The Black Star by Lin Carter - Chapter 01

1973 Genre: Vintage Paperback / Sword and Sorcery

Cover illustration by Frank Frazetta

It was rarer and more beautiful and more precious than any piece of mineral, and its dark glory outshone the lights of the heavens. The Gods had wrought it in the Country of the Immortals, and no other thing like it had ever been upon the earth.

No Emperor could hold the Throne without the Black Star. And now it was missing.

The evil Green-Robed One who had usurped the Throne would use his darkest powers to reclaim it and the young warrior fleeing across the embattled land with his beautiful lady to save this treasure of all the world would know the torments of the damned...

Chapter 01

The Book of Diodric

No longer submitting to the wise rule of the Initiate emperors, the followers of the Black Arts rose in rebellion and set up a rival emperor, who, after much struggle and fighting, drove the White Emperor from his capital, the City of the Golden Gates, and established himself on his throne.

—W. Scott-Elliot: Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria (edition of 1954, P. 29)

i. On the Parapet

Sunset flamed crimson in the west, and the City of the Golden Gates, which was the sacred capital of High Atlantis, lay ravaged and burning, half in ruin, half deserted, all but helpless in the hand of its evil conqueror.

A young warrior named Diodric leaned wearily on the marble parapet of the imperial palace. He was exhausted from the long endless fury of battle, sick of blood, and near the limits of his endurance.

Tears stung his eyes as he gazed out over the splendid panorama of the City, as he saw the empty palaces, the wreckage in the streets, the oily smoke of burning temples. He leaned his brow against his arms and felt the bitter tang of despair like brass on his tongue. Everything that was high and noble had perished from the world; only ugliness and the long decline of the world stretched from this point of time into the darkness of the future.

Because he was young and fierce-hearted and filled with impetuous hot emotion, he wept there as long shadows and the darkness of night gathered above the City like flocking vultures eager to feed on the corpses of the fallen. He wept as a child weeps: hoarse, gulping sobs racked his chest;

shuddering tempests of emotion shook him from head to foot. The City was fallen ... the Empire was ended ... what use for him to hold onto life?

Should a Throne warrior outlive the Empire that had nurtured him?

The next wave of the onslaught would take the parapet and the half-deserted palace would be lost.

This palace, the Great House, that was built on the most holy soil of all Atlantis, the Mount of Cleito at the heart of the City, would fall into the claws of the Dragon.

Why let some swarthy, snarling Dragon warrior take his life at spearpoint? The ancient heroes of the Atlanteans, when the hour of their death was upon them, had cut their warrior's braid with the little holy knife worn ever above the heart, had sung their Death Song, and had let the slim sacred blade drink of their heart's blood, and went down into the Kingdom of Darkness in the way of heroes.

With a swift impulsiveness, the boy Diodric snatched out the little sax-knife, kissed it, and snatched at his braided hair. The first verses of his Death Song were almost upon his lips. He was not even of the Atlantean race—his yellow braid and clear blue eyes and the fairness of his skin would have told you that he was a child of the primitive Celts, could you have seen him there on the marble parapet. But his ancestors, carried off as slaves by the Atlanteans from the coasts of Thuria, had earned their freedom, and the texture of his mind and character were as Atlantean as if he wore the olive skin and black hair and dark oblique eyes of a Turanian.

Though no Atlantean by race, he could at least die like one. Sunset flashed scarlet on the slim orichalcum blade as he lifted the holy knife to sever his braid. He would sing his Song and sheath the little blade in his bold young heart and go down into the Kingdom of Darkness to dwell with the heroes of olden time.

But the motion was arrested. Suddenly a quavering, weak voice from the gathering shadows said: "Don't do it, lad—don't throw your life away. Live!"

ii. The Old Warrior, Dying

Diodric turned to look at the old gray-headed veteran at the next station. All that day they had fought together side by side and he did not even know the man's name. The old warrior had taken a spear in the belly in the last wave, or the one before that. Diodric had assumed his unknown comrade was dead, slumped in the shadows of the wall.

