Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria (11 page)

CHAPTER 15

The Lords of Chaos

Lords of Chaos dark the sky:

All the Sons of Men shall die.

Dragon rune and blood of men:

Portals ope—to close again?

Naught can make the Portals fade,

Save the Sword by lightning made.

—The Scarlet Edda

The only way down was—down! Thongor turned from the edge of the grakk nest and began the unpleasant task of skinning the two infant monsters. With their scaly hide he could fashion a rope, and with its aid perhaps he could reach the narrow ledge far below.

It was hot, filthy, difficult work. With no sword or dirk, he had to rely upon the strength of his hands and the sharp points of broken bones. He wore out many, but the grakk nest was littered with many years’ accumulation of bones. He regretted the loss of his black cloak, which he could have torn into strips in a fraction of the time it took him to rip the hide from the lizard-hawks. But there was no use bemoaning what was lost.

He skinned them in long strips, pausing from time to time to break off another bone, giving him a sharp point to work with. The fresh hides stank, and he soon became beslimed with grakk blood from chest to knee; but he grimly tightened his jaw—ignoring the stench and filth—and labored on.

When the hides were removed from the carcasses, he knotted the long strips together and fastened one end of the makeshift line around a protruding knob of rock. He tested it for strength, and when he was satisfied the line would hold his weight without slipping or breaking, he swung himself out over the edge and started down the sheer wall of rock. Dangling thousands of feet over the abyss, he resolutely bent his mind on what he was doing and did not allow himself the luxury of being afraid.

The hide-strips were wet and slippery in his hands. His chest ached where the claws of the grakklets had razored it. Howling winds rising from the gulfs below buffeted him from side to side; but slowly, steadily, he descended the sheer rock-face until his toes touched the ledge. It was only inches wide. He looked to both sides—the ledge ran both ways, and he had no way of telling which direction would lead him to the easiest descent. So he simply chose blindly and started inching along the ledge to the left, still clinging to the line.

Just as he reached the point where he had to relinquish the line, the ledge widened. He let go of the knotted length of hides and, clinging with both hands outstretched to the face of the cliff, felt his way along blindly. After a short but terrible distance, the ledge widened a bit and angled steeply downward.

Foot by foot, yard by yard, Thongor descended. Here his barbarian heritage served him well. Where a city-bred man would have faltered, would have lost his balance and perhaps fallen, Thongor continued his descent with nerves of steel. A boyhood spent clambering over the glass-slick glaciers of his icy Northland home had given him a cool head for heights and a gift for feeling out minute toeholds with infinite patience.

Just the same, it took him an hour to descend two hundred feet. But from there he would move swiftly and surely, standing erect.

* * * *

The mists were too thick for sunlight to penetrate, but from the position of the sun the last time he had seen it, he estimated the time was late afternoon. And that meant he had been traveling for hours. He was completely lost. An hour before, as he had been clambering along the skyline of the ridge of mountains, he had glimpsed the black, cloud-wrapped peak of Sharimba when the rushing winds had parted the mist-curtain. It had stood on the very horizon, many vom from where he was. The tireless wings of the mother grakk had indeed carried him far from his friends.

Sharimba was west of him, which placed the Dragon Isles somewhere east. He had turned east and continued along the skyline. Surely by now the Star Sword would have been completed and his comrades would have gone on to their rendezvous with the Dragon Kings, thinking him slain.

All afternoon he had moved swiftly over the plateau, and as the light began to wane he found an easy descent and came down into a river valley. Now he was racing with a long-legged, tireless stride along the rocky brink of the rushing stream. Thrice he had paused at the limit of his strength to bathe in the swift, cold water, drink his fill, and rest a few precious moments before continuing on toward the east. All he knew was that this river must eventually empty into the Inner Sea of Neol-Shendis, and so he followed it.

He was loping along a crumbling slope of broken stone when an ear-splitting hiss froze him into a crouch. Rising from the foaming water was a sleek saurian head with fanged jaws agape. Red eyes gleamed evilly into his.

Thongor’s hand closed futilely on his naked hip where only an empty scabbard hung. Ah—what he would have given for a sword! But there was not even a stick to defend himself with, and the rocks were either too huge to lift or too small to harm the unknown monster of the river. It rose out of the seething waters, droplets running down its long snake-neck. Foreclaws crunched and squeaked on the wet stone shelf that was the river’s brink, as it dragged its length up off the land.

