Young Thongor Read online

  Frowning, puzzled, he bent over the glittering, flashing gem and peered deep into it.

  Deep and deep…through the angled mirrors of the many facets…down through twinkling mists of dim green and sparkling silver dust…to the strange pulsing core of the monstrous gem, where cold phosphorescent fires coiled and glared.

  But something happened. The crystal changed.

  The mists thinned—faded—evaporated.

  Had the touch of his fingers closed a contact between the boy and the forces that slumbered, locked deep within the mystery jewel? Had his nearness triggered some dormant, age-old spell—some mystic sorcery whose secret was traced in the weird sigils that had been hewn into the facets of the gem?

  Sparkling mists coiled—cleared—whipped away.

  Suddenly the clouded green crystal was clouded no more. Now it was clear and pellucid as glass…and the boy’s eyes widened in amazement as he stared down upon that which was now clearly visible in the very core of the gigantic gem. He stared down upon…

  A city! A city there in the heart of the jewel.

  It was exquisite, elfin. Tiny, delicate minarets and needle-pointing spires of dainty glistening ivory. Swelling bells of domes, twinkling with goblin lights. Delicious little houses, peak-roofed and gabled, with stained-glass windows no bigger than his thumbnail.

  A faerie princedom in the frozen heart of a gem!

  Breathless with awe and wonder, the savage boy stared down at little, crooked streets cobbled as if with cowrie shells; at curved flights of alabaster stairs a finger joint in width; at elfin gardens of miniature trees where tiny brooks meandered like shimmering strips of blue satin ribbon.

  All of exquisite ivory it was, walls fretted like lace, thread-thin, lit with tiny silver lamps like acorn shells. He stared down at courts tiled with malachite; at walls of rosy coral, towers of glistening jade, slender arcades of delicate marble pilasters, beams of ebony, scrolled carvings over windows, balconies, balustrades—so tiny it hurt the eye to search their detailed work.

  It was an elfin mirage—a goblin vision—a glimpse into a strange miniature world of marvel.

  And gone in the flicker of a lash!

  In a breath, the city blurred—faded—and was gone. The huge gem clouded again with swirling mists of jade shot through with dazzling coils of silver sparkles. The boy frowned in bafflement and stepped away from the squat cube of black stone and the glittering globe of mystery it bore.

  Had it been a dream—a vision—an enchantment? Whatever it was, it was gone.

  5

  Dreams in Jade and Silver

  The boy growled a wordless oath and fingered a small idol of white stone that hung about his throat suspended on a leather thong: his tribal fetish, a crude thing, like a bearded face crowned with a circle of stars. His scalp prickled with superstitious awe. Wild young barbarian that he was, yet to visit cities, a fighter from birth, reared in a harsh land of ignorant savages where every phenomenon of nature was an inexplicable wonder, he instinctively hated and feared magic and dark wizardry.

  And that weird gem, that glyph-inscribed circle of ominous dark stones, stank of wizardry.

  He stood warily, like a young animal at bay, before the twinkling stone. Its inner fires were quiescent now, calm, dully glittering. And yet he feared it and the unknown forces that had fashioned it, and which perhaps lurked within it.

  Should he quit this strange place that even the dragons feared? Should he dare the grim dangers of the night beyond, the prowling predators, great black shapes that crept through the broken waste of stone, hunting hot flesh?

  Sunset had died to faintly glowing coals by now; the plateau was deep in darkness; the sky a mass of turgid vapours, hiding the few faint stars that had dared to emerge at the sun’s death. To venture forth from this curiously protected place into the unknown dangers of the plateau might be foolhardy.

  Soon the great golden Moon of old Lemuria would rise over the edges of the world to flood all the land in light; then he could traverse the rocky tableland in relative safety. He would still be prey to all the roaming monsters of the dark, but at least he could see them and protect himself against their attack with the great sword that he still clasped in his hand.

  Perhaps the wisest thing to do was to wait here behind this ring of standing stones which, for some reason, the beasts seemed to fear. Wait here for the moonrise, and then set forth upon his long journey to the Dakshina, to the lush and jungle-clad Southlands, with their golden cities and mighty kings. There lay his goal and his destiny. He would wait for the moon.

  But he was still bone-weary from being hunted down the mountain passes by the twin dragon-hunters. He would rest here, stretch out his aching limbs, ignore the thirst that raged within his throat like a flame, the hunger that growled in his empty belly. He lay down on the smooth rock, between the black cube of the altar and the soaring pylons.

