Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria (9 page)

Behind them the altars were heating up. Thongor could feel the heat against the skin of his back. His muscles knotted and tensed with supreme effort. Droplets of sweat stood out upon his brow and slid wetly down his powerful arms.

Now three priests were coming up the steps to fasten them to the blazing altars, now red-hot behind them. As they gathered about Sumia, preparing to strip her naked, there was a sharp gasp from Sharajsha.

“Thongor—look! Upon the platform where the Archdruid stands! Your sword and the Sword of
Nemedis
as well. They must plan to hurl our possessions into the flames of Yamath along with us!”

The sight of his familiar, beloved Valkarthan broadsword lent extra strength to Thongor’s efforts. His face grew congested and purpled with the intensity of his straining muscles.

A priest took hold of the collar of Sumia’s gown and ripped it away. One pearly-white breast was laid bare. Sumia stared ahead of her, her dark eyes enormous in her pale face. A shiver of anticipation ran over the faces of the priests. The Druid licked his thin lips and reached out—

A sharp metallic
twanggg
rang out, so loud that it was heard the length of the hall. The strained and weakened link had at last yielded to Thongor’s barbarian thews!

His hands free, Thongor was upon the priests with one catlike bound. He tore the Druid’s hands from Sumia, picked the kicking and squirming figure up with one hand to throat and one to crotch, and hurled him upon the altar! There was the sizzling, crackling sound of human flesh frying, and the shrill unearthly screech of the Druid filled the hall with terror.

Thongor hurled the other two priests from the platform, dashing them against the stone pavement far below. Then he was loosening the chains that bound Sumia’s slim wrists. Using the iron hilt of a priest’s dagger for a lever, he snapped the links of her manacles and freed her, then turned to do the same for Sharajsha.

Pandemonium raged. The temple became a madhouse of whirling, shouting people. Priests and guards rushed up the steps of the idol. On the platform near the God’s knee, Vaspas Ptol called down the curses of Yamath upon the blasphemers who had dared fight free from the embrace of the Fire God.

Thongor put the dagger into Sumia’s hands and shoved her toward Sharajsha so that she might free the old wizard while he turned to fight off the oncoming priests. He sprang to the head of the stair and kicked the first priest in the face, smashing his nose into a bloody ruin. The Druid fell back, knocking others from the stair.

Thongor snatched up a fallen sword and hewed down two guards. His savage war song thundered through the shrieking chaos of the hall as the red sword rose and fell. He slew four before the blade broke upon a steel helmet. He flung the broken hilt at a man’s face and sprang back from the rush. Now his fists swung out, cracking heads and spilling bodies off the platform. Boiling with a berserk fury, he swept men off his back and hurled them upon the fiery altars. He seized one guard by the ankles and swung him around like a great living club of flesh, knocking a dozen men flat. He released the man and he whirled across the room, thudding into a knot of priests. The barbarian was in his element—a good fight!

Sumia had freed Sharajsha, and the wizard joined the battle. Bolts of white fire sprang from his lifted hands, setting yellow robes and guards’ cloaks afire. Sharajsha took the head of the stair while Thongor retreated, and cast bolt after bolt of magic flame down, clearing away the guards.

Thongor poised at the edge of the idol’s knee—and dove into space. He landed catlike upon the platform where Vaspas Ptol crouched, white with fear and outrage. From the platform Thongor took up the half-completed Star Sword and his own great blade. Before he could turn to slay the priest, the Yellow Druid had picked up his skirts and jumped off, landing in the milling crowd below. Thongor roared with laughter.

Then the great windows of colored glass far up in the dome above crashed in with a deafening music of splintering glass, and a thick rain of knife-sharp shards fell into the crowd. The gleaming silvery shape of the
Nemedis
floated over the hall, her weird form striking mad panic into the hearts of the people—priests, guards, and nobles alike. The airboat descended to the idol’s knees, where Sharajsha, his gray beard flying and lightning spewing from his upraised hands, had held the stair while Thongor went to recover the enchanted Sword.

As the hall rapidly emptied of its terror-stricken throng, who fully believed the very Gods had descended in transcendent wrath, Sharajsha helped Sumia aboard the floater and then they descended to floor level so that the giant barbarian could clamber aboard.

Thongor sprang onto the deck, magnificent in the fiery light, naked and grinning, smeared with blood, brandishing a sword in either hand.

“Karm Karvus!” he roared. “Never was I so glad to see your face! Now, for the love of the Gods, let us get out of this place before Sharajsha brings the roof down with his magic lightnings!”

