The Fantasy Adventure Stories: 7 Stories

(The Shadow of the Vulture, Black Canaan, People of the Dark, Spear and Fang, The House of Arabu, The Voice of El-Lil, The Lost Race :The Bran Mak Morn Stories)

The Fantasy Adventure Stories is the fantasy short story written by Robert E. Howard. It contains 7 fantasy stories.

The Shadow of the Vulture
The story introduces the character of Red Sonya of Rogatino, who later became the inspiration for the popular character Red Sonya, archetype of the chainmail-bikini clad female warrior.

Black Canaan
"Black Canaan" begins in New Orleans, where the narrator, Kirby Buckner, is accosted in a crowd by a withered black crone who whispers the ominous words, "Trouble on Tularoosa Creek!"  Buckner immediately realizes that his backwoods homeland is in peril and instantly departs for the Canaan region of his birth. He arrives after midnight and sets out on horseback through the bayous to the town of Grimesville. En route he encounters a mysterious "quadroon girl"  who mocks him. Buckner is disturbed to find himself aroused by her provocative beauty.

People of the Dark
“I stepped into the dimness of the cavern and halted. I had never before visited Dagon's Cave, yet a vague sense of misplaced familiarity troubled me as I gazed on the high arching roof, the even stone walls and the dusty floor. I shrugged my shoulders, unable to place the elusive feeling; doubtless it was evoked by a similarity to caverns in the mountain country of the American Southwest where I was born and spent my childhood.”

Spear and Fang
"Gur-na" was a word of hatred and horror to the people of the caves, for creatures whom the tribesmen called "gur-na", or man-apes, were the hairy monsters of another age, the brutish men of the Neandertal. More feared than mammoth or tiger, they had ruled the forests until the Cro-Magnon men had come and waged savage warfare against them. Of mighty power and little mind, savage, bestial and cannibalistic, they inspired the tribesmen with loathing and horror--a horror transmitted through the ages in tales of ogres and goblins, of werewolves and beast-men.

The House of Arabu or Witch from Hell's Kitchen
“To the house whence no one issues, To the road from whence there is no return, To the house whose inhabitants are deprived of light, The place where dust is their nourishment, their food clay, They have no light, dwelling in dense darkness, And they are clothed, like birds, in a garment of feathers, Where, over gate and bolt, dust is scattered.”

The Voice of El-Lil or Temptress of the Tower of Torture and Sin
“Maskat, like many another port, is a haven for the drifters of many nations who bring their tribal customs and peculiarities with them. Turk rubs shoulders with Greek and Arab squabbles with Hindoo. The tongues of half the Orient resound in the loud smelly bazaar. Therefore it did not seem particularly incongruous to hear, as I leaned on a bar tended by a smirking Eurasian, the musical notes of a Chinese gong sound clearly through the lazy hum of native traffic. There was certainly nothing so startling in those mellow tones that the big Englishman next me should start and swear and spill his whisky-and-soda on my sleeve.”

The Lost Race, The Bran Mak Morn Stories
“In those mountains the bandit chief, Buruc the Cruel, was supposed to lurk, to descend upon such victims as might pass that way. Cororuc shifted his grip on his spear and quickened his step. His haste was due not only to the menace of the outlaws, but also to the fact that he wished once more to be in his native land. He had been on a secret mission to the wild Cornish tribesmen; and though he had been more or less successful, he was impatient to be out of their inhospitable country.”