Young Thongor

by Adrian Cole, Lin Carter

  “Come, girl,” he growled. “Forgive my rough handling—I did not know what you were in the darkness. Come, let us be friends—I make no war on women.”

  She crouched, wordless, moonsilver glinting on the flinty blade in her fist.

  He straightened, laughed and tossed away his dagger, showing her his empty hands. She stood up reluctantly, fingering her stone knife, and finally thrust it into a phondle-skin sheath tied by thongs to her loincloth.

  When she smiled, the pale round oval of her face, framed by shining black hair, was inexpressibly lovely. He felt a small pulse thud hotly at the base of his throat as he watched her bare body move in the moonlight.

  “I am Thongor of Valkarth, the chieftain of this band,” he growled. “And I thought you were the vanguard of a troop of Shembian soldiers!”

  She voiced a husky laugh. “I am Zoroma of the Pjanthan,” she said, “and I feared you were a troop of,” her voice dropped, “ghosts!”

  He gave a grunt of laughter. “We are flesh and blood. But, tell me, girl, what are the Pjanthan? Never have I heard of them till now.”

  “Jungle hunters,” she answered. “There are many tribes like ours in Kovia—how can you not know this?”

  He rubbed his jaw ruefully. “Frankly, I know nothing of Kovia, save for the jungles around Shembis, the Dolphin City. We are bandits who raid the Shembian caravans, but now we have been chased deep into this jungle country, unknown to us, by the Sark’s soldiers. I fear we raided one caravan too many!”

  “It is as I thought,” she said enigmatically. “You are strangers. Few dare come into these regions of the jungle—even the legions of Shembis never enter here.”

  Thongor wondered why—wondered if the answer to that question might not also explain the curious retreat of the warriors of Dorgand Tul—but before he could ask, his sentinels, attracted by the sounds of their struggle, and the conversation, came over to where he and the girl stood, to see if everything was well with their chieftain. And by the time he had reassured them and, learning that the girl, Zoroma, hungered, saw to it that the remnants of their meal were put at her disposal, the girl’s curious remark had slipped his mind for the moment.

  She slept for the remainder of the night in his bed of leaves, under his cloak, while he stood guard to make certain that none of his men, who had not seen a woman in weeks, did not abuse the hospitality he had offered her.

  Many times her eyes stole to his stalwart figure as it stood before the overhanging rock, black and silvered bronze in the moonlight. But, at length, she fell into a fitful slumber, from which she did not awaken until dawn.

  * * * *

  They breakfasted on cold water from the stream and the small scraps of meat and cheese that remained uneaten. Then they pressed forward. Thongor was still uncertain as to whether the pursuing troops had retreated completely or were circling around, so he moved his men out early with all possible speed.

  Zoroma rode his kroter and he walked alongside the beast. The trail through the hills was rough and rocky, but they made better speed over clear, dry ground than they had the previous days, hacking a path through dense jungles and the muck of rotting leaves.

  The sun burned high above like molten gold in a cauldron of searing brass. They were hot and dusty, but he urged them on, with brief and infrequent rest stops.

  “Do your people, the Pjanthan, dwell nearby?” he asked her.

  “No. Many leagues to the west.”

  “How is it, then, that you are roaming these hills alone, so far from your tribe?” he asked.

  “I am searching for a youth who is…lost,” she said.

  “A brother?”

  She shook her head. “My lover. Him who…was to have been my mate.” There was a note of somber sorrow that haunted her low, hesitant voice.

  “And your people would not assist in your search? They would permit a mere lass to stray so far, in so hostile a land, all by herself?” He grunted and spat. “Mine are a savage people, too, and no soft-gutted city-dwellers. But rather than permit a maiden to venture alone into peril we would sacrifice half the fighting strength of the clan!”

  She moistened her lips hesitantly.

  “They…they fear to penetrate the borders of this region,” she said in low tones. And she explained that it was under a bad omen; she used a term which Thongor understood as—taboo.

