Young Thongor (7 page)

So, being Thongor, he lay down, resigned his problems to the turn of future events, and slept.

A gentle hand on his shoulder brought him to full instant wakefulness, like a startled jungle cat. The man who bent over him was old and lean and robed in white silken stuff. The cowl or hood of his gown was drawn, covering his features.

“Are you awake, boy? Do not fear me, I am a captive—a slave, like yourself,” the aged one said in a quiet, cultured voice.

Thongor relaxed. “Why do you ask? Do I look asleep?” he growled curtly.

The old man shrugged, seating himself, tailor-fashion on the floor. “Alas, I cannot tell. I have no eyes with which to see whether you sleep or wake,” he said.

Thongor bit his lip, angry at his own rudeness. “Your forgiveness, grandfather,” he grunted. “I did not know you were blind.”

“Not blind, my son—without eyes. There is, you will perceive—a difference.”

Thongor shrugged. “I do not understand.”

“I will show you, then, if you will promise not to be afraid of me. For, however dreadful my appearance, it is not of my doing, and I am no enemy of yours, however horrible to your sight my visage might be,” the old man said.

And lifting one slender, wasted hand he drew aside his cowl and laid bare to the horrified gaze of the boy a sight of unthinkable terror. For he had no face, no face at all, merely a blank and featureless oval of pale, unwrinkled skin: no eyes or nose or mouth, or, if mouth there was, a veil of tight skin was stretched over the opening.

“Gorm…” Thongor said hoarsely; if it was a curse, it was also half a prayer.

“Our Lord Zazamanc is sometimes…capricious,” the old man said gently.

8

Ithomaar the Eternal

“How did you come to be—like that?” Thongor asked in a low voice.

The old man veiled his horrible, blank visage behind that merciful mask of white silk and began to speak quietly. “Listen to me, my son, we have little time. I cannot answer your questions now, not all of them. In a very short while you will be taken from this place and brought before the Lord of this city, and it is my task to prepare you for that meeting. So do not interrupt, but let me speak swiftly of that which you must know in order to be spared such horror as I have endured.

“My name is Yllimdus, and I came to this place even as you did—through the crystal. My city is Kathool of the Purple Towers; in my youth I was a jewel merchant, and often led caravans into the Mountains of Mommur, seeking gem fields. On one such expedition, I achieved a rocky plateau and discovered, amidst the level tableland, a circle of standing stones and within that circle, a great gem: but I need not detail my discoveries and my experiences further, for you have known them, or you would not be here. Is it not so?”

“It is,” said Thongor.

Yllimdus nodded. “Ages ago, when the world was young and the Seven Cities of the East flourished, there arose a powerful sorcerer, a strange man of deep wisdom and uncanny mastery of the occult sciences: Zazamanc the Veiled Enchanter. This strange being achieved heights of power unguessed at by mortal men; his lifespan he extended far beyond the endurance of human flesh; his searching gaze probed the hidden crannies of the Moon, the surface of distant worlds, the dark gulf between the stars. Yet for all his learning and magical arts, he was a thing of flesh and blood, and death comes to all that live, no matter how steeped in power. Zazamanc brooded long over his impending mortality, and at length perceived a method whereby he might cheat Death itself and outlive the eons.

“With his magical arts he constructed a crystal of durable substance; within that crystal he built a private universe where time could not come and Death did not exist nor could enter therein. A gorgeous city he constructed, raised by the hands of invisible and captive spirits, and therein a magic land was created, over which Zazamanc shall rule forever, an undying king, immortal and omnipotent as a god.

“This city he named Ithomaar the Eternal, for nothing within it can ever age or die. And the kingdom over which Zazamanc rules is the dwelling place of captive peoples such as you and I—unwary travelers, lured by the mystery of the crystal and its singing voice—who have entered into this magical land and cannot ever leave.”

“These things are fantasies, grandfather!” Thongor growled.

“Alas, my son, they are utter truth,” Yllimdus said gently. “Tell me: what year is it in the great beyond, the world from which you came?”

