by Lin Carter
He had journeyed hither in winged flight to take his captive from the Zodak Horde. With unearthly magic arts he had tracked the Valkarthan through the weird maze of catacombs . . . to render him senseless with the narcotic vapors of the Dream Lotus.
And now Thongor, mightiest of warriors, kingliest of heroes, lay totally helpless at the feet of his greatest and most relentless enemy.
Eyes of cold and mocking cruelty smiled through black mask-slits, as Mardanax of Zaar leaned over Thongor’s unconscious body, and prodded him in the side with one foot.
Then, chuckling gloatingly, he stooped over the fallen hero and kicked him deliberately in the face.
CHAPTER 12
WINGED DRAGONS OF ZAAR
He lures through flame that Worm of Hell,
Wherein it perishes . . . but he,
Ensorcelled by the Druid’s spell
Is flown to Zaar beside the sea.
—Thongors Saga, XVII, 19.
Cold wind rushing past his face roused Thongor. He shook his head groggily, his shaggy mane of coarse black hair whipping out behind him on the wind, streaming like a heavy silk banner. The spell of the narcotic powder slowly loosened its hold on his brain, and his wits cleared. He gazed down to find himself hurtling through the sky, thousands of yards above the surface of the earth!
For a moment, his mind still clouded with the blue dust of the Dream Lotus, the barbarian thought he had been slain there in the lightless crypts and caverns beneath the City of the Worm—thought for one flashing, terrible instant that his soul was now borne heavenward on the winged steeds of the War Maids who carried the spirits of fallen heroes into the Shadowlands, to the halls of Father Gorm.
But then he saw that he was strapped into a great saddle astride a fantastic monster whose mighty bat-like wings rose and fell, bearing him through the sky like a god! He had seen and fought such winged dragons before. He recognized the long snaky neck, the hawk-like head with its cruel hooked beak and crest of bristling spines. He looked up at the moving shadow of the leathery, clawed wings that must have spanned a full forty feet from tip to tip, and felt his thighs press against the scaled torso of the flying monster. Behind, the monster’s body trailed away into a long barbed tail that lashed against the wind.
It was a dreaded lizard-hawk, the terrible dragon of the Lemurian sides, the fearful pterodactyl of the prehistoric age whose monstrous shape and ferocious hunger made its memory linger long in the dark legends of mankind as the prototype of the mighty flying dragon of myth.
But this winged dragon wore a saddle and bridle!
A terrific shriek sounded from behind. Thongor turned in his bonds to see hovering behind him yet a second lizard-hawk, its great bat wings shadowing the sky. And the second dragon, too, wore a saddle—and had a rider. The rushing wind of their flight made his vision blur, but the Valkarthan could faintly make out a robed and masked figure in midnight black who rode the devil-dragon of the clouds like some magic steed . . . and then Thongor remembered the shadowy figure he had glimpsed in the black mouth of the cavern, just before the gush of narcotic powder had sucked him down into a whirling vortex of blackness.
And he knew that he was in the hands of the Black City of Zaar. No force but the power of black magic could tame and break to the bridle the fierce flying monsters on which he and his cloaked captor now rode.
He turned back facing forward again, examining his bonds. With great cunning, the masked magician had tied his hands and arms with strips of rawhide. The tough leather flexed slightly as great thews swelled across his broad shoulders and deep chest—stretched, but did not break. His lips tightened grimly: ropes or even chains his iron strength might have burst, but wet rawhide shrinks as it dries, and the bonds he wore cut into his flesh, numbing even his mighty muscles.
He was helpless—for now.
He looked about him through the cloud-torn sky. The sun of afternoon lingered on the horizon, filling the notches of the mountains with liquid gold and casting level shafts of ruby brilliance that stretched long purple shadows across the endless plains. From the position of the sun he knew the direction in which they flew—to the south.
And far to the south lay the grim walls and dark bastions of Zaar, the City of Magicians!
Now he knew he had been right in guessing from what source the warriors of the Zodak Horde had procured the cloaks of invisibility they had used to capture Thongor.
