by Lin Carter
“What will they do with us?”
“Even as the chief of the Dragon Kings said, as you have reported his words to me. They will lay us upon the black stone altars of their three grim gods and there we shall die, our life-energies going to feed and strengthen the Lords of Chaos.”
“A savage death, fit for such fiends,” Karm Karvus said. “Ah, if I had a sword! Or if Thongor were here! Together we would fight, back to back, and show the Dragon Kings how men should die, standing upright and facing death, not bound to a stone table, whimpering under the knife!”
“Aye,” Sharajsha agreed soberly. “Or had I one sigil left—one talisman! But Sssaaa, the Lord of the Dragon Kings, stripped me bare.”
“Sssaaa? Was that the thing that seized you and made you drop the Sword?”
“Sssaaa is the Lord, or Arch-Priest, of the Dragon Kings. He is the one who led them here when the Black Citadel fell to the Sons of Nemedis thousands of years ago.”
As the fateful stars slowly returned to their appointed spheres, the time came. The three bade farewell to each other, quietly, with dignity. Then the great door clanged open.
Sumia gasped. It was the first time they had seen the Dragon Kings close and clearly. They stood half again the height of a man, erect upon great bent, hound-like legs. From massive shoulders sprang short arms, clawed and powerful. Their necks were longer than those of men, and the heads were blunt-muzzled, expressionless. Slitted eyes of cold green flame blazed beneath brows whose misshapen and unserpentlike bulge denoted human, or perhaps more than human, intelligence. The Dragon Kings were scaled and black, torchlight glinting with minute points of light along the glassy armor of their hideous bodies. They had long, heavily muscled tails.
But somehow the chill gleam of malignant, intelligent fire that burned in their eyes made them more terrible and fearful than the beasts their bodies suggested. A beast slays from instinct, from the natural urge of hunger…but these creatures could be as cruel as a man.
And it was shuddersome to see beasts wearing manlike trappings. For the glittering black-scaled bodies were accoutered in thick belts and harnesses like men, with pouches and jeweled ornaments and weapons of monstrous and uncouth design. Sumia’s proud spirit quailed, yet she held her head high and did not deign to let the things read fear either in her expression or in her bearing. The blood of a hundred Sarks flowed in that small, graceful body, and never was good breeding displayed better than in that dark hour, by the last of the House of Chond.
“The hour is nigh; come forth, manlings,” the cold, sibilant voice of Sssaaa commanded. Karm Karvus glanced at Sharajsha and read his tired nod, and so did not resist. Those massive arms and shoulders held strength before which even the giant thews of Thongor himself would seem puny.
They strode out of the cell and into a vast hall. The light that they had glimpsed from within the cell did not come from torches, but from strange spheres which hung by thin chains from the domed ceiling, shedding a sharp, unwavering red light. They had no time to examine this weird achievement of the Dragon Kings’ science, for they were marched forth by their grim captors, down the giant hall and through a mighty rotunda where doubtless the Lords of the serpent folk held council.
Here too the strange red lights burned without flickering, and a great circular table of some unknown green-gray metal stood, with strange throne-like chairs spaced about it. The black stone walls were hung with peculiar tapestries of woven metal-thread, depicting scenes alien to a human eye: strange gardens of fleshly-shapen flowers and weird, fronded trees, whereunder the Dragon Kings of a bygone age disported in peculiar garments too complex to be noted merely in passing. A thrilling glimpse into a world lost millennia ago, when the black Dragons were the masters of the Earth, with all of this planet under their undisputed sway, before the coming of men.
They went out of that room and into a vast circular courtyard under the stars. The wall of the black fortress ringed them about, and in the center of the courtyard rose a vast ring of black pillars, nine in number. And beyond that, an outer ring of twenty-seven more. They were nineteen feet tall, carefully hewn of the same black stone—huge brooding menhirs, looming up into the thick mists that hid the skies. They stood like the legs of gaunt black giants whose upper bodies were hidden behind the clouds. Now and again a rent appeared within that heavy veil of evilly coiling mists and a faint star burned ominously through. The great monoliths were carven with Dragon runes—odd, twisting arabesques worked in bold relief. Of the three humans, only the old wizard could read their terrible message, and he shuddered and dropped his eyes.
