by Lin Carter
Clouds hung above it, moving slowly. Half the land was in daylight, half drenched in night’s ebon gloom.
The moon, the mighty moon, far below him, was a small gold globe. The stars hung close and low over the vast world as his eyes saw it.
Between that world and this stretched the dim enormity of the Abyss. Between the worlds, streaming up from the Lands of the Living unto where he stood on the shores of Never were a dim and flickering host of shadows in constant motion, streaming between the worlds. Even as he stood staring down, they flashed by him, through the stupendous Shadow-Gates, some weeping, some crying out to friends, some praying, some laughing madly, some silent, with bowed head and clasped hands.
“Thou knowest now that thou art dead and come hither unto the Shadowlands,” the Dweller observed.
Thongor growled deep in his massive chest. His grim impassive face was flushed and somber. Anger flamed in his strange gold eyes. He shook his head, tousling his streaming mane.
“Dead? Not I! How came I unto death?” he growled. “No foeman’s blade brought me down, no winged arrow, no poison in the cup. In the prime of manhood was I, no doddering and senile grandsire—how then came I to death? Answer me, if you can, O Dweller!”
The enshadowed one shook its head again. “There are more mysteries between Life and Death than mortals dare to dream. No god am I, and thus I dare not speak the reasons for thy death, O Man .”
Thongor stared down at his hands, his arms, his broad chest. Surely they were flesh and blood, as they seemed to his sight! And yet—and yet he felt strange, as if his bare flesh was insensitive, as if his sense of feeling was numbed or had become a faint echo of itself. He could not feel the rough cold stone underfoot, not the fingers of the wind along his bare flanks. Before he could voice the question that rose within him, the Dweller spake, answering it.
“Here, all things are but illusion. Thou are a bodiless spirit, but to thine sight thine own self is an analogue of thy earthly being. Go hence, O Man, and roam amongst the Shadowlands until thou hast found the reality and canst see beyond the semblance to the true.”
Thongor gazed upon the fantastic figure cloaked in shadows, and he searched within himself to understand the other’s speech.
“What must I seek?” he demanded. “Speak more clearly, ancient one, and have done with these vague utterances, I beseech you!”
The Dweller smiled behind his shadows.
“Aye, then here is thy quest in terms as clear as I am permitted to make them. Thou shall wander the Land of Shadows until thou contest before the Throne of Thrones, O Mortal. . . and ere that time comes upon thee, thou shall master the Three Truths.”
Slowly the Dweller faded from Thongor’s sight.
What were the Three Truths? How, in this misty realm of strangeness, could he discern truth from illusion? How could he know which truths were meant for him to search out and to learn? Was ever a mortal man given a task such as this, whether in the Land of the Living or the Realm of Death?
Thongor went forward, dazed and uncomprehending. He passed under the enormous glittering arch of the Shadow-Gates and he found himself on the threshold of a strange new world of dim horizons and vast perspectives, where no object or shape or form could be seen plainly. All were queer shadowy semblances, visible only in an oblique manner; they defied a straight gaze and somehow eluded his vision, twisting away in a way he could neither quite sense nor understand nor even describe.
As he went forward through the purple gloom, his dazed mind was busy, grappling with strange thoughts. He knew that he must be dead . . . but his innate courage, his warrior’s fighting spirit that could not acknowledge defeat, revolted against the thought. And was he dead? He pondered the elusive, ambiguous words of the Dweller.
Always had he been told that when the valiant fell, the winged War-Maids bore them on throbbing pinions far above the world and beyond the stars through the infinite to the glittering Hall of Heroes where the great of the earth dwelt ever before Father Gorm. But he had not come into the Land of Shadows in this manner, nor were these the Shining Fields nor the Halls of Gorm. Where, then, was the truth of the myth?
He set the mystery of his present state aside for further thought.