The warning of the Nineteen Gods Who Rule The World had been true. The Magicians of Zaar were his secret foes. By some unearthly magic they had known of his coming into these eastern lands, and plotted with their allies the Zodaki to seize the Lord of Patanga!
But—for what evil purpose did the masked magician fly him south to the Black City? For torture—a vile death—revenge for the destruction of Adamancus and Thalaba the Destroyer—retribution for his victory over the Druid Brotherhoods of Patanga and Tsargol? His gold eyes narrowed; his lips thinned as muscles grew taut along his lean jaw. Thongor of Valkarth did not fear death as did most city-bred men, raised amidst the soft luxuries of what they called “civilization.” Nay—Thongor was sprung of a rugged stock, and throughout his savage youth he had lived daily with the grim specter of death as a constant companion. Death was an old comrade, and the Shadowlands bore no terrors that could daunt his stout heart.
But what of his realm of Patanga, with him slain? What of his beloved princess and his young son? He knew the gods held his life of great importance, groomed him for some mighty role in the events of the future. With Thongor slain, might not the Black Magicians of Zaar overwhelm the bright young cities of the West? His grim, impassive features tightened and his strange gold eyes blazed with cold fires. Helpless he might be now, but he must watch and wait to seize the opportunity to escape whenever that chance should present itself. . . .
Now the lands over which they flew slowly became harsh and barren. Thick meadow grasses fell away, exposing scab-like patches of dead dry soil. Even the fresh wind grew sour, tainted with metallic fumes. The nearer they came to the Black City, the more stark and dead and barren nature became. It was as if they approached some vile center of contagion, some dark focus of cosmic forces of destruction and decay.
Ere the conflagration of sunset had consumed the last red embers of day, they hurtled above a dead plain of sterile rock and poisoned earth, as lifeless and grim as must be the frozen deserts of the moon.
And then Thongor saw the Black City of Zaar itself. It stood at the end of a long rocky promontory that thrust out into the Unknown Sea. Cold waves advanced, collapsed in thunder, and retreated again, withdrawing into the bosom of the great ocean. But again and ever again the mighty waves swept forward to dash in a fury of exploding spray against beaches of black crystal sand and to roar in frustrate foam about the stupendous wall that held back the remorseless waters of the deep.
For this remotest southeastern edge of Lemuria was already crumbling beneath the unconquerable will of Nature. Already, in this most ancient part of the Lost Continent, the destined and irreversible submergence of the continent had begun. Were it not for the mighty sea wall of black marble the magicians had erected against the sea, the Black City would be deep fathoms below the cold waves of the storm-torn and everlasting main.
They circled above the most ancient inhabited city of man, and Thongor gazed upon it with grim, searching eyes.
Zaar was built like a mighty fortress upon its promontory. Great walls of black glassy substance ringed it in; the squat towers and ziggurats of strong citadels rose amid its narrow winding streets. And as he gazed upon Zaar, the heart failed within him. For no army ever raised by man could penetrate those beetling walls or win entrance past those frowning bastions. . . .
A dead river of salty, acid water ran through the black metropolis in caverns far below the cobbled streets. It emerged from a barred grill in the city wall, foul with nameless refuse and beslimed with excrement. A dun pall of seething smoke hovered above the dark palaces—the noi
some breath of wizard furnaces and strange laboratories. It was like some ebon city built upon the sooty plains of hell. . . and int' this terrible realm of evil and sorcery, he must venture—alone, friendless, and bound.
Even Thongor’s stalwart courage quailed at the thought.
Then, at some unseen, unheard signal from the masked magician who rode behind him, Thongor’s dragon-steed arched mighty wings against the stars and swept down over the walled city in a lowering spiral. The Black City swung up towards them, lurid with torch-lit streets, winding ways and vast avenues that twisted between mountainous piles of cyclopean architecture. He could see red flames glaring with ghastly luminance from peaked gothic windows and barred gates like grinning dragon-jaws.
Ponderous ziggurats and spires of crimson and jet swung past as the winged dragon arrowed down towards the flame-lit heart of the dark metropolis of necromancy, bearing the helpless Thongor bound into the very stronghold of his enemies.
