Tower of the Black Serpent

The Tower of the Black Serpent rises as a slender, dark pinnacle piercing the sky above the caravan square of Shadizar, the crossroads of the world. Despite the brilliance of the day, the tower seems perpetually draped in shadows, a grim and forbidding presence visible from every street and alley of the city. Known near and far by its ominous name, it is called the mother of them all by the locals, the central seat of the Cult of Set, which has grown from a little band into a pervasive power that now threatens even the throne of Zamora. The tower's very appearance marks it as a place apart, a vertical intrusion of the sacred and the terrible into the mundane commerce of the city below, and its shadow falls over the entire narrative as the source of the cult's reach and the object of Conan's first great undertaking.

The Tower as the Heart of the Cult of Set

The Tower of the Black Serpent is not merely a building but the operational and spiritual center of the Cult of Set, the infamous Stygian serpent god. Its power is broadcast through the city in the form of hypnotic processions that wind their way from the streets toward the tower's gaping doorway. These processions are led by girls and young women, some scarcely more than children, draped in soiled white garments with garlands of wilted flowers on their unbound hair, dancing and chanting to the rhythm of myriads of tambourines. Behind them march ranks of youths beating time on deep-voiced drums and making discordant music with cymbals, lyres, and plaintive flutes. The eyes of all the marchers are glazed, unaware of the scene about them, like dreamers walking in their sleep, while robed men with shaven pates stalk among them bearing brazen pots of smoldering incense. The procession culminates in a chant that awakens dormant memories in Conan: "Doom... Doom... Doom..." and then, more specifically, "Doom... Doom... Thulsa Doom... Thulsa Doom..." The final group of marchers are young men, scarcely more than boys, who stagger along with blank faces, lashing their naked flesh with whips made of the hides of serpents and barbed with snakes' fangs, so that with each stroke their flesh is beaded with blood. The tower is thus the terminus of a public spectacle of self-mortification and mass hypnosis, drawing the city's youth into its orbit and filling the air with a sickly-sweet perfume that Conan's keen barbarian senses recognize as the presence of a nameless evil.

The Theft of the Eye of the Serpent

The tower's inner sanctum is the scene of the story's central heist, planned by Subotai, who has heard of the place "in a professional way" from his brother thieves. The plan is to steal the Eye of the Serpent, an enormous ruby-red jewel of tear-drop shape resting upon a stone pylon in a rotunda some twenty paces across. The chamber is guarded by a serpent of prodigious size, coiled about the base of the altar, a reptile so large that Conan has never heard of or even imagined such a creature. The lamplight sparkles on its glittering scales, adding immeasurably to its apparent magnitude. Subotai identifies the gem as "the rarest gem on earth, and the largest," claiming they could buy an emirate in Turan with it. The approach to this treasure is itself a test of nerve: Conan is the first to climb the tower, requiring three throws of the grapnel to lodge it securely in the masonry at the upper rim. As he climbs, he passes a narrow window whence shines a pulsating light, and hears strange, discordant music and a muffled drumbeat, along with a faint chorus of hissing voices that do not sound human. An enormous head rears up in the embrasure, with cold, slit-pupiled eyes staring into Conan's, a forked tongue flickering to taste the air, until he perceives that a pane of glass separates him from the giant reptile. Reaching the parapet, he finds merlons rising like the points of a crown, embedded with myriads of bright-hued gems that glimmer like frost under the moon and fracture into a thousand tiny rainbows. Inside, the floor beneath a circular opening is littered with corpses, male and female, some fresh, some far gone in decay, others reduced to skeletal remains, with rats fleeing squeaking before the intruders. The theft of the Eye is thus framed as a violation of the cult's most sacred object, a transgression that will bring the full weight of the serpent-worshipers down upon the thieves.

The Stage of Doom's Power

The Tower of the Black Serpent is also the stage upon which Thulsa Doom demonstrates his absolute authority and his contempt for human life. Within its walls, Doom conducts his catechism, asking his followers who amongst them fears the warm embrace of death, and whether they will strike true to the infidel heart, whether it be the heart of friend, lover, or loved one in their former life. The votaries moan "Doom! Doom!" in rhythm to his utterances, swaying in ecstasy. Doom's most chilling demonstration comes in the garden, where he commands a young girl to come to him, and she leaps from the wall to her death on the tiles below, her doll-like broken body landing near Conan's feet. Doom laughs, his laughter spun through with a note of triumph, and delivers his central doctrine: "That is strength, boy—that is power! It is strength against which the hardness of steel or the resilience of human flesh are as naught. What is steel, compared to the hand that wields it; what is the hand, without a mind to command it?" The tower is thus not merely a fortress but a theater of cruelty, where Doom's power over mind and body is performed for his followers and for his captive audience of thieves. It is here that Conan, his body in chains but his soul free, first confronts the philosophical enemy he must ultimately destroy, the man who denies the value of steel itself.

The Tower's Role in the Larger Conflict

The Tower of the Black Serpent functions as the pivot on which the entire narrative turns. It is the theft of the Eye that brings Conan, Subotai, and Valeria before King Osric, who rages that the thieves have caused Yaro, the black priest, to come before his very throne to intimidate him, threatening Osric, High King of all Zamora. The tower is thus the direct cause of the political crisis that drives the plot forward, the point where the cult's ambition to set itself above the monarchs of the world becomes explicit. The tower's influence extends beyond its walls, as the cult's processions and its hypnotic hold on the city's youth represent a form of power that challenges the traditional authority of the throne. The tower is also the place where Conan first sees Yasimina, the missing daughter of King Osric, clad in a gossamer gown, walking demurely behind Doom with a slumberous gaze shot through with hidden fire, recognizing her as the princess he glimpsed in a veiled palanquin on a street in Shadizar. The tower thus contains within it the seeds of the story's later developments: the rescue of the princess, the confrontation with Doom, and the ultimate destruction of the cult. It stands as the embodiment of the serpent-worship that Conan must overthrow, a dark monument to the power of faith twisted into tyranny, and its fall is implicit in the very act of theft that begins the adventure.