by Lin Carter
“But the Prince, our lord Karm Karvus, what of him? Speak, man!”
Norgovan Thul had fought off madness with all the strength in him. With the last dregs of his iron endurance, fighting to hold to his sanity, the brave old Admiral had forced the ship about and guided her into port—an ordeal of such superhuman effort that the imagination shrinks from picturing it. For days, while the demons of madness nibbled at the edges of his mind, the loyal old Tsargolian had driven what few men remained alive to their oars by the sheer force of his will. But the effort had taken a ghastly toll. His strength was drained. No longer could he hold firm the citadel of his reason against the gibbering shadows that plucked and tore at the very center of his being. He smiled horribly, slack-jawed as an idiot. His haunted eyes rolled back in his head. Jorn Javas shook him fiercely, demanding again to know what had happened to Karm Karvus. But all the Admiral could say was one word, over and over and over again:
“Gone … gone … gone … !”
And when the other officers of the Tsargolian Guard summoned their courage and followed the brave young Otar to the bloody deck, they found Jorn Javas sitting amidst the corpses, the head of the Admiral still pillowed on his knee. The Admiral tossed and turned his head, mouthing meaningless words which broke betimes into mindless howling, like the other madmen who still lived aboard this nightmare ship.
The grizzled old Daotar seized Jorn Javas by the shoulder. The young man raised his tear-wet face to his superior.
“Did he say anything?” the Daotar demanded. “Is our lord Prince aboard the vessel?”
The youth shook his head in despair.
“Gone … gone,” he said hopelessly.
IN the absence of Prince Karm Karvus, the Lord Chancellor Drath Horvan, Baron of Amagar, as senior peer of the realm and senior officer of state, wielded the powers of a regent.
Within mere minutes of the discovery of the derelict and its crew of madmen and the dead, an emergency council of state was held in the Palace of Tsargol. Grim-eyed and white-faced peers and high commanders debated the meaning of the terrible events of the night, and the implications thereof. The Crown of Tsargol had been searched from stem to stern, but no clues had been discovered which might explain the strange and terrible tragedy. As for those found aboard—and they were but a fraction of the crew, for many were missing—they were either dead or incurably mad. From the dead there was nothing that could be learned, save that they had died either at their own hands or before the maddened attacks of their own shipmates. Nor was aught to be learned from the living, for they were not capable of rational converse.
The only fragment of information that was gleaned from the babblings of the howling men was the single phrase which many of them repeated over and over—
The Gray Death … the Gray Death.
But what that mysterious and enigmatic phrase might mean, none could say. If, indeed, it meant anything at all, and was not merely the mindless mumbling of men driven over the edges of reason into the red chaos of insanity.
What was it that had driven a shipful of men insane? And what of Karm Karvus? Was the Prince dead or alive? And, if he yet lived, was he, too, among the howling chorus of the mad?
He was not found aboard the Crown, and he was among the many mariners missing from the full complement of the crew. The councillors debated what could have happened to these men. The most logical answer was that, being raving maniacs, they had flung themselves into the sea in their madness and fury.
“The Crown could not have reached Vozashpa in time to return,” Drath Horvan mused grimly. “At best, with favorable winds, the voyage consumes seven days. And there is nothing between Tsargol and Vozashpa, save empty beaches and forested wilderness, no town, no settlement of men. The thing, whatever it was, that drove the men into madness must have struck while they were upon the high seas. And since our Prince was not found on board, alas, we are forced to the conclusion that he fell or threw himself into the immeasurable waves of Yashengzeb Chun …”
Silent faces and lowered eyes around the council table gave back no argument in counter to this supposition. Drath Porvis bit his lip savagely, his brow furrowed.
“What is yet to be discovered is whether this tragedy is some grim freak of nature, to be listed among the many mysteries of the unknown sea, or perchance the planned and deliberate attack of some cunning enemy as yet undeclared. For—” his voice sank to a whisper “—magic could have worked this terror.”
The council ended without deciding anything, like most councils. But Tsargol was on the alert, and keen-eyed guards watched from tower-top and wall, at gate and avenue and to, seawards, alert for the slightest sign of any enemy. If this was but the prelude to an assault, it would find the red stone city by the sea armed and ready.
