Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus

by Lin Carter

  “Pretence?” Rage blazed up in the glittering eyes of Belshathla. “Pretence, is it? I, the last of the Gray Magicians of Nianga—a pretender? I, before whose wisdom the kingdoms of the world shall bow down—I, who shall be hailed as lord and conqueror,' when I take my place upon the throne of the mightiest empire the earth has ever known? Listen to me, my petty princeling: the Gray Death, as you in your ignorance may call the Mind-Distorting Lamp, is but the least and littlest of all the terrible weapons in the mighty arsenals of God-whelmed and age-forgot Nianga! There is a weapon in those buried crypts that can unleash the very fury of the Sun itself, and touch a flame so furious that the solid earth itself is made to melt and run like spring ice before the hot white dawn … aye, Thunder’s Egg, the wise men of old Nianga called it… two rare and precious metals, when brought together in unguarded proximity, work such a magic ’twixt themselves that the blazing fury of the Sun itself, which sleeps ensorcelled in all solid matter, roars up in a colossal pillar of seething flame, towering over the groaning earth like a flaming tree, rooted deep in the everlasting fires of hell!”

  Karm Karvus, with what inward horror I give my readers leave to picture for themselves, listened as mad Belshathla raved and ranted on. The Prince of Tsargol, of course, had never before heard of a hydrolithium bomb, but such it was that the Gray Magician sought to describe for him, although he lacked a terminology and was forced to employ the euphemisms of magic.

  The young Prince let the madman bluster on until he thought the fellow had exhausted his lust for triumphant gloating; then, and humbly, as a lowly student begging for a display of the Master’s lore, he suggested that he would like to see the Lamp of Madness in full use. To this the Gray Magician made swift and eager assent: nothing delighted him more than to flaunt his science before the humble admiration of one who had once spurned it.

  He rose and thrust aside a hanging, revealing the black mouth of a hidden passage. Commanding Karm Karvus to attend, he led the way, lighting the black tunnel with a flickering candelabra. Karm Karvus followed closely at his heels, mind working furiously. He was unbound and no guards or servitors were in sight. He could well strike down the madman now, and take to his heels … but he knew not in what portion of the palace they were, nor how to escape therefrom, so he decided to let the madman lead him further, and await a better opportunity.

  Thus he followed the gaunt figure of the mad magician into the blackness of the tunnel, knowing not where it might lead him, but trusting to his Gods.

  THEY went down a coiling stone stair that lined the inner throat of a mighty shaft. Down, down, deep within the earth they descended, until it seemed to Karm Karvus; that a heavy mountain of stone pressed down upon the darkness. The city of Tarakus was builded in a halfcircle around the bay, and tier on tier of houses rose up the slopes of the steep and rocky promontory that thrust out into the wide waste of waters where the mighty Gulf of Patanga mingled with the thunderous waves of the Southern Sea. The citadel of Kashtar was itself built upon the heights, and this secret stair, it seemed, descended deep below the city … perhaps to sea level.

  He followed the shuffling sandals of the magician through the echoing darkness. It was a thrilling and an eerie scene … the wavering candlelight, the gaunt robed figure, the walls of naked rock that lifted about them as they descended deeper and ever deeper into the nameless abyss of darkness.

  They emerged at length into a tremendous natural cavern, like the domed hall of some primitive cathedral. Hundreds of feet above their heads, an arched roof soared, dangling stone stalactites lost in thickly-clotted shadows.

  Karm Karvus looked down and saw, far below, the waters of the sea pounding against sharp rocks. Peering through the gloom, he could faintly perceive an arched opening in the further wall of the cavern, through which the waves entered. Oddly, a mighty grille of steel bars closed that cavernous mouth. Karm Karvus could discern no reason for so curious a barrier, but he shelved the question until another time.

  They stood on a deep ledge and near the place whereat they were, a jutting spar of heavy rock thrust out over the thunderous chasm. A glittering structure of crystal globes and rods of twinkling brass had been erected at the end of this jutting spar. It was the very twin of the hellish instrument that had struck terror, madness and death into the hearts of the crewmen of the Crown of Tsargol.

  Belshathla followed the Prince’s glance, and burst into harsh, cackling laughter.

