Thongor in the City of Magicians

by Lin Carter

  As they fought on, Maldruth panting and gasping from the unwonted exercise, sweat began to glisten on his heaving chest, and his fine raiment became stained and disheveled, ripped here and there with the keen point of Thongor’s mighty blade, dribbled with blood that leaked down from a score of scratches and small wounds.

  Now Maldruth’s handsome visage was distorted and pale with rage. Panic blazed madly in his wide eyes. His lips were drawn back in a rictus of fury that bared his teeth in a Silent, gasping snarl. His headdress was cut away and his black hair became a wet tangle, falling into his wild eyes.

  If it had not been pitiful, the unmanning of Maldruth would have been amusing. Almost at any time from the beginning of the match, Thongor could have ended it. But, for a time, he played with his frantic, trembling, now-half-naked and completely outmatched adversary with the lazy malice of some great tawny cat.

  It became too much even for Shangoth’s primitive sense of justice. “End it, lord,” he said quietly.

  Terror flamed up madly in Maldruth’s goggling eyes. “No—no!” he screeched shrilly.

  Thongor put a foot of steel through his guts and set his booted foot against the feebly-twitching body, withdrawing the soiled blade with an impassive expression on his face.

  Amid the confusion of the duel, unseen by either Prince Shangoth or Thongor, who were both intent on the humbling of the Scarlet One, a black-robed figure crept from the highest throne where it had sat frozen all this while.

  Like a dim shadow it passed through the hall and faded into the gloom behind one of the mighty pillars.

  A black-gloved hand fumbled for a hidden catch, and a secret opening yawned. The robed figure hovered for one long moment on the threshold, gazing back, to see Thongor dispatch the Red One.

  Cold eyes of emerald venom glared fervidly through the slits of a black mask—then vanished, as the dark figure of the Black Archdruid of Zaar disappeared in the secret passage. The door swung to behind him and he was gone.

  Aloft, above the row of thrones, the battle between the Gods of Light and Darkness, too, had ended, the Black Cloud of Chaos deluged with the ravening bolts of blinding flame from the hands of Father Gorm. At first the shape of darkness drank in the dazzling beams of brilliance, absorbing the light within the shadow . . . but at the last, the Thing From Beyond, drenched in torrents of utter light, gave way. Its subtle internal structure of balanced forces was no longer able to sustain itself.

  The very air shook with a terrific implosion as the Black Thing collapsed inwards upon Itself and disintegrated into nothingness.

  The shock of the implosion shook the room, and slowly—slowly—the colossal stone image of Triple-Headed Chaos crumbled on its foundations and fell!

  In mid-air, the three heads broke from the stone neck with a grating cry of tortured rock. The snarling, laughing, raging visages of rock crashed down upon the row of stones and crushed them to- powder.

  The titanic limbs detached themselves from the leaning, toppling torso and fell like an avalanche of shattered stone—pouring down upon the milling guards and priests.

  The air was filled with rock-dust. Columns were toppling like storm-shaken trees. The walls split—a web of black cracks zigzagged from top to bottom. The building was coming down. And, in the whirling dust-motes and roar of breaking, crumbling masonry, the vast and shadowy figure of mighty Gorm faded from sight and was gone.

  Amid the shattering masonry, dazed by the swift whirl of events, Shangoth staggered, white with dust from head to feet, dragging his mighty bronze ax. Thcngor seized his arm.

  “Quick! How do we get out—move—the whole thing’s coming down over our heads!”

  The urgency of Thongor’s words drove through the dazed wits of the Nomad. The two sprinted across the heaving, bucking slabs of broken stone that had been the smooth tiled floor. Far ahead, through the dust and thunder of collapsing walls, the great bronze leaves of the door gleamed in the light of distant fires.

  Then—shock upon shock!

  The dome of scarlet crystal shattered into ten million shards of broken glass and hurtled down like a rain of deadly swords. Suddenly the sky was filled with flickering bolts of green-white fire—the horizon was laced in a burning net of lightning bolts—and then the mighty temple walls gave way and came thundering down in a stupendous storm-cloud of whirling dust, and the lone, small figures of Thongor and Shangoth were hidden from view. . . .

