by Lin Carter
With Barim Redbeard and Charn Thovis in the lead, they slunk down the row of cells, keeping to the shadows. No guards were stationed here at the lower levels—doubtless Kashtar reasoned that none were needed, for how could an enemy make entrance from within? All fortresses are constructed to prevent an invader from penetrating the walls and gates. No architect had yet conceived of an underground foe breeching the strongwalled defenses through the soft underbelly of the citadel.
They found Thar unharmed, soundly asleep curled in the dirty rushes wherewith the floor of his cell was strewn. He was manacled to a bronze ring in the wall, but the massive hands of Roegir the Nomad and of Thangmar the blond Kodangan giant spread apart the links of his chain as if they were of soft putty. Within moments the boy was set free, and the pirates wasted no time in retracing their steps through the dungeon to the barred grill wherefrom they had emerged from the pits.
It had been almost too easy, Charn Thovis was thinking, as he handed Thar down through the opening into the waiting arms of Thangmar below. Somehow he had not really expected his plan to work so smoothly.
Neither he nor any of the others had noticed the dull crystal talisman set in the ceiling above the cell door.
In a distant chamber of the fortress, Belshathla the gray wizard poured over an ancient book of spells, turning the crisp pages of tanned dragonskin parchment with infinite care as he studied the cryptic runes of a lost magical science with avid eyes that alone seemed alive in the dead impassive mask of his emotionless face.
A globe of milky crystal set on a pedestal of black metal flashed with eerie fire like some uncanny signal.
He set the great book down on the marble table and bent to study the flickering crystal. With the palm of his right hand he made a strange gesture over the glassy globe, repeating under his breath a Word of Power. The cloudy crystal cleared, revealing a miniature scene depicted within the globe. He watched as silent, wraithlike, mud-blackened men freed the imprisoned prince. In the dim radiance of the crystal he could not see the features of the men beneath their encrustations of filth, but it did not matter. He was in time to spread the alarm. The magical guardian he had set to watch Prince Thar’s cell had alerted him in time to the attempted escape. Within moments the dungeons swarmed with torch-bearing guards who found—nothing!
The captive prince and his unknown friends had vanished as if by sorcery!
The keen eye of Belshathla soon found the key to the riddle. He pointed his staff at muddy stains about the lip of the drainage grill set in a corner of the dungeon floor.
“They have disappeared through the sewers!” the wizard hissed. “Quickly, captain! Take your men down by the same route—I will call out the city guard and have them scour the streets of the city. The dogs must come to the surface somewhere.”
It was night when the weary, bedraggled, filthy pirates of the Scimitar came out in the street that looked upon the quays of Tarakus. The fresh keen salt breeze from the sea was indescribably delicious to exhausted men who had slithered and crawled and tramped through unspeakable muck for long hours. As the last of their number emerged from the sewer, they stood drinking deep of the clean fresh air, feeling new strength course tingling through cramped and tired limbs.
Just off the further quay the Scimitar rode at anchor, her gilded dragon-headed prow catching the faint glimmer of starlight. Another few score yards, and Charn Thovis and Prince Thar would be safely aboard the galley and they could put to sea.
The roar of alarm thrilled about them, shattering the calm of the starry night.
Black alley mouths spewed forth a howling throng of pirates who came pelting across the cobbles toward them. Starlight and torchfire flashed on raised cutlass, dirk and longsword—glittered in the mad glaring eyes of swarthy snarling faces!
In an instant, the Redbeard and his men were surrounded with a swirling mob of vengeful enemies. Steel rang on steel. Boot-leather slipped and scuffled on greasy cobbles. Men died in bubbling groans, as keen blades slashed through their guts—or staggered back from the battle, screeching through the raw red ruin of what had been a face.
Charn Thovis found himself battling for his life! His notched and dented cutlass rang on a lifted cherm-shield, which twisted, catching the edge of his blade and snatching the weapon from his grip. A booted foot crashed into his legs from behind, sending him full-length on the cobbles with a grinning pirate leering down at him from above, sword lifted to kill. He knew that in the next instant cold steel would hack into his weary flesh and the great dark of the Abyss would open to receive his spirit.