Thongor ran.

Perhaps the thing could not run fast enough to follow him—but no, it had great hind legs like a gigantic hound. He did not know what the green-scaled and yellow-crested reptile was—some nameless monster of the mountain rivers—but it was hungry.

It followed him for about a vom, gradually nearing. Its size made it too big for the rocky shelf, and so it moved slower and more carefully than he. He ran. And just as he reached the black mouth of an unexpected cave, it caught up with him.

The blunt, arrow-shaped head came hissing down to him and the thick foreclaws moved toward his flesh. Thongor set his back against the smooth rock, bracing himself with his arms, and kicked out with all the strength of his legs. His feet caught the river reptile squarely in the chest—and because its heavy weight made it slip and scrabble insecurely in the loose rock, he bowled it over.

Hissing with fury, it fell into the river with a great splash of water. Thongor whirled and darted into the cave. Within seconds he was lost in pitch-blackness, but he stumbled on. He did not know what other creatures might challenge him for possession of this cave, but they could not be worse than the thing from the river.

The cavern dove steeply downward and Thongor followed it. For a time he could hear the river monster behind him, blundering into the stalagmites and squalling with rage and frustration, but eventually only silence came from behind him. Doubtless it was waiting for him to return—so he simply went on forward into the darkness.

* * * *

After some hours the cavern floor slanted upward again and he began a long, slow ascent. It must be night by now, he thought grimly. The night of destiny. Every step might very well be carrying him farther and farther from his companions. But there was nothing to do but go on.

He came out of the cave so suddenly that he clung to the edge dizzily, staring down where cold black water exploded in a fine mist of white spray against fanged black rocks.
The sea
—!

And when he emerged fully from the cave to look about him, he found an even greater surprise. He was not on the shore, but on a steep black rock in the
center
of the Inner Sea! All around him stretched dull water under a dark, cloud-covered sky. He could see the dim black bulk of the shoreline behind him, stretching off until it faded into the distance.

The cavern had run under the floor of the sea, rising to the surface of this tiny islet. Letting the cold, wet air bathe his exhausted body, Thongor stood atop the small mound of stone and gazed around. These were the Dragon Isles, beyond a doubt, for there to his left, only a few dozen yards across the water, rose a larger isle, its black heights crowned with a fantastic castle of rude ebony stone. The luck of the Gods had directed his steps.

He descended to the edge of the water and clung there for a moment before plunging in to swim to the other island. Blinding sheets of spray drenched him.

Then the cold shock of icy water on his tired flesh was equaled by another shock. He stared down into the foaming madness of the exploding water.

A sword
.

The dim light caught the glittering length of its blade. It was under several inches of water, wedged sideways in the grip of the rocks. His hand itched for the familiar shape of a sword hilt. He dove in and came up with the sword in his hands, and clambered back upon his rocky spire again, squatting in the narrow cave mouth while he examined his find. The light was very dim—it was hours into the night, perhaps near midnight—but even by the faint light he could not fail to recognize that strange, jagged blade, glittering with power.

The Star Sword! The Sword of
Nemedis
!

“Gorm!” Thongor swore. He knew by this token that his friends had been either captured or slain, for only force could have made Sharajsha relinquish the magic blade for whose creation they had spent so much time and faced so many dangers. His face went bleak, his eyes cold. If Sharajsha was taken, what of Karm Karvus? What of…
Sumia
!

He stared up at the grim black castle whose weird turrets and battlements loomed far above him into the mist, rising from the nearby island that lay only a short swim across the cold, swirling water.

Within that dark fortress his friends lay, either helpless captives or murdered corpses. Cold fire flared within his strange golden eyes and his teeth flashed in a grin that had no humor in it. He slid the Star Sword into his empty scabbard and dove from the rock into the black, icy water.

If he were too late to rescue them, he would at least be there to avenge them. The Star Sword would reach its destined place upon the fated hour, whether man, monster, or even the Dark Lords of Chaos stood to bar his way!

* * * *

For hours Sharajsha, Karm Karvus, and the Princess lay in the chill, dank darkness of a bare stone cell. Few words passed between them, for there was naught to say. Sharajsha was stripped of his magic implements and sigils, nor did any of them possess a weapon. The slow, weary hours marched past as the grim stars rose gradually to their long-awaited positions. Many times Sumia’s thoughts returned to Thongor, whom she believed slain. She could not define the strange emotion that rose within her breast when she thought of the brave young Valkarthan warrior who had saved her from a terrible death.