Now he turned, and almost absent-mindedly he slid the sax-knife into its sheath again and went to where the other lay.

He knelt down, took the water bottle from his belt, and set it against the old warrior's lips. The other drank thirstily for a time, then shoved the bottle aside with a weak hand.

"Save the rest for yourself, boy," he muttered.

"I shall not thirst for long."

"Is it bad?" the boy asked soberly. The old man grunted.

"To the death." He looked up with keen, old eyes in a lean gaunt face to search the boy's visage.

The eyes lost their keenness and glazed and wandered.

"Has night fallen yet?"

"Not yet, but night is near."

The old man forced a weary laugh. " 'Not yet, but night is near,' " he repeated in a faint voice.

He forced another laugh, and a trickle of red blood ran from the corner of his mouth to stain his beard. "Aye, night is near enough, boy ... the Long Night itself, and no man living shall see the coming of the Dawn ... Ah, well; I, at least, will not live to see Thelatha the Accursed squatting on the Throne of Atlantis. That's something to be grateful for."

He squinted up at Diodric's pale, grimy face through the purple gloom. "Live, boy. You are young, life burns fierce within you. Why throw away another life, into the pit where so many thousands have fallen? Live, wed, sire strong sons to fight for the glories we have lost this day ... ah, God Pazadon ... Father Pazadon ... how much we have lost this day!"

Diodric lifted the old man's head upon his thigh and wet a corner of his scarf from the bottle to wipe the old man's face. He wiped away the stain of blood, but with every gasping breath that racked the other's bony frame, more scarlet spurted forth into the grizzled beard. The spear thrust had slanted into the old man's gut, but it must have missed his vital organs. It was loss of blood that had drained his strength to the brink of death. For he lay in a spreading scarlet pool and his long legs were beslimed with gore.

The old man mumbled, staring with glazed, unseeing eyes at nothing. His mind seemed to wander for a time. He muttered disjointedly of old wars and vanished glories and of kings long since gone down to dust, kings that were but names to the young Celt, battles already dim and distant, glories that the future would forget.

Diodric knelt there patiently, holding the dying warrior. There was nothing that he could do to ease the old man's passing; but no man should die all alone, and he knelt there to give what comfort his presence could give the dying warrior. At length the dying old man roused himself a little and squinted blearily up at Diodric's smoke-stained face.

"That last wave almost took us, boy," he wheezed, not seeming to notice the gory drops that dribbled into his beard with every breath he exhaled.

Then he said, musingly, "They say the Emperor has already fled the City by a secret way."

Diodric nodded somberly. "So I have heard.

Captain Ergon made his round of the battlements after the last assault. He said the Emperor was safe with the Sacred Family and would take refuge in one of the loyal cities of the west."

"Aye ... aye ... I have served him and his father, the Divine Metemphet, thirty years in this harness,"—his gnarled fingers plucked feebly at the steel breastplate he wore, stroking the Sun emblem worked thereon—"even as my father served his father, Amsham the Glorious, in days gone by. They say that the Empress is safe, too?"

Diodric nodded. "The Lord Pnomphis and the Royal Lady escaped together into the west; doubtless the Emperor will raise an army and return to take the City."

The old man cackled, then sighed. "Not in your time, boy, and not in mine. The Emperor will live and die in exile ... and the Long Night cometh down over all this land ... poor Lady! Her babe will be born beside some rough road, rather than in the God Chamber."

Diodric said nothing. It was known that the wife of Pnomphis the White Emperor was with child and near the time of her delivery. But now the old man's mind was wandering again.

"Thirty years ... many battles, aye, and honors, too ... the Lord Metemphet, you know, could name me at sight ... 'I see Shemosh is in the ranks,' he would say, reviewing the Throne Legion before a battle, 'that means we shall have victory, my Lords!' I heard him say it, many the time."

Then the light went out of his eyes and his soul went down into the Kingdom of Darkness to dwell in the cold halls of the restless dead.

He had met death with a comrade at his side.

iii. "Flee, You Young Fool!"

