Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria (6 page)

CHAPTER 9

Throne of Blood

The Red Druids gradually attained to power in great Tsargol, until at last the agents of Chaos who worshipped their Triple God in his aspect as Slidith the Lord of Blood were all but supreme in the scarlet city that rose beside the thunderous shores of Yashengzeb Chun the Southern Sea…

—The Tablets of Yathlazon

Another dungeon
, he thought with grim humor.
I cannot seem to stay out of them!

This one was small and damp, and it stank. It stank of sewage, and man-filth, and fear. And it was as uncomfortable as most jails he had been in over the years. He lay on his back in a huddle of wet, mouldering, foul-smelling straw. But at least that was better than the cold, rough stone of the floor against his bare back. They had taken his broadsword from him, of course, but at least he was not chained. That was a small comfort, he thought, but it was something.

It would seem that the woman-headed serpents had been trained to seize, to hold, but not to kill. This, at least, had been his experience, and it was a grisly one. The clammy and smothering coils of the vile wriggling horde had finally pulled him down and imprisoned his struggling limbs. For all his giant young strength, the barbarian had found himself helpless as a babe in the embrace of those slimy coils. Their steely strength was incredible. They could easily have torn him to bits and devoured the bloody gobbets. But they did nothing.

In time the priests came and took him into captivity. The Red Druids in the scarlet-hooded robes had clamped steel shackles on his wrists and led him forth from the tower of horror into the dungeons of the priesthood. And there he had languished for the remainder of the night.

It must be dawn by now. He could not see the rising sun, buried as he was under a thousand tons of stone, but his keen barbarian senses could estimate the passage of time.

And then came the clank of spears and the shuffle of boots. Dark figures loomed before him and the barred door of his cell swung open.

“Come along, fellow,” the otar of the spearmen said. His voice was quiet, his accent cultured. Thongor glanced at him in surprise. He saw a tall, lean young man some years his own junior. The captain had an aristocratic, even a noble bearing, and his dark eyes were alert and intelligent. Thongor frowned. The man was obviously the son of a noble House. He wondered upon what evil days that House had fallen, that its young princeling was given such a servile and lowly task as captaining a squad of spearmen.

“It will do you no good to resist,
chanthar
,”
the young otar said softly. Thongor glanced past him to see the squad he commanded. There were seven of them, and a surly-faced lot they were, with cold little eyes, unshaven jowls, wine-stained tunics. For a moment he measured the grim-faced and capable-looking men with steel-shod spears. Then, silently, he stepped from the cell. They formed a hollow square, with Thongor at the center, and marched down the arched hall. Thongor made no resistance—seven men was just the right number. A few less, and he would have fought. But against seven armed men, he had no chance. Besides, there was still Sharajsha!

They came into a great hall where many nobles in silks and furs lounged, talking softly. All fell silent as the spearmen led their prisoner to a marble platform where two thrones of gorgeously carven scarlet stone stood under a canopy of cloth-of-silver. The otar saluted twice and fell back with his men, leaving Thongor alone before the twin thrones, which were the color of blood.

“Bow to the Archdruid and the Sark, you worm!” one of the nobles said, a paunchy man with flabby jowls and jeweled, puffy hands—the Chamberlain, from his silver mace-of-office. Thongor made no reply, nor did he acknowledge the other’s remark in any way. He folded his naked arms before his chest and stood tall, feet spread.

“Such insolence!” the Chamberlain cried, and stepping forward, he struck Thongor with the mace. The young giant neither winced nor moved, but stood silently, glowering up at the occupants of the two thrones while red blood trickled down his cheek.

“That is enough, Hassib! Such pride is rare in Tsargol. Let us not try to break it,” said one of the two enthroned men. He had a thin black beard, curled and perfumed, and a languid, bored face. His lusterless eyes surveyed the Valkarthan from head to foot, slowly.

From his diadem and intricately fashioned robes, this would be the Sark of Tsargol, Drugunda Thal by name. The other, then, in the scarlet robes, was the Red Archdruid, chief of the Red Brotherhood. He was a cold, thin man with shaven pate and colorless eyes. About his thin neck, the great disc of his priestly office hung by a golden chain. It was a medallion of priceless jazite metal, glowing with opal hues and worked into a tangled wreath of serpents with eyes of uncut rubies.