If dead he were in truth, then his lovely queen and his young son were alone and bereft in that distant world behind him. He was shaken to the core of his being by this thought, but somehow the emotion did not seem fully real. He should have been crushed with anguish and loss and sorrow, bowed under the grim knowledge that never would he behold the fair face of his beloved, nor clasp her yielding slimness in his strong arms again, and taste the warmth of her lips under his kiss . . . but somehow he felt only the shadow of sorrow, not the poignant agony of heart and soul he should have felt.
He pondered this, and was aware that his emotions were but dim echoes of the heart-shaking throes he would have felt in the body. If this spirit-form was but the shadow of his mortal body, then it naturally followed that his emotions would be shadow-emotions—dim imitations of the strong realities. A weird world, this, and a strange state of being.
He surveyed his surroundings. He moved across a dim plain drowned in thick purple shadows. To all sides, the plain stretched away bleak and barren and desolate, devoid of life. Winds blew above this plain, moaning like lost souls, but his heavy black mane did not stir to the wind’s caress. It was the shadow of a wind. . . or his mane was but the shadow of matter, and wind could not touch it.
There was a dull crystalline sand under his feet. But it did not crunch and rasp beneath his step. Was he walking in truth, or progressing by some weird mode of bodiless locomotion, which his dreaming mind interpreted as walking? Was this desert real, or only a ghostly illusion?
His body was bare and seemed his own, but it felt eerily light of weight and impalpable to the touch. It did not have the warm solidity and weight of true flesh. From this, then, he deduced that his spirit-self was the exact Shadowlands counterpart of his earthly envelope of clay—and he himself was but the insubstantial analogue of his mortal form. Strange to realize one’s death has come and past! In one swift moment of time, all earthly cares and responsibilities are shorn away—fading behind as if they had never been real at all, and one is thrust into a strange new world.
He looked about him. On all sides, a level plain of dark flat sand stretched away to a dim horizon. Here no strong light beat, no burning sun lit up a sky of mystic purple gloom wherein no stars blazed, nor was there any moon.
Here and there about the vast plain rose curious shapes of rough-hewn stone. Were they naught but jagged shapes of uncouth rock, or were they statues of some alien artistry, curious and geometrical and hauntingly unfamiliar? He lingered to examine the nearer of the dark eidolons. It was shapen into the caricature of a man, ungainly and inhumanly tall and gaunt with elongated limbs whose sharply angled segments emerged from the rough surface of the monolith. The limbs were vague and blurred, as if some sculptor of incredible skill had striven to suggest a body wrapped and veiled in clinging mists. The head that loomed above the gaunt form was totally unlike anything human, a perfect cone devoid of any features remotely manlike.
Except for the eyes.
A vague unease traveled up Thongor’s spine as he perceived that the graven eyes of the alien image seemed to regard him with bright mockery as he passed. Some trick of light and shade, no doubt, but they seemed alive . . . and conscious.
He hurried on, careful to avoid similar eidolons for the rest of his journey.
Winds blew above the measureless plain, although he felt them not. Faint far sounds came dimly to him as he wandered. He thought he heard calling voices beseeching, now and again a repeated name, an urgent phrase. None of this could he hear clearly and although he often paused and strained to hear, he could not make out a single word or name.
Now and again came cries of pain, the sounds of imploring voices raised in unendurable torment or longing . . . and at times he thought he heard a stran
ge burst of mocking laughter, clear and cold. It was unspeakably weird and he forced his thoughts from the unbodied drifting voices, knowing that here on the unending plains were other presences beyond his own, and far, far stranger.
A shadow passed overhead and he ducked in a chill of alarm. But when he looked up he could see nothing except coiling ropes of mist which writhed slowly far above, forming wavering tentacles and serpent-shapes, and now and again eddying into the likeness of a glaring eye or a grinning mouth or a long undulating limb. He tore his eyes from the strange vista above, and plodded on.
Time seemed meaningless in this dim land. There was neither night nor day nor any way of telling the passage of the hours. He felt neither hunger nor thirst, nor did the long journey fatigue his mighty limbs. It might have been one hour or a hundred hours—or even a hundred years—later when he suddenly came upon the ring of stones.
