Thongor at the End of Time Read online

  Now was he come at last into the very camp of his enemies. In secret and alone he had made his way up the great gulf, that vast wedge of the sea that almost split the Lemurian continent to its center, up from Tarakus the southernmost city at the end of its promontory, to Patanga at the head of the gulf, which rises at the mouth of the Twin Rvers. He had entered the gates and walked the streets unnoted by any save for Charn Thovis. And was come into the house of his only ally in all the great City of the Flame.

  For Dalendus Vool, Baron of Tallan, was in secret an agent of Zaar, sworn to bring about the downfall of Patanga. Here in this house was the Black Master safe to scheme his schemes and labor furtively to bring his plan to fruition. All through those long years of painful endurance and struggle as he made his slow and torturous way across the primal continent to the gates of Patanga, his cunning brain had conceived and wrought and perfected a master plan of revenge. By now all the details were settled. The scheme was faultless. It could not fail. Thongor was doomed. Even here in the midst of his own city, ringed about with a hundred thousand warriors, the black shadow of the Last Druid would seek him out and bring him down into the dust. . . .

  Days passed and the hour of the great Spring Festival was come. Gowned in festive robes, the lords of the West gathered in the mighty columned hall of the Temple of Nineteen Gods to watch the emperor make sacrifice at the high altar. Witty, sardonic, foppish young Prince Dru was there, and that bluff old warrior, Lord Mael of Tesoni, with his young daughters Inneld and Lulera. Immaculate in sparkling silver gilt harness and sky-blue cloak, Thom Pervis of the Air Guard stood beside his old comrade, Zad Komis, Lord of the Black Dragons. Prince Shangoth of the Jegga Horde loomed above the others. The calm young face of the great Nephelos, Iothondus of Kathool, could be glimpsed in the forefront of the throng, with Charn Thovis and fat old Baron Selverus and all the lesser nobility and the ambassadors from the tributary cities of Shembis and Tsargol, Zangabal and Thurdis and fair Pelorm, which had come under the banners of the empire only one year since.

  With the lesser lords stood gross, unsightly Dalendus Vool, his obese bulk wrapped in gorgeous robes. Bright gems flashed at lobe and brow and breast, and his fat fingers were one dazzling shimmer of jewelry. But wealth and ostentation could not conceal the ugliness of the Baron of Tallan, for nature conspired against him from the moment of his birth. Dalendus Vool was the victim of a rare ailment which bleached his skin to a sickly pallor, faded his scant hair to silken whiteness, and gave him weak and watery eyes of unearthly pink hue. Today we call such unfortunates albinos, and understand their plight and sympathize with them. But to the peoples of an earlier, more barbaric and superstitious day, they were thought to be witches, and were feared and hated. As heir of a great and wealthy House, however, Dalendus Vool was saved from the contempt and fear of the commonfolk; thus was he free to come and go. But nothing eased the sick, gnawing hatred he felt for the ordinary men and women about him, more fortunate than he because of their normal pigmentation. His secret hatred ate at the roots of his being like some poisonous canker, and this flaw in his character had made him an easy victim for the wiles of Zaar, who bought his treacherous service to its cause with the tempting promise that when he had aided the Black Magicians to conquer the City of the Flame he, Dalendus Vool, would be the lord of the city, and the Patanganya his slaves to do with as his whims decreed.

  It could have been noted, had any found cause to pay attention to the fact, that Dalendus Vool seemed in the grip of some powerful emotion as he stood there surrounded with his small retinue, watching the ceremonies. Sweat glistened wetly on his colorless brow and a devouring terror blazed in his sick eyes. His loose-lipped and sensuous mouth quivered and his fat bulk trembled in the intensity of his emotion. Was it fear? Or suspense? None could say, nor did any notice.

  And who was that tall stranger newly come to his entourage? A lean figure, swathed in dark robes, whose hood was drawn closely about his face so that in the dim shadows where he stood none could make out his hidden features . . . naught save the glitter of emerald eyes that burned through the gloom like frozen hellfires. Thus was Mardanax of Zaar come into the very presence of his enemies.