  CHAPTER 20

  BESIEGED BY LIGHTNING

  Break, wall, and shatter, stone! Set free

  The thunders of the waves that sweep

  The wizard city ’neath the sea

  A thousand fathoms buried deep.

  —Thongor’s Saga, XVII, 29.

  It was like the end of the world.

  From nowhere, without warning, a mighty fleet of silvery airboats emerged from the dense clouds that overhung the sky, and floated above the canyon-like streets of the City of Magicians. And from the needle-pointed prows of the weird flying craft, where enigmatic structures of gleaming metal could be seen bolted to the urlium hulls, came fantastic bolts of dazzling lightning . . . lightning from heaven, directed by human intelligence!

  The hissing, seething rays of electric fire swept over the frowning walls of Zaar and hordes of guards were burnt to cinders in the crackling fury of the fiery bolts.

  Then the ships floated down over the streets, striking with their mysterious destructive rays at guard-citadels and key positions. Walls and buildings were shattered into atoms at the touch of the blinding bolts. Towers collapsed, blocking whole avenues with landslides of rubble. Wooden roofs and sheds burst into flame as the flickering lightning beams touched them in passing. From a hundred sites, smoke from burning buildings came whirling up to fill the sky with sheets of sparks and dense clouds of choking smoke.

  Thom Pervis had fulfilled his grim duty with savage devotion. When the invisible warriors of the Zodak Horde had seized Thongor in their ambush at the Hills of the Thunder-Crystals, the last words of the Valkarthan had been a terse order to the commander of the Air Guards to bear back to the mage Iothondus the load of power-crystals they had unearthed before the jaws of the trap were sprung.

  Although the grizzled old daotar would rather have lost his right arm than desert the Sark-of-Sarks in such dire straits, duty lay clear before him and, with tears burning his eyes, he had unflinchingly obeyed Thongor’s last order. The fleet had risen from the embattled hills and he had guided it west away across the full length of the Lemurian continent, to Patanga and home, at the very greatest speed of which the floaters engines were capable.

  In the long, weary days and nights that followed his arrival in the City of the Flame, Thom Pervis had watched with gnawing impatience as tireless Iothondus toiled almost without rest or nourishment. Under the spur of the Empire’s urgent need, the mild and quiet-voiced young natural philosopher had become a grim-faced, unwearying martinet, flogging his corps of assistants on, hour after hour, day after day, laboring far into the night to cut the sithurls, mount them on their brackets, and see them tested and installed at the prows of the sky navy. Then, armed with a destructive power never before at the command of mortal men, the vengeful Air Guard of Patanga had raced back across the stormy skies of old Lemuria to arrive at the broken walls of the dead city of Althaar, where the Jegga Nomads lay encamped. Aboard the fleet had come Zad Komis, the Lord of the Black Dragons, with half a thousand seasoned warriors from Thongor’s own guard, also the Princess Sumia and young Prince Thar as well, the princess white-faced and wordless in her despair and terror over the unknown fate of her beloved mate.

  Jomdath, the old chief of the Jegga, had told them of his conquest of the Zodaki—and grudgingly, sadly, he had imparted the sad news that Thongor was not to be found, although the mined city of immemorial Yb had been ransacked by his Rmoahal warriors. The fate of Thongor remained an unsolved mystery. The old chief had spared the slim, silent, courageous girl and kept his own suspicions to himse
lf. Deep in his loyal heart, the old warrior was convinced that Thongor lived no more.

  But regardless of the whereabouts of the Valkarthan, the place of the enemy whose machinations lay behind all their present difficulties was certain. There was no question in the minds of Sumia or Zad Komis or Thom Pervis that the foe was Zaar. And, although perhaps too late to come to Thongor’s aid, they could at least avenge his murder. And, the two daotars grimly swore, it would be a vengeance such as the world would remember for a thousand years.

  Hence had the war fleets of Patanga hurled their flying legions against the towering black walls of Zaar of the Magicians. And thus was the most ancient city of the world come to the last hour of her terrible and bloody history.

