Young Thongor (22 page)

Thongor considered briefly, then shook his head, tousling his coarse black mane. “Let them sleep if they can. The wench cannot have left more than a moment or two ago, and she cannot possibly have gone far. I shall search for her myself,” he growled.

Snatching up a burning brand from the fire, he strode off into the darkness. Some indefinable impulse led him in the direction of that dread room in which fat Kovor had met a terrible fate. He could not have explained his reasons for selecting this goal, but he had long since learned to trust his hunches, for the barbarian had a wilderness trained intuition, better developed than most.

The gigantic pile of masonry echoed about him, ringing with his rapid strides. He strode along, searching every shadow with alert eyes, scrutinizing the dusty paving for some trace of Zoroma’s small, bare feet. His cloak rustled behind him and his loose boots flopped. He bore the torch in one hand; the other held the hilt of his naked broadsword.

She had either taken another direction, or she had moved more rapidly than he had guessed likely, for it took him some ten minutes to reach the distant chamber wherein Kovor had so horribly died at the hands of the unseen opponent.

The enigmatic structure was as dark and silent as a tomb. And tomb-like was the noisome stench that hovered in the cold, dusty air. Thongor uttered a low growl, as might some prowling predator who detected the scrutiny of invisible eyes.

At length he came to the portal of the cube-shaped chamber and peered within. There was no sign of the vanished girl. The crusted flakes of Kovor’s gore, dried now to brown scabs, still clung to walls and ceiling and floor. But although Thongor searched every corner of the stone chamber, he found no token to suggest that Zoroma had come this way.

His brows knotted in bafflement. Every presentiment in his savage breast urged him that she had stood in this room but moments before, yet she was not here. His jungle-trained nostrils almost caught the warm, sweet odor of her tender flesh hovering on the stale fetor of the air. But his eyes found no evidence that she had come this way.

Baffled, he prowled on. But the endless rooms beyond were deep in the dust of millennia. No one had entered them in countless ages, that was obvious.

He doubled back and entered the room again. He stood motionless, searching with every sense for the slightest sign of some thing wrong. There was—
something
—about this room that obscurely bothered him, but he could not give a name to the vague unease that stirred his primitive soul.

It was an odd room, the walls totally devoid of any ornament, unlike most of the others, whose surfaces were sculpted with weird and alien geometrical designs in low relief. The only attempt at any sort of design was the shallow square cut in the exact centre of the floor.

On sudden impulse, he squatted down and peered closely at the crack in the stone floor, holding the crackling torch closer.

A muffled exclamation escaped his lips.

Earlier, when he had scrutinized the room following the strange doom of Kovor, the cracks that formed a perfect square in the floor of the chamber had been thickly packed with dust. Now that dust was gone.

His strange gold eyes narrowing in thoughtful surmise, the young barbarian studied the square design cut in the solid stone of the floor. Could it be a trapdoor, leading to unknown regions below?

They had not, in days of searching, found that portion of the black citadel wherein Shan Chan Thuu had made his magical laboratory. Could it not lie in unexplored crypts hollowed out of the heart of the hill?

He inserted the tip of Sarkozan in the crack and probed and pried. Was it only his imagination—or had the stone block shifted ever so slightly?

Now he wedged the blade of his small dagger in the other side of the crack, and played both steel blades against each other for leverage. The stone slab creaked—groaned. Working with infinite care, wary of snapping either of the steel blades, he slowly wedged the sword and dagger deeper into the knife-thin crevice, and began to work the slab loose.

When he had pried the stone slab up at one end so that he could get a grip with his fingers, he released the broadsword and closed his hands over the lip of the slab—and threw all the steely strength of his mighty thews into one tremendous effort.

With a harsh rasp of stone against stone, the slab lifted slowly. And Thongor stared down into a weird and wonderful world.

8

The Crypt of the Sorcerer

From the mouth of the black opening a green glare flickered. It bathed his impassive features in a lambent jade luminance. By that elusive radiance the youth perceived a flight of worn and ancient stone steps that descended from the level of the secret door.

Sheathing his dagger but keeping the great Valkarthan broadsword bare in his hand, the young barbarian stepped through the trapdoor and lowered himself until his booted feet touched the topmost step of the ancient stone stair. He descended cautiously, eyes roving from side to side, alert for the slightest sign of danger.

Beneath the floor of the citadel he found an immense cavity hollowed from the stone of the hill whereon the edifice was reared. At the foot of the stair he found the stone floor bed splattered with a ghastly crimson. His jaws tightened grimly. The gore must be the remnants of Orovar of Pelorm, who had vanished on the night following the disappearance of Kovor. But what, then, of Zoroma? Did the tattered remains of her young body bedew some far corner of the crypt? Perhaps—and perhaps not.

He recalled that, as yet, the ghastly scream that had twice rung out to signal the demise of two of his band had not yet sounded the death knell of the jungle girl.

He prowled through the crypt without finding anything of further note. Here and there portions of the stone floor were encrusted with a noisome, scaly residue that suggested the dried blood of earlier victims. He searched on, seeking the source of the curious flickering green light that dimly illuminated the recesses of the enormous vault.

In the far wall he found a dark opening and strode in warily, finding a gloomy passage of ancient stone. Cautious as a jungle cat, he padded through the dark passage, which soon widened into a vaulted chamber even more enormous than the one he had quit.

Huddled in one corner, Zoroma lifted dulled eyes and tear-wet cheeks to him.

“
Gorm!
Are you unharmed, girl?” he burst out, surprise and relief mingled in his tones. Woefully, she nodded.

He strode over to the corner where she sat huddled. “How did you come to this dismal place?” he asked.

