Young Thongor

by Adrian Cole, Lin Carter

  “Where are all the rest of them?”

  The girl shrugged.

  “Where were you when these men died?”

  The girl gestured to the back of the hall. “There is a room back there where they put me. I was brought here this day with dawn. Barak looked me over and liked what he saw. This…was to have been my…my bridal night…”

  “Well, you were spared that, at least,” the youth grunted. “But—you heard nothing, saw nothing?”

  “The walls are thick, the doors were shut, and I was sick with dread,” she whispered. “Sometime before sunfall I heard men yelling and the clump of their boots in the hall. I thought they were all drunk, or at some game or other. Then, when no one came for me, I ventured out. I found a man’s body back there, behind the hall, and then this one here. I—I thought the keep had been attacked, and you, one of the attackers!”

  The youth shook his head, long straight black hair brushing his square-jawed face.

  “Not I,” he said shortly. “Come—let us explore.”

  The girl cast a fearful glance into the deep shadows in the far corners of the hall. From such dark places, perhaps, nameless and unknown terror had struck through all this mighty keep, slaughtering men by dozens. And perhaps it lingered, even yet, in the gloom beyond the fire’s glow. She felt the cold breath of that terror against her nape.

  Then she looked up into the boy’s clear, steady gaze. There was grim purpose in that gaze, and curiosity, too. But there was no fear. And suddenly she felt less fearful herself.

  She rose to stand beside him. He took down one of the oil-soaked torches from a wall bracket.

  Then he took her hand in his.

  And they went forward into the darkness together.

  3

  Dead Man, Laughing

  They came at length to a chamber decorated more sumptuously than the rest. The walls were hung with woven cloth in such colours and patterns as the weaver-women of Eobar prefer, and there were small tables of black wood here and there about, carved and set with ivory. There was carpet that had come from the looms of Cadornis, perhaps.

  Ylala said that this was the room Barak Redwolf used for his—amusements.

  One of the things he used to amuse himself still hung from the ceiling in iron chains.

  It was, or had been, a man. An old man with a long thin beard and long thin arms and legs, and not much meat on the rest of him, either. He had been stripped naked and hung by his wrists while Barak did unpleasant things with heated irons to him. The irons still lay in a copper bowl brimful of hot coals, which still glowed amid pink ashes.

  Ylala took one look at what the heated irons had done to the old man, then turned aside. Thongor put his arm around her until she stopped shuddering.

  “Did you know him?”

  She nodded.

  “Was he of your tribe?”

  “No. He was an old wizard, named Zoran Zar, who lived in a tower in the hills. They brought him in this morning. I heard Barak boasting that he would soon have the secret of his gold out of him. He thought the wizard had a hidden treasure trove. Is he—is he dead?”

  “Quite dead,” said Thongor somberly. “There is one thing about him that bothers me.”

  “What is that?”

  “Look again at his face,” the youth advised.

  Steeling herself, the girl looked. Then she paled incredulously and looked away quickly.

  Thongor nodded. “I agree,” he grunted.

  Instead of being drawn with pain, the wizard’s face wore a most peculiar expression, considering how he had died.

  He was smiling.

  His lips were drawn back, exposing the rotted yellowish stumps of his teeth. His mouth grinned open. It was as if he had been just about to laugh when death took him.

  Thongor said nothing. Men do not smile—much less break into laughter—under the caress of red-hot iron. Only the bravest of warriors, the noblest of heroes, can endure such torment with stoicism. And Zoran Zar, surely, had been neither.

  It was strange, even uncanny. But there was much about this black castle that struck Thongor as uncanny, and he liked none of it. The gloomy castle, devoid of living inhabitants save for himself and the girl, its dark corridors weird with whispering echoes and crawling shadows, stank to him of magic.

  He did not like magic, nor did he like magicians. Young as he was, he had encountered both during his wanderings, to his discomfort. Give him a foe of flesh and blood, and put naked steel in his hand, and he would do battle as bravely as might any full-grown man. But how can you fight ghosts or curses or enchantments with naked steel?

