Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria

by Lin Carter

  Karm Karvus touched the controls and the floater descended, brushing her keel along the temple roof. The two cloaked figures of his comrades slid over the rail and melted into the shadows of the dome. Then he touched the controls again and the silvery shape vanished upward into the cloudy darkness.

  “This way. There should be a door here,” Sharajsha said, feeling along the curved dome. He found a secret catch and a door fell open, revealing a yawning square of blackness. They entered carefully, feeling their way.

  “This stairway spirals down. Be careful and watch your footing—we dare not risk a light!”

  They went down the well of complete darkness as silently as possible, the wizard carrying the Star Stone.

  “How do you know of this way?” asked Thongor.

  “Of old this was the palace of Zaffar, a wizard of ancient times. I have read in his scrolls of the network of secret panels and hidden stairways that he built into his castle. This stairwell leads us directly into the crypts below the entire Temple, where the Eternal Fire burns.”

  “What is this Fire?”

  “No man knows. The Yellow Druids of Yamath call it ‘The Ever-Burning Fire.’ It is a jet of some unknown vapor that rises from the secret core of Lemuria—or perhaps even from the very bowels of the Earth. It has burned for countless ages with a flame that never goes out. The Cult of Yamath regards it as an oracle and reads the portents of the unborn future by its weird light. I feel it is a natural phenomenon of some sort.”

  They were now within the very walls of the Fire Temple. These walls of massive blocks of stone were hollow, and between them the stair wound down into the secret crypts beneath. After some time they reached the last step, and Sharajsha felt about for the second catch while Thongor drew his great Valkarthan sword out, ready for danger.

  A click and the door opened. They stepped out into a corridor of smooth stone, lit by flaring torches of oil-soaked wood, set along the wall in wrought-iron brackets.

  “This way!” Sharajsha hissed.

  They slunk along the corridor, standing close to the wall to gain as much protection from the shadows as was possible. They encountered no guards and came at length to a great brass door. It was carved and worked with the flame-edged symbols of Yamath.

  “No guards?” Thongor grunted.

  Sharajsha shrugged. The door was unbolted. He pushed it open and they looked down into a great cavern with rough-hewn walls. In the floor of the cavern was a sunken well. From it a dancing flame of weird green could be seen emerging. It cast flickering shadows about the gloomy cave.

  “You stand here and watch by the door. I shall go below and perform what is necessary.”

  Thongor nodded and took his place as the wizard went down a stone flight of steps into the cavern of the Fire. He held the door open a slit so that he could see out and would detect anyone coming. This complete absence of guards both worried and puzzled him. He remembered the way the seemingly unguarded Scarlet Tower had contained the deathly slorgs. It was logical to assume that the cavern was similarly protected. Then he shrugged. Whatever might come, his stout sword or the wizard’s magic could certainly handle it.

  Sharajsha reached the edge of the well. From beneath his cloak he drew out a fragment of the Star Stone, a hammer inscribed with runes and queer letters of magic writings, and a long-handled pair of tongs. He clamped the tongs about the fragment and held it within the dancing green cone of the Eternal Fire of Yamath. Whatever caused this mysterious green flame lent it far fiercer and more intense heat than any ordinary fire, for the fragment of star soon glowed cherry-red, then pale orange-yellow. The Stone hissed and crackled in the dancing green Fire.

  A sudden noise! Thongor snapped instantly alert. Putting his eye to the crack of the door, he could see nothing. But he heard a soft scraping sound approaching down the torchlit corridor.

  With a whispered call, he informed Sharajsha of this. The Stone now glowed pale yellow-white.

  “Hold them off!” the wizard called. He withdrew the glowing fragment and held it over the iron edge of the well. He began to beat the glowing metal with his hammer, and as he did so his lips formed soundless words.

  A fat, yellow-robed Druid approached down the hall, accompanied by a dozen guards with plumed helmets. Would they enter the brass door, or go by it to some other room? Thongor’s question was soon answered. They headed for the door of the cavern. A guard stepped forward ahead of the Yellow Druid to open the door for him. As he did so, stepping into the cavern, Thongor cut him down with a single stroke. The man’s body rolled down the flight of stone steps.

