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The God in the Bowl

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"The God in the Bowl" is a short story by Robert E. Howard, first published in Space Science Fiction September 1952, in a version edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Howard's original version was first published in The Tower of the Elephant (Donald M. Grant 1975).

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[edit] Synopsis

In this story Conan is plying his trade as a thief in the city of Numalia in the kingdom of Nemedia. He is caught while attempting to steal a valuable object from a museum and becomes the suspect in the death of the museum's owner.

Conan is hired by a young nobleman to steal a valuable artifact. While searching for it, he encounters the museum guard examining the murdered body of the museum's proprietor, Kallian Publico. The guardsman summons aid, and is pleased to be reinforced by Inquisitor Demetrio and a group of guards. The lawmen are unwilling to disarm or seize Conan, but do not allow him to leave while Demetrio searches and investigates the crime scene. Kallian Publico had been strangled while investigating a recently arrived package, a large metal bowl with Stygian runes and symbols on it. The bowl had only arrived in the museum by chance; it had been sent by men of Stygia to the priest Kalanthes, and had arrived there on its way north. Promero, Kallian Publico's clerk, arrives and informs the inquisitor that Publico believed it to contain a powerful artifact within it. Seeking to obtain the treasure for himself, Publico apparently broke it open. Investigating the bowl, Demetrio and Conan find it to be empty. After some further investigation, Conan's employer is dragged onto the scene. Aztrias Petanius denies all knowledge of Conan and the theft and recommending that he be imprisoned or killed. Enraged, Conan slays Petanius and tries to fight his way away. However, during the skirmish, Promero emerges from a shadowy room and falls over dead from fright. Unwilling to face the terrifying, otherworldly creature that Promero has been babbling about all night, the guardsmen run away. Conan, however, stays, and goes to face the creature. The beast turns out to be an immense snake-creature. Named by Promero to be one of Set's Children, it does indeed have a foul divinity about it. Driven near insane with fear at its presence, Conan strikes out and slays it, and runs off into the night.

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