At the heart of the Black City a tremendous ziggurat loomed tier upon tier into the night sky like a man-made mountain of colossal thickness. Toward this central pile Thongor’s mount sped on flapping wings. From the square topmost tower of the squat structure a black opening belched scarlet fire that filled the night with intermittent flares of fiery light and rolling clouds of sooty smoke.
Upon one of the broad tiered levels of the central ziggurat the two winged dragons descended, coming to rest on massive spars of dull red crystal that thrust out over the torch-lit streets below like angular gargoyles. The pterodactyls settled on these huge spars for all the world like hunting falcons coming to roost on stands.
The tier was broad and level as a mighty avenue. Robed, silent figures gravely observed their descent from stations along wall and tower-crest. As Thongor sat upright, bound in the saddle, two of the hooded men approached at the silent command of the masked magician and unfastened the Vaikarthan’s bonds, permitting him to dismount from the precarious dragon-roost overhanging the street.
As they assisted him to the security of the broad tier, Thongor scrutinized the hooded ones narrowly. It had been difficult to ascertain their race with face and body enveloped in the shroud-like robes, but upon closer examination Thongor perceived them to be of the same brown-skinned, black-eyed and lean-limbed Turanian race as were his people of Patanga.
Now the masked magician dismounted and Thongor was able to discover the means by which the sorcerers of Zaar had gained mastery over the untamed monsters of this primitive age. One gloved hand reached within the magician’s hood and withdrew, having unclasped from about his brows a thin wire headband of ruddy orichalc to which were affixed strange seals and talismans of an unknown green-glowing metal. The moment the sigils were removed from the brows of Mardanax, the dragons became restive. The one nearest to the Black Archdruid clashed its beak, arched its snaky neck, and hissed like a steam-whistle.
One of the black-robed guards received the headband from the masked magician and clasped it about his own brows. The larger sigil rested squarely in the middle of the forehead, in the position of that organ of occult power known to the annals of sorcery as the Ajnaic Chakra—the “third eye.” Other, lesser talismans were bound tight to the hollows of the temples, and at the rear of the head near the base of the skull, close to the mysterious pineal gland, while the fifth sigil was affixed to the crown of the head, the site of that astral counterpart of the cortical layer of the brain, the Sahasraraic Chakra—“the thousand-petaled Lotus.”
The moment the hooded guard mounted this weird wire cap on his brows and turned his attention to the hissing, angry lizard-hawk, the creature quieted, became dormant, put its head under one bat wing and—slept!
Thongor’s strange gold eyes narrowed thoughtfully. It would seem that the five sigils somehow intensified and focused the thought-waves of the human brain, empowering a mind thus magnified to seize and control the more rudimentary brain of a beast. His flesh crept at the thought. With such a device at their control, the unscrupulous Black Magicians of Zaar could place a fantastic flying army of pterodactyls under their command, turning them against their foes—could launch a herd of jungle dragons, the titanic saurians of the swamp country, against the walls of any city which remained antagonistic to their demands. With such a secret they could conquer the world!
He stood spread-legged on the broad tier of the ziggurat, turning cold watchful eyes on his two robed and hooded guards. This might be the moment to turn and strike, to attempt an escape—surely, he was now guarded by fewer enemies than he would be when immured within this mountain-like citadel!
But each guard bore a long wand or staff tipped with black metal carved in the likeness of a demon’s claw, clutching a rough sphere of smoky crystal filled with flickering, ceiling witch-fires of evil green radiance.
Thongor gazed at these innocuous-seeming staves, and knew them for what they were—and knew, as well, that escape would be hopeless. For those clouded gems were sithurls. And from their settings, he knew them for the paralyzing-weapons which could benumb a man’s thews at a single touch, steal the strength from his limbs with a glancing blow. Set in just such a fashion had been the paralysis-sithurl he had first seen years before, when the cruel hand of the shaman Tengri wielded it to render helpless the great war chief of the Jegga Nomads, the mighty Jomdath.
His head sank slowly on his broad chest. Hopeless . . . helpless!
The masked magician turned to the guards.
“Conduct our prisoner, the Lord Thongor, hence from this place unto the Hall of the Nine Thrones, where he shall stand before the Lords of Zaar for judgment!”