A score of Dragon Kings stood within the court, each bearing a light-sphere within its black claw and wearing a strange helm of red metal upon its misshapen brow. They had formed a wide column, and as the three humans were led down their ranks they burst into a hissing chant in their ancient tongue. The ceremony was beginning.
They were led into the center of the double ring. There a great circular slab of ebony stone lay like a vast table. Manacles of red metal were fastened to their wrists and ankles as they were forced to recline.
“Courage!” Sharajsha said.
The archaic, hissing chant roared around them, rising and falling like the waves of the sea. Above their heads the floating wreaths of mist twisted like vaporous tentacles about the uncouth pillars. Red stars winked through the tattered veils.
Now drums rumbled to the patter of clawed hands, sounding in an alien counterpoint to the sibilant chant, their muted thunder echoing Sumia’s pulsebeat with a slowly rising tempo. She shut her eyes.
Sssaaa strode forward into their vision. He ascended the altar-disc and walked to its center. The three humans were bound at equal distances from one another, their heads together near the center of the stone. Sssaaa took his place there, towering above them. He lifted his great glittering arms to the sky.
“Iao-Thamungazoth!”
The chanting rose toward full cadence, its surf-roar booming. The serpent drums sounded in long rolls, rising and falling. The mist coiled between the standing stones that seemed to hover giddily above them, no longer upright. Sumia felt as if the very dimensions of space were being bent awry before the flowing rhythm of the unearthly chant.
Sssaaa thundered another name, its other-earthly syllables echoing from the reeling monoliths. The chant rose behind him in sibilant music.
Suddenly the fog seemed to stream toward an area of the sky directly above the altar-stone. Long wisps and ghostlike wraiths of fog sped between the black fingers of the columns to meet in the center, coalescing into a thick ball of darkness. Sumia shuddered at the clammy caresses of the fog-fingers as they streamed over her body. She felt a strange vertigo, as if the Earth were spinning beneath her. The circular wall that ringed the courtyard seemed to be revolving about her like a vast black wheel.
Sssaaa called upon the third dreadful name, and with a sudden flash the skies were clear. Above them the stars burned in strange patterns—slowly—one by one—turning red. The center of darkness had by now absorbed all of the fog, but it still seemed to draw upon the surrounding air with a terrible, insatiable suction. A breeze quickened about them, chill winds plucking at their garments and lifting Sumia’s long raven tresses. The wind blew directly into the ball of darkness—as if the atmosphere of the Earth were being drawn through some unknown orifice into the endless, hungry vacuum of unknown space.
The drums rose into a wild, maddened cacophony and the clangor of metal bells sounded on all sides, where the Dragon Kings had formed into a loose circle, dipping and weaving and swaying upon their great splayed hind paws. Dizziness poured over Sumia as the Earth seemed to sway in rhythm to the Dragon dance.
Above, the red stars of the destined hour blazed.
The wind arose to an icy gale, howling like a mad thing among the swaying monoliths. The circle of blackness grew, a
s if feeding upon the air and mist.
Now the carven hieroglyphs upon the menhirs glowed with a mysterious red luminance—and the curious helms of the Dragon Kings and the chains and manacles upon their helpless victims also glowed with the unknown radiation. Sumia felt a chill, icy tingling spreading through her body.
The sensation of vertigo rose and fell, even as the rhythm of the hissing chant, the drums, and the waxing and waning of the crimson star-fires.
Suddenly—all was silent.
