Thongor at the End of Time

by Lin Carter

  Six billion years before his own birth, he watched as Earth was born out of the black womb of space.

  Whirling storms of dust coagulated, solidified, gathered into cold dark conglomerate. Ages passed . . . millions of tons of dust settled into matter . . . and Earth grew into a sphere of dead inert stone, bombarded by rains of meteors and storms of dust drawn by the force of gravitation.

  Tons upon tons of rock crushing down caused rocks beneath to become heated, to collapse, to melt. Subterranean pockets of fiery gas and underground rivers of molten lava seethed with frustrated pressure under the crushing weight from above. After ages they burst free to the surface in thundering belts of volcanoes, in geysers that spread a boiling atmosphere of hot vapors across the earthquake-riven surface of the new planet.

  Ranges of mountains lifted into being. The broken landscape was swept by fiery storms. Vapors met and mingled and cooled. Century-long rains drenched the rocky land. Seas of bubbling water condensed into being. A thousand ages passed, while the pounding waves broke and crumbled the rocks into a fine dust. The seething vapors released to the surface by volcanic action had consisted of methane, nitrogen and ammonia. Later, oxygen came into being, as the searing rays of the sun pouring down on the new atmosphere, the naked rock, the bubbling seas, added solar heat to the vast cauldron of the young world. Out of this boiling ferment of gas and liquid rock, lashed by cosmic rays, heated by the stellar furnace of the sun, new elements and new combinations of elements came into being. The poisonous vapors of the atmosphere, methane and ammonia, bathed in the sun’s ultraviolet rays, slowly synthesized into amino acids, then into protein, finally in protoplasm.

  Life was born.

  A thousand ages swept over the primal earth. Green jungles and steaming swamps covered the face of the world. Out of the muddy seas wriggled a million living things, multiplying, fighting, dying in the slime of the Dawn Age.

  Life rose, and conquered. The mighty dragon-lizards of the Morning of the World bestrode the young planet, and bellowed defiance to the stars.

  The world struggled in the grip of colossal climactic forces. Ages of chilling cold swept down over the raw land, the titanic glaciers of the Ordovician and the Devonian and the Permian epochs. Bludgeoned under changing temperatures, life was forced to adapt or die. Many forms died. Some survived through change.

  In the great island of Hyperborea at the North Pole an age of tropic heat flourished while the axis of the planet swung to a new configuration. There, out of the great dragons of the dawn, arose intelligence, and the dread Narghasarkaya—the “Dragon Kings”—came to dominate the world. With their cold, cruel, reptilian minds they probed into the darkest secrets of matter and energy, of space and time, and puzzled out the laws of black magic. Soon, leagued with dark powers of Chaos beyond the universe, they bent their cunning intelligence towards conquest and power, and a Dark Empire rose on the polar continent.

  But the Gods Who Watch the World lifted their hands and the age of ice came down and whelmed all of Hyperborea beneath the eternal snows. The Dragon Kings fled south across the surging waters of an unknown sea, and came to the green shores of Lemuria which had risen from the main in a previous age. Here again the Dark Empire of the Dragon Kings spread subtle tentacles of power and sought to dominate the planet forever.

  Then there came to pass that which was written aeons later in the First Book of The Lemurian Chronicles:

  Yea, the Nineteen Gods Who Rule The World were exceeding wroth to see that the Earth was become the domain of the Dragon Kings, and they vowed that this should not be. And they spake amongst themselves in their high place above the world, speaking one to the other from tall thrones amidst the stars, saying, Let us create Man, that he may overwhelm the Children of the Serpent and break asunder the citadels of their power, and drive them utterly from the Earth, and, Lo! it was even so in the fullness of time.

  Thus in time’s dawn arose Phondath, Firstborn Of All Men. Out of the Earth was he sprung, yea, the flesh of his body was molded of the soil, and from the rock of the mountains were his bones made. The waters of the sea became his blood, and the breath of his body was of the airs of heaven. And Gorm the Father of Gods and Men struck within him a spark of the Fire Of Life, and Lo! he was alive upon the Earth, and his son Arniak after him, who was the father of Zuth who begat Iogrim . . .