Karm Karvus and the old wizard talked together quietly for a time.

“What will they do with us?”

“Even as the chief of the Dragon Kings said, as you have reported his words to me. They will lay us upon the black stone altars of their three grim gods and there we shall die, our life-energies going to feed and strengthen the Lords of Chaos.”

“A savage death, fit for such fiends,” Karm Karvus said. “Ah, if I had a sword! Or if Thongor were here! Together we would fight, back to back, and show the Dragon Kings how men should die, standing upright and facing death, not bound to a stone table, whimpering under the knife!”

“Aye,” Sharajsha agreed soberly. “Or had I one sigil left—one talisman! But Sssaaa, the Lord of the Dragon Kings, stripped me bare.”

“Sssaaa? Was that the thing that seized you and made you drop the Sword?”

“Sssaaa is the Lord, or Arch-Priest, of the Dragon Kings. He is the one who led them here when the Black Citadel fell to the Sons of
Nemedis
thousands of years ago.”

As the fateful stars slowly returned to their appointed spheres, the time came. The three bade farewell to each other, quietly, with dignity. Then the great door clanged open.

Sumia gasped. It was the first time they had seen the Dragon Kings close and clearly. They stood half again the height of a man, erect upon great bent, hound-like legs. From massive shoulders sprang short arms, clawed and powerful. Their necks were longer than those of men, and the heads were blunt-muzzled, expressionless. Slitted eyes of cold green flame blazed beneath brows whose misshapen and unserpentlike bulge denoted human, or perhaps more than human, intelligence. The Dragon Kings were scaled and black, torchlight glinting with minute points of light along the glassy armor of their hideous bodies. They had long, heavily muscled tails.

But somehow the chill gleam of malignant, intelligent fire that burned in their eyes made them more terrible and fearful than the beasts their bodies suggested. A beast slays from instinct, from the natural urge of hunger…but these creatures could be as cruel as a man.

And it was shuddersome to see beasts wearing manlike trappings. For the glittering black-scaled bodies were accoutered in thick belts and harnesses like men, with pouches and jeweled ornaments and weapons of monstrous and uncouth design. Sumia’s proud spirit quailed, yet she held her head high and did not deign to let the things read fear either in her expression or in her bearing. The blood of a hundred Sarks flowed in that small, graceful body, and never was good breeding displayed better than in that dark hour, by the last of the House of Chond.

“The hour is nigh; come forth, manlings,” the cold, sibilant voice of Sssaaa commanded. Karm Karvus glanced at Sharajsha and read his tired nod, and so did not resist. Those massive arms and shoulders held strength before which even the giant thews of Thongor himself would seem puny.

They strode out of the cell and into a vast hall. The light that they had glimpsed from within the cell did not come from torches, but from strange spheres which hung by thin chains from the domed ceiling, shedding a sharp, unwavering red light. They had no time to examine this weird achievement of the Dragon Kings’ science, for they were marched forth by their grim captors, down the giant hall and through a mighty rotunda where doubtless the Lords of the serpent folk held council.

Here too the strange red lights burned without flickering, and a great circular table of some unknown green-gray metal stood, with strange throne-like chairs spaced about it. The black stone walls were hung with peculiar tapestries of woven metal-thread, depicting scenes alien to a human eye: strange gardens of fleshly-shapen flowers and weird, fronded trees, whereunder the Dragon Kings of a bygone age disported in peculiar garments too complex to be noted merely in passing. A thrilling glimpse into a world lost millennia ago, when the black Dragons were the masters of the Earth, with all of this planet under their undisputed sway, before the coming of men.

They went out of that room and into a vast circular courtyard under the stars. The wall of the black fortress ringed them about, and in the center of the courtyard rose a vast ring of black pillars, nine in number. And beyond that, an outer ring of twenty-seven more. They were nineteen feet tall, carefully hewn of the same black stone—huge brooding menhirs, looming up into the thick mists that hid the skies. They stood like the legs of gaunt black giants whose upper bodies were hidden behind the clouds. Now and again a rent appeared within that heavy veil of evilly coiling mists and a faint star burned ominously through. The great monoliths were carven with Dragon runes—odd, twisting arabesques worked in bold relief. Of the three humans, only the old wizard could read their terrible message, and he shuddered and dropped his eyes.