He tossed the magic sword to Sharajsha and they clung to the rail as Karm Karvus set the
Nemedis’
prow rising sharply into the air. Within a few seconds they were out through the shattered windows and over the crowded, panic-filled streets of Patanga.

“North and west, Karm Karvus.” Sharajsha commanded. “We must reach the Mountain of Thunder before dawn, for the old year has ended and the new year begins—and in a few days the Dragon Kings will summon the Lords of Chaos from their dark abode beyond the Universe, to trample all of Lemuria down into the slime from which it rose!”

The glittering craft rose steeply in the air and shot over the roofs and towers of Patanga, vanishing into the northern sides, bearing with her the hope of the world.

CHAPTER 13

The Mountain of Thunder

He beat them back with a broken blade, half drowned in the roaring tide,

But the great black spear drank deep as it sank in Thungarth’s naked side.

Yet ere the Son of Jaidor fell, and ere his strength should wane,

The broken Sword of Nemedis had clove the Dragon’s brain.

—Diombar’s
Song of the Last Battle

Sumia sank exhausted on the cabin’s small bunk, pale and trembling from the danger and exertion. Sharajsha brought her a cup of wine, and they rested as the floater drove through the midnight skies and Patanga gradually diminished behind them.

“Wizard!” said Thongor. “I’ll taste a goblet of that drink as well, and so, no doubt, will Karm Karvus.” The Tsargolian locked the controls and turned to join them.

“I feared I had looked my last upon both of you,” he said, relieved. “When you did not signal for me to descend and pick you up I became fearful for your safety. And as the hours passed, I became certain you were captured—or slain. And then I saw the excitement in the great Fire Temple, and even at my height some noise of battle came to me… So on the chance that it might be Thongor of Valkarth behind this commotion, I descended and entered the Temple.”

“Well for us that you did, Karm Karvus,” the Valkarthan grinned, tossing aside his empty goblet. “And now, bid greetings to our guest, the Royal Sumia, rightful Sarkaja of the City of Fire. Her throne has been usurped by a Druid, even as was that of the late but not lamented Drugunda Thal!”

Karm Karvus bade Sumia welcome and turned to Sharajsha.

“Were you successful in forging the Star Sword before your capture?” he asked.

The wizard nodded. “Aye, or else why journey to Sharimba, the Mountain of Thunder?” He displayed the jagged blade proudly. The Princess, who had recovered from her exhaustion, and who now looked lovelier than ever with the warm rose coloring her creamy pallor, had been attempting to follow this conversation.

“Was it that you stole this sword?” she asked. “Was that why you were condemned to the altars beside me?”

Sharajsha explained to her the plot of the Dragon Kings and related something of their adventures until the present, while Thongor cleansed and bound his wounds.

As they ate an impromptu meal from the floater’s stores of dried meat and cheese, Sharajsha questioned her.

“Since it would be foolish in the extreme for you to return to Patanga, Princess, where shall you go? Has the House of Chond friends in nearby cities?”

“Nay,” she said warily. “Let me accompany you on your voyage. The Yellow Druids have driven into exile the Houses that might have welcomed the daughter of Orvath Chond.”

“It will be less dangerous for you to return to the arms of Yamath, God of Fire, than to venture with us, Princess,” Thongor said. “We voyage into unknown perils, for we know not what forces the last of the Dragon Kings can bring against us. In the long ages they have spent in their remote and hidden fastnesses, Gorm alone knows what terrors they have brewed.”

“I should rather remain with good and true friends,” she said firmly. And that was that. No arguments they could muster forth could sway her stubborn determination.

All were long since wearied, and with this matter resolved, they made ready for slumber. The only bunk was given to the Princess of Patanga, and the others stretched out on the cabin’s floor, rolled in their cloaks. They slept for hours as the floater hurtled ever northwards. Below its silvery keel the curving, silver ribbon of the river Saan traced a winding path through forest and field, past the walls of Kathool and on, ever farther and farther north, into the foothills of the Mountains of Mommur.

Thongor awoke after a time and took the controls, lifting the slim craft above the towering piles of rough black rock. These mighty ranges of mountain and cliff were at the very heart of Lemuria. They stretched from the marshes of Pasht in the West to the plains of the Blue Nomads in the East, a stupendous wall of rock thousands of vom in length. And therein were the dark waters of the Inner Sea of Neol-Shendis in which the Dragon Isles were known to lie.