  The guards yelled and their swords flashed into their hands. Thongor swung the gates wide and stood there in the entrance, smiling faintly, the long sword dripping crimson. Two guards sprang at him.

  Steel rang on steel harshly, filling the hall with iron echoes. They were decent swordsmen, but Thongor had faced far better. He disarmed one with a practiced twist of the wrist and gutted him with a backhanded swipe across the middle. The man fell screaming, and his body blocked the other. The second stepped back to avoid the falling body, lowering his guard as he did so. Thongor’s point darted forward and sank into his breast.

  The doorway was only wide enough for two, and now that the first two had fallen, two others came forward. For a time Thongor was hard-pressed. Behind him he heard the measured ringing of the magic hammer, beating the glowing lump of Stone into a sword blade. He fought on.

  Two grim-faced guardsmen engaged his sword. Steel flashed and rang in the red glare of the torches. One guard fell with a cloven skull. Thongor’s dripping blade sank into the second’s chest. But the tough yellow leather of the guard’s jerkin caught and held the steel, and as Thongor labored to withdraw the blade, two guards seized him. One held his arms and the other drove a dirk at his heart. Thongor kicked the guard in the face and wrenched free. They were all around him now. His fists drove like mallets, crushing flesh and smashing bone. Then they brought him up against the wall, pinning his arms and legs. The fat Druid came snarling toward him now that he was helpless. When he had been free, the priest had not ventured within reach of his arms.

  “Blasphemer! Desecrated!” he hissed, baring his greasy teeth. “You dare spatter the sacred crypts with human blood!”

  Thongor laughed and spat directly in the Druid’s face.

  The priest went scarlet to the lips, blazing with fury. He seized a sword and brought it up in a hissing arc toward’s the Valkarthan’s naked chest—

  His hand faltered—stopped. The blade rang on the stone floor. The face that had flushed scarlet with fury now paled with sick terror. The Druid’s eyeballs crawled to the left, staring at something beyond Thongor.

  One by one the guards turned to stare at the thing Thongor could not see, beyond his shoulder. Their faces blanched white with pure fear. Trembling, afraid to turn and run, they backed away down the hall.

  Now free, Thongor scooped up his sword and turned to face—green ghosts!

  There were three of them—transparent as glass, dim as mist, a weird and sickly green. Their groping hands were bird-clawed. Fanged and dripping jaws grinned in dead mockery from skull-heads. In black eye sockets, sparks of evil green fire flickered.

  Thongor felt his hackles rise, his neck-skin prickle. And the superstitious night-fears of the barbarian rose within him. He backed away, watching as the grisly phantoms advanced. One of them, whose terrible skull-head was veiled behind lank hair that grew long from a dirty patch of scalp still clinging to the naked bone, advanced with a hound-like lope. The second slid forward with a snaky grace. The third, whose head had been cut off and was carried beneath one bone-thin arm, shambled along as if crippled. From their hideous green bodies, filthy tatters of tomb shrouds flapped.

  The Druid, his fat, quivering face the color of curds, made the sign of Yamath with a
puffy hand. Neither it nor the stuttering ritual of exorcism he next tried halted the advance of the green ghosts.

  Abandoning dignity, the priest turned and ran with the guards and Thongor faced the phantoms alone.

  He kissed the red blade of the broadsword and muttered a quick prayer to Father Gorm. Then he sprang forward. The red steel hissed through the ghosts. They broke and crumbled like a patch of fog as the sword swished through them. Slack-jawed, he watched them fade and vanish.

  From the doorway, Sharajsha smiled.

  Thongor released his breath explosively.

  “So it was you!”

  “I thought you needed some help,” the wizard said.

  Thongor wiped the clammy sweat from his face.

  “Aye, that I did—but did you have to scare the guts out of me in doing it?”

