Thongor in the City of Magicians

by Lin Carter

  “Hai—Thongor!” they saluted him, and he lifted one powerful arm in a gesture of farewell. Then he turned to the center of the landing-stage, where his private airboat was tethered to a mooring mast. He climbed the rope ladder to the rear deck and bade the young pilot Falvoth Ptar, cast off the mooring lines. As the floater soared free and rose amid the other airboats of the expedition, he entered the floater’s tiny cabin where a picked crew of his personal guard awaited him.

  On his last expedition into the east, he had made close friends with the son of the old chief of the Jegga Nomads—the bold young warrior. Prince Shangoth, whom he had rescued from the grasp of Adamancus of Zaar. Shangoth had returned with Thongor to fight by his side in the Battle of Tsargol, together with several young Rmoahal warriors who had been among his most loyal friends and members of his princely retinue. These Nomads, Chundja and Jugrim and Rorik of the Axe, had stayed in Patanga with their prince to serve Thongor the Mighty. Now they accompanied him as he flew once again to the endless plains of the east where their brothers roamed and ruled and warred.

  The domes and towers of Patanga slid away beneath the hurtling airboat’s keel as its sharp rotor-blade bit into the fresh morning air. Thongor’s personal yacht led the formation, with two lines of floaters falling off to the sides. The drumming rotors filled the dawn sky with their droning song and the green farmlands about Patanga whirled past far below. Soon they were beyond the Land of the Twin Rivers and hurtling swiftly through the skies above the wooded hills of Ptartha.

  These weird flying ships were the key to Patanga’s power, and the weapon which had given the City of the Flame supremacy over the other cities of the West. The secret of their flying power lay in the sparkling silvery metal that sheathed their slim, tapering hulls. Urlium, the mystery metal, was a magical alloy created by the strange knowledge of Oolim Phon, the Alchemist of Thurdis. Alone of all substances known to man, this magic metal possessed the eerie power to resist the gravitational attraction of the earth. The steel framework of the airboats, plated in sparkling urlium, was not drawn downward by its own weight. Instead, the pull of gravity was reversed and the craft would have fallen up, were they not cunningly counterweighted by the keel and ribs of heavy steel which balanced against the upwards pull, rendering the flying craft perfectly weightless. Powered by heavy springs which ran the length of the twenty-foot-long hulls, sharp-bladed rotors drove the aerial ships at a speed greater than a man could travel on kroter or zamph.

  Oolim Phon, the old alchemist who had created the synthetic alloy, had constructed the first airboat. It was to have been the prototype of a mighty flying navy with which Phal Thurid, the Mad Sark of Thurdis, had planned to conquer the world. But seven years ago, Thongor, who had then served as a mercenary swordsman among the Guard of Thurdis, had been condemned to death in the arena for dueling with an officer. In his escape, Thongor had stolen the prototype airboat, and had used it later to defeat the legions of Phal Thurid and his power-mad commander, Hajash Tor, when they laid siege to Patanga. Since he wed Princess Sumia and became Sark of the City of Flame, Thongor had built a mighty flying navy of his own with which to defend the Empire of the Five Cities.

  Hours passed. The morning sun rose higher in the vault of heaven. When it stood at the noonward zenith, the fleet was over the land of Nianga. Here no cities stood. All was bleak and barren wilderness, a gray sere waste where few dwelt. All this realm had once been populous and fair, green with wooded hills and bright with glittering cities. But four thousand years had passed since that day when the God-Kings of Nianga had challenged the might of Heaven with their blasphemies, and the Nineteen Gods smote their realm with a mighty plague called The Curse of the Gray Fog. Since that terrible hour, no king had ruled in the drear wastes of Nianga, which men called The Gray Barrens and the Land of Death.

  From their height, Thongor and his warriors could see the central lands of Lemuria spread out beneath them like a gigantic map. There to the north, from horizon to horizon, stretched the mighty range of the Mountains of Mommur that ran from west to east through the center of Lemuria like a mountainous spine. Far off amidst the mountains of the northeast, the noon sun glimmered faintly on the still waters of the Inner Sea where seven years before, Thongor and Sharajsha the Wizard had fought the Dragon Kings and brought their last stronghold down in flaming ruins.