And from the landing stages atop the mighty Palace of Tsargol, where a contingent of the Air Guard of Patanga was stationed, a lone ship rose with the first light of dawn, bearing within its small cabin a Patangan pilot and a royal Tsargolian herald.
The slim little flying boat rose into the dawn above the unsleeping city, circled once, and sped off to north and east, hurtling through the clear skies of morning like a silver arrow to bear the word of the loss of Karm Karvus to the throne of Thongor the Mighty, the Lord of the West of the World.
CHAPTER 2:
BLACK HAWK’S RING
Had some grim, black and unknown doom
Struck bold Karm Karvus—and had he
Gone to an unmarked, nameless tomb
Beneath the dragon-haunted sea?
—Thongor’s Saga, Stave XIX
NEAR midnight a day after the Gray Death first struck and the half-wrecked trireme limped into Tsargol harbor, a second ship glided into port many leagues to the north and east of that red stone city.
Here, at the head of the Gulf of Patanga, at the mouth of the Twin Rivers, rose the great metropolis of Patanga—the seat of Thongor the Mighty and the most powerful of the Nine Cities of the West.
But this second vessel was no princely trireme, gilded and caparisoned for a king’s pleasure. It was long and low and rakish, with a lean black hull. Scarlet sails caught the gusting wind and a sharp prow cleaved the brine with ominous silent speed. And there were live, sane men aboard, not howling madmen. They crowded the rails for a glimpse of High Patanga in the glory of the moon.
A captain of the Air Guards glimpsed the lean black galley as she glided into port. No signal lamps flared in all her slim black length, and she had the look of a pirate about her. The airboat circled about, lamps flashing code signals to watchmen atop the mighty Air Citadel which rose east of the Great Plaza at Patanga’s heart. Horns rang out—messengers clattered on kroter-back down the broad Thorian Way to the Sea Gate to give the alarm.
Thus it was, when the slim dark galley drew in to dock, half a company of the Patangan Archers were waiting, faces grim under the light of streaming torches. The Otar of the company strode forward to hail the unknown intruder from the midnight sea.
“Ahoy the black galley! Your name, port and master?”
Faces lined the gunwales—a ragtail crew, scrapings of the gutters of half the cities of the West. There was a fat, moon-faced Kovian, a gaudy kerchief wound about his brows; brown, black-haired Turanians and Cadornyana with amber skins and almond eyes—even one of the mighty Blue Nomads from the limitless plains of the ultimate West. They looked to be a motley crew of ruffians, glittering with gems and baubles, some marked ‘with cutlass scars and some branded with outlawry. And sash and girdle bristled with weapons.
Then a big hand shoved them aside and cleared space for a towering redbeard with a bright crimson kerchief about his brows, breeches of bottle-green, enormous black boots and a massive, gem-encrusted girdle. His bare bronze chest bristled with fleece of curly gold and frosty gray eyes blazed under tufted brows. He was a bull of a man with deep chest, broad shoulders, and arms that bulged with knotted thews like the branches of a gnarled oak.
“This be
the Scimitar out of Tarakus port,” he growled, “and I be Barim Redbeard, her master.”
The young officer tightened his jaw. “The pirates of Tarakus will find no welcome in the City of the Flame. Why do you slink by night into our harbor like some skulking thief?”
Barim Redbeard grinned, white teeth flashing amidst the fiery bush of his whiskers. “The fewer that know my mission the better, lad! But I be certain o’ my welcome in the Fire City: here—catch!”
He withdrew a small object from his girdle and tossed it. It flashed in the torchlight, a golden thing. The young Otar snatched it out of the air with a deft hand and turned it over, peering curiously.
It was a heavy ring of massy gold. Cut deep in the bevel were two glyphs in the pictographic writing of the Southlands; the Ka Thon and the Gor Yaa, these two glyphs were called, and they looked like this:
The Otar blinked with astonishment He could not believe the testimony of his eyes, and on the rail above, the burly Redbeard chuckled at his reaction.
“Thongor!” the officer gasped.
