by Lin Carter
Thongor stared at the wizard. His words seemed fantastic, incredible…but they stirred the very roots of Thongor’s ancient heritage. For the old blood of Valkh of Nemedis flowed in his Northlander veins.
“Say on, Wizard!”
“The Dragons plot a terrible vengeance that shall not only destroy mankind but wreck the very fabric of the Cosmos. They have striven for long ages to establish contact with their Gods, the Lords of Darkness who opposed the Gods we worship, the Lords of Light. The Dark Lords ruled Chaos before the Universe was created. When the Moment of Creation came, they were expelled beyond the new-born Universe, to the thundering Chaos beyond. And ceaselessly from that moment to this, the Lords of Chaos have striven to reenter space and time, to begin anew their stupendous conflict with the Gods of men.”
“How can they reenter the Universe?” Thongor asked. Hot blood pounded in his veins. Ha—Gods! Here was meat and drink for a fighting man’s spirit! When Gods locked in immortal battle beyond the stars, and all earth shuddered at the far echoes of that conflict…
“By some art, the Dragons plot to open a portal to Beyond. Through that portal the Lords of Chaos may enter space. But the portal to Outside can only be opened in a certain time, when the cycles of the stars fall into a certain pattern. That dreaded time is drawing near. By my calculations it is very soon to come. It is now seven thousand and seven years since the day that Phondath the Firstborn was given life. In just weeks we shall be into the hour of doom. The old year will pass—the Festival of Year’s End will come and go. It is within the first week of the seven thousand and eighth year of man that the stars will be right for the Dragon Kings to reap their awful revenge upon the world that drove them into exile.”
“You know this for a certainty?”
Sharajsha nodded wearily.
“The Scarlet Edda warns of the day to come. And by my magic mirror I have sought out and found the hidden land where the last of the Dragon Kings yet dwell.”
He rose and went to a far wall. Opening a chest, he brought forth an old chart, drawn with scarlet inks upon fine papyrus. With one long-nailed finger he traced a path.
“Here is my subterranean palace below the Mountains of Mommur. And here, north and east, the great range crosses Lemuria to its heart. There the vast Inner Sea of Neol-Shendis lies, surrounded by walls of impenetrable mountains. Within the center of this great inland sea are the isles where the grim black citadels of the Dragon Kings yet stand. And within those towers they work at their hellish craft, preparing to open the portal to Chaos. Only one thing can destroy them and their monstrous plans.”
“What is that?”
“The same Sword that destroyed their power six thousand years ago. The Sword of Nemedis.”
“But the song tells that the Star Sword was broken in the Last Battle!” said Thongor. “And even if its fragments were preserved, the Kingdom of Nemedis fell thousands of years ago, and its cities are now heaps of rotting stone.”
“True. But the ancient masters of wisdom who wrote the Scarlet Edda tell how the Star Sword was created. It will take a long journey, and will involve many dangers. But I know how to create the Star Sword anew.”
“Is that what you meant when you said you might offer me employment?”
“Yes. I can create the Sword, but not alone. I need the strong aid and courage of a man of many battles to stand by my side against the Dragon Kings.”
Thongor bared his white teeth in a fighting grin. Here was an adventure to make all others pale! Here was the raw stuff from which songs and sagas that men should sing for a thousand years might be made. To hellfire with the Sark of Kathool! Who wanted to be a mercenary when one might become a hero?
“If your words are indeed true, Wizard, and your intentions are as you say, then seek no further. My steel is at your service.”
The wizard smiled.
“I had hoped you would aid me in this task. When I watched you battling the lizard-hawks and the mighty dragon of the jungles, I wondered if you might not be the warrior for whom I sought. Very well, Thongor of Valkarth. It shall be so. But many dangers lie ahead of us!”
Thongor laughed.