  “They were not real—mere phantoms of the mind. Come, yon fat-bellied priest will raise the alarm. We must be gone, and quickly.”

  “And the Sword?”

  Sharajsha raised it from beneath his cloak. With his rune-enchanted hammer he had beaten the glowing-hot Stone into a long, rough blade. Along its jagged, uneven edges blue sparks crawled. The hard Star Steel shimmered with power, and the air about it quivered.

  “It must be impregnated with the virtue of lightning next, and that we can only do upon Sharimba, the Mountain of Thunder, a thousand vom from here. Let us leave!”

  They went down the curving stone corridor, Thongor leading. He padded like a jungle beast, every keen sense alert for danger. Surely the alarm would have spread by now! But no sound, no call, no tread of running feet could he detect.

  They came to the secret door. Even as Sharajsha reached for the concealed catch that opened the panel, the vengeance of Yamath struck. The wizard gasped, clutched at his throat, and fell, sprawling on the cold stone.

  Thongor, too, staggered. He braced himself erect, holding onto the wall with one hand while he struggled against the mysterious influence that threatened to overwhelm him. It was as if a sudden and irresistible sleep were coming over him.

  Sharajsha struggled to speak. “Vapor…drugged…do not…breathe…”

  Then the wizard was unconscious. Thongor held onto the edge of sleep with iron strength, fighting with every atom of strength his powerful body held against the dark tides that rose to engulf him. With swimming eyes he sought for the hidden catch, numb hand pawing the blank stone in vain. His lungs ached for air. His mighty heart labored within his panting, straining chest. Then, just as he had reached the farthest limits of his strength, his finger touched the hidden catch and the door swung open, striking him off balance.

  He fell full-length on the floor, the impact driving the air from his lungs. Instinctively, he took a breath. The narcotic vapor entered his lungs, and Thongor lost consciousness, there in the sacred crypts of Yamath under the great Fire Temple of Patanga.

  CHAPTER 12

  On the Altars of Yamath

  The naked virgins on thine altars plead

  As scarlet flame on pallid flesh doth feed!

  Lord of the Fire, drink down young lives like wine.

  Hearts, limbs and breasts—their very souls—are thine!

  —The Rituals of Yamath

  Sumia had known fear, but never before had she known despair. Was it days—or weeks—since they had come to drag her off to these dungeons in which she had been chained ever since? She did not know. When the Yellow Druid Vaspas Ptol had first pressed upon her his suit of marriage, she had coldly and proudly refused. That had been at the death of her father, Orvath Chond, Sark of Patanga. For months afterward the oily Prince of the Druids of Yamath had continued to offer her marriage—and each time, his humility lessened and his arrogance increased, in direct proportion to the rise of his power over the city.

  At last, believing his position secure, he had come into her bedchamber unannounced, to force himself upon her. The young Princess had resisted him with a drawn knife and threatened to slay him if he so much as laid one cold hand upon her. Vaspas Ptol had withdrawn, snarling threats, and that very hour his soldiers had seized her and brought her to the secret dungeons below the Fire Temple. Here had she languished since that time. At first she had feared that Vaspas Ptol would force himself upon her, bound and helpless as she was. But he had not come near. Nor had the guards offered her any discourtesy, only silence to her pleas and indifference to her commands.

  She knew now that the Yellow Druid was waiting for the Festival of the Year’s End, when living sacrifice would be offered up to the dread Lord of the Fires. That sacrifice, Sumia knew, would be herself.

  And the festival would be this very night.

  It was now about dawn. She had been unable to sleep all the night, and now in the first hours of morning, just as she was drifting off to sleep, the shuffle of footsteps and the clank of accouterments awakened her. Guards were coming down the hall.

  The lock clanged and the iron door of her cell opened. Into the cell two men were dragged. They were both unconscious, hanging limply from the hands of their captors. Sumia watched in puzzlement as the guards chained them to the opposite wall. Neither of them was a Patangan. The taller and younger man wore the common leather clout and trappings of a mercenary soldier of fortune, and the old, bearded man wore the long robes of a sage.