  As Thongor gazed down, he watched the First Men being armed by the gods and taught the arts of war and those of peace. The mighty tapestry of The Thousand Year War unfolded before him, that grim and glorious epic wherein the mightiest heroes of the First Kingdoms of Man went up in red war against the overwhelming power of the Dragon Kings and fought and fell, or fled to turn and fight again.

  Century on century went past, and the war moved inexorably towards its victorious climax. For the world was changing, the climates swung and altered, Earth’s poles froze and the axis of the planet became centered in the polar realms. And the age of the mighty reptiles was passing. In their millions the great dinosaurs were dying, and the Dragon Kings were passing, too, for all their magic and superhuman science. The great thunder dragons of the steaming Jurassic were doomed. The clock of the aeons ticked on and the world entered the Age of Mammals. Across the world animals evolved and reptiles fell. Only here in primal Lemuria the last few dinosaurs survived in the sweltering jungles and fetid swamps of the savage continent.

  Eventually, Man triumphed and the Dragon Kings were conquered, and the dreaded Narghasarkaya of prehistoric Lemuria died out, to be remembered only in scraps as fragments of primal myth—as in the legends and epics of prehistoric India, where they are dimly remembered as the Nagas, the Serpent-Kings.

  Thongor watched as the Children of Phondath settled the vast breadth of the Lemurian continent, the first home of mankind. He watched as the Seven Cities of the East were abandoned, and he saw the Nine Cities of the West rise in all their youth and glory.

  And he saw his own coming unto the West, and the great deeds of conquest and heroism he had wrought in years gone by. Ever at his side the shadowy Companion of his quest beyond time whispered to him . . .

  “Have you never wondered, Thongor, of the amazing luck that has been yours, the unconquerable fortune that followed you through all those years of wandering, adventure and war? Time and again have you miraculously escaped from amidst a thousand perils, where another man would have faltered and fallen. But the Gods have watched over you and lent you courage and wisdom and strength to aid you in the extremity of your danger. Why have we done this? For the answer to that riddle, look again on the world you know. You have seen the story of the past—now gaze upon the unborn ages of the Future.”

  He had built the young Empire of the West, and city after city of his foes fell before his black-and-golden banners, until at last the Nine Cities of the West were his. He watched as the reign of his stalwart young son, Thar, opened, and under the wise rule of the Son of Thongor the West basked in the glory of a Golden Age.

  With an emotion almost beyond description, Thongor watched the wedding of Prince Thar, and the birth of Thandar. When the long and adventurous reign of Thar grew towards its end and the kingship of Thandar began, he watched as the unconquerable flying navy of the West explored and settled and colonized the breadth of Lemuria, desert and forest, mountain country and jungle land, wilderness and swamp. New cities grew into being, new sciences were born. Sham, the son of Thandar, and Valkor, and Thangoth, and the kings that came thereafter spread the rule of the Golden Empire across the mighty seas . . . he looked upon unborn ages of the distant future as colonies of Lemuria the Great arose on the shores of unknown Mayapan and primal Shamballah and upon the Roof of the World in mysterious Tibet.

  He saw the Last Days, when all of Lemuria foundered and sank beneath the thundering waves of the all-conquering seas. But he saw the Great Migration when the peoples of Lemuria fled by air across the world to settle in new lands, spurning beneath their keeps the foundering continent. He saw the heroic strugg
les of his own distant descendant, Vandar, Prince of the Last Days, to preserve the ancient wisdom.

  He watched the rise of Atlantis, that island far to the east around the curve of the world. He saw the Empire of Caiphul rise to its height, and the age of Zailm Numinos. He saw the Second Empire fall before Thelatha the Demon King, as the White Emperor was driven from the City of the Golden Gates into exile. He watched as The Black Star went into hiding and the long age of darkness swept over the Sacred Land.

  He saw the coming of Crysarion the Restorer and those bright days wherein the White Throne was wrested from the Dark One and the Star was found, and the Empire of Adalon rose to magnificence . . . and he saw it dwindle, that Third Empire, and its glory fade as the Atlanteans fell away from their gods to grovel before the dark forces. He looked on as the reign of Phorenice the Last Empress passed slowly. He heard the Curse of Zaemon and saw the Sacred Mountain wreathed in flame. He watched as the cataclysm broke the White Isle asunder and whelmed it beneath the thundering waters of the main and the Divine Dynasty fell at last.