Some hours after dawn the cloud-wreathed peak of Sharimba loomed before them. It was the mightiest mountain of all Lemuria, towering above its brothers like a black giant standing amid squat dwarfs. Thongor roused his companions and they broke their fast as the floater measured off the vom between them and the Mountain of Thunder.

Sharajsha bade Thongor guide the airboat to a landing somewhere near the crest of the black mountain.

“Only I, armed with powers of magic, may ascend the uttermost peak of the mountain,” he explained. “For when I call down the lightnings of heaven to imbue the Star Sword with power, those near me who are not protected by great craft and magic skill will be charred to ash…such are the powers I must invoke.”

The black wall of rock loomed sheer before them. Then the Princess cried; “Look!” Thongor followed her pointing hand and saw a gap in the rock, and suddenly a flat table of stone appeared, where some unimaginable convulsion of the earth’s crust had shattered off a portion of the peak. There he brought the
Nemedis
to rest. Sharajsha clambered out, his long, wide-sleeved robe of gray and his long gray mane of hair fluttering in the howling winds that swept the mountain. In one hand he grasped the Star Sword. In the other was a small pouch of scarlet photh-skin containing magical instruments. Standing there, the naked Sword in his hand, the wild landscape of cloven black rock and wind-torn sky behind him, he suddenly became a weird and mysterious figure, removed from the common range of mankind.

“Await me here,” he commanded. “From this point I must ascend to the peak unaccompanied, so do not come after me for any reason.”

“What will happen now?” Karm Karvus asked.

“Once I have reached the topmost pinnacle of the mountain, and have evoked the powers of the Throne of Thunders, the sky will darken. Clouds will gather, blackening the very sun. Then forth from the clouds, bolts of lightning will assail the peak, filling the sky with flame. But the Sword will drink the lightning even as the green things of the earth drink the sunlight, and with every bolt the power of the Sword will grow, until at last it has been charged to the final degree with energy. Fashioned from stone, forged in fire, drenched in the powers of the air—it shall command the elements of nature.”

“And—water?” Karm Karvus hazarded.

“For water it shall drink deep of the accursed blood of the Dragon Kings,” the wizard said, and he turned and slowly began his ascent of Sharimba. Standing in a row together, they watched his thin, bent figure until it dwindled above them and vanished among the jagged rocks of the mountain peak.

Thongor spat. “Sorcery! Give me a good blade and a strong arm. That’s all the sorcery one needs to fight an enemy!”

Sumia shivered, staring up at the cloud-wrapped peak.

“What will happen—when we face the Dragon Kings with the enchanted Sword?” she wondered aloud. Karm Karvus shrugged.

“I know not, Princess. Perhaps the Sword will disgorge the lightnings upon which Sharajsha will feed it. However, we shall soon see. For within mere hours now, the destined time will come when the monsters will seek to summon their Dark Lords from the unknown realms that lie beyond the stars—beyond the very Universe itself!”

Silent, Thongor watched Karm Karvus talking to the girl. The slim, courtly noble and the lovely Princess could converse as equals—but he was a rude barbarian! Broodingly he observed her slender loveliness…the great, curling fleece of black hair, slim, pale limbs displayed in creamy glimpses through the rents of her tattered gown. Never in all his years had he seen such loveliness in a woman. Lemuria had not seen her like since the fabulous days of Queen Zandarla the Fair. He turned away and, setting his back to them, stared out over the fantastic gulf of broken stone and wind-torn vapor, illuminated by the level, ruddy shafts of the morning sun.

Ah, well! Such beauty was not for the likes of him, a rough warrior more used to trading jests with Death at the tip of a dancing blade than exchanging courteous phrases with high-born ladies.

Sumia screamed
!

Thongor whirled, his broadsword flashing into his hand, his fierce golden eyes searching the rocks for an enemy. The shrill scream of the Princess was echoed by a metallic screech whose reverberations raised the hairs on Thongor’s nape
—a grakk!

Down from the airy gulfs winged the terrible lizard-hawk, a very twin of the ones that had attacked him days ago over the jungles of Chush. Its wriggling, scaled, snakebody was mailed in fantastic yellow and brown. Its rustling, bat-like wings darkened the air. At the end of a long serpentine neck the hideous head reached for the girl. She was running toward the floater, slim legs flying. The head swooped toward her—grim, hooked beak clashing hungrily, cruel scarlet eyes blazing with insatiable hunger beneath the indigo-blue crest of wild, bristling spines.