  The fleet of Patanga ringed the city in and flashed above its walls and turrets. Under the heavy cover of storm-clouds, they had descended upon the black metropolis of magic without being detected. Now they struck in a blazing attack whose ravening fury brought death and destruction roaring through the streets.

  In the cabin of the flagship, old Jomdath of the Jegga directed the aerial assault. Thom Pervis and Zad Komis knew nothing of the City of Magicians, but the savage war chief of the Blue Nomads knew the dark city all too well. For a thousand years the Wizards of Zaar had been the enemies of his people. Now he guided the attack with some measure of grim satisfaction in his bloodthirsty, barbaric heart.

  The great Temple of the Chaos Lords he picked for the prime target. From the weird flames that shone up through the arched dome of crimson crystal, he guessed some blasphemous and evil ceremony was taking place within the unholy precincts: so he directed the bolts against that citadel of the Black Gods first. His words were flashed to a signalman on the afterdeck of the commander’s ship. Within seconds, flags burst from the superstructure in multicolored streamers, and the Air guardsmen commanding the other vessels of the Patangan fleet read the command from the signal flags, according to a prearranged code.

  A shower of lightning bolts descended upon the temple, and beneath the blazing beams of dazzling destruction, the very walls of the age-old structure burst asunder. With a thunderous roar, the temple dissolved in a landslide of rumbling stone and was gone, hidden in a tremendous cloud of dust and smoke.

  Building after building received the full fury of the lightning guns. And building after building was shattered to atoms in the explosion. Within mere moments of the first assault, the Black City had become a fiery holocaust wherein panic-maddened mobs swept through rubble-strewn streets.

  Never in all her dark and kingly chronicle had the City of Magicians known such an hour. Impregnable due to her massy walls of black stone, invincible, from the supernatural arts of her wizards, she at last tasted the inevitable wine of defeat, and found it bitter.

  And what of her vaunted magical defenses and weaponry, with which her black-robed masters had planned to sweep the world with conquest and tumult? They availed for naught. The enemies against which Zaar was armed, and watchful, were armies of the land—not the air. Her far-seeing modes of vision, but one of which was the Black Archdruid’s All-Seeing Eye, were turned to eternal and unwearying survey of the great plains—not the cloudy skies above them! She had failed to foresee that new eras brought new methods of war. She had failed to change with the times. Sunk in apathy, despising all other realms, confident in her own superiority, her overconfidence had now brought her to this terrible and disastrous hour, when the triumphant fleets of young Patanga swept above her blazing streets, lashing her crowds with scourges of lightning-fire.

  As for the mighty weapons of black magic wherewith she was armed, they demanded certain time for preparation—a certain interval of forewarning—and time had run out.

  The proud, hawk-like eyes of Jomdath of the Jegga were fierce with a warrior’s joy as he watched the conquering fleets of Thongor’s air navy victorious over the ancient enemy of his people.

  And then his eyes flashed!

  Ahead, glassily reflecting the flickering lightning beams as they probed the detonating masonry of the city below, a mighty rampart of black substance caught his eyes.

  The sea wall. . . .

  There it stood, that great bastion that held back forever the icy waves of Takonda Charm the Unknown Sea. The titanic wall of black marble towered above the City of Magicians like some colossal structure raised by the hands of captive giants, or the ramparts of some fortress of the gods,

  Jomdath spoke the words that doomed Zaar.

  Colored banners broke from the superstructure of the flagship, their coded sequence reiterating his grim directive.

  And now the lightning guns turned their supernal fires against the beetling wall of black marble. Bolt after bolt went sizzling across its glassy surface. With terrific impact, the stored mega-ergs of sun power locked within the mysterious sithurls poured out against the vast structure.

  For a long, long moment it seemed as if that ocean-defying rampart was built so strong as to resist even the thunderguns of Patanga.

  But then Jomdath seized the right arm of Thom. Pervis in a mighty grip. “There! Do you see?”

  A crack ran shivering through the black marble.

  The colored banners were withdrawn, and again went streaming forth in a certain sequence. Now ship after ship focused the lightning rays against that one slight breach in the stupendous wall.

  It widened.