  At the altar, Thongor made offering to the Nineteen Gods whose towering figures of hewn and polished marble loomed about him in a vast semicircle—Father Gorm and smiling Tiandra, Aedir the Sungod and Illana the Moon-Lady, Karchonda of the Battles and young Iondol, Lord of Song, wise Pnoth and grim Avangra, Shastadion the Sealord and Diomala of the Harvest, and all the rest. The noon sun sent great shafts of gold light blazing through the mighty dome of glass far above. The shimmering radiance glowed softly on the smooth white marble of the towering, heroic figures of the gods, and one shaft fell on the altar itself, catching Thongor the Lord of the West in its brilliant ray.

  A burley-thewed, bronze lion of a man was this barbarian adventurer from the far Northlands who had come brawling and battling through half the cities of the South until some plan of the gods of whim of that destiny men say rule even the gods had lifted him to a high place among the kings of the earth. Although robed in splendid cloth of gold, his magnificent body could be seen, by breadth of shoulder and depth of chest, to be thewed like some savage gladiator. Still in the full prime of his manhood, kingship and luxury had not dulled his superb fighting skill nor softened his iron strength.

  His grim, impassive face was an expressionless mask of hard dark bronze, majestic and stern beneath the rude mane of coarse thick black hair that poured over his massive back and heavy shoulders and was held from his face by a glorious circlet of fiery diamonds set in a crown of opalescent jazite metal. Under scowling black brows his strange gold eyes blazed with savage power like the eyes of a kingly and untamed lion of the jungles. For this state occasion, he had set aside this once the great Valkarthan broadsword that seldom left his side. Such a man was Thongor in the noontide of his mighty prime, the greatest warrior of all his age, hero of a thousand legends, who had cut a crimson path through a thousand perils to win a throne beside the woman he loved.

  It was in this moment when Thongor stood at the height of his glory that Mardanax of Zaar struck him down.

  For seven nights the masked magician had readied himself for this titanic moment when he should unleash the full force of his dark sorcery against his most hated enemy. The crypts and catacombs beneath the palace of Dalendus Vool had witnessed many grim and terrible scenes of torment and punishment, but none so awful as the black rites wherewith the Black Druid prepared himself for the hour of his triumph. Each dawn the rushing waters of the Twin Rivers bore out to sea on their floods the obscenely mutilated corpses of certain slaves from whose skin the ownership-mark of Tallan’s baron had been removed . . . pitiful cadavers whose life-force, brutally torn from agonized flesh, had been offered up by Mardanax in sacrifice to the Triple Lord of Chaos.

  Power was his now for a time, great power, power to strike and slay with a terrific blast of magic force. Once he had stood among the Nine Wizards of Zaar, who each were a pole of power and, united, formed a nucleus of tremendous force upon the earth. Now his comrades were gone and his power diminished vastly by the sundering of those astral bonds and currents which flowed between the nine poles. Yet, for a time, a borrowed power was his. And with this withering blast he struck down the Lord of the West there at the mighty altar of the gods.

  Terror and consternation flamed through the throng as Thongor fell lifeless at the altar’s base. Nobles paled, gasping with shock, staring the one at the other with astonishment and horror. Women shrieked and swooned. Guards roared commands, baring bright steel as if the strength of swords alone could serve to defend the royal family of Patanga against the unseen assault of magic-working foes.

  Amid the surging crowds of shouting, cursing, praying men and women, none were unmoved. Even Dalendus Vool, privy to the plot from its inception, stood with ghastly fear written on his wet and flabby features. Only the gaunt form of the masked one was calm, aloof,
and unshaken, gloating triumph stamped on his veiled and hidden features. His slitted eyes of emerald flame blazed with unholy joy as he watched Princess Sumia weeping heart-brokenly oyer the motionless form of her beloved warrior. One by one they took their places about the fallen King, Zad Komis, Prince Dru, Selverus and Lord Mael, Shangoth of the Jegga, young Iothondus and the rest of Thongor’s staunchest comrades.