“Aye,” the pirate grinned. “The Lord Thongor’s name cut in the solid gold of Patanga. ’Twas the Great King himself give me that bauble, that ever I needed word with him, the showing of it at his gate would bring me swift into his presence.”
The Otar was nonplussed. There were but ten such rings in all the world, great seal rings that bore the name of the Lord of the Six Cities, and it was kings and princes bore them, high lords who bowed to the Black Hawk Banner. Such rings were keys and they gave instant access to the person of Thongor at any hour.
The young officer stiffened and saluted the grinning corsair as if he were a Prince of the Empire.
“You bear the Seal of Thongor, Captain, and I am yours to command. Come with me and I will bring you before the Lord of the West …”
BARIM had seen palaces before, and he did not pause to stare at the glistening marbles, the banners of rippling gold, or the glory of splendid spires athwart the star-gemmed sky.
But he checked his stride and his eyes widened at the sight of the young boy who stood at the palace gate, ginning, eager, hands outstretched in greeting.
“Lad, is it yourself? So big and tall, why, I had hardly like to have recognized my little shipmate in the likes of this grown lad!” he marveled.
Prince Thar laughed with delight.
“Of course I’ve grown, Captain Barim—it’s been three years, you know, since we sailed together that time Charn Thovis bore me away from the usurper, Dalendus Vool, and you helped us get away.* It is wonderful to see you again! But what brings you to my father’s capital, in such secrecy and by night?”
The Redbeard sobered. “Dark business lad, aye, black and dire. But surely you remember your old shipmates, here …”
His companions came pushing up behind him, crowding the son of Thongor on every side, grinning affectionately.
“Ye’ll still be remembering fat old Blay, I trust,” wheezed a jovial, moonfaced Kovian, dirks bristling from a vast leathern girdle that encircled his mighty paunch.
“And Durgan, too, I hope!” whined a lean, leathery old rogue with a black patch over one eye.
“Of course—and Thangmar, too!” the boy crowed, catching sight of a grinning giant from the Red Forests of Kodanga, his gold mane in a thick braid slung over powerful shoulders. “How wonderful to see all of you again. You haven’t changed a bit!”
“But you have, aye let me look at you,” Barim boomed, holding the youth at arm’s length. Thar had grown from the mischievous nine-year-old boy he remembered to a tall strong lad of twelve. His hard bronzed body was tough and sinewy and well-muscled for his years, and his square-jawed face, strange gold eyes and unshorn black mane were the very image of his mighty sire.
* You wit1 find the story of this adventure told in a book called Thongor at the End of Time, published in 1968.
The captain tousled his hair and cuffed him fondly. “Ah, you were just a mite of a lad, then—now ye be halfway to being a man! But, come, have ye grown a prophet’s skill these three years? How is’t we find you waiting for us here?”
“A messenger rode on ahead to say you were following,” Prince Thar said. And then he sobered, too. “But I forgot—they are waiting for you within—do you have some word of my father’s friend, Karm Karvus?”
Barim looked puzzled and shook his head. “The Prince o’ Tsargol? Why, flay me, lad, I know naught of his doings. ’Tis on another matter I’d have speech with the Lord Thongor.”
“Very well. My father left word you were to be admitted the moment you arrived. Come, I will lead the way …”
THE Hall of the Hundred Kings was vast and shadowy. Huge pillars rose, supporting a domed roof far overhead. The floor of the mighty hall was paved with squares of polished marble, black and gold. Motionless guards in the black leather and gold helms of Thongor’s own handpicked regiment, the famous Black Dragons, stood evenly spaced the length of the hall. Massive candelabra that stood as tall as men shed fierce light, flashing on burnished gold shields charged held by the guards and glittered from polished helm and lance-head. In a circle about the edge of the great dome, stone faces brooded down on the tense scene below. Some of the marble visages were bearded and kingly, some bore the features of martial conquerors.
The stony portraits of the Hundred Kings of Patanga stared down at their heir and successor, throned amid the splendor of his brilliant court—the Lord Thongor himself.
The Flame Throne of Patanga was sheathed in beaten gold the color of flame. Flame-like, too, was the ornamentation of that throne, whose high back rose to wavy, flamy points. Atop a nine-tiered dais of black marble stood the Flame Throne, and thereupon sate Thongor.