“Danger and I are comrades from of old, and many is the hour we have stood together, he and I, measuring swords. Come, Wizard! Finish your work—repair the floater. Phal Thurid built it so that he might conquer all Lemuria—but we shall see that it serves a nobler cause!”
And so it came to pass that Thongor of Valkarth and Sharajsha of Zaar joined forces in the quest of the Star Sword, even as the Nineteen Gods decreed.
For the last of the Dragon Kings had not fallen when Thungarth Jaidor’s son whelmed and broke them in the last battle. Nay, some there were that flew from the black keep there on the shores of Grimstrand Firth and fled before the blazing glory of the Star Sword in the hands of the hero. To dim and secret isles within the Sea of Neol-Shendis they made their way; and there, for thousands of years, the last of the Dragons brooded in the cold mists, pondering a mighty plan, scheming a stupendous revenge that would break the very Earth itself asunder and shatter it to dust.
And against this plot, wherewith the awesome forces of Chaos and Old Night and aligned to the weird science and black sorcery of the last of the Dragon Kings, two men stood alone to do battle for the saving of the world.
And it is here that Thongor the Mighty set forth on the path of his destiny at last, and it is here that his saga truly begins…
CHAPTER 8
The Tower of Woman-Headed Serpents
The sliding hiss of scales on stone,
Weird green-flame eyes in shadows black,
When Thongor faced the slorgs alone
And cold steel drove the nightmares back!
—Thongor’s Saga, Stave IV
The floater drove through the cool air of morning, three thousand feet above the jungles of savage Chush. Sleek and perfect as on the day it had first emerged from the laboratories of Oolim Phon, it sped across Lemuria. In its cabin, Thongor of Valkarth and the Wizard of Lemuria sat. Thongor was at the controls of the airboat, while the aged sorcerer examined a map.
It had taken the wizard a full week to complete his repairs on the airboat, newly named the Nemedis. Seven precious days out of the small store of time were now spent, and all too soon the ancient stars would return to their foretold positions above Lemuria and exert the baleful astral influences needed by the Dragon Kings for their terrible plans. While Sharajsha had labored night and day, Thongor had restlessly prowled the rooms and halls of the subterranean palace, impatient to be away. The giant barbarian was unused to inactivity and chafed at delay. The repairs had taken somewhat longer than had been anticipated, as the wizard insisted on installing some devices of his own design, and making some slight improvements on the original floater. One of these was a sphere of glass securely clamped to the control panel before Thongor. Within it a wedge-shaped pendulum of silvery metal hovered at the end of a silken thread. This magnetic pendulum, fashioned of the finest lodestone, was drawn by some weird influence to the north, regardless of the position of the Nemedis. With its aid, one could never lose direction.
Sharajsha, completing his studies over the parchment scroll, handed the map to the Valkarthan.
“Here is our present position, marked with a red spot, and I have noted the pendulum bearings for the remainder of our journey. As you see, we must fly south and east for a thousand vom, down the Ysar, which splits Chush in two, beyond Patanga, the City of Fire, and on to the south coasts of Ptartha, where Tsargol fronts the Sea.”
“Aye,” Thongor grunted. “But you have not yet explained why Tsargol is our first goal.”
“Thousands of years ago a strange object fell out of the sky over Tsargol. This object was at first considered a fragment fallen from the moon, but the Red Druids, priests of Slidith, the L
ord of Blood, called it the “Star Stone” and claimed it was the burnt-out heart of a fallen star, a talisman of great potency still venerated as sacred to the Blood God.”
“From this stone, then, the Star Sword was made?” Sharajsha nodded.
“So states the Scarlet Edda, which records the manner in which Gorm the Father of Stars created the enchanted weapon. We shall follow this formula. First we must penetrate Tsargol and cut from their holy relic a fragment to be forged into a sword blade.”
“If the Tsargolans worship this burnt-out star,” Thongor grunted, “they will doubtless have it well guarded.”