  Directly ahead rose the Mountains of Ardath, bulking purple with mist on the eastern horizon. And away to the south, beyond their view even at this height, the walled city of Tsargol stood on the shores of Yashengzeb Chun the Southern Sea. There ruled Thongor’s comrade, Karm Karvus, whom the Red Arch druid, Yelim Pelorvis, had driven into exile and outlawry. Thongor had broken the might of the Red Druids who served the demon god, Slidith the Lord of Blood, and drove them out of Tsargol, restoring Prince Karm Karvus to his rightful throne. Today, Tsargol was the second greatest city of the empire and one of Thongor’s staunchest and most powerful allies.

  With midday they broke their fast with dried meat, figs, and dates from the Desert Country, the good black bread of Pelorm on the gulf, jellied fruits from Tarakus, washed down with sarn-wine.

  By evening, they crossed the River Ilth and flew above the easternmost of the cities of man, Darundabar and Dalakh, which rose on the shores of the great river, with seacoast Vozashpa far to the south cloaked in coming darkness.

  Now they were in unknown country. Thongor had flown over these lands, but had never visited them. Even Shangoth, the chieftain of the far-ranging Nomads who rule the Eastern Plains, had never ventured into these lands. The trackless sands of the Desert Country lay below them now, where caravans from the merchant-cities dared the perils of sandstorm and thirst, among endless dunes of crimson sand wherein dwell the dreaded cathgan, or viper of the sands, and the most terrible creature of all the Desert Country, the fearful slorg . . . the woman-headed serpents.

  The sun died on its funeral pyre in the west in a welter of crimson coals. Night spread purple wings across the continent of Lemuria as the fleet of airboats sped on through the gathering dusk. Soon the mists and clouds that veiled the evening sky were brushed away by many-winged Aarzoth the Windlord and his brother, Dyrm the Storm King. Stars blazed in jeweled splendor, forming a glittering train for the rising of Illana the Lady of Heaven. Ere long she rose in all her glory, the great golden moon of old Lemuria.

  Young Falvoth Ptar, the pilot of Thongor’s floater, wearied. While he napped on one of the bunks in the small cabin, Thongor took the controls and piloted the airboat through the night.

  Ahead, hidden in the dark wings of night, the Ardath range ran south. Somewhere among its wilderness of peaks rose the great Black Mountain like a pyramid of ebon marble. Once Thongor had spent a desperate hour clinging to a ledge of the Black Mountain of Doom, marooned there during his pursuit of Zandar Zan, the Thief of Tsargol.

  This night, however, the driving rotors of his sleek craft would carry Thongor and all his host of warriors far above the deadly mountains and into the empty and desolate eastern plains to which they formed a mighty wall-like rampart. Dawn would see them speeding above the jungle countries of the south, and with midday they would be flying over the trackless lands of the Rmoahal, the Nomad warriors who were Thongor’s friends. With the lengthening shadows of early afternoon, the fleet would reach the time-crumbled walls of the dead city of Althaar which, aeons ago, had been among the First Cities of Man. Today its broken ruins moldered among the scattered bones of the First Men who had raised it stone by stone . . . today, it was the camp and base of the Jegga Horde, and there Thongor would find his stout friend, the great chief Jomdath of the Jegga.

  As Thongor’s fleet hurtled through the night into the east, far away on the remotest southern tip of Lemuria, where the Black City of Magicians stood on the brink of a promontory washed about by the crashing waves of the Unknown Sea, an Eye watched their flight. An Eye of malignant darkness and strange evil, with all the unearthly might and power of Zaar behind it. . . .
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  CHAPTER 4

  THE ALL - SEEING EYE

  And all the while a Wizard’s glass

  In darkling Zaar where Evil reigns,

  Kept watch as ship on ship did pass

  In winging flight across the plains.

  —Thongor’s Saga, XVII, 7.

  The Green Eye watched!

  In the midst of a vast domed hall of vitreous black stone was set a huge mirror of green quicksilver in a frame of shimmering copper. Set at intervals about this copper ring were great sithurls. The power crystals blazed with weird light. A tangle of copper wires coiled away from their electrodes. Strange forces seethed and tingled through the heavy shadowy air of the huge hall. Cyclopean walls of glassy black stone rose to a dome of crystal. No light burned in all that mighty womb of rock, save for a cone of shimmering emerald radiance that beat and throbbed above the pool of crystalline mercury—pulsed and beat like a Titan’s heart, timed to the throbbing illumination of the glowing sithurls.