“Why, let me see; it is winter in the six thousand nine hundred and ninety-ninth year of the Kingdom of Man,” Thongor said. There ensued a silence of some duration. Then—

“So long…so very long,” whispered the old man with no face. “Ah, lad, it was spring in the Year of the Kingdom of Man four nine seven one when I came hither on that venture…
for two thousand years I have dwelt here in this accursed paradise beyond the reach of Time!
”

“Gods! Can this thing be true?” Thongor muttered.

Yllimdus sighed: “All too true, lad; here we can never die. Oh, I have prayed for death in my centuries…but we are beyond Death’s hand, here, aye…and beyond the power of the Nineteen Gods themselves!”

“This sorcerer, this Zazamanc,” the boy asked. “What will he do with me?”

A dim echo of horror entered the gentle tones of the ancient man.

“He will…play…”

9

The Veiled Enchanter

In this dim world where no sun shone to light the day nor moon to shed her pallid radiance by night, it was impossible to guess the passage of time. Thongor soon discovered this strange truth. Tall windows, narrowed, pointed, barred with thick grilles of that strange brass-like metal which Yllimdus had named
orichalc
, let in the dim, opal light. Thongor thought to observe the movement of time by the shifting across the floor of the patch of strangely colored radiance cast through that pointed, narrow window…but it did not move, nor did it wane.

At some unguessable time later, the warriors came to take him before the Enchanter for judgement. Yllimdus had warned him that to the proud, cold immortal who ruled this miniscule world, lesser men were slaves, toys, nothing but cattle. Here in this world his art had made him a very god, and he could play with his human toys as he wished. Men could not die in this dim, eternal world, but they could suffer. So, as the whim struck him, Zazamanc the Veiled Enchanter transformed them—mutilated them into weirdly horrible monsters. Some were quaint, droll hybrids: men with the heads of insects, women with flower petals instead of hair, dwarfed little beings, gaunt giants, men with neither arms nor legs who wriggled about like naked, pallid, fleshy serpents.

Yllimdus himself had been a courtier until his Lord wearied of his cautious advice and sage counsel. And thus, with a potent cantrip, the old man had been transformed into a faceless thing of horror. Thongor’s eyes smoldered with rage and the nape-hair bristled on his neck like the hackles of some jungle beast. The wild boy was no stranger to cruelty. Nature herself was cruel, and men were her children and had inherited much of her ways. But the boy knew only the sudden, savage cruelty of swift death, or red roaring war, of man battling against man or against brute.

This sort of cruelty, casual, cold, cynical—this was new to him. And it chilled him with an unsettling mixture of horror and nausea and contempt. He wondered what sort of a man could so negligently and carelessly disfigure another man who had done him no greater ill than merely to bore him…if, indeed, Zazamanc was only a man.

For this was of the species of cruelty man usually suffered at the hands of playful and uncaring gods. Was, then, this Veiled Enchanter a god? True: he had created all of this miniature world within the jewel, and that was godlike.

And—a thrill of dread went through the boy at the thought—if he was a god, could gods be slain?

The warriors who escorted the savage boy through the magnificent palace of the Enchanter were curious beings themselves, and as he paced along in their midst, young Thongor stole many curious, covert glances at them in a covert fashion.

They were not bird-warriors like those who had arrested him beyond the city. These were cold-faced, pale, expressionless men. They were automaton-like, as the warriors in the fantastic avian costumes had been. But most of all they were like dead men somehow, in some grisly and necromantic fashion, imbued with the uncanny semblance of life, but devoid of life’s animation.

Old Yllimdus had spoken of these, back in the prison hall. He had used a curious word to describe them—
avathquar
—“living dead.” An odd, uneasy, disturbing word. Thongor’s hide crawled at the touch of them, cold and flaccid, like the puffy flesh of corpses.