“Aye! It is preserved from desecration in the Scarlet Tower, which rises in the temple precincts near the center of the city and not far from the palace of Drugunda Thal, Sark of Tsargol.”
“Guarded?”
“That is the curious thing. No guards are stationed about the Scarlet Tower, nor are any guards—or even the Red Druids—allowed to enter the Tower. It is, insofar as my wizard-glass could see, completely deserted.”
“It sounds as though removing a portion of the Star Stone should be simplicity itself, then,” Thongor remarked.
“Perhaps. Entering will be no problem. We shall wait until nightfall and fly over the towers of Tsargol. I shall let you down by a cable into the Tower.”
* * * *
For many hours the Nemedis rode the blue skies of Lemuria. The yellow walls of Patanga, City of Fire, fell past beneath them, where it stood at the mouths of the Ysar and the Saan, the Twin Rivers. The floater drove for a time above the great Gulf of Patanga and then entered Ptartha, a vast land of forests and fields with few cities to mar its seemingly endless expanse of greenery.
By late afternoon they were within sight of the red walls of Tsargol, where it stood beside the thundering shores of Yashengzeb Chun, the Southern Sea. They ate the evening meal and Thongor slept awhile, waiting for the sun to set. As soon as night came down over Lemuria, the Nemedis drifted silently down over Tsargol. Fortunately, it was a cloudy night, with neither moon nor stars to betray them to a watchful eye.
Sharajsha guided the craft over the domed palace of the Sark and halted it above the Temple Quarter, where the Scarlet Tower rose from dark gardens. The Nemedis was moored to the crimson spire with the sky anchor, a barbed hook at the end of a long line, and by that line Thongor was to descend.
“Remember, now, although my glass revealed no Tower guard, it is hardly creditable that the Red Druids would leave their sacred treasure totally without protection. Therefore be wary! Much depends upon this venture… Indeed, the future of mankind may very well hang in the balance!” Sharajsha counseled.
“That may be as it will,” Thongor said grimly as he wrapped his tall form in a black-hooded cloak. “Perhaps the Druids presume it to be too difficult for any trespasser to penetrate the walled gardens of the Quarter, or rely upon religious superstition to protect the relic. However, I have not managed to live as long as this by cultivating carelessness. If there are guards, my steel will feast on their reeking guts!”
He swung himself over the floater’s deck. Two hundred feet below his heels the dark garden stretched, a blur of gloom. The cool night wind from the sea sang about the taut anchor cable.
Hand by hand he lowered himself down. One slip and he was as dead as Phondath the Firstborn. The slippery cable was difficult to get a solid grip on, but he moved slowly down. The strain on his shoulders was terrific, but he kept a clear head, breathing calmly and deeply, and before long his booted heels scraped the tiled roof of the Scarlet Tower. This roof was peaked and its conical form forbade foothold. Holding the cable with one hand and the roof edge with the other, he felt with his feet for the window in which the anchor was hooked for a long, timeless moment…
And found it! He muscled down and slid into a black room. Balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, the broadsword sliding into his hand, he waited for a sound, a stir of movement. Nothing came and he breathed easier. He then gave the cable a single tug, by which Sharajsha was to understand that he entered the Tower without trouble. Now for the Star Stone!
This top room, he soon ascertained, was completely bare. He felt his way into the hall, equally dark, and down a flight of coiling steps to the next story. There, the rooms contained only books. Feeling his way from room to room in utter darkness, he wished impatiently for the wizard’s crystal rod of light. They had decided that a light was too dangerous, as a passing Druid might see it through one of the Tower’s many windows.
Thongor was moving down a hall when the sound first came to his notice. A slow, dragging rasp, dry and stealthy. He stopped cold, listening. The sound was repeated again. It was some distance from him, the full length of the hall. A soft rustle, a leathery slither.
Perplexed, Thongor wrinkled his brow. It was not a footstep…it sounded more like someone dragging himself along the floor…yet it was not that, for there came to his ears neither the soft thud of palms against the stone nor the heavy breathing such exertion would have demanded.
