Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria

by Lin Carter

  Thongor absorbed this silently as they were marched through winding stone corridors.

  “What of your father? Can he not help you now?”

  The otar smiled sadly. “Nay. He died three years ago—poison, some say. I am the Prince of my House, and if I cannot help myself, there is no one who can. Well, we shall die together, then. It is perhaps better this way, with a good sword in my hand, facing an enemy that I can see, than being struck down in the dark by an assassin’s dirk or a poisoned goblet, which would come in a year or two, when the mighty Sark thinks I am too powerful.”

  Thongor nodded, grimly. This was the kind of spirit his barbaric soul admired most! He liked the young otar’s wolfish grin and tough-hewn spirit.

  “If we are to die together, let me know your name,” said the Valkarthan. “Mine is Thongor, Son of Thumithar, a mercenary out of Valkarth.”

  The youth smiled. “Well met, Thongor. I am Karm Karvus, Lord of Karvus…or I was. I shall be proud to fight beside such a warrior as yourself. I have never seen such work as you displayed there in the Hall of Two Thrones. Let us face death on the sands and go down in a battle that shall leave the snake-blooded lords of Tsargol shivering in their robes!”

  “It is agreed,” Thongor smiled.

  “Quit whispering, you two!” the new otar snapped. “Here! Take swords! You, barbarian, take this!” And he handed Thongor his own Valkarthan broadsword, which he had not seen since it had served him so well in the Scarlet Tower. He hefted it in his hand, grinning at the guard.

  “The Sark says you will fight better with your own blade in your hand.” The guard sniggered. “I say you could be armed with thunderbolts, for all the good it will do you when the Gate of Death lifts!”

  Beside him, Thongor heard Kann Karvus draw in his breath sharply.

  “The Gate of Death? The Sark will pit us against—?”

  “Yes!” the otar sneered. “You will face the Terror of the Arena, Karm Karvus!” Then to Thongor he said; “It is a great honor, Valkarthan, but one perhaps that a barbarian such as yourself could not appreciate. Only the worst criminals face the Terror of the Arena, and then only on days sacred to the Lord of Blood, the God Slidith.” And turning back to Karm Karvus again, he grinned nastily. “It was a happy day for me, Karm Karvus, when you allowed your prisoner to insult the great Sark. Now I am otar in your place, instead of a mere spearman!”

  Karm Karvus laughed. “Yes, Tole Phomor, and you may even become a daotar in time. Not being a noble such as I, but a baseborn cur, you will never arouse the jealousy of the Sark!”

  Tole Phomor snarled a curse and thrust them forth.

  “Go out and die!”

  They went out the stone portal into the arena and stood blinking in the sun as the steel gate crashed shut behind them. Karm Karvus hefted his good Tsargolian rapier and glanced around. Smooth white sand, bakingly hot under the tropic noonday sun, stretched on either side. The arena was oval, walled with steep stone along whose upper edge down-pointing iron spikes were set. Above the row of spikes, tier upon tier of gaily dressed Tsargolians sat, applauding their presence with cheers and boos and laughter.

  Thongor blinked against the sun’s blaze and stared about him. Straight ahead was the royal box, where Drugunda Thal, Sark of Tsargol, and the Red Archdruid sat, apparently friends again. Directly beneath the box was a grim iron gate made in the likeness of a horned human skull, whose gaping jaws were set with heavy iron bars.

  The Gate of Death.

  Thongor spread his legs and stood waiting. He wondered what would emerge from the jaws of death, what possible beast the Sark would pit him against that could be so fierce as to earn the title of the Terror of the Arena. He had faced all manner of beasts in the past few days, from grakk and dwark to the fearful slorg. What would come out of the Gate of Death?

  Above, in the shadow of the canopy-covered royal box, Drugunda Thal leaned forward expectantly as the two emerged from the pit’s gate. Gloatingly, the Sark ran his eyes over the magnificent body of the Valkarthan, eyeing the smooth, tanned flesh that would so soon be torn to ribbons, dripping hot blood into the white arena sands.

