Thongor in the City of Magicians

by Lin Carter

  In the central square he came upon the corpse of Zarthon the Terrible. His sprawled cadaver, in all the gore-splattered and barbaric magnificence of its jeweled splendor, was hideous. Unza, the flesh-eating rodents of the ruined cities, had gnawed his ugly visage into a fretted mask of bloody horror. And between his cold brows, a scarlet arrow thrust up against the noon.

  Shangoth could read the markings upon the arrow, and knew it for a shaft flown from the great war-bow of his proud sire, Jomdath the mighty chief. Had, then, the Jegga rescued Thongor?

  He left the corpse of the fallen chief of the Zodak Horde, and prowled further in this wilderness of ruin and death. Soon he came upon a great war zamph whose bridle and reins bore Zodaki markings. The huge beast was unharmed, its dull bluish hide free of wounds. It stood forlornly without the zamph pens, which were locked against it, patiently waiting for its master to come and give it food and drink . . . a master who must have been one of the thousands who fell before the spears of the Jegga onslaught.

  As Shangoth came up to its side, the great lumbering zamph hooted plaintively and butted the horned, beaked massiveness of its great head gently against his shoulder. The young warrior of the Jegga thumped its burly shoulder and let down the barred gate to the pens. As the great brute ambled in on ponderous bowed legs, he ascertained that plentiful supplies of fresh water were in the deep trough, and ladled out the corn and bran mush that was the beast’s food. It buried its beaked snout to the eyes in the water trough and drank noisily. Then it raised its dripping head and snorted in his direction, as if to say “thanks.” As it fed, Shangoth regarded it thoughtfully. Finding the beast tractable and unwounded was a stroke of excellent luck . . . if his search for Thongor took him further afield than he had already come, the young bull would serve as his steed.

  At that precise moment came the sign he was looking for.

  A fantastic shadow darkened the sky.

  He looked up to see an incredible sight—grakk!

  Two of the feared lizard-hawks clove the bright air on thunderous hooked wings, their long snaky necks arched high, wriggling serpent-tails lashing the air-currents and massive clawed limbs folded against belly-plates as the scaly bodies soared high above the dead city of Yb.

  Shangoth froze within the shadow of the pens. The terrible flying dragons of ancient Lemuria dwelt in the mountain countries of Mommur and Ardath, and were but rarely encountered here on the measureless plains of the remotest East. Yet Shangoth had heard tales of their savage ferocity and berserk fury of blood-lust—and he well knew that the flying monsters were too heavily mailed with serpent scales of tough horn to be slain by aught but the luckiest and most skillful of warriors.

  It seemed that Tiandra the Goddess of Fortune still favored the prince of the Jegga, for the winged demons of the sky flapped by overhead without swooping for him with lashing barbed tail and razoring claws. They hurtled past, rising into the afternoon sky, and soon vanished from sight to the south.

  But not before he glimpsed their two riders.

  The heart swelled mightily within Shangoth’s brawny chest. Thongor yet lived! He slumbered beneath some magic spell, slumped helplessly in the tight bonds that fastened him into the lizard-hawk’s saddle, and he had not yet regained consciousness to recognize Shangoth far below—but the keen eyes of the blue-skinned Nomad Prince had recognized his friend even at such a distance. And Shangoth had seen too the black-robed form of the masked magician who rode the grakk behind the unconscious Thongor. That, and the southerly direction into which the two devil-dragons had flown, told Shangoth the destination of the two as clearly as if it had been inscribed across the breadth of the afternoon sky in gigantic letters of flame—Black Zaar!

  And Shangoth must follow, even if the path led him within the grinning jaw-like gates of that evil and ill-rumored City of the Black Magicians of Chaos!

  Shangoth could not know that Thongor had been seized and stunned by magic in the unknown crypts and catacombs of the cavern-world far below the City of the Worm. He could not know that the masked magician had magically transported his captive to the upper surface again, where saddled dragons waited in hiding for their master’s return. These things were unimportant. He knew only that Thongor still lived, although a prisoner helpless in the chains of the cruel Black Druids—and he knew that he must pursue the flying dragons and do his utmost to rescue his mighty comrade or fall in the attempt.

  When the zamph had finished his meal and drunk his fill, Shangoth too seized the opportunity to replenish his store of food supplies from the ownerless stock of provender within the homes of the slaughtered Zodak Horde. Then he swung up into the curved natural saddle of the zamph, that great saddle-shaped shield of massive bone that served to protect this Lemurian version of the prehistoric triceratops’ neck and shoulders. He took up the reins and tugged the beast about. It ambled through the rubble-cluttered streets, out through the broken gates of the ruined city of Yb, and gained the windswept immensity of the great plains where its ponderous stride lengthened and carried it and its brave rider deeper and ever deeper into the South.

  Shangoth reigned in the zamph on the rocky bluffs overhanging the dead river and looked down through the surly glow of sunset at the terrific panorama of immemorial Zaar.

  It had taken the loyal Nomad far longer to traverse the immensity of the plains astride his lumbering zamph than it had taken Thongor and the masked magician to travel the same distance through the ways of the upper air. But, though the sky had purpled with night’s overshadowing wings, Shangoth had ridden on. And when the sky crimsoned with bright dawn, still he had not paused to rest. Now, as sunset lay in flame athwart the western sky, he had reached the black walls of his goal. He stared down at the dark metropolis of sorcery. Somewhere within those grim walls lay Thongor the Mighty, a captive to the worshippers of Chaos. And only Shangoth of the Jegga stood between the Lord of the West and a terrible doom.

  But how could one man, even so splendid a warrior as the eight-foot-tall Rmoahal prince, battle an entire city of evil magic?

  How could he even enter the Black City?

  He stared at the beetling grandeur of the enormous wall, bristling with watch-towers. The top of the city’s wall was so broad a road had been built there, and a two-man chariot could make an entire circuit of the city atop her stupendous walls. Silent, watchful hooded men armed with strange glowing instruments stood at posts along the wall’s crest, peering down at gate and road and the measureless plains beyond. And even Shangoth’s bold heart sank within his breast.

  He could not climb the wall; it towered more than a hundred feet into the sunset sky and was not built of blocks of stone where fingers and toes might find crevices wherewith to ascend, but was fashioned by fire magic all of one piece from a black vitreous substance unknown to the Nomad warrior.

  He could not enter the gates, for they were gigantic barriers of solid iron red with rust, trebly locked and barred with night, so thick and strong no battering-ram or siege engine could penetrate them by sheer force alone.

  How, then, could he enter?

  “Where force or agility fail, one must use cunning.”

  Those wise words from The Scarlet Edda came echoing into his mind as he sat there astride the patient zamph, musing thoughtfully on the problem. As it happened, even as that phrase rang through his mind, his eyes were following the curved path of the sterile river as it cut through its deep channel across the sooty, cinder-strewn plain, to vanish beneath the walls of the Black City. . . .

  He grunted with surprise, and peered more closely at the spot where the dead river ran into and beneath the vitreous walls of black glass. A low arched opening cut the surface of the wall; heavy bars of rust-red iron combed through the rushing black waters of the stream, stretching from the upper arch of the portal down to its hidden underside. And Shangoth knew exactly how he was going to enter the dread City of Magicians.

  But first he removed the reins and bridle from the friendly zamph who had
served him so uncomplainingly on his long journey across the immense plains. He unclipped the rings that pierced its tender ears and sensitive underlip and threw these away, so that the beast could wander free. It hooted and butted its mighty head against him inquiringly. He slapped it on one burly, rounded shoulder and pushed it away. The zamph peered questioningly at him from its mild little pig-eyes, honked again, and ambled off. He stood looking after the great beast for a time, he felt sorry to see it go. It was the last friendly creature he might see for a long time. But he could not leave the dumb brute tethered here while he sought to penetrate the Black City, for he might not live to return and release it. . . .

  He dove from the bluff into the dark cold salty waters and came up gasping. The dead river was brackish, alkaline; naught could live within its icy floods. He swam toward the great city, hoping that in the dim sunset light his blue hide would not be visible against the black water. But just to be sure, he dove deep beneath the surface and swam underwater to the iron grill that barred his way. The iron rods were as thick as his thigh, but rust had eaten deeply into them during the countless centuries they had stood here in the rushing waters, and Shangoth’s strength was more than twice that of a human. He dove deep and swam beneath the black waters.

  He did not come up again.

  CHAPTER 14

  CITY OF A THOUSAND MARVELS

  Accurst metropolis! Of old,

  The Kings of Chaos bought thy heart,

  But not with shining gifts of gold—

  With foul, unholy, blackest Art!

  The Demon Princes taught thee well,

  Who sought to shatter Heaven’s plan.

  And yet the loathsome Lords of Hell

  Know not the inmost soul of Man. . . .

  —Thongor’s Saga, XVII, 21-22.

  Thongor followed the masked magician into the titanic ziggurat and through a maze of galleries and chambers that honeycombed the enormous structure. All about him to every side lay proof that the Black Magicians of Zaar were the masters of an incredible science-magic unguessed by the men of the outside world.

  The galleries and chambers were illuminated by artificial light. Globes of cold white fire hovered motionless in midair near the ceilings of the rooms through which he passed, casting a shadowless cold luminance that drove away the darkness. These weird spheres of frozen flame were neither crystals nor hollow balls of glass. It was as if some uncanny force had gathered into one place the dim phosphorescent mists of the dank swamplands and compressed their impalpable radiance into a sphere. The Valkarthan could not guess how this strange art was accomplished; neither could he imagine how they were hung motionless in the air; nevertheless, they were there, and provided uncanny light that did not flicker nor burn low.

  They passed through a high gallery that overlooked a vast hall two stories deep. There a multitude of men were busied about indescribable tasks. Thongor peered over the rail curiously. Long tables of some unknown substance white as porcelain, but transparent, covered the floor of this enormous hall. Stationed in a ring in the center were towering furnaces of heavy metal wherein searingly brilliant fires seethed at temperatures approximating those of the surface of the sun itself. Workers strangely robed in thick garments of spun silvery metal probed and manipulated long glassy rods within the core of the scintillant fires. Thongor guessed that here some weird alchemy was at work, and that the supernal heat of the sunfires were at work within the metallic crucibles, altering the very inner structure of matter itself into strange new substances. Bombarded by the intolerable radiance, the building-blocks of matter could be broken down and reformed into minerals without name, substances unknown to the world of nature.

  They passed on, and came to a long low-ceilinged room where colossal tanks of green glass bubbled with strange colored fluids. Glass tubes looped and whorled in curious patterns, collecting the condensation of nameless precipitates. Here men went clad in papery suits and wore weird glass masks against the malignant vapors and corrosive fumes and deadly acids wherewith they labored, brewing potent poisons and ardent liquors for use in torment and conflict. Although he maintained an impassive visage like a face carved from hard bronze, Thongor inwardly winced with loathing that so deep an insight into the structure of the cosmos and the laws regulating nature should be perverted and twisted away from man’s service to his destruction.

  The laboratory workers in their strange robes and inhuman masks, toiling against green fires, and amidst swirling fumes, no longer resembled human beings. They were like evil demons from the nether pits of hell, stroking the terrible furnaces of their darkling realm of torment and despair.

  In other galleries, Thongor saw the secret forces of nature laid bare so that the probing mind of man might search out its hidden laws, and twist it into strange forms. Captive lightning, caught in unimaginable traps and torn out of the heart of heaven, writhed like sparkling serpents of blue fire between globes of polished brass, filling the air with the metallic stench of ozone. Nameless acids and odorous chemicals were subjected to the relentless bombardment of intense forces. In a long tank of porcelain, a broth of oily fluids seethed beneath a ceaseless shower of electric sparks. Perhaps the dark intelligences of Zaar were blasphemously seeking to duplicate that accident or miracle of nature wherein life was first created.