Green flames burned, phosphorescent spots of fire against the darkness.
Eyes!
They hung at knee level, questing the dark. Thongor felt his hackles rise on his neck. His primitive senses gave him uncanny warning…
Again the rasping slither, and the lambent eyes of weird green flame glided forward a few feet.
Serpents? Were the silent halls of the Tower guarded by clammy reptiles? That explained why the wizard’s glass had not revealed tenants in the Tower: needing no light, and dwelling in the dark, they would be invisible.
Silently Thongor retreated back down the corridor, avoiding a patch of dim light where a window cast vague illumination on the floor. He waited as the dry rasp continued. And then—
His barbarian blood literally froze in his veins as the unknown guardian of the hall slid into the light and was revealed in all its repellent, loathly horror.
Imagine a pallid serpent as long as a man’s body and thick about as his upper thigh, a serpent upon whose fluid and questing neck grew, not the blunt, wedge-shaped head of a snake—but the dead-white, masklike face of a woman.
Slanted eyes of lambent green flame glowed in a colorless face whose perfect feminine beauty clashed revoltingly with its snakelike body. Bald, the round skull gleamed naked in the dull light. Scarlet lips smiled seductively, revealing hideous fangs.
It was a slorg, one of the dread woman-headed serpents of the Lemurian deserts to the east. Thongor’s skin crawled with revulsion as he looked upon it. Never before had he seen one of the slithering monsters, but he knew it well from shuddering legends of desert warriors who had awakened to find themselves in the clammy embrace of the slorg, crept upon them in the stillness of the star-gemmed night.
For a moment the slorg hovered motionless there in the dim luminance, its masklike face and blazing eyes swaying on the long neck as it quested for its prey. Then it moved, slithering and wriggling, from the shaft of light that fell from the square window. He heard its belly scrape along the stone of the floor and a surge of nausea gripped him. He fought the gut-twisting disgust down and drew forth his great Valkarthan broadsword with a faint rasp of steel against worn leather. The hilt of the sword felt wet against his sweating palms.
In the dim darkness he searched for the pallid gliding length of the slorg. It was not far away. If it came near him, perhaps he could kill it swiftly and without undue noise, which might attract others…
And then he heard them wriggling down the hall. He knew not how many they were. Their eyes of lambent phosphor burned with evil green fire through the gloom. And he heard for the first time the sibilant hiss of the slorg’s hunting song. The sinister, throaty hissing made his blood congeal with loathing.
He hated serpents. His cold, windswept northern home knew them not. The slithering serpents that infeste
d the rotting jungles of the Southland filled him with disgust and horror.
He could see the glowing eyes clearly now. Five, six, perhaps a dozen of them. They glided unerringly toward him. Perhaps they scented his hot blood with their cold reptilian senses. As the first slorg moved to confront him, he stepped forward and swung a vicious blow with his blade. The steel whipped through the elongated alabaster neck, and the horrible head thudded to the floor, tusks clashing against air, while the headless body writhed slowly in death agony.
Now the others were upon him, a phalanx of green-glittering eyes and undulant pale bodies. Thongor turned and raced up the flight of steps to another floor. He prowled swiftly through several rooms without finding the Star Stone. Then the slorgs poured through the doorway in a cold white tide. His mighty broadsword reaped a bloody harvest among them.
And then he steeled himself for a great heroic feat of courage such as few men are asked to attempt. He had now examined all the upper floors. It remained for him to go down through the lower levels, which meant he must make his way down the stairs covered with wriggling white serpents.
Luckily he wore high boots. He went down the steps at reckless speed, slashing the slorgs from his path as they snapped and hissed at his booted legs. Perhaps the most awful thing about them was that it took them so long to die. Long after his sword had cut through their cold flesh, the heads were sinking their tusks in his boot-heels.