  Only Charn Thovis held back from joining their circle. The young warrior, a recent member of the Black Dragons, even more recently elevated by Thongor to the rank of kojan of the empire, felt he had not the right to intrude on the private sorrow of the dead king’s closest friends.

  Thus was he in a position to notice the tall, dark-robed figure in the retinue of Dalendus Vool, and to note how the personage of hidden face stood unshaken and calm amidst the restless throng. Where had he seen such a figure before? Only days before had he looked upon a strange man, robed and hooded and unknown. Could this noble servitor to the Baron of Tallan be that furtive and tattered beggar who had accosted him at the gates with dawn those fifteen days ago?

  The young warrior in the leather harness of the Black Dragons stood staring curiously at the hooded figure, and a thoughtful expression furrowed his brows as he stared. As for the masked magician, he did not notice the young chanthar at all; Mardanax of Zaar was too busy drinking in the intoxicating glory of this, his great moment of triumph and victory. He was too deeply entranced in the spectacle before his eyes to spare a single glance for Charn Thovis. He was to regret this in the days to come. For the young and noble warrior was to remember that motionless figure, and was to dwell upon it in his thoughts through the events of the coming days.

  Chapter 3: THE SECRET COUNCIL

  When coils of dark conspiracy

  Through secret traitors grip the land,

  Those loyal men who would be free

  Must rise and take a stand.

  —The Scarlet Edda

  The stone fortress of Sardath Keep rises in the green hills of the Tesoni lordship to the north of Patanga where the two rivers of the Saan and the Ysar part, the one to curve away westward into the lush jungle country of Chush, the other to find a path through the vast and mighty Mountains of Mommur that run the length of the continent of ancient Lemuria like a mountainous spine.

  Here for seven hundred years the lordly ancestors of Lord Mael dwelt in baronial splendor.

  Here in the hour of midnight, by furtive and stealthy and secret ways, came ten men summoned to a hasty conference by the Lord Mael.

  Besides Mael himself, there came fat old Baron Selverus, second of the three peers of the realm. But Prince Dru was absent. He was immured in the palace and inaccessible. Likewise absent for much the same reason was old Thom Pervis, Daotar of the Air Guard, although his friend Zad Komis was here with Iothondus and Prince Shangoth and aged Father Eodrym, Hierarch of the Temple of Nineteen Gods. Young Charn Thovis had also come.

  The ten made their path to Sardath Keep by devious ways, some like Selverus and Eodrym and Iothondus overland by zamph or kroter. Others, like Shangoth and Zad Komis, came by air in private floaters, as the weird and magical sky boats of the ancient Lemurians were called. They met in secret, for dark and desperate times had come upon the Empire of the West in the seven days that had passed since the sudden and tragic death of their friend and monarch, Thongor of Valkarth.

  Almost from the very moment the body of Thongor, clad in his leathern war harness, wrapped in his mighty crimson cloak, with the great Valkarthan broadsword clasped against the cold flesh of his breast, was laid to rest in a sepulchre of white marble built before the high altar of the temple—strange events had begun to occur.

  Sumia, his incomparable young queen, withdrew into the seclusion of the palace and was seldom seen in public again. She inexplicably dissolved the council of advisers who had well and faithfully served Thongor in the years of his reign, assuming total power in her own person—which, under the laws of Patanga, she was certainly entitled to do, but nonetheless her action in this matter was odd, and seemed uncalled for.

  Next, as the heir, Prince Thar, was only nine years old, the Sarkaja had selected a Prince Regent to govern the realm in her name and that of her son. Again she had acted in a most strange and discomforting manner, passing over her most trusted peers to select none other than Dalendus Vool, a minor kojan of the lesser nobility rarely seen at court and as much disliked as he was distrusted. In a single stroke, the Baron of Tallan was become the first peer of the realm.

