Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria (2 page)

Thongor set one great hand on his comrade’s shoulder and gripped in the hai-chantharya, the warriors’ salute.

“That lies in the lap of the Gods, Aid Turmis. Mayhap our paths will yet cross again. Farewell!” he growled.

He clapped the youth on one bare shoulder, then swung though the small door. His great black cloak bellowed behind him as he melted into the thick purple shadows of the cobbled street beyond and was gone.

CHAPTER 2

Black Wings Over Chush

The War Maids ride the iron sky—

  Come, brothers, either slay or die!

A dark wing sank as each man fell,

  To bear our spirits home to hell!

—War Song of the Valkarthan Swordsmen

Beyond the door, Thongor found himself in a narrow alley between the citadel and a vast warehouse. At the end of the passageway, he could see the stables. Behind the huge pens the great dragon-like shapes of the zamphs stirred. Two bored guards lounged against the rail, watching the huge beasts. Their backs were to Thongor, and with a single stroke he could probably…

With a metallic scream the alarm gongs sounded. Thongor choked back a curse. The daotar’s men had reached his cell and found it empty—or had seen the unconscious jailer. The alarm had sounded just a moment too soon, for in a few steps he would have been up to the guards and could have slain them. Now, however, they were alerted, and with drawn blades they stood on either side of the gate to the pens. Other guards hurried from the rear portal of the citadel to reinforce the stable guards. An escaped prisoner would, or course, seek to steal a mount the very first thing.

Thongor ground his teeth with a bitter Valkarthan oath. They could not see him here in the thick darkness of the alley, but how in the name of all the Nineteen Gods was he to get away? Desperately he cast his eyes from side to side—and then glanced up. A slim metal shape met his gaze, gleaming in the light of roof torches.

A malicious gleam danced in Thongor’s golden eyes. The very thing! There on the roof of the citadel was moored the only prototype of the Sark’s new “floater,” the marvelous flying boat with which Phal Thurid planned to conquer the whole of Lemuria. The Sark’s cunning alchemist, Oolim Phon, had devised the weird airboat out of urlium, the weightless metal. It was driven by simple rotors, and although the Valkarthan had not the dimmest notion how to pilot the strange craft, he would soon learn. And what a stroke of fortune! To escape by the Sark’s prized airboat—the only one in existence as yet! It would fly him over the towers and walls of Thurdis and far beyond, faster than the swiftest zamph in Phal Thurid’s pens.

With a keen eye he measured the citadel’s wall. The fortress was built of great blocks of gray stone, half the height of a man, with an inch or so of space between them. Accustomed from boyhood to climb over the slippery ice-walls of the great glaciers of his polar homeland, hunting the savage snow apes for their precious furs, it would be far easier for him to scale this wall than for another man.

For Thongor, to conceive of a plan was to attempt it. Swiftly he removed his boots. Knotting the thongs together, he slung them over his shoulder, and tossing back the great cloak, he caught the upper ledge of the first stone and drew himself up hand over hand. His bare toes clinging to the small gap between the stones, he ascended, stone by stone.

The air was chill with the night wind from the southern sea, but luckily the great golden moon of old Lemuria was hidden behind a thick veil of clouds. There were guards on the roof, and it would never do for them to sight him climbing. With hands and feet fully occupied, he was in a bad position to fight.

Up and up he went, like a great black spider on the gray stone wall. The streets of Thurdis were far beneath him now. One slip, and he would dash out his brains against the slimy cobbles far below. He breathed calmly and deeply, ignoring the pain in his slashed arm.

Then a loose bit of cement slipped beneath his foot, rattling down to the alleyway. For a long second he dangled, feet free, his entire weight supported by his fingertips. Then he clenched his teeth and drew himself up again, slowly, inch by inch, to a secure foothold.