Shouting, Karm Karvus whipped out his Tsargolian rapier and raced to aid the Princess. Roaring his deep-throated war cry, Thongor exploded into action. One lithe bound brought him to the side of Karm Karvus, and together they plunged their steel into the writhing body that hung in midair upon thunder-beating wings while the long neck quested after the fleeing girl. But even sharp steel could not penetrate the tough, leathery hide, and their blades slid harmlessly off the horny scales.

Sumia cried out again as the loose rocks twisted under her feet—and then she tumbled down, helpless beneath the darting beak.

Thongor sprang astride her, roaring. Clenching the sword double-handed, he swung the mighty blade with the full power of his iron thews. His edge met the clashing beak and batted it to one side with the impact. The lizard-hawk screeched deafeningly. He swung again, his blade shearing off the crest of blue bristles. Karm Karvus came up to join him.

“Get the Princess into the floater!” Thongor commanded.

“And leave you—!”

“Do as I say, man—quick, now!”

As Thongor battled with the monstrous flying reptile he was aware of the girl being taken from beneath his legs and glimpsed Karm Karvus bearing her in his arms to the safety of the
Nemedis.
But he was too busy to do anything but fight—and fight he did!

The grakk was gigantic—fully as large as the airboat. Its beaked head was almost as huge as Thongor’s entire body, and the tremendous muscles of its sinuous length could have torn him to ribbons in an instant, could it have seized him. But the giant Valkarthan danced over the mountainside, leaping away from each plunge of the hissing head, battering at it with great blows of his blade, never still for an instant. He roared and shouted at the hovering thing, holding its attention lest it should leave him and pursue the Princess and Karm Karvus.

Its great membraned wings beat the air like the booming sails of a ship, the wind buffeting Thongor. With great hewing strokes he tried to sever the armored neck, to extinguish one of the scarlet eyes that blazed into his, mad with fury. But the steely scales resisted his blows as might the granite mountain itself. Thongor knew it was only a matter of time until his feet would strike a loose rock, bringing him down sprawling—or before he should fail to dodge the swinging head and be caught in the viselike grip of that slavering yellow beak—but he fought on tirelessly.

And then one clawed foot seized him, dragging him down. Hooked claws the size of curved scimitars bit into his leather trappings. As the hovering monster dragged him, his skull hit a boulder and blackness enveloped him.

In the cabin of the floater, the Princess stifled a cry when Thongor fell. Breathlessly she watched as the lizard-hawk hovered on thundering wings above the helpless man. Beside her, Karm Karvus gave an oath.

“Stay here, Princess!”

The Tsargolian sprang from the floater’s deck to do what he could to save—or to revenge—his friend. But before he could reach Thongor’s side, the cruel, barbed claw closed about the barbarian’s waist and the winged monster rose slowly into the air with the unconscious man dangling from its powerful grasp.

Helpless, Karm Karvus stood beneath, watching as the monster lizard-hawk rose, knowing that at any moment he could expect to watch his mighty friend dashed in the gulf below—or devoured. As the lizard-hawk hovered, it bent its long neck and seemed to sniff at the dangling body.

From the safety of the floater, Sumia clasped her hands to her beating heart. Breathlessly she watched as the bold warrior who had saved her from death faced death himself.

And then the two watched as the lizard-hawk, seemingly satisfied that its prey was either helpless or dead, rose steeply on booming wings. It circled above them, and then slid away over the great gulf. Still bearing the unconscious Thongor, it vanished toward the east and was lost to their view among the thick vapors.

Karm Karvus slowly slid his rapier back into its scabbard. Bending, he picked up the fallen broadsword that Thongor had carried through a hundred battles. With the sword in his hands he returned to the floater.

“Can we not pursue the creature in the airboat?” Sumia asked.

“To what avail, Princess? How could we battle the lizard-hawk, even if we could find it again? And if we could somehow battle it, would it not drop Thongor in order to fight us?”

Sumia bowed her head silently, recognizing the wisdom in Karm Karvus’ words.

“Nay, there is nothing that we can do, Princess,” the Tsargolian said sadly. “Were Sharajsha here, perhaps his magic could save our friend—but he is far above, where we dare not venture. I doubt not that Thongor has been slain—crushed in the grakk’s claws by now. Let us be brave and reconcile ourselves to the fact of his death.”

And then Karm Karvus fell silent, placing the great Valkarthan broadsword upon the bunk. Even in the arena, facing the grinning jaws of death, he had never known a more terrible moment than this—forced to stand by helplessly and watch his friend carried off to a lonely death in the wind-torn skies of Lemuria.

Far above them the skies darkened and the drums of thunder rolled. Sharajsha was preparing the Star Sword. But neither of them was listening. Each was deep in thought.