He had been striding mechanically along, busy with vague thoughts, paying little attention to the path. Indeed, he did not truly know where he was going, in what direction or toward what far goal, nor had he thought to ask.
Abruptly he became conscious of a vertical surface rising before him. He stopped and looked ahead, peering through the purple gloom. Ahead of him, in a vast circle, seven mighty slabs of dark and glistening stone stood on the edges about some bright glittering object within the center of their ring.
A dim premonition stirred his dull dreaming wits. He must go cautiously in this strange realm of the dead. Gorm alone knew what terrors and marvels moved about him, veiled from his sight. He peered curiously at the ring of stones. The gaps between the stones were wide, but somehow he sensed a warning. The stones were set here for a purpose, either to keep something out . . . or to hold something within.
He knew that he must resolve this mystery before passing on. So gathering his powers in readiness, he moved forward cautiously until he entered the ring of stones.
For a moment a strange impalpable barrier seemed to hold him back. He could see nothing before him but he could not move forward. It was as if a wall of curdled shadows opposed his path. Gathering his strength, and mentally calling on Father Gorm for aid, he pressed forward, and found the barrier melting before him.
He stepped forward fully into the ring, and saw—
Chapter 6: THE SWORD IN THE JEWEL
His soul hath passed the Shadow-Gates
And ventures on a nameless quest.
A stranger destiny awaits
Him here than even he hath guessed!
—Thongar’s Saga, Stave XVIII
A Titanic jewel! Taller than a man it loomed, hewn into a thousand glassy facets, flashing with light. In all this dim and unsubstantial Land of Shadows he had seen no brighter thing than this great glittering boulder of cut light.
The crystal was lucent as ice, a pallid blue like summery seas. Rough-hewn it towered, like some mighty iceberg from the wintry waves of Zharanga Tethrabaal the Great North Ocean. A cluster, a focus of dazzling rays, shone from it in beams of glowing radiance.
About it marched the ring of seven stones, like giants set to guard its precious brilliance . . . giants petrified to stone though long aeons of slow-pulsing time.
He stood staring at the jewel. There was something uncanny about it—some current of queer force that roughened his bronze hide and set his nape-hairs prickling in superstitious awe. For all his years among the civilized folk who dwelt in the great cities of the West, Thongor was a primitive still, with all the barbarian’s night-terrors and sense of omens.
To set down his mental impressions in mere words were a futile task, for they were but inarticulate surges of emotion—a tingling of the nerve-endings, the eerie stirrings of vague premonitions, no more.
Somehow, he sensed the Thing in the circle was the most truly real object he had yet spied in all this weird realm of the spirit-world. In truth, what were the cryptic words the Dweller on the Threshold spake?—Here, all things are but illusion . . . go hence, and roam the Shadowlands . . . until thou seest beyond the semblance to the true. . . .
He stepped forward to peer more closely into the titanic jewel. Light beat from it in shimmering beams. He found it oddly difficult to move against the flowing rays of luminance—as if impalpable barriers rose before him to obstruct his passage nearer to the jewel. Naught that he could see nor feel, naught sensible to touch or vision. He felt as one enmeshed in the dim webs of some unearthly spider.
Setting his jaw with grim determination, and again hurling forth an unvoiced prayer to Gorm, Father of Earth and Heaven, he moved against the shimmering curtain of semivisible force and felt it drag almost imperceptibly against his bare limbs as he strove to penetrate the net of shining beams.
Now he had come up to the jewel.
He peered within, through glimmering panes and flashing angles, his gaze sinking through the translucent crystal into far depths of throbbing indigo flame where sparkling atoms of utter light danced like elfin flakes of supernal fire.
He saw the Sword.