Then the unexpected intervened.
A tremendous black shadow fell across the sky, blotting out the dim faint stars and hiding the cloud-veiled face of the glimmering moon. Like some vast dragon of the midnight skies, a dark shape glided across the heavens, floating down upon the straggling throng of furious yelling pirates.
The first thing Charn Thovis knew of this was when the ebon shadow swiftly enveloped everything about him, where he lay sprawled on the greasy cobbles, bestraddled by his grinning assailant, who stood with lifted sword ready to slay the fallen warrior.
Startled, the pirate turned a frightened face to the heavens. Color drained from his features bleaching them to a papery white as he looked forth upon the gliding monster of the skies who hovered above him.
Then a fantastic glare of green-white lightning clove the darkness. Night erupted into searing midday brilliance as spears of thunder-fire splattered about them.
Steel clattered on greasy cobbles from a palsied hand as the pirate who bestrode Charn Thovis let fall his sword.
Death struck, swift-winged, from the skies.
Chapter 19: RACE AGAINST TIME
With triumph nearly in his hand,
The Masked Magician greets the day,
Nor dreams that from a distant land
The heroes speed to block his way . . .
—Thongor’s Saga, Stave XVIII
All that night the slim silver airboat had drifted on the winds of heaven. For days now, the Patangan craft had tirelessly searched the surface and shores of the gulf for some sign of the missing prince and his companion. They had found nothing.
When Changan Jal and the patrol had returned to the Air Citadel and made their report to the acting Daotar of the Air Guard, the news that Thongor’s son had been stolen from the palace by a renegade Black Dragon, the kojan Charn Thovis, and that the two had perished somewhere over the gulf, had spread through the City of the Flame, causing shock and fear, grief and alarm. But no one had doubted it—except for those who knew the stalwart young kojan from Vozashpa. They steadfastly refused to believe that Charn Thovis was capable of any such act . . . but he was missing, the prince was gone, and Changan Jal was a trustworthy officer whose word had never been questioned.
The loyalists met in secret and strove to find the reason for Charn Thovis’ incredible treachery. Lord Mael stoutly claimed the young officer must have believed Thar to be in danger—that he must have uncovered some sort of plot against Sumia Sarakaja and her son. Shangoth firmly declared that Charn Thovis would never have betrayed his loyalty to the dead Thongor—loyalty that now must be given to the prince his heir. Iothondus agreed, and while the other conspirators argued and debated and puzzled over the bewildering sequence of events, that unlikely duo—the mild young scientist and the fierce Nomad warrior—determined to search out the truth for themselves.
They took a scout craft that Iothondus kept moored to the landing stage on the roof of his house near the Forum of Numidon the evening of the day the news reached Patanga of the demise of the stolen prince. It was their plan to scour the surface and shores of the gulf for some trace of any survivors of the wrecked floater. It seemed hopeless, but Ionthondus could not rest until he had proof positive that Thongor’s son no longer lived. And Shangoth felt a strong conviction that the brave, intelligent and resourceful young warrior from Vozashpa would be able to deal with whatever hazards and perils he encou
ntered while shielding young Thar from harm.
The scout craft was swift and powerful, well stocked with provisions, including a tank of drinking water. Its sithurl-powered engines were supercharged and could keep the airboat aloft and under power for many days of flying time. So they set out in secret, determined not to return until every hope had been exhausted.
They found the wreckage of the stolen floater. The steel structure and keel had sunk, of course, but the urlium plating would remain aloft forever until a chance bolt of lightning robbed the magic metal of its antigravitic powers. Of course they found no sign of either Charn Thovis or the boy in the wreckage—not even a scrap of boot-leather or a piece of torn cloak.
They searched on. Iothondus knew, or guessed, that it had been Charn Thovis who had stolen the experimental model of the flying harness from his laboratory. He had decided this from the moment he had learned that it was still a mystery how the young warrior had entered the Palace of a Hundred Kings in the first place, eluding the attention of a regiment of guards. No other solution presented itself to his agile mind but that Charn Thovis had abstracted the skybelt from his unguarded laboratory and used it to fly into the prince’s tower room—and out again, with the lad in his arms.