“Stubbornness rather than pride, my Lord Sark,” the Archdruid murmured silkenly. “We have means to tame such stubbornness…”

The Sark smiled lazily. “Yes, my Lord Yelim Pelorvis. But look at those shoulders—that chest! Gods, but I should like to see that strength in the arena! What is your name, fellow?”

“Thongor of Valkarth.”

“How did you enter the Scarlet Tower?”

Thongor made no reply.

The Druid leaned forward. “And where is the Star Stone? What have you done with the sacred talisman of Slidith?”

Thongor remained silent. But despite his expressionless face, his mind was working rapidly. He realized that what he faced was not just death, but torture. The Red Druids would try to torture him into revealing what had become of their sacred Stone. While he was not afraid of pain, or of death for that matter, his Northlander blood seethed at the notion of torture. When he had served Phal Thurid, Sark of Thurdis, he had seen what fiendish inventions a twisted mind could conceive to wring information from the human body. His soul writhed, sick with disgust at the thought.

“Answer the Lord Archdruid, man!” the Sark said. “Where have you hidden the talisman of Slidith, the Lord of Blood? Answer, or we shall have the truth wrung out of you slowly, drop by drop!”

Thongor was not afraid of revealing the truth. If, as he half expected, he had been betrayed by the wizard, who had flown off leaving him to die at the mercy of the slorgs, telling the truth would neither help nor harm Sharajsha. But he was determined he should not be put to the question. According to the simple, rude faith of his Northland home, Father Gorm’s War Maids only carried home to the Hall of Heroes the spirits of those who had fallen cleanly in battle. Thongor knew only too well what the red-hot hooks and clever needles of the torturers would leave of his healthy body once they had begun their monstrous play upon him. Far better to die cleanly by a spearthrust, or in the arena with steel in his hands.

Therefore he sprang, taking the spearmen off guard. From complete immobility he flashed into action. Whirling on his heel, he leaped at the first spearman, felling him with a straight-armed blow to the jaw and wrenching the long spear from his slack hands. Whirling again, he charged at the dais. A guard interposed, but Thongor ran him through the belly and the man fell, clutching with numb hands at his tumbling guts. In a flash he was up the marble steps where Drugunda Thal was rising to his feet, features working with terror. Thongor swung the steel base of the spear at his head, knocking the Sark sprawling. The diadem fell tinkling down the steps.

“Seize him! Slay him!” the Sark squealed, frothing with panic. Guards came leaping up the steps, swords out. Thongor whirled to the Druid’s blood-red throne, but Yelim Pelorvis had melted into the shadows.

Laughing, Thongor whirled to face the guards. He had the advantage of superior height, standing as he did on the top platform of the dais, and he brought it into play. One booted foot crashed into the face of the foremost guard, sending him reeling back upon his comrades’ blades, his face a bloody ruin. The steel spearshaft caught another across the nape, snapping his spine with a
krak!
that could be heard even above the cries and shouts of the crowd. Then he whipped the spear around and caught a third across the throat with a slashing stroke. The man’s head was nearly severed from his trunk and he went down in a shower of gore. Above the clash of steel, Thongor roared out the harsh staves of his Valkarthan war song:

“Hot blood is wine for Father Gorm!

The War Maids ride the wings of storm!

Our stout blades their red harvests reap

And thirsty steel at last drinks deep!”

He had slain five of the spearmen when the flat of a blade caught him across the back of the skull and he fell, buried beneath a grunting mass of men, the bloody spear torn from his hands.

When they wrestled him to his feet, arms twisted up behind his back, he was laughing.

“I’ll wager your flap-jawed milksop of a Sark never saw a man fight before, from the way he squeals like a maiden at the sight!” he roared. “Put me in your arena with a good sword in my hand, you gutless, virgin-hearted snake, and I’ll show you fighting that will curdle the slimy blood of Slidith himself!”

The Sark was nearly raving with blind fury. To be hurled from his own throne by a naked and unarmed prisoner—sprawling on his back, feet waving helplessly before his own nobles, and ringed about with guards! Spitting curses, he staggered over to where the guards held Thongor and struck him in the face again and again with his hand, the many gaudy rings that adorned his fingers cutting into Thongor’s face. The barbarian laughed at him.

