Young Thongor

Young Thongor by Lin Carter Adrian Cole Page A

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Authors: Lin Carter Adrian Cole
heated irons to him. The irons still lay in a copper bowl brimful of hot coals, which still glowed amid pink ashes.
    Ylala took one look at what the heated irons had done to the old man, then turned aside. Thongor put his arm around her until she stopped shuddering.
    “Did you know him?”
    She nodded.
    “Was he of your tribe?”
    “No. He was an old wizard, named Zoran Zar, who lived in a tower in the hills. They brought him in this morning. I heard Barak boasting that he would soon have the secret of his gold out of him. He thought the wizard had a hidden treasure trove. Is he—is he dead?”
    “Quite dead,” said Thongor somberly. “There is one thing about him that bothers me.”
    “What is that?”
    “Look again at his face,” the youth advised.
    Steeling herself, the girl looked. Then she paled incredulously and looked away quickly.
    Thongor nodded. “I agree,” he grunted.
    Instead of being drawn with pain, the wizard’s face wore a most peculiar expression, considering how he had died.
    He was smiling .
    His lips were drawn back, exposing the rotted yellowish stumps of his teeth. His mouth grinned open. It was as if he had been just about to laugh when death took him.
    Thongor said nothing. Men do not smile—much less break into laughter—under the caress of red-hot iron. Only the bravest of warriors, the noblest of heroes, can endure such torment with stoicism. And Zoran Zar, surely, had been neither.
    It was strange, even uncanny. But there was much about this black castle that struck Thongor as uncanny, and he liked none of it. The gloomy castle, devoid of living inhabitants save for himself and the girl, its dark corridors weird with whispering echoes and crawling shadows, stank to him of magic.
    He did not like magic, nor did he like magicians. Young as he was, he had encountered both during his wanderings, to his discomfort. Give him a foe of flesh and blood, and put naked steel in his hand, and he would do battle as bravely as might any full-grown man. But how can you fight ghosts or curses or enchantments with naked steel?
    They went on, searching for some sign of life.
    Behind them, dangling limply in the iron chains, the dead man hung, turning idly this way and that as a gust of wind moved down the draughty halls. The skull-like face of the old man still bore the rictus of silent laughter.
    Thongor wished he knew what had made the old man smile.
    * * * *
    Within the span of an hour they had searched the keep from cellar to attic and found nothing that lived.
    One more corpse, crushed to death as if in the embrace of a giant, they found at the head of the stairs leading up to the watch-tower, but that was all they found, or almost all.
    Nowhere was there the slightest sign of battle, nor any token that men had fought against men in the dark halls and empty rooms. No discarded weapons or smashed furniture or spilled blood. Nor had there been any looting, for casks of gems and gold lay in the cellars untouched.
    It was inexplicable and frightening.
    Returning to the main hall, they stirred up the fire again, piled on fresh logs. Then, while the flames roared up, and Thongor went to close and bar the great gate, Ylala made herself useful in the kitchens.
    They ate before the flames, making a good meal from cold fruit, hot meat, fresh bread and rich, succulent gravy. They sampled, at first cautiously, then with enthusiasm, the thin gold wine of the Southlands, made from fermented fruit called sarn . Thongor had tasted wine but once before, while a prisoner in the enchanted city of Ithomaar; it had been too heady and exhilarating for one raised on the thin, sour ale of Valkarth. But this wine he liked, as did the girl.
    They exchanged few words, feeling uncomfortable with each other. Girls and boys in their tribes were rigidly excluded from each other’s company until of marriageable age. Only in the pits of Ithomaar had Thongor been alone with a girl before, and he did not quite know how to behave.

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