  They went on, searching for some sign of life.

  Behind them, dangling limply in the iron chains, the dead man hung, turning idly this way and that as a gust of wind moved down the draughty halls. The skull-like face of the old man still bore the rictus of silent laughter.

  Thongor wished he knew what had made the old man smile.

  * * * *

  Within the span of an hour they had searched the keep from cellar to attic and found nothing that lived.

  One more corpse, crushed to death as if in the embrace of a giant, they found at the head of the stairs leading up to the watch-tower, but that was all they found, or almost all.

  Nowhere was there the slightest sign of battle, nor any token that men had fought against men in the dark halls and empty rooms. No discarded weapons or smashed furniture or spilled blood. Nor had there been any looting, for casks of gems and gold lay in the cellars untouched.

  It was inexplicable and frightening.

  Returning to the main hall, they stirred up the fire again, piled on fresh logs. Then, while the flames roared up, and Thongor went to close and bar the great gate, Ylala made herself useful in the kitchens.

  They ate before the flames, making a good meal from cold fruit, hot meat, fresh bread and rich, succulent gravy. They sampled, at first cautiously, then with enthusiasm, the thin gold wine of the Southlands, made from fermented fruit called sarn. Thongor had tasted wine but once before, while a prisoner in the enchanted city of Ithomaar; it had been too heady and exhilarating for one raised on the thin, sour ale of Valkarth. But this wine he liked, as did the girl.

  They exchanged few words, feeling uncomfortable with each other. Girls and boys in their tribes were rigidly excluded from each other’s company until of marriageable age. Only in the pits of Ithomaar had Thongor been alone with a girl before, and he did not quite know how to behave. As for Ylala, she kept a demure silence, her eyes downcast, except when he was not looking at her: then she lifted her eyes to his face, which she thought very handsome. To her, he seemed much more manly and serious and responsible than a boy his age should have been.

  They slept for what remained of that night to either side of the fire pit, rolled in furs. But neither slept well or deeply; Thongor, because he was disturbed by the nearness of the girl, and by her loveliness; and Ylala, because she could not put out of her mind the thing they had found on the second floor of the castle.

  It was a man’s boot. With the foot still in it.

  4

  Barak Redwolf

  When the great golden sun of old Lemuria lifted up over the edges of the world to flood the land with its light and drive away the darkness, the youth and the girl also rose.

  They made their ablutions and breakfasted on a light meal, saving most of the meat against a future hour of need. Then they robed themselves in furs against the cold wind and the numbing snow of the heights, and fared forth into the mountain country.

  Thongor had decided that there was nothing else for him to do but escort Ylala home to the caves where her tribe dwelt. He could not very well abandon her in the empty castle; neither did he deem it proper that she should accompany him down the great Jomsgard Pass into the southern country. So he must take her home.

  They left at midmorning, and struck out for the plateau beside the White River glacier, where her people made their winter encampment. Besides
a supply of food and drink, sleeping-furs and weapons, they bore with them a thick earthenware pot stuffed full of live coals, so that if need be on the way they could at least build a fire.

  But they carried off from the castle of Barak Redwolf neither gold nor gems from the robber baron’s treasure. Neither of them had any particular use for such loot, as there was nothing to buy in the waste; and Thongor, at least, had an uneasy suspicion that the wealth of Jomsgard Keep might somehow be tainted by the curse of invisible doom that had slain the baron’s warriors to the last man.

  Ylala, however, did not scruple to bear away with her a cruse of valuable lamp oil for her mother. Such civilized luxuries were hard to come by in the cave country.

  They struck overland, Thongor going ahead to test the snow banks carefully with the long spear he had borne away from Barak’s armory. It was well into Panchand, the second month of spring, and the thaws were eating into the thick-banked snow. Runnels of dirty water trickled down the cliff walls, and the footing underneath was loose and treacherous.

