The Pool of the Black One
| "The Pool of the Black One" | |
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| Author | Robert E. Howard |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Conan the Cimmerian |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| Published in | Weird Tales |
| Publication type | Pulp magazine |
| Publication date | October 1933 |
| Preceded by | "The Slithering Shadow" |
| Followed by | "Rogues in the House" |
"The Pool of the Black One" is one of the original short stories starring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan becoming the captain of a pirate vessel and encountering a remote island with a mysterious pool that has powers of transmutation.
First published in Weird Tales in October 1933, the story was republished in the collections The Sword of Conan (Gnome Press, 1952) and Conan the Adventurer (Lancer Books, 1966). It has more recently been published in the collections The Conan Chronicles Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle (2000) and Conan of Cimmeria: Volume One (1932-1933) (Del Rey, 2003).
"The Pool of the Black One," which appeared in Weird Tales magazine the month after "The Slithering Shadow," is a piratical adventure story and occurs in the Western Sea of the Hyborian Age. The story begins with Conan the Cimmerian adrift at sea, having had to escape from rivals in the Barachan Isles. He clambers aboard The Wastrel, a ship belonging a different pirate order, bitter rivals of the Barachan ones. After a terse conversation with the captain and a brawl with a Zingaran bully, Conan is begrudgingly accepted as a lowly member of the crew and is allowed to remain on board.
The ship then sails to a mysterious island where the captain hopes to find a legendary treasure and, perhaps, much more. All hands go ashore, including the tyrannical captain and his mistress Sancha. The shore seems deceptively inviting, crew members gorging themselves on sweet fruit - which causes them to fall asleep. While on the island, Conan confronts the captain alone in the jungle and slays him in a grim duel. However, the mysterious kidnapping of Sancha and the disappearance of several crew members compels Conan to plunge deeper into the jungle. Meanwhile, most of the island is revealed to be inhabited by strange tall black humanoids (not black as in kushite or zembabwean, but rather jet black with strange golden-glowing eyes and clawed hands) that capture the crew, use one young crewmember for a strange hypnotical-musical rite which involves having him dance and cavort wildly to the tune of a strange flute-like instrument (which seemingly has the power to 'lay bare the most secret lusts and passions of one's soul') and then dunk some of them in the eponymous pool, which transforms them into shrunken figures. Thousands of such figures placed on shelves at the side of the pool indicate that the black humanoids have been doing this for countless years, and that this accounts for many ships which sailed into the west and never returned.
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