  He said nothing. His people, too, knew the terrors of the dark ness and the curse of all omens. The Black Hawk people of Valkarth were not immune to the strength of the taboo…but never would the stalwart heroes of the North have permitted shadowy terrors to come between them and the protection of their womenfolk. Privately, he decided that these Pjanthan were either weaklings, or fools—or both.

  But he did not want to offend her.

  Frequently that morning as he strode along beside her kroter his lambent gaze strayed to her bare brown thighs, rounded calves and slender, tapering ankles…to the proud lift of her naked young breasts, her sleek, flat abdomen, the rondure of her little rump. And, whenever she thought he was not looking, the girl’s huge, dark eyes took in the swelling arch of the boy’s deep chest, his flat belly. His long, powerful arms.

  It was nearly noon when they came upon the white, grinning skull mounted on a black pole, set up like a silent warning directly in their path.

  4

  The Shadow of Shan Chan Thuu

  Zoroma shrieked as the naked white skull loomed up in their path. The kroter shied nervously and Thongor growled an oath and sprang to catch the bridle before the beast could panic into flight. The girl sat shuddering, her terrified eyes fixed on the grisly emblem of warning that grinned at them from atop the black pole.

  Thongor examined it narrowly.

  “We passed such a thing in a jungle clearing last evening,” he said. “I thought it a warning sign reared by the Beastmen, but the hairy folk of the jungles would not be here in these harsh hills. Do you know what this thing means, girl?”

  “It bears the sign of Omm,” she said weakly. “The emblem of Shan Chan Thuu!”

  “And what might Omm and Shan Chan Thuu be?” he growled.

  Her face pale, her dark eyes haunted by fear, she shuddered, for all the baking heat of the dusty hills. It was as if a clammy, crawling wind blew against her naked spine.

  “Have you never heard of Omm?” she asked faintly. “Indeed, you are strangers to the jungles of Kovia…”

  “I told you our accustomed territory lay to the north, in the wilderness of Chush,” he said impatiently. “Come—out with it, girl!”

  “Omm is a legend in this land…an age-old city that dates back to the dark days of Time’s Dawn…when the children of Nemedis first came into this realm out of the Ultimate East, to lay the foundations of the Nine Cities.” Her voice fell to a whisper, and there was something in her tone, a crawling note of cold menace and elder evil, that lifted his nape hairs and roughed the skin of his forearms with the thrill of premonition.

  “No one knows where the Lost City of Omm lifts its eon-crumbled towers, but legend whispers that it is the cradle of an evil deviltry…a lore of science-magic foul with the slime of chaos, and black with the horror of man’s cruelty,” she whispered. “Such is the unholy legend of Omm.”

  “And what of Shan Chan Thuu?” he pressed. “Is it some black god of the Pit?”

  She shuddered. “Perhaps that is what he is, after all…but he was mortal once, an ancient devil-wizard out of Omm who came into this land and raised his own black citadel among these very hills, wherein to pursue unmolested by his sorcerous brethren his strange worship and his stranger arts. That was two hundred years ago, men say…”

  “And he lives yet?” Thongor demanded, incredulously, though a brief memory of Zazamanc in the ancient city of Ithomaar stirred in his mind.

  The girl shrugged slim, bare shoulders, tawny, pink-tipped breasts lifting. “They say he prolonged his life beyond the limitations of mortal flesh…that he bartered his soul to chaos for so
me vast magical price—“

  “—The Emerald Flame!” a voice gasped behind them.

  Thongor turned to see that his lieutenant, Chelim, had heard the girl’s fable.

  “Have you never heard of it, lad?” Chelim grunted, his shaven pate gleaming with perspiration, his powerful muscled arms gray with rock dust. “A fabulous jewelled treasure—I’ve heard the same tale as the wench relates—the old Omnian sold his immortal part to possess it! They say ‘tis a wealth of gems of a kind unknown to men—the ransom of a dozen emperors! And the old wizard long since dead!”

  A speculative gleam shone in the fierce eyes of the young barbarian. “Gems, eh? And this death’s head means we are approaching his fortress, or whatever it is? It is supposed to warn men away from his treasure house?”