  All that day they kept moving, pausing only occasionally to rest and refresh themselves. Toward late afternoon they surprised an elphodon drinking from a stream, which Thongor brought down with a single arrow. That night they sought refuge in an empty cave, built a fire, and roasted fresh meat from the carcass of Thongor’s kill. They slept near together that night for warmth, achingly conscious of each other. With dawn they went forward.

  They found Barak Redwolf near midday. Or what was left of him.

  The baron must have left the castle at the height of the terror, creeping forth into the waste by a secret way. They had no way of telling where he might have been going, but he had not gotten far. Something had come upon him while he had rested, a little after dawn, by the ashes of a fire not long cold.

  He had been crushed as if by some titan’s hand. Only his lower parts were mangled; from the waist up he had not been touched.

  The expression upon his face was one of sheer, unbelieving terror. Thongor regarded the dead man’s face grimly. The baron had been a knave, a bully, and a tyrant. But he could not for long have held supremacy over his band of ruffians if he had not been a brave man, and a seasoned and veteran warrior. Hard-bitten men of such breeding do not die before the fangs of a beast or the spears of an enemy with such an expression of blood-curdling horror on their faces.

  They went on, for there was nothing else to be done.

  After a while Thongor cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Was this Zoran Zar a powerful wizard?” he asked.

  “So the old men of my tribe said,” the girl replied. “They say he had tamed to his will, and pent up, the Demon of the Snows.”

  “What manner of creature is that?”

  “I really do not know. The old men said it was a thing of utter cold that dwelt beneath the roots of the ice mountain,” Ylala said.

  Thongor grunted, and spat, but said nothing. He was not entirely sure that he believed in demons; on the other hand, he was not entirely sure that he didn’t.

  He wondered if Barak Redwolf had.

  * * * *

  They spent the second night under a low, shelf-like rock that afforded them some shelter from the wind and from whatever beasts might be roaming the snowy wilderness.

  They slept in each other’s arms.

  Thongor had not intended this to happen, but it had. No sooner had he put the furs about them than the girl had come into his arms, pressing herself against him, burrowing her face into his shoulder. He was fumbling and inexpert at first, and they were clumsy in their eagerness. But the instincts lay deep in the blood of both, and soon they moved together, helping each other. When it was done, they lay gasping, and her face was wet with tears.

  The second time it was easier, and much better. He was gentle when she needed him to be gentle, and fierce when she wanted his fierceness. This time there were sleepy, satiated smiles, and many warm kisses, but no tears.

  They slept deeply and well that night, and woke with dawn, rested and fresh. And never again was there to be any strangeness or restraint between them, for as long as they were to be together.

  Later that morning they came to the caves of Ylala’s people. But there were none to greet them and the fires in the caves were dead and cold. Ylala had long born the cruse of precious oil to pleasure her mother. But nothing would ever pleasure her mother again, nor would anything ever again cause her pain. For she was beyond both pain and pleasure, when they found her remains on the outskirts of the caves, crushed as if by some immense hand.

  5

  That Which Kills in the Night

  They found three other bodies besides that of Ylala’s mother, and Thongor scratched holes in the snowy earth and buried them with their weapons and belongings beside them. Then he covered them over and piled high cairns of rocks atop the rude graves to keep the beasts away.

  Then they rested beside a roaring fire, and took food, the girl dry-eyed, saying nothing, the boy grim and somber. There was nothing more to be done by them here.

  The marks in the snow were clear and easy to follow, although they were unlike the tracks of any beast which Thongor had ever seen or heard of. It was more like the path made by a crawling worm or a serpent than anything else, he thought to himself, that shallow, wriggling, smooth depression in the snow. But if worm indeed it were, then the thing was twice as long as a tree is tall.

  They followed it up into the hills, reaching the crest by afternoon. Here they found the tower of the dead wizard, Zoran Zar; it was more of a house than a tower, a four-sided stone building only a little taller than it was long.

