Conan the Barbarian #105 – “Whispering Shadows” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one starts with Conan being denounced by a Bamula witch doctor, blaming him for a plague that’s recently struck the tribe, as well as some recent setbacks against their enemies. The Bamulas aren’t eager to move against their war-chief … until Conan tires of the witch doctor’s imprecations and kills him. That rouses the tribe and he topples the totem of Ajujo onto them before taking off. Conan heads north through the jungle and out into the savannah, hoping to cross the plains and find work in Kush. He’s stalked by lions and kills a
couple with his arrows before fleeing, but the great cats suddenly give up the chase when Conan gets close to a partially-ruined castle standing in the grasslands. Conan thinks there’s something eerie about the castle, but when a huge storm blows in he decides to take shelter inside, in spite of his misgivings. Conan has strange dreams about malignant spirits in the castle trying to coalesce into something solid and kill him, but when he wakes he realizes it was no dream. A troop of Stygian slavers arrives to shelter from the storm and before Conan can warn them, the spirits manifest as a Lovecraftian horror 
that starts devouring the Stygians. Conan climbs out a window to escape the carnage and runs into a Stygian guard who’s been driven mad by the sight of monster slaughtering his comrades. Conan has no choice but to kill him and grabs one of the Stygian horses so he can get out of there as fast as possible. This is a minor Conan story, based on a tale by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter called “Castle of Terror”. Roy admits it’s not a great story to begin with, so he and Buscema weren’t exactly inspired to greatness here, especially since Conan doesn’t really do anything in the story.
Conan the Barbarian #106 – “Chaos in the Land Called Kush” – Roy Thomas/John Buscema/Ernie Chan
This one continues from the above story, with Conan still heading for Kush. In Meroe (capital of Kush), a man named Amboola wakes up in a cell after being given drugged wine by Queen Tananda, who accused him of plotting to overthrow her. Amboola is innocent, but that doesn’t help him much when a strange beast, like a humanoid warthog, appears out of some smoke in the cell and kills Amboola. A man named Afari hears of the slaughter and rushes to tell his master, Lord Tuthmes. Amboola was
commander of the Queen’s Black Spears, so Tuthmes knows the Queen wouldn’t kill him openly for fear of turning the city against her, but he dismisses the idea of a monster and suggests the Queen may have had Amboola killed secretly. Tuthmes tells Afari to have the guards who found the body (and heard the monster) executed, which will make it look like Tuthmes is avenging Amboola’s death. But after Afari leaves we see that a wizard called Muri sent the beast to kill Amboola on Tuthmes’s orders. Tuthmes is trying to destabilize Queen Tananda’s rule by getting rid of her supporters and making it seem like she consorts with demons. (Apparently, Afari has designs on marrying Tananda 
and started the rumours that got Amboola killed, so Tuthmes is using him to further his own ends.) The next day, Tananda rides out to the hunt, but the people of Meroe think she sent the beast to kill Amboola, so they’re not happy to see her. Egged on by a “witch-smeller” named Ageera, the crowd attacks Tananda and kills some of her guards. Conan happens upon the scene and instinctively rescues Tananda from the mob, holding back the attackers until the palace guards arrive. Tananda has the captain of her bodyguards killed immediately and offers Conan his job at a fabulous salary. Naturally, he accepts. A few days later, a Nemedian slave named Diana is brought to Tuthmes, who tells her he wants her to be a spy for him in Tananda’s court. To insure her loyalty, he shows her the warthog-beast and promises to
loose it on her if she betrays him. Diana is taken to the court and presented to Tananda as a slave, but the Queen suspects she’s a spy and threatens to torture her if she doesn’t tell her the truth of why she’s there. Before Tananda can start the torture, Conan interrupts and tells her he won’t allow her to hurt Diana. This story is based on another De Camp/Carter tale called “The Snout in the Dark”, which was itself based on a fragment of a story written by Robert E. Howard but never completed. This issue is mostly set-up, introducing us to Tuthmes, Tananda, and Diana (not to mention the pig-demon), but we’ll have to wait until next issue to see what happens with them.