Diodric washed the dead face clean with fresh water and a bit of rag, and laid the corpse out straight, closing the gnarled old hands over the hilt of his sword, which he set upon the dead man's chest. Then, wearily, he got to his feet and strode back to his post. Odd that the Dragons had not attacked the walls before this.

For seven long days and flaming nights the battle had raged about the City of the Golden Gates.

Upon word of the approach of the Demon King and his host of savage Dragon warriors, the White Emperor had summoned his nephew; King Thion of Meropis, and the King of Kerne, and Zophtus, a third tributary king. They had come with all their hosts, but courage alone could not prevail before the withering blasts of magic Thelatha hurled up against them. The legions of three cities had gone down before the Dragon like ripe wheat before the scythe.

But the City itself held firm against Thelatha.

The Throne Legion held it, and made the Dragon warriors pay dearly for every foot of space they were forced to yield up. Ring by ring, wall by wall, zone by zone, canal by canal, they were driven back. At last the Outer City had fallen before the magical weapon wherewith the Dragon warriors were armed: the Black Fire it was called, and it cast a weird dark flame that burned stone, metal, and flesh, and the fires thereof could not be extinguished with water. Indeed, to this hour, oily smoke rose from the wreckage of mansion, palace, temple, and forum in the City beyond, where uncanny flames yet smouldered: flame that was dark as any shadow, and threw off not heat but cold.

The clank of metal against stone, loud in the stillness of twilight which was broken only by the distant rustle of flames and faint cries from the deserted City, made Diodric turn, snatching up his great spear.

But it was only the captain, Ergon. Pale of face, his plumed helm gone, his cloak of Imperial scarlet in rags, the officer emerged from the gloom. His cold eyes took in the corpse of old Shemosh where Diodric had laid the body, and his pale face was suddenly drawn and bitter. There were weary lines about his eyes.

"Still here, lad?" he said in a clipped voice.

"The cohort guarding the south parapet has gone down into the City, hoping to make Meropis Gate and escape before the City is invested in force."

"What of my cohort, lord?" asked the youth.

The officer shrugged.

"Dead, most of 'em. The last wave all but took the wall; the next one will, for certain. You may as well try to save yourself."

Save yourself.

Diodric touched the hilt of the holy knife at his breast, remembering. Almost had he cut his braid, sung his Death Song. But the other man, the dying man, had saved him from the impulsive act his fierce, impetuous mood of the moment had almost begun. Now the moment was past, his mood had changed. Suddenly he wanted very much to live: the feel of the evening breeze against his sweating, grimy face was tonic; the young vigor in his loins, the young strength in his thews, cried out against extinction.

"I should rather stay and defend my—"

The captain laughed harshly, almost mockingly.

"Defend what, boy? A deserted City—an empty palace? We have abandoned the City to the enemy; all have fled the Great House save a few slaves, a few looters!"

The officer's shoulders slumped. He looked suddenly very weary and his eyes went dull. "All is lost here. Go, boy, while you can. Perchance you can join the Emperor in the west. He will be raising troops against the Dragon. He will come back someday, to wrest the City from the conqueror.

He can use that strong young arm of yours." He looked up, seeing the indecision in the boy's face. His cold bitter expression softened.

"You look like a lettered youth of decent family. Have you ever read Kemthon the philosopher? He has a counsel: 'Never can you be certain that your life may not someday be valuable to another.' Those are wise words."

There was thoughtful melancholy in the older man's voice; then despair and helpless fury twisted his mouth, and he raged savagely: "Flee, you young fool! I have dead men enough on my conscience!"

And he was gone. Diodric stood and watched the tall, spare figure as it receded down the parapet, steel greaves ringing at every step.

As he strode away, the captain held his back as stiff and straight as if he were on parade.

Watching the proud, lonely officer making his round of guard posts now deserted by fleeing men or held only by corpses, the boy felt that he watched the greatness of High Atlantis receding down dim vistas of time into the forgotten past.

*This is only a part of Chapter 01*

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