Free Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria by Lin Carter Page B

scented his hot blood with their cold reptilian senses. As the first slorg moved to confront him, he stepped forward and swung a vicious blow with his blade. The steel whipped through the elongated alabaster neck, and the horrible head thudded to the floor, tusks clashing against air, while the headless body writhed slowly in death agony.
    Now the others were upon him, a phalanx of green-glittering eyes and undulant pale bodies. Thongor turned and raced up the flight of steps to another floor. He prowled swiftly through several rooms without finding the Star Stone. Then the slorgs poured through the doorway in a cold white tide. His mighty broadsword reaped a bloody harvest among them.
    And then he steeled himself for a great heroic feat of courage such as few men are asked to attempt. He had now examined all the upper floors. It remained for him to go down through the lower levels, which meant he must make his way down the stairs covered with wriggling white serpents.
    Luckily he wore high boots. He went down the steps at reckless speed, slashing the slorgs from his path as they snapped and hissed at his booted legs. Perhaps the most awful thing about them was that it took them so long to die. Long after his sword had cut through their cold flesh, the heads were sinking their tusks in his boot-heels.
    He reached the lower floors drenched with cold sweat, and searched through many chambers, finding only heaps of ecclesiastic robes or sacrificial weapons, but not the great talisman he sought.
    And then a flood of slorgs poured hissing into the room, a flood of slithering white serpents so deep he knew there was no chance of making a path through them. He retreated from room to room, his broadsword dripping with slime and gore…
    In the last chamber his back pressed up against a rough and jagged surface. The Star Stone! It stood upon a low, unpretentious altar against the wall, a rough black mass of metal slag.
    Thongor seized the globe of cold metal, secured it under one arm, and retreated on before the rushing snaky tide. Up the stairs and down another long hall he went, fighting both the slorgs who advanced from below and the creatures who came at him from the darkness of each room as he passed them.
    He could move much faster than the sluggish, coldblooded nightmares. That alone had enabled him to preserve his life till now. He raced up the last flight of stairs before the oncoming tide, reaching at last the room to whose window the anchor of the Nemedis was hooked. Hurriedly he twisted the cable about the Star Stone and knotted it securely—but before he could climb out of the window, slithering coils closed about his legs. Sibilant voices sang death to him.
    He turned, kicking loose, and as he did so the anchor was jarred free, and the cable which was his own path to freedom and the clean airy heights above slid from his grasp. The anchor fell across the dark garden and the Nemedis drifted away.
    Slimy coils enfolded his body. But, although escape was now impossible, the Valkarthan’s fighting heart swelled with vigor. One last mighty battle before the end! With a ringing verse of the war song of the Valkarthan swordsmen on his lips, the giant barbarian turned to fight. Steel rang on cloven bone and thick reptilian gore splattered the walls as Thongor fought on—joyously, recklessly, but without hope.

CHAPTER 9
    Throne of Blood
    The Red Druids gradually attained to power in great Tsargol, until at last the agents of Chaos who worshipped their Triple God in his aspect as Slidith the Lord of Blood were all but supreme in the scarlet city that rose beside the thunderous shores of Yashengzeb Chun the Southern Sea…
    —The Tablets of Yathlazon
    Another dungeon , he thought with grim humor. I cannot seem to stay out of them!
    This one was small and damp, and it stank. It stank of sewage, and man-filth, and fear. And it was as uncomfortable as most jails he had been in over the years. He lay on his back in a huddle of wet,