and 1936, and is now regarded as having spawned the ‘sword and sorcery’ genre, making Howard’s influence on fantasy literature comparable to that of J. R. R. Tolkien’s. The Conan stories have since been adapted many times, most famously in the series of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Howard was enjoying an all-time high in sales by the beginning of 1936, but he was also deeply upset by the ill health of his mother, who had fallen into a coma. On the morning of June 11, 1936, he asked an attending nurse whether she would ever recover, and the nurse replied negatively. Howard walked to his car, parked outside the family home in Cross Plains, and shot himself. He died eight hours later, aged just thirty.
Chapter I
The desert shimmered in the heat waves. Conan the Cimmerian stared out over the aching desolation and involuntarily drew the back of his powerful hand over his blackened lips. He stood like a bronze image in the sand, apparently impervious to the murderous sun, though his only garment was a silk loin-cloth, girdled by a wide gold-buckled belt from which hung a saber and a broad-bladed poniard. On his clean-cut limbs were evidences of scarcely healed wounds.
At his feet rested a girl, one white arm clasping his knee, against which her blond head drooped. Her white skin contrasted with his hard bronzed limbs; her short silken tunic, lownecked and sleeveless, girdled at the waist, emphasized rather than concealed her lithe figure.
Conan shook his head, blinking. The sun’s glare half blinded him. He lifted a small canteen from his belt and shook it, scowling at the faint