  “Aye, the Mind-Distorting Lamp … the Ray of Madness itself … the only other existing copy of the instrument mounted aboard our Kashtar’s own flagship, the Red Wolf,” grated. Then, gesturing around, he said: “This is my laboratorium, and here I conduct my experiments far from the spying eyes and ears of jealous men.”

  “Here?” queried Karm Karvus in surprise. “You experiment here? But on—what?”

  Belshathla shrugged. “Slaves mostly. See you those hanging cages?”

  Karm Karvus had not seen them before in the dim light, but now he followed the pointing finger of the mad magician and his gorge rose in nausea at what his eyes gazed upon.

  A dozen cages of rusty iron dangled by chains from the groined ceiling of the cavern far above. There were dead men, and women, too, and some there were that had not died—whimpering, wild-eyed things that mouthed and mewled and slavered. The mad!

  “Most of those experiments are finished with,” confided Belshathla. “And when they are no longer of any use to my scientific research, I dispose of them—thusly!” He reached out and caressed a great lever with the palm of one claw-like hand. Karm Karvus saw that the catch of the lever released sprockets in the bottom grille of each cage in numbered sequence. When the mad scientist was finished with the poor wretches, he could tip them screaming into the sea far below. And then it was that Karm Karvus saw the reason for the barred entrance …

  A heavy reptilian head came rushing up from the floor of the cavern, the waves breaking on its blunt, wedge-shapen skull, cold eyes flaming with ophidian hunger. Belshathla had somehow trapped in his cavern one of the mighty sea dragons of the Lemurian deeps. And, suddenly, the hazy outlines of an idea arose in the quick mind of Karm Karvus.

  He assumed a critical, almost contemptuous expression. Surveying the pitiful, whimpering things in the cages, he said dubiously: “These creatures are all dead—dead, or already mad. How can I see the weapon of your genius in its full power, with such poor mewling subjects? Can you use the ray on—that?”

  He pointed below them, at the tremendous dragon of the abyss. A touch of fear came into the face of the mad magician.

  “Why, I—I do not—yes, of course!” Belshathla blustered. He busied himself with the weird glittering machine. A deep-throated humming awoke within the hellish instrument. Strange lights glowed and flashed, and the stench of nameless chemicals came harsh and hot to his nostrils. Karm Karvus held his breath in anticipation. He had but the vaguest idea of what was going to happen—his plans were rudimentary in the extreme—but somehow, letting one incident lead to another, he thought he saw a way out of this predicament. If he could destroy both Belshathla and the Ray of Madness, that would leave but the duplicate instrument mounted on the bows of the corsair flagship—it seemed worth a try!

  Belshathla was ready for the monstrous experiment. Cold lights gleamed up from the raygun, transforming his face into a weird mask of highlights and shadows.

  “Be careful not to look full into the ray,” he cautioned, “but turn your gaze away. First, I will use the beam at the lowest settings—watch!”

  The humming sound rose to a maddening whine. Now from the central globe, a throbbing beam of completely colorless light shone. The cold finger of pallid luminance glowed faintly through the echoing gloom. It stretched from the rocky prominence whereon they stood, probing down into the watery abyss—to bathe the lifted head of the monster reptile full in its flickering beam!

  Slowly, the eyes of the dragon blinked sleepily—glazed—and became motionless, riveted upon
the source of the colorless ray. The dragon lay, half submerged, rapt: the Lamp of Madness held its mind locked.

  “This,” said Belshathla conversationally, “is the same setting to which the instrument was attuned when we took your vessel. If you will recall, your men were completely hypnotized, enthralled, frozen, their attention fixed upon the ray. In this state, the mind is completely under the dominance of whomever controls the Lamp, and will take any suggestion given it. Your men were transformed from motionless statues to roaring, battling madmen when Kashtar commanded them to kill, you may recall. Of course, the dragon cannot be so commanded, as, a mere beast, it does not understand spoken commands. But if I increase the vibratory level of the ray, and build its intensity, it will go wild—behold!”

  He made some adjustment to the whirling crystal globes, and even as he spoke, the burning eyes of the monster reptile flared crimson and it gave voice to a thunderous bellow of maniacal frenzy. The great lash of its tail whipped the cold black waters to fury in an explosion of flying white foam.

