Young Thongor (8 page)

“I recall the race; but that was…long ago.”

For an instant it seemed to Thongor that the black flame of those eyes bore within their fierce depths a measureless weariness, an age-old boredom. Perhaps even something of—futility?

“He is young and strong, bred of brave warriors, I doubt me not. It might be amusing to see that strength…take him hence to the Arena Master. We shall see this youthful prowess on the Day of the Opal Vapors. Take him away now…”

The guards saluted with mechanical perfection, and led Thongor from the silent hall. Behind, sitting tall and straight and regal in the scarlet chair, the Veiled Enchanter continued staring straight ahead, into nothingness, with no expression on his cold and beautiful face.

11

In the Speculum

Zazamanc stood in his magical laboratorium. Corrosive vapours swirled about him, caught in twisted tubes of lucent glass. Fiery liquors seethed in crucibles of lead over weird fires of glowing minerals. Trapped forever between two panes of quartz, a mad phantasm screamed soundlessly, caught in a two-dimensional hell. Strange and terrible was this place of many magics: the air stank of dire wizardries; the brimstone odors of the Pit reeked therein.

The square stone chamber was oddly lit. Wandering, ghostly globules of insubstantial luminance drifted like bubbles of light, to and fro, ice-blue, scarlet, blinding white. Their shifting radiance cast eerie black shadows crawling over the uneven walls, clustering like frightened bats in the darkest corners.

A vast globe of silvery metal bore a strange image: a huge, insectoid thing, with a naked, exposed, and swollen brain, and black, glittering, compound eyes, squatting in green caverns of porous rock, where glassy stalactites and strange crystal outcroppings caught and flickered with vagrant wisps of light.

This was one of the Insect Philosophers who dwelt in the dead core of earth’s moon, and with whom, by his art, Zazamanc sometimes conversed.

With a white crawling fungoid intelligence, on the twilight zone of the planet Mercury, he also communicated at times; and with a crystalloid but sentient mineral being on one of the moons of Saturn.

The insectoid thing with the monstrous brain faded slowly from the surface of the silver sphere. The image was replaced with a different scene. A sweltering area of burning sand where a half-naked boy struggled with a huge crimson beast. Zazamanc drew in his breath sharply, watching in suspense. The boy held, for weapon, a hooked sickle. His wild, black mane streamed about his yelling, contorted face; his strange gold eyes blazed lion-like through the tangle of his locks.

The crimson thing roared and foamed, and batting wildly at the nimble, leaping figure with heavy paws bladed with black claws like scythed razors. At length the boy darted within the reach of those grasping arms.

Zazamanc sucked in his breath and held it.

The sickle flashed, catching the light, as it swung in a wicked arc. It slashed through the distended throat of the roaring crimson brute and in an instant it lay gasping out bubbling gore on the wet sands, while Thongor stood panting, sweaty, streaming with blood, but triumphant.

Zazamanc uttered a curse and permitted the image to lapse into its component atoms of light. The surface of the silver sphere went black and dull.

Turning away from the speculum, the Veiled Enchanter crossed the cluttered, crowded chamber to a huge desk that was a cube of gray, cracked stone. On top of this a jumble of parchment scrolls lay sprawled in a litter of amulets, periapts, talismanic rings, and instruments peculiar to the magician’s art.

Shoving aside two of these, an arthane and a bollime, the Enchanter uncovered a vast and ponderous book. This tome was of peculiar and alien workmanship: no terrene product of the bookwright’s art, surely. The leaves were bound between two plates of perdurable metal, but a rare, unearthly metal, blue as sapphire stone, and filled with radiant flakes of gold light. The twin plates were deeply embossed with large glyphs of geometric complexity. And the leaves within were even more strange: of flexible, lucent stuff, glassy and crystalline and yet supple.

The pentacles, with which these leaves were inscribed, were of red-orange, green-black, silver, violet and a strange throbbing color that seemed somehow to belong between the hues of heliotrope and jasper, but which was a color not otherwise found on earth and belonging to no spectrum of normal light. In some odd fashion, these magical diagrams had been inked
within
the very substance of the flexible crystal leaves.