He clung against the wall for a moment, catching his breath and resting his arms. Above, on the parapet, two roof guards leaned their elbows against the wall, idly looking out over the city. All they had to do was to glance downward and they could not fail to see him, a black-cloaked shadow against the gray stone. He held his breath as they talked idly, gazing out over the towers and spires of Thurdis. He dared climb no further while they were there, lest his sudden movement attract their attention. His arm and shoulder muscles ached from the strain. It was as if red-hot needles were slowly being thrust into his thews.

Still they leaned against their arms, just above him. He could even hear their conversation—as to which prisoner had escaped. The shorter one wagered it was the Northlander mercenary.

“You remember the great lout, the one who made a wager with Jeled Malkh that his racing zamph would not win in the arena yesterday? He struck the noble otar down with his great barbarian pigsticker when the otar refused to pay! I hear Jeled Malkh nearly stuck the pig himself, but the oaf threw wine in his face or something.
Hah!
It would be an otarship for us, Thulan Htor, if we captured the Northland wretch.”

“Aye,” his companion grunted. “But the street patrols will get him, not you and I. He will steal a zamph and make for the Caravan Gate, doubtless—unless he purchases a hideaway in the Thieves’ Quarter. I would like to come face to face with the mercenary pig myself, that I would. I’d show him what Thurdan steel can do with Northlander meat!”

Just as Thongor’s arms were about to give way, the two turned away, leaning their backs against the parapet. Silent as a shadow, the Northlander ascended the wall behind them, grinning wolfishly.

The two were still conversing when a deep voice spoke softly behind them:

“The Gods have granted your dearest wish, Thulan Htor. Here is your chance to show a mercenary pig what Thurdan steel can do.”

They whirled—to see a bronzed giant, naked save for leather clout and black cloak and warrior’s harness, standing atop the parapet, a mighty broadsword flashing in his hand. Golden eyes blazed in a clean-shaven face, and a long wild mane of thick black hair fell to the huge shoulders.

Paralyzed, they gasped at this phantom that had appeared out of thin air by some supernatural force. Thongor kicked one in the throat, knocked him sprawling. His broadsword flashed out to open the other’s throat from ear to ear. The black beard was drenched in a sudden flood of gore. He sprang over their sprawled forms to the roof.

But there were other guards. A shout rang up—swords flashed in the torchlight. Thongor ran across the roof of the fortress.

The Sark’s floater was tethered to a mooring-mast in the center of the roof, drifting weightlessly some twenty feet from the rooftop. A thick cable was knotted about the middle of the mast, and its other end was fastened to a ring in the rail of the floater’s small deck. Thrusting his sword in its scabbard, Thongor sprang up and seized the rope. He slung himself up the line hand over hand, swinging over the rail onto the deck before anyone could stop him.

One slash of the sword cut the cable, and the airboat drifted free, out over the street. Thongor went across the narrow deck, which wobbled beneath his feet, and slid into the small enclosed cabin. His eyes raked the few simple controls, while the alarm gongs roared behind him and men shouted.

The floater was rendered completely weightless by its urlium hull, a gleaming sheath of blue-white metal. The boat was about twenty feet long, from pointed prow to pointed stern. It was driven by spring-powered rotors. One set at the rear propelled it forward; a second set just beneath the prow pushed backward; other rotors in the center of the deck and beneath the keel forced the floater either up or down, as desired.

These engines were set into action by four levers, labeled with the directions which they governed. The levers now rested at the bottom of their curved slots. The higher the levers were pushed, the stronger the rotors drove the craft.

Before the floater had drifted more than a dozen yards from the citadel, Thongor had mastered the simple controls and had the rear rotors humming. The airboat flashed over the city, high above the towers. As he passed the mighty walls of Thurdis, Thongor elevated the floater so that they should be well beyond the reach of any arrow. The airboat purred on into the night.

A small oil lamp sealed in a glass ball provided light for the tiny cabin. Locking the controls, Thongor swiftly examined the contents of the ship’s chest. He found a day’s supply of dried fish, a flask of water, and some medicinal salve, which he smeared over his slashed arm. Jeled Malkh’s blade had merely laid the skin open.