Silence, complete and dead, as though they had been instantly stricken deaf. The Dragon Kings froze. The wind, the swaying vertigo—ceased! The very Universe seemed to hang suspended—to hold its breath, as if awaiting some terrible signal, some final act…
Sssaaa drew slowly from his harness a great black sword with a pronged blade. The Sword of Sacrifice. He bent over the Princess, and she stared upward, uncomprehending, frozen. The forked point descended toward her breast—and suddenly she knew that within seconds it would rip through her soft flesh and scoop out her living heart, hurling it aloft into the hovering heart of darkness above. She felt an icy paralysis clamp down upon every nerve, every muscle. She could not scream, although her mouth fell open. She could not tear away her terror-frozen eyes from the horrible sight as the blade descended to touch her motionless breast.
And behind them, Thongor laughed.
It was a rich, deep, full-throated laugh, warm and human. Its warmth seemed to crack the ice that bound them all. Sssaaa jerked uncontrollably, lifting his massive head to stare with wild green eyes. Sumia turned her head and saw Thongor across the courtyard, standing with spread legs atop the black wall. A cold hissing began among the Dragon Kings, and Sssaaa straightened.
From behind him, Thongor lifted the Sword into view.
Sssaaa screamed like a jet of escaping steam. The great circle of monsters broke and milled in a tangled confusion.
The Sword blazed with light, not the clotted scarlet of the Dragons’ magic spheres or the glowing symbols on the black columns, but a clean blue fire that seemed to burn through the murk and blur about them, dazzling and cleansing as the light of high noon.
He pointed the Sword at the center of the altar-disc, where the Lord of the Dragon Kings stood, the Sword of Sacrifice raised high.
Thunder cracked!
A jagged, sizzling blast of lightning arched from the Star Sword to the black blade of death. The black sword spluttered, melting, searing the Dragon’s cold black claws. He flung it from him, shrieking with maniacal fury.
The second bolt caught Sssaaa upon his weird helm of blood-red metal. It heated to the melting point instantly, and the great black body arched with the unbearable shock, tearing muscle from bone with the terrific impact of the thunderbolt. His brains fried, his body blasted, the Lord of the Dragons fell twitching spasmodically to the black pave.
The Dragon Kings broke, screeching. Some fled with wild loping strides for the citadel. Others raced to pluck the giant barbarian from the walls. But the Star Sword was alive with fire now, lice a stupendous blue-white torch. Bolts of crackling fire sprang from it, playing over their scattered ranks in a dazzling shower of electric fire.
A stream of thunderbolts landed among the columns, shattering some and toppling others. The black forest of stone fell, crushing many of the Dragon Kings beneath the weight of the monster monoliths.
Bolt after sizzling bolt poured into the motionless globe of darkness. The air quivered, exploding with thunder. The whirling chaos of the courtyard was lit with flashes of blinding white fire. The heavens cracked across, and cold rain and howling wind came drenching forth—as if, the evil paralysis of Dragon Magic broken, outraged Nature was striking back in all her raw, elemental fury. Blinding, stinging sheets of cold rain flooded down in a wild deluge, and the roaring song of the wind arose into a shrieking madness about them. Through its rage came the deep, ringing voice of Thongor, chanting the mighty, barbaric music of Diombar’s ancient song:
“…and thunder broke the sky—
Red lightning flashed—drums of thunder crashed—a rain of fire fell
To sweep the Kings of the Dragons down to the smoking pits of hell!”
Before the terrific storm of blue-white lightning, the swirling center of darkness broke—shattered—crumbled into fragments that rapidly dispersed and were gone, as a thick black fog is dispersed and dissolved before the scorching beams of the noontide sun. The storm rose. The noise was deafening. Wind and rain, the thunder of falling columns, and above them all, the iron-throated song ringing out in brave verses of victory:
“He beat them back with a broken blade, knee-deep in the roaring tide,
But the great black spear drank deep as it sank in Thungarth’s naked side.
Yet ere the Son of Jaidor fell, and ere his strength should wane,
The broken Sword of Nemedis had clove the Dragon’s brain.”