“Yes! To the arena with this vomit of the North! We’ll see how this hero fares, pitted against our pets!” the Sark snarled.

From nowhere the Archdruid appeared, laying a slim, claw-like hand on Drugunda Thal’s arm.

“No, my Lord Sark! We must put him to the torment—we must find the Stone—”

“Who’s Sark of Tsargol, snake face?” Thongor grinned. “You—or that slime-eating old vulture? I’ll wager he tells you when to change your breeks as well!”

The Sark went livid with rage, spitting and snarling. He shook off the restraining hand of the Druid.

“Drugunda Thal rules in Tsargol, filth! And when you face my pets it is before
my
throne that you shall grovel, whimpering with terror!”

Thongor only laughed mockingly.

“Away to the pits with him! At noon he shall die in the arena—I swear it by all the Gods!”

Thongor was still chuckling when they dragged him away. His ruse had worked. He had not seriously hoped to escape from a roomful of armed men, armed only with a spear himself. His only chance to escape the humiliation and degradation of the Druid’s torture racks had been to enrage the Sark to the point of fury so that his thirst for revenge would goad him into overriding the objections of the Red Archdruid. Obviously, from the equal height of the twin thrones, the Archdruid was co-ruler with the Sark of Tsargol; at least he stood very near Drugunda Thal in authority, Thongor assumed. And with a barbarian’s instinctive understanding of human weaknesses, the young Valkarthan could see that Drugunda Thal—languid degenerate that he was—was usually kept well under the control of the Red Archdruid. Doubtless this was done by the simple method of pandering to and encouraging whatever passions were the peculiar weakness of the Sark. While busied with his pleasures, the Sark doubtless let the cold-blooded priest run the kingdom.

A fighting grin bared Thangor’s white teeth. He had certainly brought his scheme to success! Not only had he goaded the enraged and maddened Sark to the point of condemning him to death in the arena rather than torture under the knives of the priesthood, but it seemed as well that he had forced a breech between Druid and Sark. It was too soon to guess at the outcome of this, but it might well have repercussions which might be twisted to serve his own needs.

He was still chuckling over these matters when the guards thrust him into a cell in the pits below the arena. The spearmen had never before heard a condemned man laugh as he was locked into a cell, and they exchanged wondering glances.

But then they had never before encountered a warrior such as the giant young Valkarthan, either. And Thongor grimly vowed he would show them fighting such as they had never seen, when he was thrust forth into the blinding sun, sand crunching under his heel, the roar of thousands ringing in his ears, to face the snarling fangs of whatever monster he was destined to do battle against for his life.

These thoughts Thongor firmly put from him. The arena would come soon enough. In the meantime he was hungry. It had been many hours since he had last eaten. He resolved to face the death in the arena with a full belly, at least.

Shaking the bars and lifting his voice in a roar, he bellowed for the jailer as if calling for an innkeeper.

CHAPTER 10

The Arena of Death

White sands drank deep the reeking gore

  As red steel ripped the scaly hide.

A thousand throats in one great roar

  Saluted as the monster died.

—Thongor’s Saga, Stave IV

Thongor had hardly finished his rude meal of bouphar beef, bread, cheese, and sour red wine, which he had bullied out of the dim-witted old pit-keeper, before another troop of guards came up to his cell.

The barred door creaked open and the guard captain harshly commanded him to step forth.

“Gods, can’t you even give a man time to digest his meal?” Thongor grumbled.

The otar—it was another man this time, a surly-faced lout with bristling stubble on his jowls—laughed harshly. “’Twill be your last one, swine of a barbarian, so I hope you enjoyed it,” he grunted with a leering smirk.

“Aye, ’twas good enough,” Thongor said. “But the sight of your fat face may ruin my digestion.” The captain’s eyes went cold at these words, and a small ripple of laughter ran through the squadron. It stilled as the captain raked his men with mean, hard eyes.

“Come on out, you, or we’ll drag you out,” the otar growled. “Don’t keep your betters waiting for the spectacle of your death!”