  Ominous and inexplicable actions had followed thereafter one upon the other so swiftly that Lord Mael and the others hardly knew from one day to the next where matters stood. Sumia’s only living relative, her cousin Prince Dru, had vanished into the palace and become incommunicado. Had he perhaps been imprisoned on some vague charge—was this unseemly event possible? Alas, in such darkening and troublous times, it was all too possible, for many high-placed men of long and proven loyalty to the throne had been jailed and were jailed to this hour. Among them, most sadly, was gallant old Thom Pervis, one of Patanga’s greatest warriors and, as Daotar of the Air Guard, one of the most important commanders of the legions that shielded the empire from its enemies. Dalendus Vool had demanded the old officer surrender himself on flimsy and trumped-up charges, and the loyal Daotar had complied—for, incredibly, the order for his imprisonment was countersigned with the signature and seal of Sumia Sarkaja herself!

  Matters like these, dubious and uncertain, clouded with mystery, had brought the ten men together in this remote castle for a council. Now was the time to confer, to draw inferences and to plan a course of action, for who among them could be certain that tomorrow he would not be imprisoned in the dungeons beneath the mighty palace on some unlikely charge?

  Thus had Mael dispatched the most loyal warriors of his Tesoni clan to the far corners of the empire to summon in secret session those proven friends of Sumia and Thongor. Hither flew Ald Turmis, Sark of Shembis, the third city of the empire, and one of Thongor’s oldest friends and fighting companions. But the messenger entrusted with a summons to Karm Karvus, another of the Valkarthan’s most valiant comrades, seemed to have gone astray. For neither did he return from that red-walled city of Tsargo, fourth city of the empire, that rose on the wave-lashed shores of Yashengzeb Chun the Southern Sea where Karm Karvus had ruled as Sark these past eight years, nor did Karm Karvus arrive for the council, as he most surely would, had the message reached him.

  And from Thudis, second city of the empire, the old Sark Barand Thon sent his stalwart young son, the Jasark Ramchan Thon, as his accredited representative. From Zangabal came Prince Zul, younger brother of the Sark of that city. Zangabal had joined the empire of its own free will four years ago. But no word came from the Sark of Pelorm; again, as in the case of seacoast Tsargol, a messenger must have gone astray or failed to reach his goal for some more ominous reason. . . .

  Lord Mael admitted that he found the actions of Sumia Sarkaja incomprehensible. “It is as if the lass had turned against us all,” he growled, hunching his beefy shoulders and shaking his massive head like a baffled and angry old bear.

  “The most puzzling of her actions, to my mind, is this singling out of the Baron of Tallan as regent,” Aid Turmis said. “To pass over such elder advisers and friends of long-proven loyalty as the Lord Mael or Baron Selverus or Prince Dru, in favor of a little known and even less liked kojan such as this Dalendus Vool is simply incredible,” he mused in a puzzled tone.

  The young philosopher Iothondus nodded agreement. “She is like one under the spell of some potent drug,” he said thoughtfully. “At first I believed her erratic actions the result of shock and sorrow. Now I wonder . . . the steps the Sarkaja has taken these past few days are so unlike her normal state of mind that she resembles one acting according to the dictates of a superior will. It is as if she is under some enchantment.”

  That doughty old warrior, Zad Komis, growled his agreement. One horny palm grasped the
well-worn pommel of his rapier and his keen eyes flashed. “If the Queen needs our aid, we must come to her assistance and free her from whatever force has bound her!” he said harshly.

  Heads nodded about the table, but Mael summed up their common doubt. “But who can we strike against— who is the enemy? Or is there in fact no enemy, except in our imaginations? What if the lass is under no dominance but simply acting of her own wishes—how then can we protest? How can we know?”

  Many more words were spoken and many other subjects brought under scrutiny and discussion, but when at dawn the council broke up and the ten dispersed each to his home, nothing had been concluded.

  The lords of the empire were baffled, worried, suspicious and angry, but they could find no enemy to strike out against, no evidence of treason or of foul play.

  They left Sardath Keep as the first rays of dawn struck rose and golden fire from the upper peaks of the Mountains of Mommur and lit the clouds of heaven to brilliant flame. They agreed to keep on the alert and in touch with one another, to watch and listen and be wary. That seemed to be all that they could do. So cleverly had the secret foes of Patanga manipulated the current of events that they remained faceless and hidden.