  “Who are these men you bring to my cell?” she demanded. The captain of the guards smiled thinly.

  “Two fellow-sacrifices, destined for the altars of fire beside yourself, O Princess!”

  “They are not Patangans…what have they done?”

  The otar shrugged, “They were found in the sacred cavern of the Eternal Fire, which their presence desecrated. When they were discovered, the young one fought, slaying six guards and insulting a Druid. Vaspas Ptol has condemned them to the altars. He believes they were in the crypts attempting to steal the offerings and treasures, but were interrupted before they could get to them.”

  The guards locked Thongor and Sharajsha to the opposite wall of the cell and departed leaving Sumia to her silent vigil beside the two unconscious men.

  Thongor awoke from the sleep vapor first and stared around. The first thing he saw was a slim young girl sitting on a wooden bench across the cell, looking at him. She appeared to be about eighteen, with hair of glossy blackness, which poured in thick waves of curls down her back. Her skin was of an almost marble whiteness, tinged with creamy color. Had she not moved, Thongor would have thought her a statue, for her features and limbs were so flawless they seemed to have been chiseled from pure marble. Her face was a slender oval under the glossy mass of curling black hair. Beneath thin, curving black brows her eyes were dark wells of light.

  Under his gaze her cheeks darkened from soft cream to the same rich color as her soft lips.

  “Where are we?” Thongor asked.

  “In the dungeons of Vaspas Ptol, Archdruid of Yamath, God of Fire,” the girl answered.

  Thongor tested his chains. His wrists were riveted to the wall against which his back was pressed. The old wizard, still unconscious from the narcotic vapor, was similarly bound beside him. The girl wore a copper ring about her slim waist, fastened to a ring set in the wall with a slender copper chain.

  Thongor told her his name.

  “I am Sumia of Patanga,” she said.

  He regarded her with surprise.

  “The daughter of Orvath Chond, Sark of Patanga? Why is the Sarkaja of Patanga chained to the wall of the dungeons of Patanga?”

  “Because I scorned to wed Vaspas Ptol,” the girl said proudly. “He approached me when the Sark, my father, died some seven months ago. I have refused him, not just once but many times. But his power has grown in Patanga, until at last he feels strong enough to dispose of the Sarkal office and rule the city himself.”

  Thongor
nodded sourly. The greed and lust for power of the Druids was familiar enough to him. If ever he managed to get out of this place and complete his task with Sharajsha, perhaps he could set about uprooting some of these depraved priesthoods.

  “Tonight is the Festival of the Year’s End,” Sumia said. “We shall be sacrificed to Yamath tonight, while Vaspas Ptol watches.”

  “That will be as it may,” Thongor growled. “The old man captured with me is a powerful magician. Doubtless he will have something to say about that—as will I, if I ever get my hands free and close them about the hilt of a sword. But tell me, will the people of Patanga really stand by and watch their rightful Sarkaja die on the altars of Yamath?”

  “Yes. They are helpless before the might of the Druids. Vaspas Ptol has this city in the palm of his hand. The people fear his magic and his cruelty. And he has played so cunningly upon their superstitions that he rules them through their dread of Yamath, the false god he worships.”

  “Is there no one, then? No relative…no lover?”

  She colored again, lifting her head proudly. “I am the last member of the House of Chond. Nor have I any lover. I am here in this dark place because I scorn to marry any man whom my heart has not chosen!”

  She fell silent then, nor could Thongor engage her in any further conversation, for she answered only briefly. Shrugging, he made himself as comfortable as possible against the wall and went to sleep. His recent exertions and lack of rest took their toll. He slept soundly for some hours, facing death with the healthy contempt he always displayed toward danger.

  When he awoke again, Sharajsha had also come to his senses. Either the old man had breathed in a more powerful dose of the sleep vapor or else his advanced years made him more susceptible to its influence, for he had out-slept Thongor by hours. Now he was conversing in low tones with the girl.

  Thongor yawned and stretched and greeted his comrade.