  Inside, they found nothing. Barak Redwolf’s men had been thorough, if not neat. Old books written in languages Thongor could not understand lay cast about, scattering the stone-paved floor with paper. Crockery was smashed in the fireplace, which stank of queer chemicals for which Thongor had no name. Curious small idols of lead and clay and brown stone lay toppled over or smashed. The furniture, what there had been of it, was broken or overturned.

  Here and there, Barak’s men had pried up stone slabs from the flooring, hoping to find gold buried beneath them, somewhere. There was no sign that they had found any.

  Outside the stone house, holes had been dug in the earth. Neither was there here any sign that treasure had been found, such as empty sacks or broken chests.

  Here on the heights the wind had blown away most of the snow and the earth was raw and muddy. It was easier to track the devil-thing.

  The tracks led to a hole in the earth, like a covered well. The cover, a rounded slab of mountain granite, had been manhandled away and there were signs in the mud that men had knelt here as if to probe the depths of the pit with long poles or spears.

  Thongor examined the stone lid curiously. It had carefully and painstakingly been carved with cryptic symbols in a language he could neither speak nor read, but which he had seen before, once or twice, in his travels. They were the characters used in the secret language of magicians. The weird runes were potent and powerful, he knew; it stung the eyes until they watered just to look upon them.

  Bidding the girl stand back, he unwrapped their store of fresh meat, tied a thong about it, and dangled it over the lip of the well. The odor of meat was rich and tantalizing on the fresh air.

  They heard, both of them, a slithering in the depths of the earth, as of some ponderous and mighty thing—stirring.

  Then a blast of frigid air smote them. So unearthly was the cold that breathed up suddenly from the pit that ice crystals formed in their hair and upon exposed portions of their bodies.

  At the sight of that which came pouring forth out of the pit the girl screamed—horribly. Even Thongor felt his skin crawl and his nape-hairs stir.

  It was like a worm grown unthinkably immense—mountainous in its hugeness—soft and pulpy and obscenely naked.

  White it was, with the unhealthy pallid whiteness of a thing that has never, or seldom, been exposed to the gla
re of the golden sun.

  It had no eyes, no nostrils, no features of any kind. Except for a wet, squirming, repulsive, toothless orifice that should have been a mouth. This obscenely working hole closed over the dangling meat. Oozing a fetid slime, the orifice gaped open again, hungry for more flesh.

  Thongor flung his spear into the white thing, but it did no harm, merely slicing a path through stinking, colorless pulp. Then he put an arrow or two into it, which it did not seem even to feel.

  The gaping maw of the thing, dripping slime, veered suddenly toward Ylala, where she stood frozen with horror as if rooted to the spot. The blast of arctic cold that breathed from the wriggling length of the worm-thing chilled her flesh, made her blood flow sluggishly. In a sudden spasm of revulsion, the girl flung that which she held, for some reason, in her hand.

  It was the cruse of oil.

  The stopper came loose when the container thudded against the monstrous worm. In seconds, pale yellowish oil ran all over the head and upper portion of the thing, dripping into the gaping, wetly-working maw.

  Thongor whirled, caught up the pot of coals and flung it.

  Hot coals spilled out and splattered the worm from its blind head to the upper portion, which extended out of the mouth of the well. Mindlessly, the worm chomped down on the live coals.

  Then it recoiled suddenly, uttering a shrill, ear-splitting hiss of pain. Steam swirled up, obscuring the thing as it whipped its pulpy head to and fro.

  Flame shot up as the coals caught fire in the spilled lamp oil. Writhing tendrils of flame meshed the white worm, bit in cruelly. For perhaps the first time in the measureless eons of its monstrous life, the Demon of the Snows felt the unendurable searing touch of pure flame upon its soft, cold flesh.

  Wriggling in spasms of agony, the worm-thing oozed back into its pit.

  It vanished from view, but they could hear its shrill, squealing cry; and the earth shook to the fury of its torment.

  Oily black smoke, mingled with live steam, seeped from the yawning mouth of the pit.