Clamped to the wall above the floater’s single bunk was a powerful war bow, such as those used by the beast-men and the Blue Nomads of the far western plains of Lemuria. Phal Thurid planned to mount a fleet of such air-boats manned by crews of archers trained with such weapons, famed throughout Lemuria for the incredible distance over which they could cast an arrow. Despite his fatigue, Thongor examined the weapon curiously. It was the first time he had seen one this close, for his wanderings had never carried him into the western plains where the monstrous and savage Blue Nomads reigned unchallenged among the crumbling ruins of Lemuria’s most ancient kingdom,
Nemedis
, dead now for thousands of years.

The weapon was fully six feet in length, a bow fashioned of layer upon layer of horn. The extreme toughness of the horn made it difficult to draw such a bow; however, it also gave greater force to the arrow’s flight. From veterans of the western cities, Thongor had often heard tales of the fabled prowess of the blue-skinned Rmoahal Giants, who could reputedly hurl an arrow five hundred yards with fantastic accuracy.

The string of the bow was of dragongut, and the arrows themselves were at least half as large as a good-sized spear, tipped with wickedly barbed points of razor-edged steel. Thongor looked forward to trying out the weapon.

The floater hummed through the night skies of Lemuria. Now the golden moon broke free of her net of clouds and lit the landscape below him. Checking the controls to make doubly certain they were locked in place, Thongor went out on the deck and gazed over the low rail at the ground that rushed by beneath him. Far below him the farms surrounding the walled city of Thurdis rushed past—crossed, occasionally, by great roads paved with stone. He could see the farmhouses and outbuildings, plain in the bright moonshine. From this height, they were no larger than the slow wains in which the farmers carried their harvest to the bazaars of the city.

It was a fantastic, thrilling experience to fly like a great bird far above the earth. Only a couple of men, including Oolim Phon the Alchemist and the Sark himself, had ever flown before. Thongor felt like the hero Phondath the Firstborn, flying through the night astride his winged dragon in the myths. He grinned, feeling the cold wind lift his black mane. Thus the War Maids rode, bearing the spirits of valiant warriors to Father Gorm, so they might dwell in the Hall of Heroes until vast Lemuria sank beneath the blue waters of the mighty seas!

He gazed above, reading the starry hieroglyphs of the constellations. His father, years past and gone, had taught the boy Thongor to read his direction in the stars—taught him how the two stars of the constellation of the Chariot pointed over to the Boreal Star. According to star lore, then, the floater was headed almost exactly northwest. Were he to continue on this course, he considered, he would pass directly over Patanga, and Kathool farther on. Patanga he had no desire to visit. The city was virtually dominated by the yellow-robed Druids who worshipped Yamath, God of Fire, by burning women alive on his red-hot altars of fiery bronze. Barracks rumor had it that the young Princess Sumia of Patanga was virtually a prisoner in her great palace, under the command of the Yellow Druid Vaspas Ptol, who had seized power in the land upon the death of Sumia’s father, the late Sark. Phal Thurid, Sark of Thurdis, hoped to wed this young Princess, thus gaining the fabulous wealth of Patanga without battle—if he could wrest her from her captors.

Thongor shook his head. The City of Fire sounded too chancy—best that he continue on to the farther city of Kathool, whose Sark needed warriors to protect his jungled borders from the savages of Chush.

He re-entered the cabin to examine the dial that reported the remaining amount of rotor power in the great coiled springs that ran beneath the deck. A rough estimate gave him five or six hours of flight before he must crank up the springs again. It would be dawn then. He stretched out on the small bunk and was asleep in a moment.

The farmlands of Thurdis gave out into wilderness below the floater’s gleaming keel, and soon it was passing over the waters of the Ysar, silvered by the round lamp of the moon. While Thongor slept the deep and refreshing slumber of one whose strength has been exhausted, the airboat began to cross far above the dense jungles of Chush, and soon the Eternal Fires on the domed roofs of the temples of Patanga passed beneath. As Thongor slept, the floater hummed beyond the City of Fire, where, unknown to him, his destiny lay, and headed for the distant realm of Kathool, flying through the night skies of Lemuria like a great bird.

