Thongor And The Dagon City by Lin Carter - Chapter 01
Genre: Vintage Paperback / Sword and Sorcery
By the Creator of JANDAR In the Stirring Tradition of CONAN
The adventures of the mightiest sword-and-sorcery hero of them all!
The Vampire-King Of The Lost City
Xothun had ruled in Omm for a thousand years — master of strange powers, yet slave to his craving for human blood. The lost city lived only to serve — and feed – Xothun...
Then came the barbarian adventurer, Thongor of Valkarth, with a city to free, a princess to rescue, glory to win, and his mighty sword to pit against the legions and the wizardry of the terrifying Xothun!
Thongor's greatest challenge could spell the salvation of an entire people...or the warrior's own doom!
Chapter 01
Listen to the audio version of Chapter 01
CHAPTER ONE: IN THE GRIP OF THE GALE
“. . . into this violent age of sorcery and conquest, of the assassin's dagger and the venomed chalice, where the greed of Sark was set against the blood-lust of Druid, with the Throne of Lemuria for prize . . . came one man, a wandering adventurer from the savage wilderness of the Northlands: Thongor of Valkarth, armed with the iron thews of the warrior and the barbarian's contempt of danger . . .”
—The Lemurian Chronicles: Book Four, chapter ii.
A great storm roared over the dense jungles of prehistoric Lemuria. Lightning blazed, illuminating a fantastic scene of wild-torn clouds and sheets of pouring rain, revealed in flickering explosions of electric fire. Torrents of rain drenched the shuddering trees and the wind howled like demons in agony, sweeping the jungles with blasts of elemental fury.
Thousands of feet above the jungle, a slim metal boat fought in the iron grip of the raging gale. The storm buffeted its slim hull, which streamed with the rain and quivered like a live thing under the raw fury of the terrific winds. Its rotors fought the seething gale as the air-boat struggled vainly to ascend above the storm that had so suddenly and unexpectedly darkened the Lemurian sky.
Only the complete weightlessness of its urlium armor kept the floater from being driven from the skies, hurtling to its swift destruction in the thick jungles far below.
Within the small cabin of the air-boat, three people watched the spinning pendulum that indicated the direction of their flight.
The first was a lean, handsome young man in the jeweled trappings of an officer, with smooth dark hair and keen, intelligent eyes. This was Karm Karvus, exiled Prince of Tsargol, a seacoast city in the far south. He sat hunched over the simple controls of the floater, fighting to keep her on her course, his face tense with strain and concentration.
Behind Karm Karvus, stood a slender young girl, her lovely face a pale creamy oval beneath the tousled fleece of glossy black curls that poured over her bare shoulders.
Her enormous dark eyes were wet black jewels, filled, now, with haunting fear as she watched the madly whirling pendulum in its glass sphere. Her proud, rounded figure and limbs gleamed through the rents in her scanty garments, which, although they were torn and soiled, were of a fineness that denoted Imperial position and wealth.
She was the Princess Sumia of Patanga, also in exile, driven from her rightful throne by the greed and lust of a power-hungry Druid.
Standing by her side, with a brawny arm about her white, trembling shoulders, bracing her against the shocks that buffeted the swaying cabin, stood the giant form of the barbarian hero, Thongor of Valkarth, who had rescued her from a thousand perils and was now returning her to the city of Patanga and the throne of her fathers.
He was a great bronzed lion of a man, thewed like a savage god, naked save for the leather clout and bare trappings of a wandering mercenary swordsman. His tanned, expressionless face was majestic and stem beneath the rude mane of thick black hair that poured over his broad shoulders, held back from bis brow by a leather band. At his side the steel length of a great Valkarthan broadsword hung in its black leather scabbard, and a vast scarlet cloak swung from his shoulders, secured by a narrow golden chain about his throat. His lips were tight-set but his strange golden eyes showed no trace of fear as he watched Karm Karvus struggling with the controls.
"It is no use," Karm Karvus said, finally. "I cannot hold the Nemedis on her course in these winds—we are being driven further and further from our route with every passing second!"
The slim metal hull quivered with tension under the lashing wind and rain, as the weird flying craft became the helpless toy of the storm. Thongor told Karm Karvus to switch off the rotors, and helped Princess Sumia and the Tsargolan to fasten themselves securely to the stout walls of the cabin with a metal hook that passed through a loop of their leather trappings and locked into metal rings set into the wall.