Thongor saw that this time there were
ten
guards sent to escort him to his doom. He smiled quietly. The warriors held drawn swords bare in their hands. Obviously the powers that be did not wish to see another example of Thongor in action, and the extra men were an additional precaution.

He smiled. He was acquiring a reputation here in Tsargol.

He stepped out of the cell and was surprised to see a familiar face among the warriors. It was the same lean, aristocratic young otar who had summoned him forth that very morning. He looked again and saw that the young noble this time was disarmed. The red sash of office was gone from his warrior’s harness, and his wrists were bound with chains.

Thongor glanced over at the grinning face of the new otar. With one dirty hand he was fondling the red sash, now worn across his own chest. There had been something of a change in the ranks, Thongor surmised.

“Why are you here?” he asked as the spearmen led them out.

The former otar smiled quietly and said, “Because of you, Northlander. I was disgraced that my prisoner should break loose before the Sark—hurl the Sark on his royal face, in fact, while I and my men stood by gaping. So I have been stripped of rank and am to face the terrors of the arena beside you!”

“I am sorry for that. I only meant to get my hide out of the torturers’ reach and into the arena where I could expect a clean death,” Thongor muttered. “I did not mean to bring another man into trouble by my actions.”

The otar shrugged.

“Ah, well. What matter? It would have happened sooner or later. The Sark hates my family, who are a minor branch of the former ruling dynasty. His father, Sanjar Thal, seized power when the last House died out. The Druids supported him because he was inclined to this bloody Slidith-worship, while my House, the Karvus, ignored the cult. The blood-drinkers did not dare to stamp us out because of the high esteem my father had won in the Vozashpan Wars. Instead they stripped us of power and humiliated us, reducing my father from Chamberlain to a mere archivist, and myself to an otar, the mere captain of a hundred.”

Thongor absorbed this silently as they were marched through winding stone corridors.

“What of your father? Can he not help you now?”

The otar smiled sadly. “Nay. He died three years ago—poison, some say. I am the Prince of my House, and if I cannot help myself, there is no one who can. Well, we shall die together, then. It is perhaps better this way, with a good sword in my hand, facing an enemy that I can see, than being struck down in the dark by an assassin’s dirk or a poisoned goblet, which would come in a year or two, when the mighty Sark thinks I am too powerful.”

Thongor nodded, grimly. This was the kind of spirit his barbaric soul admired most! He liked the young otar’s wolfish grin and tough-hewn spirit.

“If we are to die together, let me know your name,” said the Valkarthan. “Mine is Thongor, Son of Thumithar, a mercenary out of Valkarth.”

The youth smiled. “Well met, Thongor. I am Karm Karvus, Lord of Karvus…or I was. I shall be proud to fight beside such a warrior as yourself. I have never seen such work as you displayed there in the Hall of Two Thrones. Let us face death on the sands and go down in a battle that shall leave the snake-blooded lords of Tsargol shivering in their robes!”

“It is agreed,” Thongor smiled.

“Quit whispering, you two!” the new otar snapped. “Here! Take swords! You, barbarian, take this!” And he handed Thongor his own Valkarthan broadsword, which he had not seen since it had served him so well in the Scarlet Tower. He hefted it in his hand, grinning at the guard.

“The Sark says you will fight better with your own blade in your hand.” The guard sniggered. “I say you could be armed with thunderbolts, for all the good it will do you when the Gate of Death lifts!”

Beside him, Thongor heard Kann Karvus draw in his breath sharply.

“The Gate of Death? The Sark will pit us against—?”

“Yes!” the otar sneered. “You will face the Terror of the Arena, Karm Karvus!” Then to Thongor he said; “It is a great honor, Valkarthan, but one perhaps that a barbarian such as yourself could not appreciate. Only the worst criminals face the Terror of the Arena, and then only on days sacred to the Lord of Blood, the God Slidith.” And turning back to Karm Karvus again, he grinned nastily. “It was a happy day for me, Karm Karvus, when you allowed your prisoner to insult the great Sark. Now I am otar in your place, instead of a mere spearman!”

Karm Karvus laughed. “Yes, Tole Phomor, and you may even become a daotar in time. Not being a noble such as I, but a baseborn cur, you will never arouse the jealousy of the Sark!”