  He saw the flight of Dakalon and Vara from the doomed land . . . those survivors who were afterwards remembered in the legends of the Greeks as Deucalion and Pyrrha, the two survivors of the Deluge. He saw them arrive at the great Atlantean colony at Sais on the delta of the Nile in the Land of Mizraim. He saw their mighty airship land, bearing the precious books and instruments, and rejoiced that something of the Sacred Records were preserved, that not all of the ancient wisdom was lost, and that only a portion of the secret science would be forgotten. . . .

  He stood at last upon the end of time, the brink of the ages, where the long saga of the prehistoric world came to its end, and history begins.

  He saw the walls of Babylon builded. He watched the rise of Ur of the Chaldees. He looked on as Narmer the Mighty led his legions to conquest, and the Upper and the Lower Kingdoms were united under the Double Crown, and the kingdom of Egypt was born.

  Then darkness came down and obscured the Future from his sight, and he knew that the quest was ended.

  The voice was speaking softly by his side as the mists of time veiled the future from his sight.

  “You were singled out for the greatness that was born within you, Thongor of Valkarth. Aeons of evolution wrought within the very plasm of your seed the greatness for which the Gods strived, courage and vision, manhood and strength, wisdom and justice. From your loins shall spring a mighty line of kings, as you have seen. Your hand has set into motion the ponderous wheel of time. Under your reign, The Golden Empire of the Sun shall be founded, and that Empire shall outlive the very continent of Lemuria, aye, the Kings of your House shall reign in the rose-red cities of the Maya-Kings and Aegyptus on the Nile, and great Atlan. The laws you shall promulgate in your wisdom, the wars you shall fight to establish the rule of right, the sciences and arts that you shall foster, will begin a great tradition whose lore and law and learning shall go down the ages. Upon them shall be builded empires and civilizations that shall stand forever. You are the founder of human civilization, the First Hero, the King of the Dawn.

  “The dim, distorted memory of your mighty deeds shall echo down the ages of the unborn Future for all time. Men shall call you Kukulkan and Odin, Herakles and Siegfried, Rama and Prometheus. The broken, half-forgotten epic of your age will live on dimly remembered in the pre-Sanskrit Puranas, the mythological sagas and histories of the nomadic Aryan peoples who shall spring from that wave of the Lemurian migration who shall flee the doom of their continent into the fastnesses of Asia.

  “Return, then, O Thongor, to your body. For you are not truly dead. Nor can you yet die, for the empire is but half-founded and you have mighty works to complete before we can welcome your great warrior’s spirit into the Hall of Heroes to dwell in the land of the immortals through measureless eternities of golden spring.

  “Return, and take up your burden! For black Mardanax yet lives, and even now, a traitor forces your queen to become a bride, and the son of your loins, in whom the future of mankind resides, dwelleth in great danger. Return, O Thongor, to rise up from the tomb and do battle against your enemies . . .”

  He fell through a whirling chaos of mighty mists that swirled into a roaring vortex of confusion, split apart by thunders that seemed to rock the very stars from their places . . . down . . . down he hurtled . . . to the stone tomb that held his cold clay.

  The dream (if dream it were) was ended. And life began again.

  The Fifth Book: AT SWORD’S POINT

  “Swiftly the flying fingers of that masked, unknown and faceless Destiny that triumphs even over the all-mighty Gods, weaveth together the threads of many different lives into a portion of that mighty Tapestry of Time; and in that vast and never-ending web wherein all men are minor figures in a grand design, it is given unto none of us to comprehend the ending of the pattern wherein the strands of our days and lives are woven. Could but we read the outcome of the tale, would not we strive to change the sequence and rewrite the ending thereof? Alas—even the Eternal Gods know not the ending of the Tale!”

  —The Scarlet Edda

  Chapter 17: IN THE PIRATE CITY

  The black flag flies atop our mast,

  Our sharp prow cleaves the foam.

  We’re done with voyaging at last,

  We see the cliffs of home . . .