  On a great throne of skulls, atop a nine-stepped dais of green marble, sat Mardanax, Lord of Zaar the City of Magicians. Mardanax—the Black Archdruid, High Priest of the Three Lords of Chaos.

  Tall and gaunt of form was he, robed in voluminous folds of black velvet, his hands gloved in black stuff, his face masked in black and hidden from the sight of men beneath the cowl of his enveloping robes.

  Through mask-slits, eyes of cold emerald fire stared down from the height of the Black Druid’s skull throne . . . down into the swirling green and silvery depths of the All-Seeing Eve.

  It lay at the foot of the dais, set into the black marble floor like a deep well, encircled with a rim of red copper. Within the circle of the Eye, that curious liquid metal, quicksilver, was held in the tension of unknown forces. Mysterious current flowed from the seven sithurls set in its frame, filling the roiling, swirling liquid metal with electric fire.

  Now the seething pool of mercury grew calm. A sparkling mist of vaporized metal faded from the green mirror of its surface. Within the mirror’s depths, a strange vision slowly took form, evolving out of chaos.

  A vision of nighted foothills slumbering at the knees of great black mountains. Hills folded deep in purple shadow, their contours reflected dimly in black lakes that lay at the mountain-roots. Above, the night sky blazed with stars like fiery jewels cast from a careless hand on curtains of black velvet . . . and the great golden moon of old Lemuria set amidst the jeweled throng like a golden brooch.

  Across the golden face of the moon darted strange shapes.

  Sleek projectiles of glistening silver metal, wingless and slim, tapering to needle-prows. Low cabins rose from amidship, opening on rear decks bound in with an encircling rail. From masts that slanted out behind the stem keel, long banners flowed on the night wind—banners of cloth-of-gold, stamped with the grim Black Hawk of Valkarth,

  The fleet of Thongor, hurtling over the heights of Ardath!

  On and on the glistening ovoids sped, arrowing across the bright shield of the moon’s mystic face. On into the east . . . and beneath his mask, the Lord of Black Magic smiled to see their strange flight. For the cold, cruel eyes of Mardanax of Zaar knew those bannerets of gold and black. They had gazed on the duplicate of those banners five years past, when the airboat of Thongor had burst the glassy walls of the Tower of Adamancus of Zaar, slaying the magician in the grasp of his own demons and setting free the Princess Sumia of Patanga and her defender, the mighty Rmoahal warrior, Shangoth of the Jegga Horde. Even then, five long years past, the cold cruel eyes of the Black Druid had peered into the whirling depths of his All-Seeing Eye to watch the valor and might of Thongor the Barbarian bring death and destruction to the great magician Adamancus and all his works.

  And now, the Warrior-King of Patanga had ventured again into the unknown East . . . to dare the wrath of Zaar the Black City and the terrible vengeance of Mardanax, its King!

  Cold eyes narrowed behind his black mask, the Lord of the Magicians stared into the swirling depths of his magical mirror and watched the fleet of Patanga as it flew over the endless leagues of mountain and desert, jungle and plain.

  The Citadel of Mardanax crouched like a monster of stone on a hilltop that towered amidst the City of Zaar. About him, cloaked in the dark of night, the City of a Thousand Marvels slept, while on the cliff-like heights of his eyrie, the Lord of the City kept watch.

  This was the seven thousand and fourteenth Year of the Kingdoms of Man. For seven thousand years the Black City had stood here on its promontory at the very edge of Lemuria, fronting the dark waters of the unknown deep. Aeons ago, the Nine Sons of Phondath the Firstborn had ruled here in the East. They and then sons and then sons’ sons had built the First Cities . . . immemorial Yb and vast Althaar, age-forgotten Nemedis the Father of Cities, and grim-walled Zaar of the South. During the long age of The Thousand Year War, the children of Nemedis and Zaar, of Althaar and Yb the City of the Worm had fought against the reptilian hordes of the Dragon Kings who dominated all the earth before Father Gorm kneaded the dust of the soil into the First Man and bled life into the veins of his creation from his own right wrist.