  The girl nodded. Thongor and the burly Chelim exchanged glances.

  “What do you think, Chelim?” the youth growled. “Will the men let old fables fright them from a treasure like this?”

  White teeth flashed in the bald giant’s tanned face. “Not Jorn’s Raiders, lad! They’d dare the horrors of the Pit itself for a handful of gold!”

  The girl watched them but said nothing.

  “Where is this place?” Thongor asked.

  She pointed. “Directly in our path, but—”

  He waited. “But—what?”

  She bit her lip. “Nothing…”

  * * * *

  After a brief consultation with his warriors, Thongor led the march forward. Some of the men had demurred: that scrawny little thief, Fulvio, whined that it was not wise to disturb the bones of dead wizards, for life clings long about the dust of those sorcerers who have sworn the awful Vow to Chaos. But Thongor laughed and mocked their fears.

  “I have faced and fought gods, ghosts and devils—men, magicians and monsters, before now,” he grunted. “And never yet have I found a thing that cannot be killed!”

  And so the bandits rode on, ignoring the grisly warning that grinned down at them from the black stake, the ominous crimson symbol coiled between its bony brows.

  And Zoroma rode with them. But now she was silent, and her face was tense and haunted. For all the hot moonlight, it seemed to her that they rode through gathering shades of darkness, as if a dread shadow lay over all this dead, dry land.

  The shadow of Shan Chan Thuu.

  5

  Black Citadel

  As the long shadows of late afternoon stretched across the rocky hills of Kovia, they came within sight of the ruined tower. It had been built atop a round knoll and it thrust high up above the surrounding barrens. Gaunt and stark and ominous was that dead citadel, the only sign of man in all this waste.

  Thongor studied it with narrowed eyes, thoughtfully. It was odd, he thought, that the transition from lush, steaming jungles to this harsh and barren land should be so abrupt. One moment they were cutting a path through sweltering underbrush—the next their boot heels crunched in dry soil where not a single blade of grass grew. He had not even glimpsed a mold or lichen, such as one might find underneath boulders or on the shadowed base of rocky cliffs, even in the most desert-like of wildernesses.

  It was more than odd—it was uncanny.

  It was as if that black citadel that thrust its broken walls up into the dim gloaming were the centre of some cosmic contagion that had cast its evil blight over all this land about, draining the life and the vigor from every living thing. Not one single sign of life had they seen since leaving camp the night before. Not so much as a crawling scorpion, carrier hawk or a venomous serpent.

  All of this land was a land of death…

  From this distance, the citadel was a black, featureless mass—a clotted cluster of shadows, of which no details could be discerned. But it was evident that the structure was of far greater antiquity than the legends hinted, for the extent of decay was extraordinary: Thongor could see fallen columns, shattered architraves and entire sections of wall that had collapsed into moldering ruin. Surely, the passage of a mere century or two could not account for so extensive a degree of ruin. It would take millennia—perhaps even eons—for a stone structure to crumble like this, particularly in a desert wilderness, whose aridity should preserve worked stone, not hasten its decay.

  The rocky eminence whereupon the black citadel stood was in the exact centre of a vast bowl-like depression, a disc-shaped valley, like some enormous crater. The floor of this crater was a stretch of desiccated sand—dead as the surface of the moon.

  They rode across the breadth of this huge depression, the hooves of their kroters crunching and squeaking in the crystalline sand. Thongor stooped and picked up a handful of the strange stuff. It was not sand at all, but rock—stone that had been subjected to some weird force that had sapped the hardness of the mineral until at length it crumbled into this coarse substance.

  Under the pressure of his fingers, the sand crystals crushed to fine powder, like dry wood ash. What uncanny force had leached the solid strength from living stone?

  They rode on.

  As they drew nearer, it became easier to make out the details of the structure. And they became aware of its true size—distance, a trick of perspective, or perhaps the absence of any nearby object large enough to measure it against, had somehow concealed the truth of its proportions.

  It was the largest stone edifice that Thongor or his warriors had ever seen. It may well have been the most enormous man-made structure on Earth at that time. Indeed, it would have dwarfed even the pyramids of Egypt, or the mighty Sphinx itself, had those relics of ancient Atlantis been built in the age of Thongor, the dim Pleistocene.