CHAPTER 3

Attacked by the Lizard-Hawks

Below him, dwark with dragon-fang,

  Above, hawk-talons stretched to crush!

Strange battle there, ’tween earth and air,

  Above the deadly deeps of Chush.

—Thongor’s Saga, Stave IV

Thongor was awakened by two things. First, the silence and motionlessness of the floater, and second, the harsh scream that ripped through the stillness of the dawn. He sprang from the bunk, wide awake in an instant. The springs had wound down, and the airboat drifted without power. But what had made that raucous screech?

He went out on the deck, and stood amazed at the unexpected sight. It was the sixth hour, and the sun of morning lit the sky with rose and gold. But beneath him gleamed not the long quays of Kathool on the Saan, nor even the wide swath of cultivated lands that stretched for miles around it. Beneath him lay the deepest jungles of Chush.

He rubbed one hand over his jaw in puzzlement. He should have left these jungles behind many hours ago. How could his estimate have gone wrong? Then he noticed how the floater drifted beneath the strong and steady wind that blew out of the east. With a muffled curse to Gorm, it came to him in an instant. When the rotor power had failed, the weightless airboat had not simply hovered above the regions of Kathool, but had moved slowly west, driven by the strong winds. He was now hours away from where he had wanted to be, above the darkest, most impenetrable jungles of Chush. Nothing to do, however, but crank up the springs again and head east to Kathool.

But before he could do so, there came again that harsh, metallic cry that had helped to awaken him. Scanning the morning skies, Thongor felt his blood chill as he saw a terrible sight.

Winging down at his floater out of the upper regions was a monstrous and fantastic flying thing. Its scaled and writhing body was fully the length of the floater, and its gigantic leathery wings spread bat-like fully forty feet from tip to tip. Above the body reared a head upon a snaky neck—a head hideous almost beyond belief, with a monstrous hooked beak and cruel scarlet eyes beneath a blue crest of bristling spines. A long snakelike tail floated behind, tipped with a barb the shape of an arrowhead, and cruel-taloned bird-claws reached from beneath the creature’s yellow belly.

Thongor had heard of the great grakks, the lizard-hawks of Chush, before but had never seen one till now. They were the fiercest and most deadly fighters of all Lemuria—rivaled only by the mighty dwark, the jungle dragon itself. And now one was descending with the speed of a lightning bolt toward his head.

He threw himself flat as the vast shadow of the grakk’s wing fell over the deck. The monster struck the floater a glancing blow and swooped off, climbing for another attack. As the airboat wobbled beneath the first blow, Thongor was nearly thrown off and only saved himself by seizing the rail with one iron hand. He drew himself up as the weird flying reptile came at the floater again. This time it hovered, wings thundering, while it groped for the floater with an outstretched claw. The foot-long talons closed over the needle prow, and even the strong urlium with which the prow was sheathed was not tough enough to withstand the terrific strength of the lizard-hawk’s grip. It crumpled like paper.

Thongor sprang to his feet and dove into the cabin, coming out with a length of cord and the great war bow he had found clamped to the cabin wall the night before. While the monster shrieked deafeningly and battered at the sleek hull of the floater, he threaded the cord through his belt and fastened it around the rail to hold himself securely even if the lizard-hawk succeeded in tipping over the airboat. Then he notched the bowstring with a mighty effort, almost cracking his shoulder muscles, and laid the long shaft of a war arrow across the string.

The first arrow caught the grakk squarely in the chest. It sank halfway to the feather between the tough scales, and a dribble of green blood ran slimily down the monster’s heaving flank.

It shrieked like a sheet of steel being torn in half by a giant. Releasing the prow, it fluttered away—but not for long. Tracing a wide circle through the sky, the deadly thing came arrowing back toward the floater, which drifted helplessly above the jungle.