She shook her head mutely. “I…I know not. It was like a dream. I seemed to hear a voice that called my name…a voice that seemed to come from a great distance. And I followed it, like one entranced…followed it to the room where your man, Kovor, died.”

“And found the trapdoor in the floor?”

She nodded listlessly. “It stood open, and a dim green light beat up from the opening in the floor…still the far, faint voice called, and it seemed in my dream that I could not resist the urgency in that voice…it drew me on…down the stone stair…to this place, where I found…I found…” Her words died in a choked sob. Bare shoulders shook as thick waves of her shining black hair fell across her tear-stained face. And it was then that, peering about, he saw that this corner too was scaled with the dry crust of long-shed gore.

“Alatur!” she sobbed, holding out one hand.

“Your lover?”

She nodded mutely. Clenched in her fingers a bronze talisman flecked with dried blood could be seen. She wept, and he let her weep, knowing it the best remedy for woman’s sorrow. He raised his head and peered about alertly.

“A voice that calls one, as in a dream, to the hidden place of death,” he mused. “There must be more to these crypts than this—come, lass. Let us explore further.”

Fear leapt suddenly into her great dark eyes. “Should we not be gone from this place before…before…
it
…comes?”

He revealed white teeth in a swift, wolfish grin. “Probably you are right,” he growled. “But it goes against my ways to retreat from danger—and never yet have I faced a foe that cold steel could not kill!”

He helped her to her feet and they went forward through the green-lit gloom. As his eyes roamed about restlessly, ears straining to catch the slightest sound, he felt the pressure of unseen eyes, but could see nothing but bare, worn stone about him. The walls of these crypts radiated an almost tangible aura of cold menace, but still he went forward, searching for something to kill.

Why had not the unknown, murderous thing torn apart Zoroma? Was it perhaps because it sensed his own presence, and the swiftness of his approach? Perhaps…he would find the answer to that mystery soon enough, he somehow guessed. He would find the answer to many mysteries here, he knew.

* * * *

They came at length into anther chamber, larger than all the others. And on the threshold, Thongor halted abruptly, amazement written upon his features, and an oath of astonishment on his lips.

The floor was heaped and littered with treasure!

The far walls bore chests and shelves of ancient wood, whereon moldering objects lay scattered. Huge old books of thick-leafed parchment, bound between boards of carved wood, or plates of ivory, or bound in the scaly hides of dragons.

A long bench of black marble bore instruments of the sorcerous arts—a brazen astrolabe, a huge hourglass filled with dark crimson powder, mortar and pestle, and a great deal of broken crockery—the remnants, he doubted not, of crucibles and vats and cucurbits and other devices of the alchemist’s art. There was even a gigantic instrument of verdigris-eaten bronze, a weird conglomeration of rings and hoops, with an engraved bronze spear at the center. Thongor dimly recognized it as an armillary sphere, whereby a necromancer may follow the movements of the stars and planets through the celestial circle of the zodiac.

Over everything lay a thick, gray blanket of dust, and the heavy webs of dead spiders festooned the walls. The floor was heaped with a splendor of treasure and trash. Bits of old, worm-eaten wood, dried bones, the withered remnants of ancient mummies, globes of dusty glass, the wink and flash of gems, thick gold coins, bright goblets of precious metals, crumpled scrolls and scraps of antique parchment, rust-gnawed blades of dagger, axe, sword and spear, dented helms, casks of gems, all manner of bottles and vases and phials, filled with colored powders or nameless oils—all lay jumbled together in a trash heap of decay and neglect.

With a muttered oath, Thongor strode over to examine the drifts of wreckage that bestrewed the floor. Gems crunched under his boots and ancient coins spilled, clattering, down the sides of the heap as he disturbed their ancient rest.

It was from this moldering pile that the lambent green light shone.

He dislodged a clattering avalanche of broken bottles and spilled jewelry as he dug down through the heap. Suddenly green flame bathed his bronze torso in flickering light. A muffled exclamation burst from his lips as he gazed down at the incredible thing his searching fingers had discovered.

“Thongor! What is it?” Zoroma cried.

He turned, grinning exultantly in her direction, holding up the flashing object he had found. “
The Emerald Flame
—by all the gods!”

9

Secret of the Emerald Flame

It was an incredible thing—and its value must have been fabulous. It was like a great collar and heavy pectoral, but it was fashioned entirely from strange gems whose like the barbarian youth had never before encountered. The gems varied in size from that of a kernel of corn to great lumps as large as hawks’ eggs. They were uncut but polished smooth, and they were the pale, lucent green of clear water or the fresh bright jade of young leaves.

In the heart of the jewels an elusive wisp of flame danced and flickered. This wavering flake of fire was the fierce yellow-green we call chartreuse. Not all of the gems contained this wisp of flame at their hearts—there must have been a couple of hundred gems in the heavy collar, which, when worn about a man’s throat would lap over his shoulders, chest and back, covering them with a mantle of flickering jade fire. Some of the jewels were dead and dull and lusterless, but most were alive with inner flames that danced with an ever-moving semblance of life.

Thongor stared at the treasure in his hands, for incredible it was in very truth. There was the ransom of a hundred captive kings in his heavy handful of living green fire. With the wealth this collar represented a man could purchase an empire—nay, a dozen!

He laughed delightedly, drunk with the exultation of his discovery, and lifted the collar to set it about his throat—

And then a bony, claw-like hand clutched his ankle in a vise-like grip of steel.

He stared down, his face contorted with astonishment.

The hand was as scrawny as an eagle’s talons: scarce more than bare bone sheathed in scaly, desiccated, parchment-like skin, woven together with dry sinews like cords of cat gut. It was the hand of a thing long dead and withered…but it clung to his ankle with incredible living strength and tenacity.