The Flame Knife is a 1955 fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 novella written by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

 and L. Sprague de Camp

L. Sprague de Camp

Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...

 featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery

Sword and sorcery

Sword and sorcery is a sub-genre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural...

 hero Conan the Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero that originated in pulp fiction magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films , television programs, video games, roleplaying games and other media...

. It was revised by de Camp from Howard's original story, a then-unpublished non-fantasy Oriental tale that featured Francis X. Gordon titled "Three-Bladed Doom

Three-Bladed Doom

Three-Bladed Doom is an El Borak short story by Robert E. Howard. It was not published within Howard's lifetime.There are two different versions of this story. The first is shorter than the second words. The short version was printed first, in issue #4 of the magazine REH Lone Star Fictioneer ....

". De Camp changed the names of the characters, added the fantastic element, and recast the setting into Howard's Hyborian Age

Hyborian Age

The Hyborian Age is a fictional period within the artificial mythology created by Robert E. Howard, in which the sword and sorcery tales of Conan the Barbarian are set....

. The story was first published in the hardbound collection Tales of Conan

Tales of Conan

Tales of Conan is a 1955 collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The tales as originally written by Howard were adventure yarns mostly set in the Middle Ages; they were...

(Gnome Press

Gnome Press

Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company primarily known for publishing many science fiction classics.The company was founded in 1948 by Martin Greenberg and David A. Kyle. Many of Gnome's titles were reprinted in England by Boardman Books...

, 1955), and subsequently appeared in the paperback collection Conan the Wanderer

Conan the Wanderer

Conan the Wanderer is a 1968 collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines...

(Lancer Books

Lancer Books

Lancer Books was a series of paperback books published from 1961 through 1973 by Irwin Stein and Walter Zacharius. While it published stories of a number of genres, it was noted most for its science fiction and fantasy, particularly its series of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian tales, the...

, 1968), as part of which it has been translated into German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 and Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

. It was published by itself in paperback book form by Ace Books

Ace Books

Ace Books is the oldest active specialty publisher of science fiction and fantasy books. The company was founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn, and began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns...

 in 1981, in an edition profusely illustrated by Esteban Maroto

Esteban Maroto

- Career :Born in Madrid, he began his career in the 1960s with series like Cinco por infinito, published in English by Continuity Comics as "Zero Patrol" ....

.

Plot summary

Conan, leader of a band of kozaki in the service of King Kobad Shah of Iranistan, quarrels with his patron over the latter's command to capture Balash, chief of the Kushafi and Conan's friend. Instead, Conan takes his band to warn the Kushafi. In the Gorge of Ghosts, the two bands are attacked by members of the Sons of Yezm, a cult of assassins whose symbol is the flame knife. The cultists kidnap Nanaia, Conan's current girlfriend. The Cimmerian tracks them to their stronghold, where he becomes embroiled in a conflict with his old enemy Olgerd Vladislav, a foe first encountered in Howard's story "A Witch Shall be Born

A Witch Shall be Born

"A Witch Shall Be Born" is one of the original stories by Robert E. Howard about Conan the Cimmerian. It was written in only a few days in spring of 1934 and first published in Weird Tales in 1934. The story concerns a witch replacing her twin sister as queen of a city state, which brings her...

".