  “I still say this is a mistake, O Sark,” the soft voice of the Red Archdruid came to him. “The man should be tortured, so that we may learn what he has done with the Star Stone.”

  “It is the arena for such scum, Yelim Pelorvis, as I have commanded. The Stone was not upon him when he was captured, but neither was it hurled from the windows of the Scarlet Tower into the temple grounds, for all that has been searched. No, the barbarian merely hid it in some corner of the Tower, where it shall doubtless soon be found.”

  “But what if—”

  “Silence, I say! I am Sark over this city, not you, Druid!”

  Yelim Pelorvis lapsed into silence, but his eyes were burning with a cold, acid fire and he glared venomously at the Sark. Drugunda Thal stood, magnificent in his gorgeous silken robes, the diadem of Tsargol sparkling upon his brows. He raised one thin arm imperiously.

  “Release the Terror!” he cried shrilly.

  Thongor tensed as the steel bars of the Gate of Death slowly, creakingly, rose into the wail, revealing a black pit. Then—

  With a blood-freezing scream, a crimson thunderbolt launched itself across the arena straight at them. It was all snarling jaws and glittering fangs. Eyes the color of yellow sulphur blazed with blood-lust. A wicked barbed tail lashed the sands as it charged with incredible speed.

  Thongor froze, every sense alert. It was a zemadar, the most dreaded monster of all Lemuria. The ferocious zemadar was the most deadly killer of the jungles, possessed of an insane ferocity that often made it charge in the face of certain death, capable of outracing even a speed-bred zamph in the fury of its hurtling charge.

  But it was more dangerous still because of its triple row of foot-long fangs, each tusk razor-keen and bearing a poisoned saliva that instantly paralyzed its foe. Like a crimson juggernaut it hurled across the sands at them.

  Thongor flung himself to one side and plowed into the sand, the zemadar narrowly missing him. The beast spun instantly, snapping at the air over his head. He drove the broadsword into its throat.

  But to no avail. The leathery flesh of the crimson monster was too tough for even his blade to pierce. He leaped backward as the twenty-foot horror sprang at him, batting the air with steel-hooked claws and growling ferociously.

  Karm Karvus had also barely jumped clear of the charge. He brought his blade home against the monster’s ribs, but the sword glanced off.

  The zemadar whirled, its barbed tail lashing. It knocked Karm Karvus’ feet out from under him, and he fell sprawling face-downward in the sand. The zemadar turned to gobble up its prey.

  Then Thongor did a thing so foolhardy—or so brave, depending on one’s outlook—that it brought the entire throng to its feet with a gasp. In the box, the Sark leaned forward—blood-lust visible in his pale, twitching face and glistening eyes.

  Thongor sprang upon the beast’s back.

  Locking his iron-thewed legs about the base of the monster’s neck, he clung to the arching neck, ignoring the ridge of spines that ran down its back. The zemadar had never felt a live weight on its back before, and it went mad with rage. It bucked and kicked with a snarling frenzy. But Thongor clung grimly to his precarious perch, and began inching upward.

  “What is that mad fool doing?” the Sark gasped, craning forward to see through the blur of the struggling man and monster.

  The cold, sardonic voice of Yelim Pelorvis rang clearly: “Climbing up to get at the zemadar’s eyes, I believe. They are the only vulnerable portion of the beast’s entire body, as he doubtless knows.”

  The Sark laughed harshly.

  “He will never do it! Never!”

  Yelim Pelorvis smiled a thin-lipped smile.
<
br />   “We shall see. I have a feeling that you are about to lose your prize zemadar, O mighty Sark.”

  Sweat dripped down into Thongor’s eyes and the naked sun blinded him. He clambered up the lithely twisting neck to the head, digging his feet into the ridges of the zemadar’s crimson hide and ignoring its struggles to unseat him. He clamped one brown arm about the monster’s upper neck and with his free hand drove the steel blade deep into the zemadar’s eye. It screamed like a great sheet of canvas being ripped apart with one pull.

  He dug the point deep, probing for the zemadar’s tiny brain. On the sands below, Karm Karvus closed in, driving his steel at the monster’s belly.