Tole Phomor snarled a curse and thrust them forth.

“Go out and die!”

They went out the stone portal into the arena and stood blinking in the sun as the steel gate crashed shut behind them. Karm Karvus hefted his good Tsargolian rapier and glanced around. Smooth white sand, bakingly hot under the tropic noonday sun, stretched on either side. The arena was oval, walled with steep stone along whose upper edge down-pointing iron spikes were set. Above the row of spikes, tier upon tier of gaily dressed Tsargolians sat, applauding their presence with cheers and boos and laughter.

Thongor blinked against the sun’s blaze and stared about him. Straight ahead was the royal box, where Drugunda Thal, Sark of Tsargol, and the Red Archdruid sat, apparently friends again. Directly beneath the box was a grim iron gate made in the likeness of a horned human skull, whose gaping jaws were set with heavy iron bars.

The Gate of Death.

Thongor spread his legs and stood waiting. He wondered what would emerge from the jaws of death, what possible beast the Sark would pit him against that could be so fierce as to earn the title of the Terror of the Arena. He had faced all manner of beasts in the past few days, from grakk and dwark to the fearful slorg. What would come out of the Gate of Death?

Above, in the shadow of the canopy-covered royal box, Drugunda Thal leaned forward expectantly as the two emerged from the pit’s gate. Gloatingly, the Sark ran his eyes over the magnificent body of the Valkarthan, eyeing the smooth, tanned flesh that would so soon be torn to ribbons, dripping hot blood into the white arena sands.

“I still say this is a mistake, O Sark,” the soft voice of the Red Archdruid came to him. “The man should be tortured, so that we may learn what he has done with the Star Stone.”

“It is the arena for such scum, Yelim Pelorvis, as I have commanded. The Stone was not upon him when he was captured, but neither was it hurled from the windows of the Scarlet Tower into the temple grounds, for all that has been searched. No, the barbarian merely hid it in some corner of the Tower, where it shall doubtless soon be found.”

“But what if—”

“Silence, I say! I am Sark over this city, not you, Druid!”

Yelim Pelorvis lapsed into silence, but his eyes were burning with a cold, acid fire and he glared venomously at the Sark. Drugunda Thal stood, magnificent in his gorgeous silken robes, the diadem of Tsargol sparkling upon his brows. He raised one thin arm imperiously.

“
Release the Terror!
” he cried shrilly.

Thongor tensed as the steel bars of the Gate of Death slowly, creakingly, rose into the wail, revealing a black pit. Then—

With a blood-freezing scream, a crimson thunderbolt launched itself across the arena straight at them. It was all snarling jaws and glittering fangs. Eyes the color of yellow sulphur blazed with blood-lust. A wicked barbed tail lashed the sands as it charged with incredible speed.

Thongor froze, every sense alert. It was a zemadar, the most dreaded monster of all Lemuria. The ferocious zemadar was the most deadly killer of the jungles, possessed of an insane ferocity that often made it charge in the face of certain death, capable of outracing even a speed-bred zamph in the fury of its hurtling charge.

But it was more dangerous still because of its triple row of foot-long fangs, each tusk razor-keen and bearing a poisoned saliva that instantly paralyzed its foe. Like a crimson juggernaut it hurled across the sands at them.

Thongor flung himself to one side and plowed into the sand, the zemadar narrowly missing him. The beast spun instantly, snapping at the air over his head. He drove the broadsword into its throat.

But to no avail. The leathery flesh of the crimson monster was too tough for even his blade to pierce. He leaped backward as the twenty-foot horror sprang at him, batting the air with steel-hooked claws and growling ferociously.

Karm Karvus had also barely jumped clear of the charge. He brought his blade home against the monster’s ribs, but the sword glanced off.

The zemadar whirled, its barbed tail lashing. It knocked Karm Karvus’ feet out from under him, and he fell sprawling face-downward in the sand. The zemadar turned to gobble up its prey.

Then Thongor did a thing so foolhardy—or so brave, depending on one’s outlook—that it brought the entire throng to its feet with a gasp. In the box, the Sark leaned forward—blood-lust visible in his pale, twitching face and glistening eyes.

Thongor sprang upon the beast’s back
.