  * * * *

  The colossal stone wreck was one of incredibly detailed and curiously unfamiliar architecture. The eye became lost in a maze of balconies, towers, colonnades and buttresses. The mind was baffled and confused among the mad profusion of wall and arch and wing and extension. It was not so much one building as a cluster of buildings, all built together in a man-made mountain of stonework. The nature—the origin—the uses—of the citadel were impossible to make out.

  It was like nothing else on Earth.

  The extent of the decay was incredible. The outer walls, which were as much as twenty paces thick, and built of solid stone, had crumbled and lay fallen, scattering the slopes of the high place with enormous cubes of broken stone, each weighing several tons. Minarets were toppled and square turrets leaned crazily or strewed the earth with rubble. The whole outer surface of the enigmatic ruin was worn and pitted, as if bathed for countless centuries in the glare of some intolerable radiation. From the rough, porous condition of the outer walls, Thongor got the feeling that solid inches of stone had melted into powder, sifting down from the face of the structure.

  As they approached nearer, they became aware of yet a further element of mystery. They felt an uncanny sensation of being close to some enormous and living—thing.

  It was hard to say precisely what there was about the shadowy citadel that gave them the feeling that it was, somehow, alive. Like a titanic idol, hewn from a solid mountain of dead black stone, carved by the denizens of some unthinkably remote eon, it squatted, brooding, amid all that dreary waste of death and desolation.

  There exuded from the dark structure an aura of cold menace. The black openings of windows gaped like the eye-sockets of a skull. The cold wind of fear blew from the towering colossus, like a chill and fetid breath from the mouth of the Pit itself.

  The men muttered among themselves, signing their breasts with the names of half a hundred gods and totems and protective spirits. Thongor alone remained impassive. He had looked death and horror in the face often enough—and he had laughed!

  * * * *

  When all the west was a welter of crimson vapor where Aedir the Sun lord lay expiring in scarlet and gold, they reached the summit, and colossal portals loomed before them like the yawning jaws of a dead behemoth.

  Within they found a vast, echoing hall whose roof, supported by stone columns like mar
ble sequoia, was lost in clotted shadow far above. Galleries and antechambers in incredible number branched away from this central hall. All was a murmuring emptiness of dim shadows and whispering echoes.

  For a very long time, it was evident, the hall had lain untenanted.

  Moldering rubbish littered the stone paving of this gloom-drenched hall in which one hundred men could have marched abreast without brushing the walls to either side. Thongor poked among the rubbish of dry leaves, rotten bits of cloth and nameless scraps of ancient leather—and the toe of his boot dislodged a human skull.

  Zoroma stifled a cry.

  He knew she was thinking of her lover. But this could not be him. The bone of the skull was brown and scabrous with antiquity.

  Thongor dispatched some of his troop to explore the nearest galleries, while assigning to a limping rogue named Randar the task of stabling the kroters in an antechamber close by the front gate. Then, while a few men under the command of a grizzled old swordsman from Thurdis marched off to take a look at the far end of the colossal hall, he drew his lieutenant, Chelim, to one side.

  Zoroma stood, staring blankly about her with wide, apprehensive eyes, absently fingering a protective amulet of white crystal that hung between her breasts. She did not notice as the men stepped apart for a consultation.

  “Well, what do you think?” Thongor inquired.

  Chelim rubbed his nose, which had been broken once or twice and clumsily reset, and sniffed.

  “I don’t like it, lad,” he muttered. “I get the feeling this place is somehow alive—watching me—waiting for me to take a false step, before it pounces; or does something even worse.”

  Thongor grunted: he had the same feeling, and he liked it little. “This can’t be the citadel of Shan Chan Thuu. Not if the old Omnian sorcerer only lived two hundred years ago! This place has been abandoned for thousands of years—and its true age must be measured in millions of years. Look at that area of wall: the facing stones have decayed away, littering the floor with dust. Why, it would take ages to do that.”