  The zemadar, mad with pain, kicked the otar away again and fell backward, grinding Thongor into the sand. The enormous weight of the creature might have crushed him, but the sand was soft and loosely piled, so he merely sank into it. The crowd went mad with the heroic battle, screaming their throats raw under the blazing noontide sun.

  The zemadar staggered to its feet and dragged itself over to the wall. Thongor, seeing that he was doing no good there, slid the sword out and reached for the second eye.

  “What is my pet doing now?” the Sark quavered.

  “Trying to scrape the barbarian off his back by rubbing against the arena wall,” the Archdruid observed coolly.

  Indeed it was. And it had rubbed Thongor’s left thigh raw before the cold steel of the Valkarthan broadsword sank to its hilt in the monster’s other eye.

  The crowd held its breath.

  Coughing blood, the zemadar staggered blindly away from the wall into the center of the arena. Thongor sprang from its back, landing lithely on his feet.

  Twisting its gory head from side to side slowly, blindly seeking its foe, the zemadar lurched up to the Gate of Death. Thongor felt a chill run down his spine, like fingers of ice. Gorm! The thing took long enough to die…

  It coughed a gush of blood and sank to the sands, twitching. The long spiked tail thumped the sands once or twice, raising a white cloud. And then it died.

  Thongor, with Karm Karvus by his side, raced across the arena to stand beside the beast. Then he stared up at the astounded Sark.

  “That is how a man fights, Sark of Tsargol. Now let us see how a man dies!”

  And he flung the sword glittering through the air. The paralyzed throng watched as the blade completed its sparkling flight—and quenched its brightness in the breast of Drugunda Thal, last Sark of the Royal House of Thal.

  The Sark came to his feet, seizing the sword hilt with both hands, staring at it with goggling eyes. His mouth gawked like that of a beached fish. Blood came out and dribbled down his thin beard. With a heave of unexpected strength he tore the blade out of his breast. Then he tottered and fell face-forward from the royal box, hurtling down to thud against the arena sands, almost at Thongor’s feet.

  The Valkarthan warrior bent down, picked up his sword, and wiped it clean against the blood-bed rabbled robes of the dead Sark.

  Yelim Pelorvis stood alone in the royal box, a tall, lean figure wrapped in scarlet robes. Slowly he stooped, smiling, to pick up the diadem of Tsargol. It had fallen to the floor of the box when Drugunda Thal toppled over the ledge. Now he set it in place upon his own shaven brows.

  Then the throng exploded into noise and action. Cursing guards came leaping down the tiers, brandishing glittering weapons. Groups of fantastically robed nobles, like panic-stricken flocks of gorgeous birds, poured to and fro, screaming and shouting. Women shrieked and fainted. Red-robed priests chanted droning psalms, unintelligible in the general uproar. From the pits across the arena, guards emerged and came pelting across the sands.

  Thongor grinned at Karm Karvus.

  “That was just a taste of battle, friend! But now, at least, we are pitted against men, not monsters.”

  Karm Karvus laughed and tossed his sword up, sparkling in the sun, deftly catching it by the hilt.

  “Now we shall show them what real fighting is, eh, barbarian?” he asked gaily.

  Then the sun went dark.

  Thongor looked up as a swift shadow moved across the blood-splashed sands. Aloft, he saw a glittering metal ovoid hovering against the sun. It glided toward them, cutting the air silently. A knotted rope dangled from the rail of the rear deck. The Nemedis!

  Thongor grunted. So the old wizard had not abandoned him after all! Hope welled up within him. He felt like laughing or singing. But there was no time for either.

  As Karm Karvus stood frozen, staring up at the weird flying craft in awe and amazement, Thongor seized the younger man, tossed him across his broad shoulders, thrust his broadsword into his girdle, and reached up to catch the rope as it swept past.

  The Nemedis turned and climbed steeply, lifting the two warriors from the arena sands. They hurtled above the wildly milling crowd, soared above the towertops of Tsargol—and up and off, vanishing into the noonday skies of antique Lemuria, wherein they were soon lost to sight.

  CHAPTER 11

  Crypt of the Flame

  From wild red dawn to wild red dawn we held our iron line

  And fought till the blades broke in our hands and the sea ran red as wine.