Zazamanc opened the ponderous volume and began an intent perusal of the sorcerous lore. The boy Thongor must die. And in a grim and bloody manner.

And—soon!

But
how?

12

Jothar Jorn

The arena stood on the further edge of the city of Ithomaar, a vast, circular amphitheatre like an enormous crater. This bowl-shaped depression had been scooped out of the ground by captive genii, its sloping sides terraced into tiers and fitted out with curved marble benches. The gladiators themselves, and the cages that held the beasts they were to fight against, dwelt in subterranean crypts below the arena floor. To these, the bird-masked and unspeaking warriors conducted the youthful barbarian.

They brought him to a huge, fat, half-naked man who had been working out with the swordsmen. He was crimson from his exertions, his massive torso glittering with sweat, and as Thongor came up to him he was toweling himself dry and emptying an enormous drinking horn filled with dark ale. One of the bird-guards proffered a slim ivory tablet to him. It was inscribed with a brief directive, written in emerald inks, in queer, hooked characters such as the barbarian boy had never before seen. The man scruti nized them quickly, then raised thoughtful, curious eyes to Thongor.

“A Northlanderman, eh? Tall for your age, and built like a young lion. Well, cub, I doubt not those strong arms will provide merry entertainment for our Lord, come the Day of Opal Vapors!” His voice was hearty and genial, and his great, broken-nosed slab of a face, beefy-red, glistening with perspiration, was cheerful and honest. His little eyes were light blue and good-humored. Thongor rather liked the look of him, and slightly relaxed his stiff, guarded stance. The gamesmaster noted this, and chuckled.

“My name is Jothar Jorn and I am our Lord’s gamesmaster,” he said. “You’ve naught to fear from me, lion cub, so long as you do as you are told, and quick about it, too.”

“I am Thongor of Valkarth,” the boy said.

The gamesmaster nodded, looking him over with quick, keen eyed. “Valkarth: I might have guessed, from the color of those eyes. Snow Bear tribe?”

Thongor bristled and a red glare came into his strange gold eyes. “My people were the Black Hawk clan, and the Snow Bear tribe were—are—their enemies,” he said fiercely.

The big man eyes him with frank, friendly curiosity. “You’re a bit mixed on your tenses, lad. ‘Were—are’—which would you have?”

Thongor’s head drooped slightly and his broad young shoulders slumped. In a flat, listless voice he said: “My people are dead, fallen in battle before the dogs of the Snow Bear; my father, my brothers…”

A sympathy rare in this primitive age shone in the small blue eyes of the big man. “
All
…of your people slain in war by the other tribe?” he asked in low, subdued tones.

Thongor’s head came up proudly and his shoulders went back. “All are dead; I am the last Black Hawk,” he said bleakly.

“Well…well…” Jothar Jorn cleared his throat loudly, and shook himself a little. “In that case, you will be hungry,” he said in his hearty way. “Hungry enough to—eat a Snow Bear, shall we say?”

The boy grinned soberly, then laughed. And they went in to dinner.

Jothar Jorn bade an underling lead the barbarian to the common room where the gladiators ate at long benches, and set a repast before him such as the boy had not seen for as long as he could remember. A succulent steak, rare and bloody, swimming in its own steaming juices, tough black bread and ripe fruit and a tankard full of heady ale. Thongor fell on the feast ravenously, reflecting that if
this
was captivity, then it might not be so bad, after all.

13

The Pits of Ithomaar

Ten days passed, and busy days they were. As a newcomer to the City in the Jewel, Thongor was curious about everything and kept his eyes and ears open. He soon learned that Jothar Jorn had entered the magic crystal only twenty years before: he had been gamesmaster of the arena of Tsargol, a seacoast city far to the south, head of an expedition into the mountainous country of Mommur, trapping beasts for use in the games then to be held in celebration of the coronation of Sanjar Thal, Sark of Tsargol. He, too, had glimpsed the jewel from afar, having left his trappers behind, hot in pursuit of a mountain dragon, and had been caught by the siren-like lure of the crystal even as had the Valkarthan boy.

