Il ritorno di cain / Atlantis / La fortezza nascosta

In their search for Jacques, Zagor, Chico and Digging Bill penetrate into the mysterious African continent. They meet slave merchants, a mysterious fetish endowed with dark powers, a friend believed dead… And they discover that Kush’s terrible necromancers, who live in a cemetery-city and have the power to wake the dead, have kidnapped Jacques!

At the extreme border of Djouf, on the immense heap of stones cemented by the sun, lies the necropolis of Achron. It is there that, in distant times, king Thaylas of Kush brought the sceptre of the queen of Atlantis, Tin-Hinan. The search for the lost Lassalle interlaces with that of the mummy of Thaylas, who still holds in her hand the precious sceptre. It is under the authorty of this sceptre that Priness Marada wants to reunite the Tuareg tribes. But in the city of the dead, danger has the horrible aspect of the ghouls, the corpse eaters, while the comforting light of the sun shows Zagor and Cain the sheik Azim, with his Knights of the desert, is no less to be feared...

There is no end to the horrors that unfold before the eyes of Zagor, Cain and Princess Marada’s Tuaregs. After a miraculous escape from the fury of the ghouls, their well-earned rest in the Gebel Shaat fortress is but short-lived: hordes of living dead are thronging against the walls, a spectral army composed of the corpses of all the soldiers whose bones have been bleached, century after century, by the scorching sun of the Djouf. They’re being guided by two Kushite priests, and this is the pair that must be struck down! Meanwhile, the search for Jacques Lassalle is still proceeding, with not only Zagor and Chico following his trail, but Captain Jean Lafitte’s bold and headstrong daughter Denise too, as well as the guardian angels Jerome and Van Sutter. For all of them, the quest leads to the legendary reign of Songhay and its magnificent queen, but not all of them get there by the same route. In fact, there are some, like poor Jerome, who will never set eyes on the majestic walls of the jungle city...

Tin Hinan and timeless war are mentioned (part of Atlantis saga started in Martin Mystere).