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"My road lies southward, southward to golden Khurdisan; it is the working of the fates that my road lies that way."

In the endless wastes of the northern steppes, beyond the craggy lands of the Ice-marches, strange legends were told of fabled Khurdisan. In those savage lands Brak the Barbarian lived and fought, until he mocked his people's warlike gods once too often, and the shamans cast him out.

But his banishment was not entirely grim. He had a destination -- the great crescent-shaped land of Khurdisan that stretched nearly from the Pillars of Ebon in the west to the Mountains of Smoke where the world ended in the east. He would fight his way there, if need be, through the splendour and sorcery of the realms that lay between.

And now, his quest scarely begun, he faces the ageless, undying enmity of Yob-Haggoth, the Dark One, and of his Amyr of Evil, Septegundus of the lidless eyes and the crawling flesh.

"The road is long to Khurdisan, Barbarian. Beware of Septegundus. I will be there!"

Brak the Barbarian, outcast from the wild northern steppes of his own people, journeyed southward to golden Khurdisan.

He rode alone through a world of savagery and sorcery, relying on his swordsmanship and his barbaric strength for protection. But far greater than the threat of man or beast was the menace of Septegundus, Amyr on Earth of the great evil, Yob-Haggoth the Dark One.

Already Brak has escaped once from a hideous death before the stone idol. But the arm of Septegundus was long, his powers of sorcery unmeasured. Would Brak ever reach his goal among the fabled cities of Khurdisan?

"We go to the dark. We ride to the awful dark. A stranger leads us, a savage man. His presence brings the evil down!"

The soothsayer's grim words chilled the hearts of the travellers. Even the iron nerves of Brak the Barbarian twanged with foreboding. For in the traders' caravan as it crossed the wasteland of Logol he was the savage, the stranger. Though his strength and swordsmanship might protect the caravan from attacks by brigands or wild beasts, even from the ruby-eyed warriors of Quran, he was as helpless as any against the menace of supernatural powers.

And as first one, then another of the travellers fell prey to the horror that stalked them, Brak knew that he must find a weapon more powerful than his sword if he too was not to be discovered drained of blood and bones, a dry husk bearing the three black marks, the triangular Mark of the Demons.

In When the Idols Walked, Brak arrives at the edge of the roaring sea, seeking a ship to carry him to Khurdisan. But before he can find passage, his caravan is set upon by slavers who chain the great warrior to an oar. With each stroke he plots his revenge. Brak's tormentors will be destroyed, but he will find that the sea holds greater horrors than a slavedriver's whip.

Table of Contents:

• Devils in the Walls - (1963) - shortstory
• Ghoul's Garden - (1973) - novelette
• The Girl in the Gem - (1965) - shortstory
• Brak in Chains - (1977) - novella
• The Mirror of Wizardry - (1968) - novelette