Conan the Barbarian #86 – “The Devourer of the Dead” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with Conan and Zula outside the Stygian capital of Luxur, studying the city before they go in to look for Bêlit. Of course, Zula is only there because he promised Conan he’d help rescue Bêlit, hoping that Conan returns the favour and helps him track down his old master in Kheshatta. The duo sneak into the city by scaling the high wall and Conan takes out a guard so he can don his clothes as a makeshift disguise. With Zula pretending to be Conan’s slave, they make their way through the city to a
tavern, where Conan hopes to learn more about King Ctesiphon and his palace. He takes to a bar wench (who wants to bang him) and learns some valuable information as a funeral procession goes by outside. Conan disappoints the wench and heads out to tell Zula they need to join the funeral procession to get into the palace. Some acolytes were making fun of Zula while he waited, so he goes after them and astounds them with his erudition before kicking the shit out of them. They catch up to the procession and get inside the Temple of Set (which looks like a pyramid with the top missing). Zula is recognizes as an 
impostor, so he and Conan fight their way through the acolytes and guards and find a room containing a well that reflects the starry sky. They dive in and swim up into the channel that the barge is moving down. They follow it and find themselves in a chamber with a C’thulhu-esque monstrosity called the Devourer of the Dead. They quickly realize they can’t fight it, so Conan uses a torch to set the barge on fire, hoping the Devourer won’t like the taste of flames. As they’re watching, they hear a voice from the coffin that was on the barge and when they open it, Bêlit is inside. The Devourer consumes the flaming barge and goes nuts, bringing the temple roof down. Conan, Zula, and Bêlit swim up the channel until they reach the outside. Bêlit tells them King Ctesiphon had her put into the coffin because she was captured with Neftha. When Conan wonders why Ctesiphon would fear a slave girl, Bêlit tells him that Neftha is actually the King’s sister. This is a pretty good issue, reuniting Conan and Bêlit and strengthening the bond between Conan and Zula by having them fight together against overwhelming odds. Roy was always fascinated by Egyptology (and almost went into it as a profession), so he put a lot of real-world myth into this issue. 
Of course, in Egyptian myth, the Devourer of the Dead was part hippo, part lion, and part crocodile, not C’thulhu’s cousin like we get here, but I think this works really well for a Conan tale.
Conan the Barbarian #88 – “The Queen and the Corsairs” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
If you’re wondering what happened to issue 87, it was a reprint of a story from Savage Sword of Conan magazine and since it isn’t included in the Chronicles of Conan collection I’m using, I’m not including it here. Anyway, this story continues directly from the one above, with Bêlit relating to Conan (and us) what happened after she and Neftha changed into snakes to enter the palace unobserved. They changed back to human form and Neftha led Bêlit to the King’s chamber, explaining how King Ctesiphon is so paranoid that he only sees people during the day if he’s surrounded by guards, but he doesn’t trust the guards completely so he dismisses them at night. She also mentioned that he’s an ineffective king, dependent on his
advisors, especially one called Hath-Horeb. When they entered the king’s chamber, Bêlit found a skeleton dressed in his vestments and realized it was a trap. But she was surprised that Ctesiphon was more afraid of Neftha than her and soon found out that the “slave girl” was actually Ctesiphon’s sister, returned to take his throne. Bêlit started slaughtering guards and grabbed the king as a hostage, but got a surprise when he turned out to be Hath-Horeb magically disguised. The wizard knocked her out with his powers and sent her to be eaten by the Devourer of the Dead, which brings us back to the present. Bêlit leads them back to the palace, climbing up from underground again and retrieving her original 
clothes. They burst into the throne room to find Neftha about to be executed, but Bêlit kills the axe-man to get to Ctesiphon. As Conan and Zula waste the guards, and Neftha and Hath-Horeb both slip away, Bêlit corners the frightened king and demands to know what happened to her father. Ctesiphon admits that Atrahasis was executed years ago to make room in the dungeons. Bêlit is ready to skewer the king, who tries to bribe her by offering his crown, but she tosses him off a balcony to his death instead of taking it. Before the fighting can continue, Neftha appears and proclaims herself the new ruler (under the name of King Ctesiphon III). Instead of being grateful for Conan helping her, she orders him and Zula thrown in the dungeons and Bêlit killed. Zula uses a type of hypnosis to make the guards wander about aimlessly and when Hath-Horeb tries to counteract it, Bêlit puts a spear through him. Neftha orders them all killed and they’re forced to flee the city, Bêlit still trying to deal with the fact that father’s been dead for years. This is a good ending to the Luxur
story and the question of Bêlit’s father. It’s too bad he wasn’t really alive, I would’ve liked to see how he and Conan got along. Neftha seems a bit ungrateful, but i guess it fits with her being a queen … or king, since Roy was echoing real-life Egyptian history, where women reigned as kings and even wore false beards to look the part. Neftha is kind of an amalgam of Hatshepsut and Cleopatra and having her take the name of her dead brother saves any continuity problems that might crop up with Robert E. Howard’s work.