Yara, Awaken!
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The life of man is not the life of Yag, nor is human death the death of Yag. Let me be free of this cage of broken, blind flesh, and I will once more be Yogah of Yag, morning-crowned and shining, with wings to fly, and feet to dance, and eyes to see, and hands to break."
One of my favorite short stories is The Elephant Tower by Robert E. Howard. In it, the indomitable Conan of Cimmeria attempts to steal the (wait for it….) legendary Elephant Heart jewel from the wicked wizard Yara, who had used its power to enthrall the nation of Zamoria and keep its king drunk for fear of Yara’s power.
A chance joining journeys with Taurus, famed thief of Nemedia provides Conan with a way to bypass the terrors of the courtyard and a means to scale the jeweled tower. Upon reaching the top and surviving that which tore from Taurus life, Conan makes his way down through the tower’s terrors until he reaches the room where the Elephant Heart jewel is kept.
The Elephant’s heart is encased by Yag-kosha, the last member of an ancient race of beings from Yag, a planet on the far edge of our galaxy. A refugee after a failed rebellion, Yag-kosha and his failed compatriots came to earth in ages past and watched the rise and fall of civilizations. One by one, the exiles succumbed to time until only Yag-kosha was left to remember the deep secrets.
It was a lonely Yar-kosha who took a budding wizard under his wing and taught him the white ways; though the wizard was not satisfied and wished to learn the dark as well. In a moment of weakness Yara bound Yar-kosha to his will, enslaving him. Through torture Yara made Yar-kosha an instrument of his power and feasted upon the power provided. 
Blinded, withered, and saddened by the evils pressed through him by Yara, Yar-kocha is found by Conan, who hears of Yar-kosha’s plight and is beseeched. Unwillingly, Conan agrees to do his bidding and plunges his sword deep into the Yar’s scarred chest separating the ancient alien heart from his frame.
Here we begin our reading:
…Holding the still pulsing organ over the blazing jewel, he pressed it with both hands, and a rain of blood fell on the stone. To his surprise, it did not run off, but soaked into the gem, as water is absorbed by a sponge.
Holding the jewel gingerly, he went out of the fantastic chamber and came upon the silver steps. He did not look back; he instinctively felt that some form of transmutation was taking place in the body on the marble couch, and he further felt that it was of a sort not to be witnessed by human eyes. He closed the ivory door behind him and without hesitation descended the silver steps. It did not occur to him to ignore the instructions given him.
He halted at an ebony door, in the center of which was a grinning silver skull, and pushed it open. He looked into a chamber of ebony and jet and saw, on a black silken couch, a tall, spare form reclining. Yara the priest and sorcerer lay before him, his eyes open and dilated with the fumes of the yellow lotus, far-staring, as if fixed on gulfs and nighted abysses beyond human ken.
"Yara!" said Conan, like a judge pronouncing doom. "Awaken!" The eyes cleared instantly and became cold and cruel as a vulture’s. The tall, silken-clad form lifted erect and towered gauntly above the Cimmerian.
"Dog!" His hiss was like the voice of a cobra. "What do you here?" Conan laid the jewel on the great ebony table.
"He who sent this gem bade me say, ‘Yag-kosha gives a last gift and a last enchantment.’"
Yara recoiled, his dark face ashy. The jewel was no longer crystal-clear; its murky depths pulsed and throbbed, and curious smoky waves of changing color passed over its smooth surface. As if drawn hypnotically, Yara bent over the table and gripped the gem in his hands, staring into its shadowed depths, as if it were a magnet to draw the shuddering soul from his body. And as Conan looked, he thought that his eyes must be playing him tricks. For where Yara had risen up from his couch, the priest had seemed gigantically tall; yet now he saw that Yara’s head would scarcely come to his shoulder. He blinked, puzzled, and for the first time that night doubted his own senses. Then with a shock he realized the the priest was shrinking in stature –was growing smaller before his very gaze.
With a detached feeling he watched, as a man might watch a play; immersed in a feeling of overpowering unreality, the Cimmerian was no longer sure of his own identity; he only knew that he was looking upon the external evidences of the unseen play of vast Outer forces, beyond his understanding. Now Yara was no bigger than a child, now like an infant he sprawled on the table, still grasping the jewel. And now the sorcerer suddenly realized his fate, and he sprang up, releasing the gem. But still he dwindled, and Conan saw a tiny, pigmy figure rushing wildly about the ebony tabletop, waving tiny arms and shrieking in a voice that was like the squeak of an insect. Now he had shrunk until the great jewel towered above him like a hill, and Conan saw him cover his eyes with his hands, as if to shield them from the glare, as he staggered about like a madman. Conan sensed that some unseen magnetic force was pulling Yara to the gem. Thrice he raced wildly about it in a narrowing circle, thrice he strove to turn and run out across the table; then with a scream that echoed faintly in the ears of the watcher, the priest threw up his arms and ran straight toward the blazing globe.
Bending close, Conan saw Yara clamber up the smooth, curving surface, impossibly, like a man climbing a glass mountain. Now the priest stood on the top, still with tossing arms, invoking what grisly names only the gods know. And suddenly he sank into the very heart of the jewel, as a man sinks into a sea, and Conan saw the smoky waves close over his head. Now he saw him in the crimson heart of the jewel, once more crystal-clear, as a man sees a scene far away, tiny with great distance.
And into the heart came a green, shining winged figure with a body of a man and the head of an elephant –no longer blind or crippled. Yara threw up his arms and fled as a madman flees, and on his heels came the avenger.
Then, like the bursting of a bubble, the great jewel vanished in a rainbow burst of iridescent gleams, and the ebony table-top lay bare and deserted –as bare, Conan somehow knew, as the marble couch in the chamber above, where the body of that strange trans-cosmic being called Yag-kosha and Yogah had lain….
- The Elephant Tower, by Robert E. Howard (Illustrations from Conan #20-22)
The story closes with Conan fleeing the crumbling tower, the very symbol of Yara’s perversion of the natural order, as Yar-koshba, now the liberated Yogah, ascends into the sky:
The little HP logo even still lights up:
