by Lin Carter
Other than this lack of definite information as to Thongor’s dungeon, Shangoth’s imposture was carried out with not a hitch. No one questioned his presence along the streets and squares of the city and no one ventured to bar his way, nor to approach him with questions.
Then, swiftly, came the end of his freedom.
A party of mounted guards on swift-pacing kroters came clattering through a column-lined arcade where Shangoth loitered, near dawn. It was with a distinct shock that the Jegga prince saw they wore robes of the same emerald green as his harness, and that the enigmatic word or name “Vual” was: emblazoned on the browpiece of their hoods and the chests of then: voluminous robes. They were armed with ebony shafts tipped with ivory bird-claws which clutched glowing crystals of strange power. Shangoth had seen such staves in the hands of the evil shamans of his people, before his father the great chief Jomdath had driven the vile warlocks forth. He knew with grim certainty that a glancing touch of those harmless-seeming wands could paralyze a man for hours.
He hoped they would pass him by with but scant notice. But Tiandra, it seemed, smiled on him no longer.
One of the mounted guards fixed him with a keen glance, then reigned in his reptilian steed and called to his fellows.
“Ho! Here he is. Phanthar, give the empty-brained lout your kroter—come!”
They reigned in about him. Still affecting the mindless mien and mechanical stride of the other slaves, Shangoth strove to stalk past them, paying them no attention. But it did not work. One seized his arm and bade him halt.
“Stop, you! The Lord Vual requires your presence—where have you been all these hours, you brainless fool? We’ve combed the streets since the Hour of the Cat!”
Shangoth halted, standing stiffly, not daring to look at the man who had addressed him, and wisely choosing not to reply.
One of the others laughed harshly.
“You know they cannot speak, Changthu. Come, drag the witless dead thing upon your kroter and let’s be off—I may yet enjoy an hour or two of sleep before day breaks!”
Not daring to resist, ringed about by the guards, Shangoth permitted himself to be hauled into the saddle of one of the hissing kroters and woodenly rode off, accompanied by his guards. He had not the slightest idea of where they were taking him, nor of whom he was supposed to be, and deep in his heart he felt a leaden despair.
For all he knew, with every step he was being led farther and farther from his lord.
For all he knew, the guards were leading him into dire captivity, from whence he could not escape to lend aid to the imprisoned Thongor.
Yet he dare do nothing that was not seemly in one of these robot-like slaves. So he went forward dumbly, like an ox to the slaughter, and in his despair he had no notion that he was on his way toward saving the world.
Dawn broke, slow and sullen and fiery, over the frowning ziggurats of Zaar the Black City.
CHAPTER 16
THONGOR AT BAY
Now Thongor stands in chains alone
Midst judgment halls of ebon gloom,
While Mardanax from kingly throne
Hands down the grim decree of Doom.
—Thongor’s Saga, XVII, 25.
They stood before the gigantic doors of sheeted gold whereon were worked the likeness of curling wavy-edged flames—such as might arise from the nether pits of hell itself. And one of the guards went forward to where a huge disc of jade hung suspended from a silver chain. He struck the center of this circle of pale jade and awoke a throbbing echo of bell-like sound that whispered away through thick shadows.
Slowly, the ponderous doors swung open . . . and Thongor stood on the threshold of the great Hall of the Nine Thrones. Face grimly set, he strode forward into the vast echoing place of darkness, his footsteps ringing on the marble pave. The tremendous leaves of the portal swung shut behind him, closing together with an ominous brazen thunder like the crack of doom.
He stood alone in unbroken darkness.
Then, from the central pit, the fire-fountain blossomed. A great tongue of scarlet flame roared up from unseen depths below, painting the columned circular hall with leaping shadows cast by the nine tall thrones that were set in a ring about the pit of fire.
Gigantic shadows went crawling across the curving walls behind the nine great thrones, whereon was painted with uncanny skill a hellish mural which bore the portraiture of fantastic demons. For a moment he gazed on the painted figures of the mighty servitors of Chaos and Old Night—Lords of the Black Inferno such as terrible Gamory and Zepar the Red, and Furfur who appears before mortals as The Hart with the Fiery Tail . . . dark Khil and fearsome Saleos who goeth mounted upon the Corkodrill . . . pard-headed Sitri with his gryphon-wings . . . and Beleth, the Rider on the Pallid Steed . . . shapes of unforgettable horror with eyes of sparkling crystal, limned upon the curved walls with incredible artistry in blazing colors that seemed to burn the very eyes!
Now scarlet light flooded the dim hall as the fountain of fire rose, shedding sheets of sparks. Guards led Thongor forth into the echoing hall, and brought him to a place near the well of flames, amidst the circle of towering thrones. And there they left him, vanishing in the shadows behind the thrones. He stared about him at the mighty chairs of colored stone, each looming atop its dais of glistening marble, and the tremendous backdrop of the mural whose demoniac figures leered down at him through the flame-shot gloom. Wet leather creaked as he surreptitiously tested his bonds.
Then came from without the vast doors of sheeted gold the ominous thunder of the huge jade gong, ringing in slow deep notes of solemn warning.
And one by one the Lords of Zaar took their places on the circle of thrones. . . .
Thither came Pytumathon to the seat of purple malachite, his gross, flabby bulk gowned in fantastic velvet and lavender silks. And war-like Maldruth, swaggering in scarlet and steel, a sardonic, mocking smile on his handsome, swarthy visage, as he gained the chair of sparkling crimson crystal. And quiet, bland Sarganeth of the Nuld in his voluminous robes, settling into the throne of gray granite, wherefrom he eyed the grim silent figure of the captive Thongor with mild and colorless gaze. And gaunt, mummy-like Xoth the Skull, his fleshless body wrapped in indigo cloth, feverish eyes burning from black sockets in his bald skull of a face. Mardanax the Black Archdruid reappeared, venomous emerald eyes gleaming with triumph, gloating through the eye-slits of his mask, taking his mighty place on the highest throne of black marble, and lastly Vual the Brain, his tiny, shrunken, childlike body tenderly cradled in the mighty arms of the blank-eyed Rmoahal slave, his enormous swollen brow and pinched elfin face hideous in their deformity, eyes of sharp black fire peered like evil gems at the silent Valkarthan as the zombie-like slave set him down carefully in his vast chair of lucent green jade.
The slave stepped back into the shadows behind the green chair, and the Wizards of Zaar looked down at Thongor where he stood, friendless and alone, in the very fortress of his enemies, ringed about with his greatest foes.
In solemn tones, Mardanax recounted the crimes of which Thongor was accused. He told in grave words how the Valkarthan adventurer had disrupted their carefully-laid plans against the Nine Cities of the West: how he had been the instrument of the destruction of their brother-druids of the Cults of Slidith the Lord of Blood and Yamath the Lord of the Flame, whose Orders he had broken and driven forth from Tsargol the Scarlet City and Patanga the City of Fire into homeless, wandering and scattered exile. He related in portentous tones how their brother, the Lord Thalaba the Destroyer, Prince of Magic, had met an ignominious death when Thongor had broken the siege of Patanga and sent the invading armies of the cities of Thurdis and Shembis fleeing from the field . . . and how a second of their brothers, the Lord Adamancus, Prince of Magic, had been whelmed and consumed in the clutches of his own demoniac servitor when Thongor had shattered and breached the very walls of his enchanted fortress to rescue the Princess Sumia and Shangoth of the Jegga Nomads. And he told, too, how their s
ervants the Zodak Horde had been crushed before the iron legions of Thongor’s ally, Jomdath of the Jegga, who now reigned supreme and unchallenged over the endless plains of the Rmoahal country.
Thongor knew that the only answer this magical tribunal could make to this long indictment would be . . . death.
And, doubtless, knowing full well the venomous rancor of these Black Magicians of Zaar, the punishment would be meted out in a manner lingering and artistic, a fiendishly-drawn-out death ingenious and coldly cruel.
But as the Valkarthan warrior stood silent and contemptuous before the judgment of his enemies, a flicker of hope yet wavered within his breast. It had taken every atom of his powers of iron self-control to restrain his features in a mask of impassive rigidity. Almost had he gasped aloud with sheer unexpected shock when he had seen the Rmoahal slave who bore into the hall the dwarfed body of Vual the Brain—the zombie-faced Rmoahal whom he knew as one of his greatest friends: Shangoth, Prince of the Jegga!
How, or in what manner, Jomdath’s son had come into this black city of necromancy and evil was beyond Thongor’s ability to conjecture.
He had last seen the Prince of the Jegga when the invisible warriors of Zarthon the Terrible had closed the jaws of their cunning ambush about Thongor’s men at the Hills of the Thunder-Crystals. At his last glimpse, Shangoth had been safely aboard the afterdeck of Thongor’s floater . . . and then the invisible Zodak Nomads had seized Thongor and carried him off to the ruins of immemorial Yb the City of the Worm.
That was days and days ago, and many leagues to the north. Now had Shangoth transversed so vast a distance—and why? To attempt the rescue of the Lord of the West? Thongor’s great heart warmed. Well did he know the devotion of the mighty Prince Shangoth of the Jegga, his friend. No other motive could have been imagined. Yet one terrible question burned within his brain, filling him with a nameless dread as he looked upon the rigid figure of Shangoth where he stood, brawny arms folded upon his mighty chest, staring blankly ahead with dull, dead, lusterless eyes.
Had the nine fiends of Zaar destroyed the mind and will of the Nomad prince with their vile sorcery—transforming him into a soulless robot of flesh, like the other living dead men who were their helpless slaves?
The judgment, when at last it came, was everything that Thongor had expected it to be. Upon his mighty throne of black marble, the Lord Mardanax terminated his lengthy, gloating indictment, and turned the matter of punishment over to the tribunal of the magicians.
“Now there remains only the manner of punishment,” he said, and the Nine stirred in a quiver of anticipation. “You will recall, O my brothers, that I suggested a certain—experiment—at our last council, many days past?” His tones lingered gloatingly on the word, and his cold green eyes glimmered on Thongor with chill mockery. The Valkarthan stood in silence, his face as impassive as a mask of bronze. “An experiment which the Nine Books of Darkness call . . . The Eternal Slavery of the Soul to Chaos?”
Thongor did not know the meaning of this cryptic phrase, but the note of demoniac mirth, of unholy relish, in the smirking tones of the Black Archdruid raised the hackles bristling along his nape. He maintained his aloof, unspeaking calm, almost as if the topic were other than the means of his death. If the Nine Wizards of the Black City hoped to break his spirit, to bring him to his knees, grovelling at the foot of their thrones, they would not achieve this goal. He stood as unmoved as a statue of granite, contempt visible in the proud unyielding stance of his body.
“. . . Since that time, my brothers,” Mardanax continued in his purring, silken voice, “I have delved further into the procedures of this mighty ceremonial. Would you know further of it, lords?”
“Aye, O Elder Brother!” came the whispered reply.
“Never before in the seven thousand years of our dominion over this realm have we attempted this ritual. But soon it shall be performed—all too soon for you, O Barbarian!”
Thongor steadfastly made no reply, but maintained a grim and unshaken mien.
Mardanax laughed harshly. “I congratulate you on your courage in the teeth of the Unknown! But it is more due to ignorance than to bravery. Perhaps I should explain in simple terms precisely the manner of doom which we decree as your punishment. Let me explain. In this ritual, the Lords of Chaos are summoned into actual physical presence in the Temple of the Dark Powers. There, by a feat of potent magic, your spirit is to be torn from your living body and fed to the Chaos Kings . . . which act condemns your immortal soul to unending aeons of slavery in the service of the Masters of Evil, while your physical body, devoid of its animating spirit, becomes a mindless, drooling thing . . . a mere vegetable, incapable of intelligence or any act of will, but still sensitive to pain. And your body will indeed feel pain, O Thongor, for unending years of degradation and torment and bestial defilement . . . a slave in our hands even as your eternal spirit shall be a slave to the Dark Lords of Cosmic Evil! We will leave you with this pleasant picture to contemplate through the hours of loneliness that lay before you in your dungeon cell. Take him hence.”
As Thongor was led away, he heard the Nine conclude:
“The Ritual of Summoning will be a mighty ceremony whereof the Lord Vual shall serve as Karcist or controller.”
“Aye, Elder Brother. A great honor. . . .”
“Green Brother, you will for this ceremonial require the protection of that most potent of all amulets, the Grand Negator. Secure it from the periaptium and render it potent with a charge of unlimited absorption.”
“I go, Elder Brother,” the Brain hissed, summoning the black-eyed Rmoahal slave with a beam of thought.
Guards forced Thongor from the hall, stumbling towards a hidden door. He had hoped before leaving the Rotunda of the Nine Thrones to catch the eye of the mute Shangoth, to see if the Prince of the Jegga would—could—return his cognizance. But the guards bore him away before he could catch the Rmoahal’s eye.
The door of his cell, a solid slab of steel broken only by a small barred window, clanged shut behind him. The guards had replaced his leathern bonds with shackles of cold iron wherewith they had chained him to a stout bronze ring in the wall. As the echoes of the steel door faded away, leaving him to darkness and silence broken only by the ceaseless dripping of water seeping from some unseen place, and the squeak and scurry of unza, the naked and scavenging little rodents of the pits, one phrase echoed and re-echoed through his mind.
The Eternal Slavery of the Soul to Chaos.
The malign intelligences that ruled this dark city had read well Thongor’s stalwart spirit. Threats of physical torment could never wring a cry of pain from his lips, or bring the blackness and chill of despair to his mighty heart.
But this was a torment beyond the pangs of the flesh . . . a torture of the very soul. And even Thongor the Mighty quailed beneath the dread of it, and it haunted his thoughts through the long hours he lay in chains alone amidst the dripping water, the chill darkness, and the squeaking of the rats.
CHAPTER 17
THE VOICE AT THE WINDOW
When bale-stars to their place return
To form a Sign within the sky,
When they were wont of old to burn—
Then shall the soul of Thongor die.
—Thongor’s Saga, XVII, 26.
The stone wall of his dungeon cell was cold and wet and slimy against his shoulders. From somewhere, water dripped with a slow, maddening, repeated sound. The rustle and slither of unseen things came faintly to him, the squeal and scurry of tiny claws rasping against the stone. The unza were becoming bolder. And—coming nearer. Thongor set his jaw grimly. He had heard of prisoners who had been attacked by squealing, red-eyed hordes of the repulsive, naked rodents. And of prisoners eaten alive by the feral denizens of the dungeons—prisoners whose naked, gnawed bones moldered amidst rusty chains. Prisoners who had been . . . forgotten.
Such a death he could almost envy. But such would not be allowed to him by the Black Magicians of Zaar.
He wondered when his doom would come. The words of Mardanax had given no estimate of the interval that would befall before his judgment at the tribunal of sorcerers . . . and the terrible enactment of the sentence reserved for him.
Here, in this darkness, with the cold wet stone against his back and the slow drip of dank water punctuating the dead silence, he almost forgot what fresh air and the light of the open sky were like. His thoughts drifted as, despite the chill, the stench, and the discomfort of his chains, he dozed and dreamed. He thought of his mate, the dark-eyed princess, and his sturdy young son. He wondered what they were doing at this moment of time, and if they were thinking of him.
He thought of his distant homeland far to the north, the bleak and wintry Northlands of Valkarth that he had not Seen since he was a boy. He saw again the face of his father, Thumithar of the Black Hawk People . . . his mighty bronze body cloaked in furs, battling the white glacier-wolves with long torches, howling his savage war-cry, black beard frosted with snow . . . and he saw again, in his mind’s eye, the laughing faces and strong lean bodies of his stalwart brothers . . . and the quiet, beautiful face of his mother.
He remembered,war-season, when the Snow Bear People swept across the frozen tundra to seize their fishing grounds. He remembered the ferocious battle on the black shore, when they battled with stone-tipped spears and bronze axes against the hordes of howling warriors, knee-deep in the black icy waters of Zharanga Tethrabaal the Great North Ocean. From crimson dawn to scarlet sunset they had fought, grappling hand to hand like savage beasts at the last, and when all was done, Thongor alone stood living on the grim beaches of death . . . panting, bone-weary, his naked body smeared with blood, ringed about with a score of dead foemen.