"Thanks to the weightless urlium, the floater cannot descend," the Valkarthan said. "We shall therefore attempt to ride out the storm and retrace our path once its fury is abated." He locked his harness to another ring in the hull, and stood with them, stoically ignoring the whirling dance of the uncontrolled air-boat
Some time—perhaps hours later—a sudden blaze of lightning lit the sky around them with an enormous flash of blue light—revealing an awesome and terrible vista.
Dense black storm-clouds spilled about the hurtling floater, their upper tiers whipped to scudding tatters before the fury of the raging winds. And below, the wet black jungles had given way to level grasslands, smooth meadows broken only here and there by clumps of forest.
"We must be somewhere over Kovia," Thongor observed.
Karm Karvus nodded. "Or Ptartha," he said. "At any rate we are hundreds of vorn* from Patanga."
A thick shield of clouds again obscured their vision, and they hurtled on in darkness. Chilled by the dank rain, Sumia shivered, and the young barbarian detached the scarlet cloak from his broad shoulders and draped it about her slim figure.
"Have courage, my Princess," he said. "Very soon now the storm will pass, its energies dissipated. We shall be in your city of Patanga by midnight." She smiled tremulously at him, but then her dark lashes fell over her eyes and she slept. Karm Karvus also nodded and dozed, but Thongor remained on the alert.
Again the clouds parted, this time disclosing a dull, lead-colored shield below them, instead of the forests and plains of southern Kovia. This must be the Gulf of Patanga, the great wedge of water that nearly splits the Lemurian Continent in half. Or so Thongor hoped: surely the storm could not have driven them so far off their course that they were over Yashengzeb Chun, the Southern Seal But the terrible gale had continued now for more than five hours, and the intensity of its winds could not be measured. It might well be that they were by this time over the unexplored watery wastes of Yashengzeb Chun, the Southern Sea—if so, this meant that every passing moment carried them still further from the shores of the mighty Continent. And, by the time the howling storm abated and Aarzoth the Windlord ceased the clamor of his thunderous wings, they might be lost over the mysterious waves of the great ocean, where no Lemurian mariner, no matter how daring, had ever ventured.
Nor were they likely, in such a circumstance, to find their way home again; for, with the magnetic compass as yet only a rude toy, man's knowledge of terrene geography yet unborn, and these trackless seas haunted by titanic marine monsters of colossal strength and incredible rapacity, it was the virtual equivalent of suicide to penetrate far beyond sight of land.
The giant barbarian tightened his jaw grimly at the thought. But he did not remind his exhausted companions of this dire eventuality: he let them sleep on, undisturbed.
Then a flash of electric fire—a thunderous explosion—from the dense, boiling storm-clouds a writhing serpent of weird lightning blazed across the sky—to seize the helpless, hurtling air-boat in its fiery clasp.
For a long, terrible moment, Thongor felt the agonizing electric shock crash through his body. It shrieked through every nerve and muscle in his massive form. The floater hung suspended amidst a quivering, glowing nimbus of electric flame. Long sparks crackled and snapped from every sharp edge and projection of the flying craft's metal hull.
Sumia screamed at the lash of electric pain—Karm Karvus howled—even Thongor bellowed in the sizzling agony of the weird shock.
But then it was gone. It passed as quickly as it had come, and it left them numb and limp and half-paralyzed, shaken and drained of strength from the tingling impact of the thunderbolt. But rarely doth the celestial fire strike men, and then it almost always slays. Only the fact that their aerial craft was aloft—that it was not grounded—preserved them from instant death. The fury of the lightning bolt would otherwise have burnt them to black and cinderous corpses under such terrific voltage.
Thongor was the first to recover from the shock. His mighty frame and brute vitality were such that he could endure many times the punishment that would have crushed weaker, city-bred men. Raised from birth in the savage, rock-strewn wastes of the ultimate North, battling a grim war for survival against hostile nature and cruel beasts and yet crueler human foes virtually every instant of his life, his strength and endurance were all but superhuman.
Swiftly ascertaining that his two companions, although weak and shaken and unnerved from their ordeal, were not seriously harmed, the barbarian bent his attention to the condition of the air-boat Its gleaming urlium hull was scarred where the writhing bolt had clung, and long black smears marked its metal surface, but otherwise it seemed normal. The air in the cabin was thick with the tingling smell of ozone. Thongor unfastened his harness from the ring in the cabin wall, and went out on the deck of the hurtling floater. Instantly he was drenched beneath the icy deluge of the rain, and the insubstantial fingers of the wind plucked at him with terrific force. But the iron strength of his barbarian thews held him firm, clinging to the rail.
His premonition was correct. The Nemedis was sinking.