The rain was falling so heavily that through its glassy curtains the blundering, stumbling forms of the Dragon Kings were but dark shadows against the blinding flashes of exploding lightning. The dazzling bolts caught at wall and turret, clung twisting for a few instants, then vanished as a rain of broken rubble slid down into the court. Now lightning blazed in the skies above them, lighting the entire heavens in terrific sheets of flame, almost as if Father Gorm, the Lord of Lightning Himself were partaking in this last epic battle against the Dragon hordes. And skybolt and Swordbolt flamed together, striking down the Dragon Kings one by one. The squealing, shrieking, panic of the stumbling, staggering black forms reeled in panic before the remorseless blast of the angry heavens and the incandescent Sword of Nemedis.
Before this whirling chaos Sumia swooned for a moment, or an hour, for when she next opened her eyes the storm was vanishing with the same swiftness as it had begun. Under the clean light of the stars that now burned red no more, the destined cycle passed, the black citadel lay in wet smoking ruins, the ringed monoliths either fallen or raising only broken stubs of seared, half-molten rock to the clear, calm sky, where now the full moon was emerging softly to wash the Earth and the sea with her pure, serene light.
At his lonely post on the ruined wall, Thongor stood as if exhausted, the no-longer-glowing Sword held in his hand. Through the calm stillness of the night, he sang softly the last verse of the ancient song:
“Thunder rolled in the crimson sky; the War Maids rode the storm
To bear the soul of Thungarth home to the halls of Father Gorm.
The Age of the Dragons ended then, where the seas with scarlet ran.
Though the cost was high, the prize was great.
And the Age of Men began.”
Then Thongor came down from the crumbling wall and across the rubble-choked courtyard to the broken disc of the altar. And the keen blade of the enchanted Sword bit through the links of their chains and they were free, and Sumia felt at last the strong, gentle arms of Thongor the Barbarian around her, bearing her up carefully, holding her against his naked chest, her head against his heart.
“You are not dead,” she said, and Thongor shook his head, wild black mane falling across his bronzed shoulders.
“Nay, Sumia, I live,” he said quietly. And his golden eyes looked down into her eyes, which glimmered like dark stars. She made no further answer, for a great weakness rose within her, but her perfect lips curved a very little in a faint smile…and then she sank exhausted into the darkness of a deep and healing sleep, cradled in the Valkarthan’s powerful arms.
And the Age of Men began…
EPILOG
The Nemedis floated a few feet above the ground before the cavernous entrance to the subterranean castle of Sharajsha the Great. Standing beside the ladder, Karm Karvus of Tsargol, Princess Sumia of Patanga, and Thongor of Valkarth were making their last farewells to the old wizard ere flying on to
the adventures that yet awaited them in the days to come.
“Since you will take no pay or reward for the time you spent in my service, Thongor, accept then this slight gift from a friend,” Sharajsha said, pressing into Thongor’s hand a small package. The Valkarthan examined it curiously.
“’Tis a mere trinket, an armlet of gold, naught but a token of our adventures together. Yet keep it by you, for someday it may come in handy.”
Thongor nodded and thrust it within the pocket-pouch of his trappings.
“The time has come for us to say farewell,” Thongor said. For two weeks, since their return from the Dragon Isles, the three adventurers had been guests of the Wizard of Lemuria in his underground palace. There they had slept, rested, and feasted. Sharajsha had shown them his marvels, and they had talked through the long evenings, discussing their adventures and the perils through which they had safely passed. Again and again Thongor recounted how the waves had lodged the Sword of Nemedis below the mouth of the cavern where he emerged to find it beneath his eyes, and Sharajsha solemnly declared it was the work of the Gods…perhaps of Father Gorm Himself, for naught but an act of the Gods could have brought the sleeping powers of the Sword to life there in Thongor’s hand as he stood upon the wall of the black citadel. For Thongor knew not the runes and words of power with which the wizard had planned to set into action the enchanted blade.
“The Gods smiled upon our quest, and I feel within my old bones, Thongor, that they shall watch over you and that yours is a charmed life.”
Thongor smiled with the healthy skepticism of the barbarian, but made no comment.
But the Valkarthan was not made for leisure, and after some days he chafed to be away, finding adventures again. The others found him again and again fondling the hilt of his beloved broadsword, which Karm Karvus had preserved for him when he had lost it.