True to Thongor’s expectations, the second blow hurled the airboat spinning end over end through the morning sky. Tightly gripping the war bow, the Valkarthan swung dizzily at the end of his rope. As the floater drifted back into a horizontal position, the flying reptile hovered beside it with booming wings, smashing the sides in with its cruel beak. Dangling at the end of his rope, Thongor sent a shaft winging for the head. It missed the weaving, snakelike neck and hissed on by. But the second shaft caught the lizard-hawk in the throat, just below its powerful jaw. It screeched furiously, mad with the pain of the keen-barbed arrow, threshing wildly with its wings.

One wing caught under the rail of the floater’s deck, overturning it. As it spun through the air, Thongor was hurled with stunning impact against the hull. He dangled at the rope’s end, unconscious.

The bow and quiver dropped from his hands, falling into the jungle far below.

Hissing with fury, the winged reptile now settled on the upturned keel of the airboat, much as a bird settles on a branch. Its claws tightened about the long rib of the keel, crunching on the smooth blue-white urlium.

Beneath its heavy weight the floater lost much of its buoyancy and sagged down toward the treetops.

Thongor still dangled head-downward, unconscious.

And now a new danger threatened him. Up from among the trees came the hideous horned snout of the dreaded dwark, the jungle dragon. It snuffled at the sinking floater. Leaning its forepaws against the trunk of a gigantic lotifer tree, it extended its enormous length of mailed neck into the sky.

Lower and lower sank the floater, borne down by the massive weight of the grakk.

As it sank, Thongor’s helpless body dangled nearer and nearer to the opening jaws of the giant dragon. Still stunned from his collision with the floater’s hull, he was not even conscious of the approaching head of the monster saurian.

The dwark’s entire existence was one unending and continuous quest for food, to fill its monstrous belly. It was literally capable of eating all day long. Vast quantities of meat were needed to drive the gigantic muscles in its lumbering body.

The limp form that swung helplessly at the end of the rope smelled like
food.

The huge saurian opened wide its cavernous jaws. Two rows of needle-pointed fangs lined each jaw, and the largest teeth were longer than the Northlander sword that hung at Thongor’s thigh.

The yawning jaws came closer as the jungle dragon strained its neck to the fullest length. Slimy saliva, reeking like an opened grave, slid down its scaled jaws. The scarlet eyes flamed with the lust of hunger.

Then another screech rang out. Down from the sky came a second and a third lizard-hawk. As the dwark paused, scanning the sky above, observing the weird shapes that hovered above, the first winged reptile at last felt the deathly power of the war bow’s mighty shaft. It slid drunkenly from its perch atop the crippled airboat and fell flopping down into the jungle, virtually at the jungle dragon’s feet.

Released from its burden, the weightless ship bobbed upward again, bearing Thongor out of the dwark’s reach—and into the view of the two lizard-hawks.

While the tiny, dim brain of the giant saurian was striving to understand why its dangling prey was suddenly wafted aloft, far beyond its reach, the scent of the dead lizard-hawk at its feet reached its senses. Abandoning Thongor, it bent to feast ravenously on the body of the winged reptile.

Thongor came to his senses, taking in the grim situation. Not one, but
two
lizard-hawks to contend with—the war bow gone, leaving him armed only with his broadsword.

And the monster dwark directly below.

He pulled himself up the rope hand by hand and clambered aboard the floater once again, which had returned to its normal horizontal position. If he could crank up the springs that powered the rotors before the two lizard-hawks attacked, he might yet escape. He opened the trap in the deck and began turning the wheel. Gradually the long springs wound tight.

Meanwhile the two grakks circled the floating craft warily. Their tiny reptilian intelligences dimly comprehended the fact that this weird invader of their skies had in some unknown manner slaughtered one of their kind, whose half-eaten corpse lay far below, under the great jaws of the ravenous dwark.

Red murder blazed in their hideous eyes.

Wings folded, they struck the floater simultaneously.