Through intermittent rents in the clouds beneath he could see the dully-gleaming waters rising slowly as the air-boat sank.
Thongor returned to the cabin and delivered this grim news to his companions. They stared at him, speechless.
"When the old Wizard, Sharajsha, repaired this air-boat, he told me something of the nature of the gravity-defying metal which Oolim Phon, the Alchemist of Thurdis, created. Its power to resist gravity is nullified by electric force, such as lightning."
"Is the nullification permanent?" Sumia asked.
Thongor shrugged.
"No one knows. Perhaps not. Perhaps the Nemedis will recover her ability to hover above the Earth in a little time.
At any rate, we are now sinking slowly. We are no more than seven hundred feet above the water now."
"Let us not give up hope," Karm Karvus said stoutly.
"Let us pray to the Nineteen Gods that before such time as the floater has completely descended into the Sea, the urlium will have regained the full anti-gravitic power with which the metal was originally imbued. We must wait—and hope."
As if in ironic comment on their new plight, the storm was now lessening its furies. The rain died to a mere occasional gust and the intervals between the flares of lightning became longer and longer. But the wind still drove powerfully, hurling the air-boat before it.
Before very much more time had passed, they were below the clouds, now only a hundred yards above the Sea. The force of the gale drove the waters into gigantic black billows, and even Thongor's iron spirit quailed as his imagination contemplated their fate, when they sank into that swirling chaos of foam and seething water.
Moment by moment the Nemedis sank lower, rolling against the gusts of wind sluggishly, her buoyancy almost gone.
Observing the failing wind, Surnia said hopefully, "Perhaps, if we do enter the waves, the winds will have died by then and we shall not have to contend with such billows."
Thongor shook his head, doubtfully.
At that moment, still another danger confronted the helpless travelers. A great glittering head burst through the black waves, eyes of cold evil hunger glaring up at them.
"Gorm!" Thongor swore softly.
"What is it?" the Princess cried, shrinking into the protective circle of the Valkarthan's powerful arms.
"It is the larth," Karm Karvus answered her.
The monster's head was almost as large as the floater. It was a blunt-muzzled snake-like bead, mailed in heavy scales of dull gray born. Its black eyes blazed with a fury of hunger. So vast was the dragon-like body of this marine monster, that its entire life was one unending quest for food to fill that screaming gulf of hunger. Now that it had seen the slowly sinking craft, the monstrous head was extended from the crashing waves on a long serpentine neck, swaying dozens of yards above the sea. The great jaws swung open, revealing a black empty maw lined with fangs fully six feet long, wicked curved scimitars of steel-hard bone.
"Can we fight it?" Karm Karvus asked.
Thongor slid his great broadsword from its scabbard with a rasp of steel.
"We can but try," he said, in a bold ringing voice. "For we can die but once!" And he roared out the great war—challenge of the Valkarthan swordsmen. The massive head of the sea-monster swung away, surprised.
Although the Nemedis was now only twenty feet above the tossing waves, it was still aloft and the winds still drove it on. While the monster hung, its tiny brain indecisive, the flight of the floater left it behind. But ere more than a few moments had passed, it roused itself and came after them, long serpent neck breaking the waves like the prow of some fantastic ship, churning the black waters to flying foam with gigantic claws.
The air-boat sunk still lower, so low that the foam-crested waves brushed its glittering keel. Within moments, the higher waves were breaking over the rail and water was sliding across the deck. The wind now dropped, although occasional flashes of cold lightning still exploded far above them among the dense clouds.
Thongor stood at the rail, the long-sword glittering nakedly in his right hand, and Karm Karvus, armed with a slim Tsargolan rapier, silently took his place beside his friend. Thongor bade Sumia retire to the cabin.
"Nay!" the girl said, her proud head lifting proudly. "If we are to die, it shall be together. And I can think of no better place to die than standing beside the man I love."
Thongor bent and kissed her once. Her white arms locked about his neck. He strained her against him, his blood rising in passion as her slim cool body was pressed to his. And then he broke away and thrust her into the cabin, turning the lock.
The larth was very close now, its snaky head looming above the ship, black eyes blazing madly with the lust for flesh and fanged jaws dripping with foam.
And in that moment the Nemedis struck the surface of the sea with a terrific shock. Black waves closed over the reeling deck. Thongor's hold was torn away and he was swept out in a swirl of wild waves.
The last sound he heard as the black waters closed above his head was Sumia screaming as the larth attacked the floater.
*The Lemurian equivalent of the mile: five thousand five hundred and fifty-five "strides".