  Glittering slabs of surface marble were shattered and shorn away by the probing beams; they went quivering through the air like thick black motes silhouetted against the white blossom of utter flame that clung to the wall—the focus-point of a score of searing beams of ravening fury.

  The blasting rays bored in—deeper—deeper.

  Now lesser cracks spread from the main breach. A web of cracks zigzagged across the blistering, crumbling surface of the sea wall. Above even the roar of burning buildings from the city, and the droning roar of the lightning guns, arose a new sound. A note of menace. A dull, deep, growing, rumbling sound as of gathering thunders.

  The ominous rumble was followed by an unearthly shriek of stone tortured beyond endurance, stone splintering!

  And the Sea Wall fell!

  The central portion of its mighty curve swelled outwards and broke with a thunderous roar—burst into a million huge shards of riven stone that went whirling through the stormy air. And in its place a solid wall of water flooded through the gigantic gap.

  The massy weight of water struck the earth. It came down in the suburbs of Zaar, where from of old the lords and princess of the magical metropolis had taken their ease amidst the lilied languor of their palaces.

  The palaces were crashed like paper toys beneath the tread of a giant. And the giant walked on, toward the city itself.

  For many generations of man, that wall had held the ocean-giant back. But now the wall was burst, and the giant set free. And he went howling and roaring down upon the city of his foe. With slapping hands he smashed flat the man-built structures that stood before him.

  The sea was loose; like an avenging monster, howling with elemental fury, it thundered forth upon the winding ways of Zaar—as the whole wall was torn away and shattered in a flood of ruin.

  The impact of the weight of water shook the unstable earth. A titanic foam-crested wave swept across the peninsula and drowned the Black City beneath its crushing weight, and in its rush it smashed apart everything that stood in the path of its irresistible advance.

  Only the towers of Zaar still stood above the roaring waters, and one by one, as their foundations were ground to dust or swept away by the raging, foaming fury of the flood, the black towers toppled slowly into the seething waters and were gone.

  The wave broke in thunder against the hills that rose beyond Zaar, at the edge of what had been the river beneath the city. Now all was a plain of roiling, muddy waters.

  The earth shook before the giant’s tread as he stomped the city down. With a thunderous shock, a black chasm ripped open across the base of the prom
ontory, where it was joined to the main continent. The mighty crack in the earth spread—widened—and the waters poured in a titanic waterfall over its edge, thundering down to the volcanic core of the earth.

  Within moments the very tongue of land where Zaar had stood since the first days would be swept by the waves and would founder, sunken a hundred fathoms beneath the triumphant waters of the unconquerable ocean . . . grim prelude to the eventual cataclysm which would overtake all of Lemuria in aeons to come, when the mighty continent itself would be drowned beneath an ocean that would someday be named, with unintentional irony, the Pacific—the “Peaceful.”

  And then a mighty cry broke from the lips of Zad Komis. “There—atop the hills!”

  They followed his pointing arm, and Sumia cried out in a sharp, unbelieving cry of hope, “Thongor!”

  And it was he. For when the mighty temple had collapsed in ruin, Thongor and Shangoth had raced forth into the streets and there had pried up one of the iron grills that covered a storm-drain—plunging into the subterranean river only a little time before the probing lightning-beams of Patanga had turned the black metropolis of magic into a seething holocaust of blazing flames. They had swum forth by the same route by which Shangoth had made entry into the city—out through the broken grill in the wall, and forth from the river’s brink, climbing the hills to their crest to watch the stupendous spectacle of the Fall of Zaar. Thus, from the vantage point of the hilltop, they had stood in safety while the colossal sea-wave swept the city to ruin and thundered across the shallow valley to break against the hills almost at their feet. But now the sharp eyes of Zad Komis had glimpsed the mighty Valkarthan and his comrade and the flagship drifted down to hover above the crest of the hill. A rope ladder was dropped to them and within moments Thongor swung up over the rail to the afterdeck and swept his beloved into his arms, to crush her against him in a mighty embrace and to seal her warm lips with one long rapturous kiss, while all about them Shangoth and his mighty sire, and the lords and warriors of Patanga split the air with a great shout of salute and triumph.