Yllimdus, who had been imprisoned for more than a year in the great hall, having incurred the dislike of his Lord, had warned him of these, and had said that not everyone came through the Jewel Amid the Seven Pillars alive. Some were drawn through, and were dead when they materialised within the miniature world. Perhaps it was these fresh cadavers, magically animated by some occult science that became the
avathquar
. It was a peculiarly unsettling thought, and he eyed them with guarded curiosity as they led him along.

They seemed completely drained and empty, with none of life’s warmth and passion. He wondered if they truly lived, or if they were but automatons of dead flesh vitalized in some weird manner by the power of the Enchanter. They were splendid specimens of manhood, surely, tall, strongly built and handsome in a regular sort of way. But they strode along like puppets, looking neither to the right nor the left, their pale, stern faces hard and blank, no sign of alertness in their cold, empty eyes.

Bemused by such thoughts as these, Thongor saw little of the superb corridors and halls and chambers through which they led him: ever after he retained but a blurred impression of blazing tapestries seething with color and motion, or glowing figurines and statuettes of unearthly grace and lifelike detail, or of carved, marbled walls and fretted screens of ivory and soaring columns and arched and vaulted ceilings painted with weird and mythological frescoes.

At length they led him into a colossal hall floored with black marble like a gigantic mirror. Far above, lost in dim shadows, an enormous dome reared on thick columns of a sea-green stone unfamiliar to him. About the walls, more of the zombie-like warriors stood, motionless as graven images, immaculate in dazzling, sun-gold armor.

For these things he had no attention.

It was that which occupied the very center of the gloomy hall which seized and held his fascinated gaze. A tall chair of scarlet crystal, three times human height. And in the chair a man was seated.

10

Burning Eyes

Zazamanc bore the appearance of a slim, tall, youthful man with strong arms, long legs, and a coldly beautiful face, which bore no slightest sign of age. He was attired in complicated and fantastic garments of many colors: puce, canary, blood-scarlet, lavender, mauve, subtle gray, deep violet.

His raiment was unlike any costume that Thongor had ever seen or heard of. Tight hose clothed his long, slender legs; a tunic or jerkin, gathered and tucked and folded according to the dictates of some alien fashion, adorned his torso; sleeves of various lengths protruded one from the other. Long gloves were drawn over his lean, strong hands, and strange rings of metal and stone and crystal twinkled and flashed as he moved his fingers.

A cowl, trimmed with strange, purple fur, was drawn about his head but did not cover his face. This held and fascinated the boy. It was of a supernal, an unhuman, beauty. A high, broad white brow, arched and silken-black eyebrows, long imperial nose, firm, delicately modeled chin, thin-lipped but exquisitely carved mouth—these were his features.

They were flawless; without blemish. No wrinkle marred the purity of that godlike brow. No slightest shade of emotion lent warmth to the cold perfection of that face. It was like an idealized sculpture: cold, beautiful, pure, but inhuman.

The eyes alone held life and expression.

Strange eyes they were…black and cold as frozen ink…depthless as bottomless pits…cold and deep, but burning with a fierce, unholy flame of vitality. Behind their enigmatic gaze the boy somehow sensed a vast, cool, limitless intellect as far removed from the ordinary mind of mankind as man is from, say, the groveling insects or the squirming serpents.

They brought him before the tall scarlet throne and he stood erect and unbowing as that black, burning gaze swept him slowly from head to foot. With careful, judicious deliberation the Veiled Enchanter scanned him slowly.

When he spoke, and then only, did Thongor understand his cognomen. For, from brow to chin, his coldly perfect visage was delicately veiled behind a transparent membrane of some slight fabric, thin almost to the point of invisibility. Why a man should wear a veil which veiled nothing, and through which the eye could clearly see, was but the least of the mysteries Thongor had yet encountered in this tiny world of magic and beauty and depraved horror.

“It is a savage boy; doubtless from the Northlands; I believe I recall a race of strong Barbarians who dwelt of old on the wintry tundras of that portion of Lemuria,” the Enchanter said idly. His voice was like his face: cold, perfect, clear, but devoid of warmth or animation.