Still securely fastened to the deck at the end of his rope, Thongor was hurled from his feet by the impact. The ship was batted from the skies as by some monster hand. It crashed prow first into the thick branches of an enormous lotifer—and there it lodged, tightly wedged between bent branches.

The rail crumpled and the rope snapped. Thongor fell, down through whipping branches, to land groggily on the springy moss that carpeted the jungle.

A hundred yards away the jungle dragon lifted its dripping head at the sound of the floater’s crash.

The lizard-hawks, clamorously screaming in their triumph, circled and flew off.

Thongor unfastened the rope from his harness and examined himself. Despite a number of bruises and small cuts, he was unharmed. He crept out of the dwark’s view and was lost in the thick jungle gloom within moments.

Lost
, he thought grimly,
is the correct word.
He was marooned in the deepest, most dangerous and impenetrable jungles on all Lemuria. Fully one hundred leagues of impassable, dwark-haunted jungle stood between him and the nearest city.

The great war bow, which alone might have made it barely possible for him to stand against the terrific monsters of the jungle, was hopelessly lost.

Perhaps even worse, the trees grew so thickly here that he could not see the sky. He therefore had not the vaguest notion in which direction he must travel to reach Kathool or Patanga.

Marooned alone, hundreds of miles from the nearest haunts of men, with only his broadsword to protect him against the jungle terrors whose least member weighed a dozen tons, is it any wonder that even Thongor of Valkarth felt his spirits sag?

He set out doggedly through the thick underbrush, hacking his way with the great Valkarthan broadsword. Along toward midmorning he stopped to break his fast on ripe sarnberries and a handful of waterfruit. He jogged along, hoping he was going the correct way, but completely unable to ascertain his direction by observing the position of the sun.

Several times he thought of climbing one of the giant lotifers that grew so thickly in Chush, their tall boles towering as much as two hundred yards above the mossy turf. But each tree was thickly grown with the dreaded slith, the bloodsucking vampire-blossoms that were the horror of Lemurian jungles. Grimly he decided not to attempt the trees. He had narrowly escaped death from the slith which the Sark of Thurdis kept in his arena. He would not go out of his way to court their attention now.

And was it, he wondered, humanly possible for one man to cross a hundred vom of jungle on foot? What would he do during the long watches of the night, still many hours away, when every mighty predator of the jungles would be out roaming for food? His situation by night would be doubly dangerous, for due to the prevalence of slith in the trees, he would not be able to take to the upper world of branches to avoid the larger brutes.

Still he slogged on. The dense, humid heat of the rank jungle underbrush bathed his naked body in sweat. Time and again he paused to pluck from his flesh the huge tree leeches that clung loathsomely to his arms and legs, sucking his blood painlessly through their hundred microscopic mouths. Once he sank unexpectedly to his waist in a bog and only saved himself from the sucking embrace of the yellow mud by tying one end of the floater’s rope to the hilt of his sword and hurling it into the nearest tree trunk, then drawing himself slowly through the slimy muck hand over hand.

At first he paused to rest only every hour, but gradually, as even his iron strength ebbed under the oppressive heat, his pauses grew longer and the intervals between them shorter.

As the first touches of darkness fell over the jungles of Chush from the late afternoon sky, he sagged down to the bed of moss beneath a tremendous lotifer, completely exhausted.

He did not know how far he had come, for he had been forced to detour from a straight path many times in order to avoid one beast or another, or a group of trees too thickly intergrown for him to penetrate. At a rough guess, he would estimate that he had covered fifteen miles, perhaps more.

And he did not know if he had been going in the correct direction. If he had been aimed
away
from Kathool, he was a doomed man, for the first city that lay due west was Cadoma, more than a thousand vorn distant, and his bones would rot beneath the sucking fangs of the slith before he could reach its walls.

Then he became aware of a danger far closer—the tread of mighty feet crushing the underbrush flat not far behind him. From the way the ground shook, he knew with a deadly certainty that it could only mean one thing
—the jungle dragon was stalking him.