  Karm Karvus had been playing this scene by pure instinct, not at all certain where it would lead. Now he suddenly saw—and sprang back as the mighty larth, bellowing in its mad fury, came clashing and scrabbling up against the cliffy wall of rock, which shuddered under the impact of its colossal weight. The ledge shook—black cracks shot forth in sudden zigzags—rock crumpled, splintered, gave way.

  Now Belshathla recoiled, white-faced and shaken. The smooth and sceptical words of the Tsargolian had subtly led him on; but now, seeing what he had wrought, the Gray Magician feared for the safety of his instrument—and his person. But it was too late. With a grinding roar, the ledge broke away, and fell. The Lamp of Madness went twinkling down through the foam and spray and was lost. Karm Karvus felt a pang of fierce joy go through him—now the pirates of Tarakus had only one other such weapon wherewith to imperil the Empire!

  The next moment, his joy vanished, for he himself was falling. Black water and white foam and the enraged, thrashing sea monster swung up towards him as he fell amidst a cloud of broken rock into the chaos of waters far below.

  Belshathla alone did not fall: he managed to seize hold of the rocky cliff and sustain himself even as the ledge collapsed. Shaken and gasping, he dragged himself back into the mouth of the tunnel. Through his pride and folly, the irreplaceable second Lamp had been lost, and with it Kashtar’s precious captive, the Prince of Tsargol.

  For surely nothing could survive in that thundering maelstrom of battering waves and shattering spray …

  CHAPTER 7:

  THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

  The stars are bright, the wind is cold,

  The moon is drifting free.

  We're out to seek for pirate gold

  Across a silver sea.

  —Sea Chantey of the Pirates of Tarakus

  SUNSET flared crimson in the west, and a scudding wrack of wind-torn clouds gave ominous presage of coming storms. Below, the long rocky promontory thrust forth from the southernmost tip of Ptartha into the great waste of waters where the Patangan Gulf joined the limitless reaches of Yashengzeb Chun.

  Tarakus the Pirate City was builded on the uttermost tip of this savage mass of wet black rock, where curved breakwaters formed a quiet harbor. Thunderous waves crashed against this sea-wall in blinding sheets of flying spray and seething foam. But above, the city of the «corsairs climbed in rising tiers above the stormy main.

  The Pirate City resembled a fortress. Soaring, square-sided stone towers rose against the flame of sunset. Beetling walls and heavily-machicolated battlements stood about the city like sheltering arms. High above the city, on the upmost slopes of the black promontory, the massive stone citadel of Kashtar brooded down upon his domain.

  In the harbor below, more than one hundred vessels rode at anchor. Dragon-prowed galleys and high-pooped ships of war, lean caravels and stout carracks—the mightiest armada of all the World’s West was moored below the corsair capitol. But rarely did so many of the Captains of the Coast bring their savage, black-hulled sea wolves home to anchorage at the same time. But now were they launched on the mightiest expedition of all time—the invasion and conquest of an empire. And even now the harbor was a bustling scene of furious industry, as stores and provisions were shipped aboard and vessels were set in fighting trim for the great war against Patanga, the City of the Flame.

  Kashtar the Red Wolf was in a howling rage. The loss of Karm Karvus, and the destruction of the second instrument, had goaded him to fury. For his plans had long been set and were now thrown into confusion by this unexpected event. It had been his cunning scheme to seize upon other of the Lords of the Empire, even as he had captured the Prince of Tsargol, and to use these valued friends of Thongor as hostages. But this would take months—and had he time to spare? Was Karm Karvus dead, or had he perchance escaped alive from the subterranean cavern? Cold reason and logic said that there was little chance of one man escaping with his life from the seething inferno of thundering water, wherein a maddened larth writhed in wild convulsions. But reason and logic were not enough—were Karm Karvus to escape, and were he to carry the alarm to Patanga, Tarakus would lose all element of precious surprise, and would face an alert and ready opponent when at last the great corsair armada sailed into the harbor of Patanga.

  Thus was the fleet being brought to sudden readiness. And, as well, Kashtar’s men were combing the city for any slightest token of Karm Karvus.