  And, of course, he slept…

  Strange dreams filled his brain with curious visions.

  It seemed that as he lay there in the darkness a cold radiance bloomed within the enormous mass of crystal; a weird luminance of mingled jade and silver that pulsed like a living heart—a heart of throbbing light!

  Waves of green and silvery glare swept over his sleeping body, and from somewhere within the huge pulsing core of light that the magic gem had become, a far, faint voice called to him in a language he did not understand.

  But the message in those words he understood all too well.

  The voice lured, sang, beckoned. It was siren-like; it called to him irresistibly. It sang of marvels and wonders, of impossibly beautiful things, of unguessable mysteries…and he yearned to obey that mystic summons.

  Like chiming silver bells, the voice spun a net of magic about his sleeping mind…and drew him…drew him, on and on…

  And in that strange, haunted dream it seemed to the boy that he opened his eyes and rose lithely to his feet, for all that he still slept. Step by step, entranced, wide-eyed, but still deep in slumber, he approached the great jewel.

  It was ablaze now, a throbbing sphere of radiance. An aura of crackling power stood out around it like a huge glittering gateway—and through that gateway the tiny elfin city could be seen clearly now, yet it was somehow no longer small, but large…large enough for him to enter and to walk those crooked winding streets, to stroll those cool enchanted gardens, to quaff chilled, sparkling wine in those ivory palaces…

  Step by step he strode up to the burning gate and came awake in a ringing silence.

  6

  Through the Crystal

  Shock sluiced over him like a cold, unexpected shower. In his sleep he had, in truth, risen and approached the great gem and now he stood frozen, his extended hands only inches from the glistening crystal, which was, even as in his dream, ablaze with whirling lights and a beating aura of throbbing force.

  Rage flamed in the heart of the boy savage. This vile witchery aroused his wrath. His scowling brows contorted. His lips drew back in a challenging snarl, baring white, wolf-like teeth. A deep menacing growl rumbled in his chest.

  “Gorm!”

  Growling aloud the name of his primal god, the youth reached forward deliberately and seized hold of the huge sparkling crystal, as if challenging it to work its secret wizardries.

  An icy tingling ran through him as he touched the chill, slick crystal. An electric shock that numbed him as it flickered along his nerves. Waves of cold dazzle buffeted his mind, dulled his sight. He staggered on numb limbs—he fell—

  Into the crystal.

  It was as if in the instant he fell forward the hard sparkling surface melted into a glittering mist that swirled about him in icy coils but offered no resistance to his warm flesh. He fell forward and down and through the crystal…and hurtled into the dark throat of a spinning vortex of swirling jade and silver motes of light.

  Strangely he felt neither surprise nor fear. It was like some weird occurrence within a dream—too fantastic and im
probable to be real, and hence nothing for him to fear, since it could not really be happening.

  He fell through the whirling vortex of moted light and now, it seemed, he fell slower and slower, as if the vaporous spangles of jade and silver radiance beat up and somehow sustained his weight.

  In the next instant he struck a sloping surface with stunning force and went rolling down an incline. Crisp, dew-wet, emerald grass slid across his limbs and he came to rest in a mass of drowsy flowers under an amber sky of dim, luminous vapours.

  Dazed and uncomprehending, he stared about him wide-eyed at clumps of strange feathery trees that loomed up against the topaz twilight…trees without leaves, whose slick, black boughs bore fantastic peacock-plumes of metallic green and gold and lapis.

  Beyond them, weird, impossibly slender animals of snowy white grazed the dewy sward. Earth, he knew, had never bred those strange yet lovely creatures with their silken hides and long, thick gold manes. If not Earth, then—where was he?

  Then a vagrant glitter caught his gaze and drew it beyond the feathery trees and the grazing unicorns…to the exquisite, soaring minarets and swelling domes of a faerie city that lifted in the haze of distance.

  The city in the jewel!

  This was no dream, but strange reality.

  As real as the fantastically clothed, bird-headed warriors who stood ringed about him—distilled from emptiness in a twinkling—as real as the spear-blades of cold blue steel levelled at his naked breast.

  7

  The Man with No Face

  They took from him the great broadsword and its scabbard and baldric, and they bound his wrists behind his back with tinkling brass chains, or chains of what looked like ruddy, glistening brass, and all the while he stared at them with wonder.