As for the gladiators he trained, they were all Ithomaar-born and knew nothing of the outer world from which Thongor and Jothar Jorn had come. The boy soon found his place among them, but not without a few lumps and bruises. For the most part, the gladiators of Ithomaar the Eternal were full-grown men, and a mere stripling cast into their midst was fair game for a bit of good-natured hazing. But the young barbarian did not take very well to the playful roughhouse in the manner to which his fellow gladiators were by now accustomed.

The first man who tried to shove the boy around was a big, cold-eyed bully named Zed Zomis, the acknowledged leader of the gladiators. He ended up flat in the corner with his jaw broken in three places and a mouthful of shattered teeth, for all that he was ten years older than the boy Thongor, a head taller, and outweighed him by thirty pounds.

Three of Zed Zomis’ comrades, who had gathered to watch their leader have a little fun with the surly outlander youth, promptly jumped on the wild boy from behind when they saw him dispose of their friend. Within the first few seconds of the tussle they discovered they had picked a fight with a lion cub in very truth. The
vandar
, as the jet-black lion of the Lemurian forest country was called, was twelve feet of steely, sinewy strength from fanged jaw to lashing tail tip, and a juggernaut of fighting fury: Jothar Jorn had nicknamed the young barbarian aptly.

To a boy from the savage Northlands, war was a way of life, and, for all his young years, the Valkarthan lad was no stranger to the red art, having been raised virtually from the cradle with a weapon in his fist. Northlandermen of Thongor’s people dwelt in a bleak and hostile land of bitter wintry snows, and life was one savage and unending struggle against rapacious brutes, scarcely less rapacious human foes, and Nature herself, who was cruel and harsh toward weaklings north of the Mountains of Mommur.

Thus, to Thongor, fighting was no game, but deadly serious. And no one attacked a warrior of his kind in play, only in earnest. Thus, when Zed Zomis’ bully boys sprang upon him from behind, it was no mere laughing tussle he gave them, but a grim, vicious battle to the death, from which they emerged with a number of broken bones; and one of them, at least, would limp forever.

Thus he made for himself a place in the pits of Ithomaar, and it was a place of considerable respect. The gladiators treated him with care thereafter, and not a few of them were quick to hail him as a friend. As for Thongor, he bore no ill will to the four men he had beaten and was as ready to be friends with them as with any man who treated him with dignity.

The boy thrived on the hearty meals the gladiators were served. These consisted of immense steaks swimming in hot gravy, raw vegetables, sweet pastries and a variety of good, strong wines. Of this menu, the last two items were new to his experience, and after a prolonged bout with the wine cups, from which he emerged a bit unsure of his footing and with a head, the next morning, that throbbed with queasy pain, he treated the fruit of the vine with much the same gingerly respect with which the older gladiators had learned to treat him.

From Jothar Jorn he learned something of the fighting skills as practiced by civilized men. The warriors of the Black Hawk clan had schooled him in the use of bow and arrow, spear and javelin, war-axe, and of course, in the art of using the great two-handed broadsword. He missed his own broadsword, Sarkozan, taken from him by the bird-masked guardsmen when they captured him. The sword was old, ancient, really, and it had passed down his line from father to eldest son from time immemorial. Some said the great sword Sarkozan had been wielded by none other than Valkh the Black Hawk himself, the famous hero who had been the founder of Thongor’s nation—Valkh, Valkh of Nemedis, one of the immortal heroes who went up against the Dragon Kings at the close of the Thousand Year War—Valkh, who was of the blood of Phondath the Firstborn, in the twentieth generation of the direct male line.

That sword had, ages ago, drunk the blood of the Dragon Kings, reaping a red harvest there on the black beaches of Grimstrand Firth. Maybe the Nineteen Gods themselves had blessed it, when the heroes went up from Nemedis in the Last Battle, for it was written in
The Lemurian Chronicles
how of old They went among the men of the First Kingdoms.