It was this that gave him hope that both might still be alive, despite Changan Jal’s testimony that the stolen floater had been torn to fragments by the lizard-hawk thousands of feet above the trackless waters of the gulf. For if they had not been devoured by the sky dragon as Changan Jal believed, they could quite possibly have survived the terrible fall by means of the lifting power of the skybelt.
All day they searched fruitlessly. At night, drifting down to the forested shores of Ptartha, Iothondus moored the flying boat to a tall jannibar tree, and they slept exhaustedly, rising at dawn to continue the hunt. They scanned the beaches along the eastern coast of the gulf, flying low above the wooded hills with signal flags fluttering from the rear deck masts, hoping that Thar or Charn Thovis—if they were about—would see the airboat and know them for friends.
Luck came unexpectedly a day later, when a naval vessel out of Shembis signaled them down and asked for their aid in spotting from the air a pirate ship of Tarakus which had been ravaging the shipping between Zangabal and the Dolphin City. The pirate ship, said the captain, was believed to have paused on its way to Tarakus to take on board a boy and a young warrior who had been found floating in the gulf—or so far-sighted sailors stationed high in the rigging of a pursuit squadron from Zangabal fast on the trail of the pirate craft had reported.
The baffled naval officer did not understand until many days later why the two men in the Patangan airboat had gone wild with joy at this news, and ascended to streak off to the south without even pausing to say farewell.
High in the night skies above the dreaded City of Pirates, Iothondus let the airboat glide in slow circles as they searched the city below for some sign. The pirates of Tarakus were at war against all flags and nations, so they could hardly land and ask questions as they had in Zangabal and Pelorm. They had no idea what sort of a sign they were looking for, but they scanned the torch-lit streets of the cliff-built city with thoughtful, searching eyes. And at length, as the first faint rays of the false dawn were lighting up the dark east, they saw the sign for which they were waiting.
A battle in the streets near the quays! A howling mob of rough-clothed pirates swept from the black alleyways to attack a small, stealthy band of men—and a boy—who seemed to be making their way towards one of the ships moored along the nearer quay. Iothondus gave the controls a sharp turn, and the agile craft slid down through the early morning sky to swoop low over the struggling, cursing mass of fighting men.
He could not recognize either Charn Thovis or Thar through their coating of black muck from the sewer tunnels, but he unleashed the deadly lightning guns with which the airboat was armed, just on the chance that these were the two for whom he had searched. The dazzling bolts of electric fire tore gaping rents through the horde of pirates attacking Charn Thovis, Thar, and the crewmen of the Scimitar. The warriors of Tarakus had never seen the terrible sithurl-weapons of Patanga in action before, and they stampeded, half-mad with terror and panic. Within the instant, the battle was over and the airboat dropped down to the level of the docks where an astounded Charn Thovis recognized the familiar faces of the giant Blue Nomad and the quiet young scientist through the crystal windows of the floater’s cabin.
With tears of joy in their eyes, Shangoth and Iothondus kissed Prince Thar’s hand and clapped Charn Thovis’ shoulder in wordless welcome. The young kojan hastened to introduce the wide-eyed and mud-smeared pirate band to the two famous courtiers of Patanga.
“We knew you had good reason to carry the prince away,” Shangoth growled, when Charn Thovis had told of discovering Sumia Sarkaja in her drugged and somnambulistic state. “I will break that fat pig Dalendus Vool between these two hands when next I lay my eyes upon his ugly face!”
“Nothlaj,” Iothondus mused, white-faced. “No wonder—now I understand how Dalendus Vool could have persuaded the Princess to become his bride!”
Charn Thovis started. “What? Has the Princess actually wed that greasy unza? That must be what they were after, the throne itself—he and that strange companion who goes ever at his side these days, that tall gaunt man in the dark robes, the one with the slitted emerald eyes and his face hidden in the hooded cowl of his robes.”