  —Sea Chantey of the Pirates of Tarakus

  The sunset spread tapestries of bloody crimson across the storm-black skies. A long and rugged promontory of bleak rock thrust from the southern coast of Lemuria into the raging waters where the great Gulf of Patanga mingled her waves with the mighty currents of Yashengzeb Chun the Southern Sea.

  The uttermost tip of this rock-based promontory lifted sheer cliffs above the thunderous waves that broke in sheets of blinding foam against long quays of wet stone. The crest of the cliffs and the sides thereof were covered with a strange city whose red-tiled roofs rose level by level above the pounding waters of the main.

  Tarakus the Pirate City was built like a fortress. Tall square towers lifted against the glory of the sunset sky. Frowning walls and mighty battlements ringed in the rude stone city. Nestled within the curve of the cliffs, huddled in the wall-like embrace of the great stone quays, half a score of great ships rode at anchor. Caravels and carracks, long dragon-prowed galleys and high-pooped ships of war—the most terrible sea-going fleet of all the West—the dread armada that guarded the Pirate Empire from her enemies.

  The Scimitar came up to the mouth of the sheltered bay, where great chains sealed the entrance-way from unwarranted intruders. Barim Redbeard bellowed orders. Signal lamps at prow and masthead flashed green and white and crimson in the gathering dusk, and watchful guards loosed the bronze chains that she might enter the harbor and moor along the length of the long stone quays.

  Another voyage had ended, and the Scimitar was safe and snug in her home port—moored in the harbor of the only city of all the West where lawless outlaws ruled a kingdom of wild corsairs.

  Captain, crew and captives came ashore in a longboat, and Charn Thovis and Prince Thar entered the great stone city of the pirates.

  Sunset flame died; black storm-clouds thickened, piling in the west. The stars came forth, blazing in icy splendor. They strode up the great stone stairs and stood in the cobbled streets of Tarakus.

  Sheltered in the curve of rocky cliffs, the pirate port blazed with light. Lanterns swung in the breeze. Greasy windows flared with light of roaring fires within. The crude stone city roared with song and thunder defiance against the cold mockery of the watchful stars—for the Sea Rovers were in port and every ale house and wineshop and inn was filled with rough swaggering corsairs roaring for food and strong drink and spoiling for a fight.

  Men of half a hundred nations brawled and swaggered through the narrow cobbled alleys and twisting ways of the outlaw city. Clamped against walls of salt wet stone in iron brackets, oil-soaked torches flared, streaming long gold flames on the briny wind.
Wineshop signs swung and creaked on the salty breeze before low oaken doors. They were crudely painted with emblems—crossed cutlasses, grinning skulls, the rude likenesses of sea-dragons and strange monsters.

  The stormy night was filled with drunken song and revelry, loud with thunderous curses and the clash of steel on steel as drunken corsairs battled with glittering scimitars under the flaring torches, egged on by rowdy, cheering comrades. Surf boomed and roared at the foot of rocky cliffs. Salt spray exploded against wet black rocks and long stone piers and the whistling sea wind carried its icy splatter through the gusty crooked streets that wound past tall high-gabled stone houses and thick-walled adobe buildings with peaked roofs of scarlet tiles set with high narrow windows of diamond-panes.

  For more than a century the little stone town sheltered in the cliff-walled cove had been the wide-open capital of a corsair empire that scourged and ruled and roved the southern seas. Here no law ruled but that bloody pact called the Articles of the Red Brotherhood. Beyond those simple codes of justice, there was no law in all of crimson Tarakus but the rule of the naked cutlasses, the clenched fist, the fighting skill of each snarling buccaneer—for the hand of every ruffian of Tarakus was lifted against the other and Might alone prevailed in the walled fortress city.

  Tonight the pirate port was ablaze with mirth and song. Oaken doors hung open and the rich glare of roaring fires lit the streets and painted monstrous black shadows over the walls of the one and two-story houses. Great haunches of beef turned sizzling on creaking staves above lusty fires that crackled and seethed on stone hearths. Steel flickered and sang as duels exploded all over the streets. Rings of howling men encircled cursing duelists who fought to the death under the blazing stars over a fancied insult or an imaginary slight. Painted, giggling wineshop sluts and haggard wenches draped in the jewels of an empress clung to the bare brawny arms of bravos, cheering on the battling swordsmen.