It lay imbedded deep within the glittering crystal. Indigo flame coiled and seethed about its shining length. Stars of scintillance blazed and flashed on its mighty pommel. It was sunken into the very center of the mystic jewel, as sometimes in his boyhood he had seen great mastodons deep frozen within the sparkling walls of a vast glacier.
No mortal weapon was this, surely, for his hand had clasped the hilts of all manner of human weaponry. Seven feet long the great blade extended from the mighty crossshaped hilt. Nor was that keen blade forged from any metal known to the smiths of men, nay, for mirror-bright it blazed—some pure and glistening alloy worked by Aslak the God-Smith, or by some fabled race of beings who had trod the earth aeons before the coming of men.
His hand yearned to close about the great hilt, to heft the mighty weight of the sword, to test the unearthly temper of its blazing edge.
He knew he must free the sword from its crystal prison. How he knew this he could not put into words, but the unspoken conviction seethed up from deep within him and he knew it must be done. Perhaps the sword was set here in this place from the Dawn of the Created Universe for him to take up in this moment. Perhaps the gods had written into the tablets of the destiny of Thongor that he take up this potent and supernatural blade. He knew not . . . but he knew the sword was his, and that he must free it.
With such as Thongor, grim men of direct and frontal action, not given to subleties of thought, to think is to act. He moved directly from the impulse to the action. He had naught more than his bare hands wherewith to shatter the glittering stone, and he knew that he could beat against that dazzling cliff of light for ages to come without dislodging a single shining atom of crystal from that impervious surface. Therefore, he sought a tool.
Naught met his eye as he gazed impatiently around him. Naught, save for the mighty ring of standing stones. But at that sight he smiled, and his keen eye measured distances, hoping the stones were real enough to splinter the jewel, and not mere illusions.
He set his back against one great stone of the ring and heaved, it was like pushing against a marble mountain. For one man to dislodge this towering slab of flinty stone seemed impossible. It seemed so foolish to even contemplate that most men would not even have tried. He looked up at the soaring wall of the stone. It towered into the heavens thrice his own not inconsiderable height. And, from the immovable appearance of the monolith, it was buried deeper than one might guess into the nameless substance of the land. Yes, truly impossible . . .
Most men would not have even tried, I say. Aye, but Thongor was his own man, unique among the swarming millions of his fellows. A rare and strange being was this barbarian, a hero, a king, and such as he achieve the impossible by never shrinking back from attempting it.
He set one burly shoulder against the slab, and set his arms thus and so, and placed his feet, and drew deep a mighty breath, and heaved.
For a moment there was nothing. No movement. No slightest yielding. Sto
p trying, ghostly voices hammered in his brain. It cannot be done, they whined at him; give up now—now—now!
He strove on, muscles knotting with strain, face black with effort, mighty lungs panting, heart laboring.
Great thews swelled along massive shoulders and mighty arms, standing out hard and sharp-edged like worked bands of bronze. His feet dug down into the sandy soil. His hands clasped the edges of the huge slab, locked in place, and strained, knuckles whitening with effort.
The slab shuddered. It gave, slowly, slowly, earth buckling before it as the stone yielded inch by agonizing inch before the irresistible surge of Thongor’s mighty thews.
As it began to topple, he released the stone and sprang back so as not to be caught as the buried portion came crashing up out of the sand. He stood panting, sucking air deep into his lungs, watching.
The seventh stone of the ring came thundering down and caught the jewel square. It cracked, a web of black lines slithering across the glittering surface from top to bottom. Thongor stood grinning, wondering what kind of eerie world this was, where spirit aches from effort as much as flesh ever did, where insubstantial lungs suck in unreal air, where an immaterial heart pounds against soul-ribs—mad, nightmarish world!
With a thunderous explosion, the titanic jewel shattered apart. Light blossomed in a flare of supernal brilliance, searing Thongor’s eyes as with a lightning-flash. Utter flame sheeted up in a pyre of white fury. He felt the lash of light across his chest like the breath of an open furnace. The ground shuddered and recoiled, jumping underfoot.