  Alert corsairs strode about the harbor, the rocks, the seawall, beaming bright lanterns and flickering torches into dark places. Mounted on swift-striding kroters, parties of well-armed pirates rode the crowded streets and about the outer walls of the city, searching for any sign of the escaped captive.

  The city itself was ablaze under the crimson skies, for the crews of a hundred ships were in port. Every ale house and wineshop and inn was filled with rough-voiced, swaggering seamen roaring for drink and food and women.

  Wineshop signs swung on creaking hinges in the gusts of salty wind. Drunken song and the roar of revelry thundered up against the elemental fury of the storm. For now the howling gale was broke and sleety rains swept the twisting, cobbled ways. Staggering celebrants lurched into inn and ale shop for shelter against the downpour, but the keen-eyed, hard-faced guard parties merely wrapped their sea cloaks about themselves and grimly strode on. Every street and square, every hovel and house would be searched that night on orders from Red Kashtar. If Karm Karvus was abroad in the city—he would be found.

  Hour after hour, as the storm raged and thunder went bellowing down the sky, they searched on. Lightning flared and flickered amid boiling black clouds; icy rains sluiced the cobbled alleys; but the search went on.

  WHILE the guards of Tarakus scoured the streets and buildings of the Pirate City for any trace of Karm Karvus, the fugitive himself had taken refuge in the one place most likely to be overlooked by even the most cunning and doggedly determined of the searchers.

  In short, he was upon the roofs;.

  The Tsargolian never quite knew how he had survived the weltering fury of torn black water wherein the dragon, goaded beyond endurance, floundered and squalled. Somehow, after an eternity of swimming blind through black cold water far under the surface—lungs near to bursting and red agony searing at his brain—he had come up, gasping and half-drowned, in the fetid air of the sewers.

  The pirates of Tarakus were not a cleanly lot, but when a city is constructed upon the slopes of a rocky ridge honeycombed with subterranean lakes and river-channels, it is an easy and obvious thing to build a sewer system. And it was the luck of the Gods that led the Prince, lost in the darkness, to emerge in one of the sewer tunnels.

  From thence he had clambered up into the streets of the city. By yet a second stroke of good fortune, the narrow alley was dark and deserted at this hour. With a heave of strong shoulders, the Prince shoved the rusty grating aside, and crawled out—muddy, bedraggled, smeared with filthy garbage from head to foot—but
alive. And, for the moment, safe.

  But for how long?

  He prowled the little-used side streets, keeping well in the shadows, and for a time he sought to find a way out of the city. Once beyond the walls, he could make his way down the length of the rocky promontory, rejoin the mainland, and trust to his luck in the jungles of Ptartha. He might be able to find friendly fishermen in some jungle cove, and thus gain transportation to the nearest city of the Empire. That he could worry about later, when the time came. His first problem was to find some way of leaving the Pirate City unobserved.

  He took the only route to safety that occurred to him—the rooftops. There, in the windswept darkness, well above lighted doorways and swinging lanterns, high above blazing windows, guttering torches, or the eyes of passers-by, lost in the black confusion of roofs and domes, chimneys and gables, he hoped to elude detection.

  And thus far the ruse had worked. The streets of Tarakus were narrow and the houses were set very close together. It was not a difficult matter to clamber or to leap from one rooftop to another, and he found it comparatively easy to make progress across the city. On a clear and a fair night, he might have been spotted more easily—a black figure moving against the bright tropic, stars. But amidst howling gusts of sleety rain, only fools peer skyward with open eyes. And, as well, on a clear night of no storms, the clatter and thump of his boots on the roof-tiles might well have been heard by those within. Luckily, this night was a loud and stormy one, and no one heard—or if they did hear his passage, they did not bother to give it a second thought.

  But the breaking of the storm, which had long impended, proved in itself a hazard. It is difficult enough to clamber across tilted roofs and slippery tiles, but to do so in streaming rain, with howling gusts of wind to knock you off balance and tear loose your fingerholds, is another and much more difficult matter. After several near slips, Karm Karvus determined that, whatever the hazard, he was going to have to seek a haven somewhere—and soon. One incautious step—one slip of his footing—and he would end up with a broken leg or a cracked skull on the wet glistening cobbles below.