“Aye, Eider One.”
Thongor turned and strode with them across the windswept tier of stone, lit by the tossing plume of scarlet flames far above, and entered into the central ziggurat without protest.
And thus did Mardanax the Black Archdruid bear Thongor the Lord of the West prisoner into the City of Magicians, to face a doom stranger than any mortal man had ever faced before. . . .
CHAPTER 13
SHANGOTH THE AVENGER
And all the while, to find his friend,
The Jegga prince hath crossed the plain
To where the very land doth end
And somber Zaar confronts the main.
—Thongor’s Saga, XVII, 20.
When he came to his senses at last, after uncounted hours of unconsciousness, the prince of the Jegga Nomads found himself lying stiff and bruised and covered with dried blood. The enraged zamph that had attacked him was nowhere to be seen—doubtless the pain-maddened beast had wandered off somewhere out of sight.
Shangoth clambered laboriously to his feet and stood swaying, staring blearily about him. His head throbbed like a beaten gong, spreading waves of bright scarlet pain through his aching brain. He lifted one unsteady hand to his brows and felt wetness and raw flesh. The blow of the zamph’s horn had laid open his scalp in an ugly wound. Had it not been for the tremendous stamina of Shangoth’s powerful young body, and the superb health enjoyed by this splendid young specimen of fighting manhood, he might well have never recovered consciousness. As it was, although the Rmoahal’s magnificent physique had managed to throw off most of the effects of the wounds inflicted by the monstrous zamph when it had charged, thrown and trampled him hours or days before, the demands had drawn deeply on his reserves of vital energy and he felt weak as a sick girl. He swayed, staggered, hand to brow, fighting for consciousness against the waves of throbbing darkness that threatened to engulf him again.
Despite the urgency of his mission, he quite realistically assessed his chances of catching up with Thongor’s captors in his present weakened condition as virtually nonexistent. He therefore resolved to rest himself, treat his wounds and regain his strength, before pressing forward—and with the practicality and singleness of purpose of the savage he wasted no time in doing just that.
A bundle of dry grasses set alight with flint and steel from the pocket-pouch of his harness gave him wa
rmth and light against the night chills. Water from his belt-canteen, heated in his helm, enabled him to wash his body clean of blood, and to cleanse the gaping wound in his brow, which he then treated with the remarkable healing salve his people had used for untold ages, a medicinal preparation whose curative powers were but little short of the miraculous. Then, as he rested, absorbing warmth from the crackling fire, he delved into his store of field rations, concocting a nourishing meal of jellied fruits and spiced dry meats, washed down with a heady draught or two of native wine.
Then, wrapped in his warm cloak, he slept beside the fire through the long chill night rousing with the fresh salt tang of the morning wind keen in his nostrils, feeling marvelously invigorated, his powers restored to near their normal strength.
As the first rays of dawn stroked the high-piled clouds to fiery gold, he set forth on Thongor’s trail. Perforce he must follow it on foot, since he had sighted no steed save for the maddened zamph with the arrow in its eye that had savaged him hours or days before. But the robust strength of his magnificent young body propelled him tirelessly forward at a steady and unvarying pace through the long hours of morning.
When the sun had nearly ascended to the noonward zenith, he came upon the broken walls of the dead city of Yb, his goal.
And found, instead of the camp of his enemies—a conquered stronghold, a decimated fortress, strewn with the bloody leavings of a battlefield!
His sharp eyes soon spotted the Jegga tribal markings on fallen arrows and broken shields, and the keen-witted young warrior swiftly reconstructed the events that had left the City of the Worm a crimson shambles, reeking like a slaughterhouse.
But what of Thongor?
He made entry through the broken, fallen gates of the dead city and rapidly traversed the rubble-strewn streets towards the central plaza. To every side lay fallen bodies. Sword, spear and arrow, and the trampling feet of war zamph and scythe-wheeled chariot had reaped a bloody harvest here. Naught he saw that yet lived in all this immense ruin, save for a few starved mongrel curs growling over raw fragments of the fallen, and ungainly carrion birds that flapped screaming away as he came near.