He was a magnificent lion of a man, with the broad shoulders and mighty chest and splendid thews of some savage gladiator. His grim dark face was impassive, expressionless, but under his black scowling brows his strange gold eyes blazed lion-like.
Robed was he in black imperial velvet. The gold shield of Patanga was upon his breast, charged with the Black Hawk of Valkarth, his savage Northlander home.
Naked, across his thighs lay the great Valkarthan broadsword wherewith he had hewn a red path to the Throne of the West. Sarkozan—Kingmaker—the old pre-Sanskrit Puranas name that mighty blade.
Binding his unshorn warrior’s mane of coarse black hair, the Flame Crown was upon his brow. The wavy points of it flashed with huge chandrals, a rare Lemurian gem whose gold-orange crystals matched the fiery hues of the golden coronal.
This night Thongor sat long at council with his peers. Slim, sardonic Prince Dru, bluff old Lord Mael, Baron Selverus and the Hierarch Eodrym—they all were there, as were those war-comrades, Zad Komis, Lord of the Black Dragons, and Thom Pervis of the Air Guard. And with them, a mighty Rmoahal giant, his indigo hide glistening, towered in war-harness beside a young Turanian with smooth black hair and alert, intelligent eyes, his supple hard body clad in the black harness of the Dragons. These were Shangoth of the Jegga Nomads and young Charn Thovis.
Indeed, all of the great ones of Patanga were here save for the lovely Sumia, the Empress. With her, motherhood took precedence over affairs of state, for a girl-child had been born to Thongor’s mate scarce a year before, and the babe—a little. Princess named after Sumia’s mother, Zandarla—demanded full attention.
It was the young warrior noble, Charn Thovis, who first saw Barim Redbeard and his comrades as they came striding into the great hall with Prince Thar as their guide. The young officer grinned and rose to greet the corsairs, for it had been he, three years ago, who helped the Prince escape the clutches of the scheming Dalendus Vool. ‘They had found refuge aboard the Scimitar and made firm friends.
On the Flame Throne, Thongor, his frowning brow heavy, his grim jaw resting on one balled fist, pondered the mystery of Karm Karvus, one of his oldest comrades. Now his brow cleared, a rare smile lit his somber features, as Redbeard strode up to the throne.
“Redbea
rd—by Gorm and All Gods!” he thundered, rising from his kingly chair and descending to clap the grinning corsair on one burly shoulder. “I see the dragons of the deep have not yet breeched the Scimitar’s black hull—’tis good to see you, man!”
Introductions were made all around and scurrying pages fetched seats and chilled wine for Barim and his men.
“We sit late at council, pondering the fate of my good friend, the Prince of Tsargol,” Thongor said when the pirates were settled comfortably. “When the docks sent word the Scimitar was come in secret to my shores, I bethought me you brought some word to shed light on the mystery of his vanishment.”
Barim shook his fiery mane. “Alas, Lord, the first I heard of this was from the lad himself—harrumph!—the young Jasark your princely son, I mean. ’Tis on another business am I come, with strange and evil tidings … but I would know of this Tsargol matter, ere I disgorge mine own tale.”
In terse, grim words Thongor sketched in what little was known of the weird doom that had befallen Karm Karvus at sea; and one phrase of his account wrung a grunt of astonishment from the Redbeard.
“The Gray Death, is it? Hai, Gods, I am come in great good time,” he growled, and fat Blay and wry Durgan and huge Thangmar muttered amongst themselves. Thongor demanded his meaning.
“That already ’tis begun; and best I delay no more in unlading what knowledge I bring hither. Aye, sink me for a merchantman, would I had come days earlier, then might your friend Karvus have been spared!”
“Explain,” Thongor said curtly.
“Aye, Lord. Then here’s the lot …” And in rough words, all interspersed with sailor-oaths, he unfolded a strange and awesome tale before his noble audience.
FROM their impregnable stronghold at the end of a rocky promontory that thrust from the base of the Gulf into the Southern Sea, the bold corsairs of Tarakus had ravished the main for half a century.