  At first he thought they had in very truth the heads of birds; later he determined that they wore curious, avian headdresses or helmets. They were very lifelike: plumed at the crest, with sleek, gleaming feathers down over the face, glittering soulless eyes, and cruel, hooked beaks. Birdlike, too, the fantastic costumes they wore: robes and cloaks of woven plumage; hooked gauntlets affixed to their hands like the claws of winged predators. Even their tunics were woven of the soft breast-feathers of hawks.

  The bird-warriors moved like automatons, without a sound, stiffly. They said utterly nothing to him, not deigning to reply to his questions. Neither did they handle him with rough, uncaring manner…it was as if someone had commanded them to seize him, disarm him, and render him helpless, but taking all the while the greatest possible care to see that he was not harmed.

  It was bizarre. Thongor put it away for further thought: just another of many mysteries. Then he was led through the glittering streets into the impossible city.

  Dawn—pearly, nacreous, rosy-pale—lit the strange, amber skies as he was led captive into the weirdly beautiful city. But it was like no dawn that ever Thongor had seen on Earth, for there was no sun, no orb of fiery light, but merely a gradual brightening of the vaporous sky into dim radiance without source.

  He had not yet in his young life ever seen a city of man, except for the crude villages of his native Northlands; but he somehow knew no terrene metropolis could be like this. He became aware, just then, of yet another strangeness.

  The air was cool and clear and scented faintly of blooming flowers. But the honey-hearted warmth of verdant summer lay beneath the dewy coolness of dawn. And that was—madness. For when he had been drawing ever nearer in his wandering to the great Jomsgard Pass that cleft in twain the Mountains of Mommur, it had been Phuol, the third month of winter. Yet no snow locked this land in its icy grip, and from the scented air and dewy lawns and flowering trees he had already seen, it seemed more like late spring—the month of Garang, say—or the month of Thyron in early summer. Which reminded him of another unanswerable mystery.

  For it had been in the very hour of sunset he had lain down beside the weird jewel. But here it was dawn!

  Thongor shook his head with an angry growl, as if to clear his mind of these mysteries. But already he suspected the truth: he was no longer in the world he knew, the world where he had been born, but in another. Or perhaps within the magic jewel the sequence of day and night was curiously reversed, and the seasons of the year as well. Mystery upon mystery —but their answers were of no importance. Whether or not he had been reduced in stature by some weird enchantment and now dwelt within the jewel, or whether the jewel was itself but the magical gateway which led to this strange new world, did not matter.

  What mattered was that, wherever he was, he was prisoner of those that ruled this sorcerous world of timeless summer.

  As he went on between his bird-masked captors, he stared about him with dawning wonder, forgetting his superstitious fears and the grim fact of his captivity. Everywhere he looked, vistas of radiant and enchanting loveliness opened before him: dim arcades of slender, twisting columns wherein small shops offered trays of fabulous gems, gorgeous embroideries, flagons of precious vintages.

  Beautiful beyond belief, the city lay in the dim morning, and yet a shadow of unseen horror haunted it. For in the pale golden faces of the robed and bearded inhabitants, Thongor caught the look of fear.

  Fear, too, lurked in their low, musical voices as they conversed, covertly eyeing the boy as his captors led him through the streets. Fear, and a glint of something else: perhaps—pity?

  The boy stared about him, and he knew the city could not be real. Yes, it seemed solid enough, and doubtless was, but—unreal, for all its solidity.

  He was led past a bell-shaped dome that glittered and flashed in the morning radiance. It was made of rock crystal, a cliff of pure crystal, a curving, unbroken dome, unlike anything Thongor could have imagined.

  And the tower, the white minaret, built from one shaft of solid ivory. The seas and forests of the earth gave birth to no lumbering behemoth so vast as the unthinkable beast whose single horn supplied the snowy ivory for that solid tower!

  Into a great, turreted citadel of sparkling jade and marble the warriors led him, and thence to an immense domed hall where his shackles were affixed to a ring in the floor. Food in a shallow bowl of some dark crimson wood, and a crystal flagon of water, were set at his feet. Then the soldiers left him.

  Being Thongor, the first thing he did was to eat and to drink as much as his belly could hold. And, when at length his hunger and thirst were assuaged, he attempted to break either his shackles, his chains, or the ring in the floor. Tough young thews swelled along his strong arms; bands of iron muscle writhed and stood out in sharp relief across his deep chest and broad shoulders; his scowling face blackened with effort; but the sparkling metal, which looked like brass, was of an unbreakable hardness.

  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.