A stab of unutterable foreboding went through Shangoth the Nomad like a spear of ice. His voice was deadly calm as he asked, “A man in dark hooded robes, with his face hidden . . . a man with slant eyes like icy green flame . . . eyes that seem able to numb your brain when you look within them?”
Charn Thovis nodded, wondering at the strange intensity in the tones of the indigo-hued giant of the Jegga warriors. “Aye,” he said in surprise. “I glimpsed them when he came up to me in the street that morning, just before you met me near the gates. He was clothed like a beggar then, but I caught a glance at those strange cold eyes—”
He broke off, for Shangoth groaned a curse in a deep, broken cry that seemed wrenched from the roots of his soul. “He lives! O Sky-Gods of my people, had I only known!”
“Who are you talking about?” Charn Thovis cried in alarm, shaken at the anguish and grief in Shangoth’s ragged cry. The answer came in a thunderous growl that drove cold shock through him and left him gasping.
“Mardanax of Zaar, the Lord of the Black Magicians!”
“Are you . . . sure?”
“Aye! Oh, I know not how that Prince of Darkness escaped the destruction of his accursed city, but three years ago when I prowled that evil kingdom in disguise, searching for my Lord Thongor whom the black wizards held captive, I saw him well. Aye, I have stood as close to Black Mardanax as I now stand to you, and the memory of those emerald eyes of frozen venom glaring from the shadow of that black cowl still haunts my dreams! Gods of the Sky—I see the whole plot now! It was a bolt of magic struck my Lord Thongor down at the altar—no natural death at all, but the foul vengeance of that City of Evil!”
Iothondus went white to the lips and wrung his slim hands in an agony of remorse. “Ah, where are my wits! I should have guessed it—nolhlaj, the drug that numbs the will—and black hypnosis, the power of one mind to gain dominance over another! I should have guessed it, when Sumia turned against her dearest friends and withdrew into the seclusion of the palace! And now she will wed with that vile traitor who I doubt not is himself under the power of Mardanax! Aye, the vengeance of Mardanax—to rule behind the throne of Patanga itself!”
Charn Thovis turned to him swiftly.
“Quick. You say ‘will wed.’ Then she has not actually taken the vows with Dalendus Vool before the altar?”
“Why, no—the herald’s proclamation said the morn of the twentieth day of the month of Zamar—”
Charn Thovis turned to the muddy pirates who stood about, gaping at the dazzling turn of events. “I have lost cou
nt of time in the msh of events. Quick: what day is this?”
Barim Redbeard rubbed a bewhiskered jowl ruminantly. “Why, this is the morning of the twentieth of Zamar.”
“What is the hour of the ceremony, Iothondus? Think, man!”
The sage stammered, “The . . . ah . . . the n-ninth hour”
“And it must be the sixth or near the seventh hour of day by now,” Charn Thovis snapped, mind racing. “We must be away—perhaps, with the help of the gods we can arrive in time!”
Thar grabbed his arm.
“But Charn Thovis! What of Durgan, and Blay, and Thangmar, and Captain Barim—we can’t just leave them here, can we? Now that the King of the Pirates knows they helped me to escape through the catacombs?”
The Redbeard uttered a booming laugh and clapped the boy on the shoulder—a friendly blow that sent the lad staggering. “Ho! By the Green Whiskers of Shastadoin the Sealord, never you fear for Barim Redbeard and his men, my lad! Neither Kashtar nor his pet wizard know what hands helped you flee those black dungeons—aye, nor all the men who sought to seize us here, before yonder wizard came out of the skies like a very god to chase them away with his tame lightnings! No, you lads leave, and swiftly, to help Thongor’s queen escape the dirty unza who would lay their filthy paws on a Northlander’s proud mate! Fear not for us—the night was dark, and we’ve each of us enough foul-smelling black muck on our faces to plant a garden in! Swift now, Charn my lad—be off with you—but don’t forget your shipmates of the Scimitar. Some day not far off, we’ll come cruising into the port o’ Patanga to—pay you a visit—mind you warn your fleets and guards that the men of the Scimitar be good friends, even if they follow the pirate trade!”