Locking his iron-thewed legs about the base of the monster’s neck, he clung to the arching neck, ignoring the ridge of spines that ran down its back. The zemadar had never felt a live weight on its back before, and it went mad with rage. It bucked and kicked with a snarling frenzy. But Thongor clung grimly to his precarious perch, and began inching upward.

“What is that mad fool doing?” the Sark gasped, craning forward to see through the blur of the struggling man and monster.

The cold, sardonic voice of Yelim Pelorvis rang clearly: “Climbing up to get at the zemadar’s eyes, I believe. They are the only vulnerable portion of the beast’s entire body, as he doubtless knows.”

The Sark laughed harshly.

“He will never do it! Never!”

Yelim Pelorvis smiled a thin-lipped smile.

“We shall see. I have a feeling that you are about to lose your prize zemadar, O mighty Sark.”

Sweat dripped down into Thongor’s eyes and the naked sun blinded him. He clambered up the lithely twisting neck to the head, digging his feet into the ridges of the zemadar’s crimson hide and ignoring its struggles to unseat him. He clamped one brown arm about the monster’s upper neck and with his free hand drove the steel blade deep into the zemadar’s eye. It screamed like a great sheet of canvas being ripped apart with one pull.

He dug the point deep, probing for the zemadar’s tiny brain. On the sands below, Karm Karvus closed in, driving his steel at the monster’s belly.

The zemadar, mad with pain, kicked the otar away again and fell backward, grinding Thongor into the sand. The enormous weight of the creature might have crushed him, but the sand was soft and loosely piled, so he merely sank into it. The crowd went mad with the heroic battle, screaming their throats raw under the blazing noontide sun.

The zemadar staggered to its feet and dragged itself over to the wall. Thongor, seeing that he was doing no good there, slid the sword out and reached for the second eye.

“What is my pet doing now?” the Sark quavered.

“Trying to scrape the barbarian off his back by rubbing against the arena wall,” the Archdruid observed coolly.

Indeed it was. And it had rubbed Thongor’s left thigh raw before the cold steel of the Valkarthan broadsword sank to its hilt in the monster’s other eye.

The crowd held its breath.

Coughing blood, the zemadar staggered blindly away from the wall into the center of the arena. Thongor sprang from its back, landing lithely on his feet.

Twisting its gory head from side to side slowly, blindly seeking its foe, the zemadar lurched up to the Gate of Death. Thongor felt a chill run down his spine, like fingers of ice. Gorm! The thing took long enough to die…

It coughed a gush of blood and sank to the sands, twitching. The long spiked tail thumped the sands once or twice, raising a white cloud. And then it died.

Thongor, with Karm Karvus by his side, raced across the arena to stand beside the beast. Then he stared up at the astounded Sark.

“That is how a man fights, Sark of Tsargol. Now let us see how a man dies!”

And he flung the sword glittering through the air. The paralyzed throng watched as the blade completed its sparkling flight—and quenched its brightness in the breast of Drugunda Thal, last Sark of the Royal House of Thal.

The Sark came to his feet, seizing the sword hilt with both hands, staring at it with goggling eyes. His mouth gawked like that of a beached fish. Blood came out and dribbled down his thin beard. With a heave of unexpected strength he tore the blade out of his breast. Then he tottered and fell face-forward from the royal box, hurtling down to thud against the arena sands, almost at Thongor’s feet.

The Valkarthan warrior bent down, picked up his sword, and wiped it clean against the blood-bed rabbled robes of the dead Sark.

Yelim Pelorvis stood alone in the royal box, a tall, lean figure wrapped in scarlet robes. Slowly he stooped, smiling, to pick up the diadem of Tsargol. It had fallen to the floor of the box when Drugunda Thal toppled over the ledge. Now he set it in place upon his own shaven brows.

Then the throng exploded into noise and action. Cursing guards came leaping down the tiers, brandishing glittering weapons. Groups of fantastically robed nobles, like panic-stricken flocks of gorgeous birds, poured to and fro, screaming and shouting. Women shrieked and fainted. Red-robed priests chanted droning psalms, unintelligible in the general uproar. From the pits across the arena, guards emerged and came pelting across the sands.

Thongor grinned at Karm Karvus.