Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria Read Free Page A

corridor and through the guardroom, where the fat jailer lay unconscious, and on through a maze of well-lit but empty corridors until Aid Turmis halted before a small, low door.
    “You can get out into the side street this way,” he said.
    Thongor nodded. “My thanks to you, Aid Turmis. I shall not forget your friendship.”
    “Nor shall I, and I shall miss you at the Inn of the Drawn Sword hereafter. But now—hurry! You can steal a zamph from the prison stables and get out the Caravan Gate before the alarm spreads.”
    “Aye.”
    “Where shall you go, Thongor?”
    Thongor shrugged. “Wherever they need a strong arm and a good sword. Kathool, perhaps, or far Cadorna to the east. I know not and care but little. A good swordsman seldom need starve for lack of employment.” A rare expression of seriousness made Aid Turmis look solemn—he who was usually laughing and merry.
    “It has been a long road together, with many good tunes along the way, but I guess it ends here. Well…farewell, then, chanthar. Farewell, warrior. I doubt that we shall meet again, Thongor of Valkarth.”
    Thongor set one great hand on his comrade’s shoulder and gripped in the hai-chantharya, the warriors’ salute.
    “That lies in the lap of the Gods, Aid Turmis. Mayhap our paths will yet cross again. Farewell!” he growled.
    He clapped the youth on one bare shoulder, then swung though the small door. His great black cloak bellowed behind him as he melted into the thick purple shadows of the cobbled street beyond and was gone.

CHAPTER 2
    Black Wings Over Chush
    The War Maids ride the iron sky—
      Come, brothers, either slay or die!
    A dark wing sank as each man fell,
      To bear our spirits home to hell!
    —War Song of the Valkarthan Swordsmen
    Beyond the door, Thongor found himself in a narrow alley between the citadel and a vast warehouse. At the end of the passageway, he could see the stables. Behind the huge pens the great dragon-like shapes of the zamphs stirred. Two bored guards lounged against the rail, watching the huge beasts. Their backs were to Thongor, and with a single stroke he could probably…
    With a metallic scream the alarm gongs sounded. Thongor choked back a curse. The daotar’s men had reached his cell and found it empty—or had seen the unconscious jailer. The alarm had sounded just a moment too soon, for in a few steps he would have been up to the guards and could have slain them. Now, however, they were alerted, and with drawn blades they stood on either side of the gate to the pens. Other guards hurried from the rear portal of the citadel to reinforce the stable guards. An escaped prisoner would, or course, seek to steal a mount the very first thing.
    Thongor ground his teeth with a bitter Valkarthan oath. They could not see him here in the thick darkness of the alley, but how in the name of all the Nineteen Gods was he to get away? Desperately he cast his eyes from side to side—and then glanced up. A slim metal shape met his gaze, gleaming in the light of roof torches.
    A malicious gleam danced in Thongor’s golden eyes. The very thing! There on the roof of the citadel was moored the only prototype of the Sark’s new “floater,” the marvelous flying boat with which Phal Thurid planned to conquer the whole of Lemuria. The Sark’s cunning alchemist, Oolim Phon, had devised the weird airboat out of urlium, the weightless metal. It was driven by simple rotors, and although the Valkarthan had not the dimmest notion how to pilot the strange craft, he would soon learn. And what a stroke of fortune! To escape by the Sark’s prized airboat—the only one in existence as yet! It would fly him over the towers and walls of Thurdis and far beyond, faster than the swiftest zamph in Phal Thurid’s pens.
    With a keen eye he measured the citadel’s wall. The fortress was built of great blocks of gray stone, half the height of a man, with an inch or so of space between them. Accustomed from boyhood to climb over