  In another laboratory of hell he saw naked slaves stretched out on operating tables while their skulls were sawn away and the pulpy brains scooped from within. These brains were then immersed in a cloudy fluid while thin wires of burning copper were inserted into key nerve centers. Noting his attention to this grisly rite, the masked magician smiled coldly.

  “We seek to learn how the brain of a man may safety be removed from his body and preserved,” he stated. He pointed one lean black-gloved hand to a row of platinum cannisters which were being sterilized in baths of searing steam.

  “When the brain is alive and active again, we hope to preserve it within these durable containers, connecting the centers of sense and speech to certain clever mechanisms that duplicate the actions of our natural organs, so that a man’s brain can be taken from his body and kept alive, still seeing, thinking and speaking. When we have perfected the art of doing this, our mightiest intellects need never fall prey to death. When at last old age overtakes the body of a man, the mind can live on, still thinking and working aeons after the body that bore it has decayed to dust. In other words, we seek absolute immortality! Think of it, savage—to preserve the mind of a man for thousands, yea, for millions of years after his body has died!”

  His voice rang out, thrilling with cold fanaticism, but Thongor’s lips twisted in a grimace of disgust.

  “The mind lives, the body dies,” he growled. “And tell me, Druid—what of the soul?”

  Cold mockery gleamed from the green eyes hidden by the black mask. “In all our anatomical researches, I fear we have not discovered the seat of that elusive component.” The masked magician smiled. They went on.

  It was like a tour of the armories of hell. Thongor was shown weapons that man would not rediscover in ten thousand years and more. In a huge barracks-like room he watched the cold-faced war-wizards of Zaar practicing with sithurl-tipped wands, the crystals whereof were attuned to the frequency of the human nervous system so that a slightest touch of the glowing gems grazing against bare flesh would send one’s opponent shrieking and wriggling to the ground while unendurable agony blazed through his body, demolishing his brain and wrecking the very inner citadel of reason itself.

  He looked upon vapor bombs, dumbbell-shaped missiles of fragile glass which bore coiled and compressed within them poisonous vapors a thousand times the strength of that blue dust of the Dream Lotus that had felled him back in the caverns of the worm—narcotic fumes of such inconceivable potency that men who breathed the slightest whiff of the vapors would die raving mad, then minds destroyed with intolerable visions and hallucinations.

  They showed him warriors clad in unbreakable armor of synthetic m
etal as lucent as the finest glass—armor as light as thin crystal, but against which the mightiest spear or javelin would shatter—glass mail which would turn and crack the steel of a tempered sword!

  He looked upon a corps of flying warriors fitted out with body harness plated with urlium, the anti-gravitic metal from which the mighty airboats of Patanga gained their flying power. His blood ran cold at the thought that the lost science of Oolim Phon had been rediscovered by these malignant and depraved sorcerors with their lust for world-conquest. Soon, soon they would turn their uncanny science to the manufacture of a great flying navy to rival even the Air Guard of Patanga!

  And he saw hellish laboratories where men were injected with narcotic poisons in gigantic dosages which rendered them totally insensible to pain.

  “Imagine if you can a mighty army of such warriors,” Mardanax commented in his cold mocking way. “They would fight on to the last, even as their limbs were hacked from their bodies. Of course, the dosages we use are deadly, and drive the warriors berserk, but thus they may be commanded in suicidal assaults, since they are already dying even as they fight! Shortly we shall enslave the Blue Nomads of the plains—your friends of the Jegga first of all, and then the Shung and the Thad, and the rest. Our drugs intensify their bodily strength even as they paralyze their ability to experience pain. We shall launch these slave-armies against the citadels of the West in such numbers that the West will be won without the loss of a single life of Zaar!”