  With arrow, spear, and heavy mace we broke the Dragon’s pride,

  Thigh-deep in the roaring sea we fought, and crimson ran the tide.

  —Diombar’s Song of the Last Battle

  They clung to the line as the floater lifted. A few arrows hissed by them as they cleared the last tier of the arena, and then they were out over the streets of Tsargol, where news of the Sark’s death had spread and townsmen fought with Druids till the gutters ran with blood.

  “What is this—thing?” Karm Karvus asked.

  Thongor lifted his voice above the roaring winds that sang about them. “A flying boat. It is driven by a friend—a powerful magician from Chush. Have no fear.” As the red walls of Tsargol drifted past below them, the two pulled themselves up the swaying line, hand over hand. They clambered over the low rail and Karm Karvus wiped his brow, staring down at the forests and fields, that rushed past beneath their keel.

  “His magic must be powerful indeed, to fly like a bird without wings!”

  The wizard was in the Nemedis’ cabin. They went across the quivering deck to join him.

  “Thank Pnoth you are safe, Thongor,” Sharajsha said as they entered the cabin. “Who is your companion?”

  “Karm Karvus, a noble of Tsargol, condemned with me to the arena. I could not leave him behind while I escaped alone.” The wizard nodded, greeting Karm Karvus.

  “Let me salve your wounds,” he said, locking the controls on a northwestern course. From beneath the low bunk he drew medicines. As he applied a poultice to Thongor’s thigh, which had been rubbed raw when the zemadar scraped him against the arena wall, he said; “I did not know what to do when the anchor became dislodged from the Tower’s window. Before I could maneuver the Nemedis back and attempt to pick you up, the gongs were ringing and the temple gardens were filled with guards and priests with flaming torches. Did you think I had deserted you?”

  “I did not know what to think,” Thongor admitted.

  “I saw that you had tied the Star Stone to the line, so I took the floater up beyond sight and waited for a chance to rescue you. Then I saw you and Karm Karvus fighting in the arena and came down to help you escape. I thank Pnoth, God of Wisdom, that you escaped with your lives!”

  “Thank, rather, Tiandra, Goddess of Luck,” Thongor grunted. “Have you anything to eat?”

  * * * *

  All that afternoon the airboat flew above Ptartha, while Thongor and Karm Karvus ate and rested. Sharajsha told the Tsargolian of their quest for the Star Stone and of their plan to overcome the Dragon Kings, and the Prince of Karvus decided to join their adventures. Now that he was a homel
ess wanderer like Thongor, he said, he could do no better than to assist their cause in gratitude for his rescue.

  “By evening we shall be over Patanga, the City of Fire,” Sharajsha said. “I have cut a large fragment off the Star Stone, and in the Eternal Fire I must forge it into a sword blade.”

  “Where is this fire?” asked the Valkarthan.

  “In the crypts below the High Altar of Yamath, Lord of Flame. I have a plan by which we can penetrate the city and, with luck, forge the Star Sword uninterrupted and undiscovered. But we must wait till darkness.”

  By nightfall they were high over Patanga. The red-roofed city rose on the Patangan Gulf, between the mouths of the Ysar and the Saan rivers. As darkness gathered over the sky, the floater sank silently to hover like a ghost-hawk over the spiked domes of the Fire Temple.

  “One of us must remain in the Nemedis,” Sharajsha said. “Karm Karvus, that one must be you.”

  “It is not my way to remain behind in safety when my friends face danger,” the Tsargolian protested.

  “I must forge the Sword and Thongor shall guard me. There is none to remain behind, holding the floater in readiness for flight, save you.”

  “Very well then.”

  Sharajsha gathered a black cloak about himself, drawing the hood over his features.

  “When we are on the roof, take the Nemedis up a thousand feet and remain there. We shall signal with this mirror when we are ready to go,” the wizard said, showing Karm Karvus a small glittering disc. The Tsargolian nodded.

  “Let us be gone,” Thongor said restlessly. “It is risky having the floater hang here like this, where anyone might glance up from the street below and see it.”