  The Thousand Year War was over; the Age of the Dragon Kings was done; and the first of man’s cities had fallen into decay and desolation, leaving the Empire of the East to fall beneath the thundering chariot wheels of the savage Rmoahal hordes.

  All but Zaar. Still the descendants of her founders dwelt here at the edge of the world in the ancient city of black stone. For Zaar alone of the cities of men had betrayed the Heritage of the Firstborn: Zaar had leagued with the Dragon Kings, had drunk unearthly wisdom and dark lore from the cold minds of the serpent-men, and with their mastery of magic had learned to stave off the death of their city, shielding it behind magic forces like a mighty wall. Thus Zaar survived, at the terrible price of treason and betrayal to the very name of Man.

  Oldest of Earth’s cities, Zaar was coeval with Man himself. And these eastern lands where Man was born were already beginning to see the first signs of the great cataclysm in which Man’s first home should perish. For already the stupendous volcanic forces which were at work deep in the cavernous heart of Lemuria had begun the remorseless destruction of the oldest continent. The promontory on which black-walled Zaar the City of Magicians stood was beginning to sink beneath the nameless sea . . . stark prelude to the Day of Doom, still hundreds of thousands of years in the unborn future, in which the entire continent should founder and go down beneath the measureless waters of the great Pacific.

  As yet, Zaar staved off its destruction with a mighty sea wall which held back the immeasurable tons of watery death. But the Magicians of Zaar did not ignore the evidence of their own intelligence: already, and for many years, they had been at work seeking a new home . . . in the remote West.

  But the Magicians of Zaar were few in number, however, great were their powers of black magic. They could not overcome the Nine Cities of the West in open battle—or, at least, they did not dare to pit the power of their dark science against the valorous swords of Patanga and the other cities.

  Instead, they worked darkly and in secret. For more than a hundred years, the agents of Zaar had been at work among the cities of the West, dividing them one from the other, rising barriers of jealousy, hatred and prejudice. So intensive had this work become in recent years that one of the Nine Wizards—the supreme Council of Magicians who ruled the dark city—had been sent in secret a decade before to redouble the work. This malignant being, known to men as Thalaba the Destroyer, had worked his way into the innermost confidence of Phal Thurid, the Mad Sark of Thurdis. It was Thalaba the Destroyer who had piled fuel on the fires of ambition that goaded Phal Thurid on to dreams of world-conquest . . . but the coming of Thongor had put an end to that part of the Great Plan. For on the very brink of victory, when the hosts of Shembis and Thurdis stood before the mighty gates of Patanga itself and lay siege to the City of the Flame, Thongor had come out of obscurity, a nameless and wandering barb
arian from the trackless Northlands, to bring the banners of Thurdis down in defeat, to break the iron legions of Phal Thurid, and to trample both the Mad Sark and the scheming Thalaba of Zaar into the dust. . . .

  But another phase of the Great Plan had been begun a generation before, when secret agents of the Black City had insinuated themselves into high places of power among two Druidical brotherhoods, the Yamath-Cult of Patanga and the Slidith-Cult of Tsargol. The Yellow Archdruid of Patanga and the Red Archdruid of Tsargol had worked hand in glove with the Black Archdruid of Zaar. Their evil cults had bred corruption and fear among the hearts of the men of the West. Eventually, both in Tsargol and in Patanga, these pilots had borne fruit: Vaspas Ptol, the Archdruid of Yamath, ruled from Patanga’s throne, while to the south, Yelim Pelorvis, the Archdruid of Slidith, held Tsargol in the palm of his hand.

  But again—and yet again!—by some incredible miracle, this nameless barbarian, Thongor of Valkarth, had triumphed over the deepest plans of Zaar. Both brotherhoods had he smashed, slaughtering their leaders and driving the remnants of the two cults forth as homeless exiles, devoid of power and influence. Whereupon Thongor had bound the divided cities of the west together in his young empire, healing the wounds that breached them apart, welding them together into a mighty bulwark against the dark powers of the east.

  This upstart adventurer, this Thongor, who was become the Sark-of-Sarks of the West, had built an empire then that now held five of the Nine Cities of the West together, where Zaar had hoped to have city divided and warring against city, until all were so weak that the black legions of Zaar could sweep down upon them and conquer the entire West at a single blow. Now that portion of the Great Plan, too, was ended.