Last Train to Parthenia Read online

  “Your pardon, my queen.” It was the young slave who’d brought the coffee, standing respectfully in the doorway. “A messenger from Yogoroth is here. He would speak with you.”

  What now? Johnson wondered.

  L’Etoile rose to her feet. “Hide the amulet!” she hissed to Johnson.

  The messenger was a tall lean man in his thirties. He wore black robes and simple leather sandals. His head was shaved in the manner of acolytes. If he was surprised to see Johnson in his overalls and work boots in the royal chambers, he gave no sign.

  “My queen,” he bowed deeply. “The great Yogoroth has sent me to ask if there is anything you require for tomorrow’s nuptials—silks from the far countries, perhaps, gems from Hydrathistan ... He commands you—”

  “He commands me?” L’Etoile drew herself up to her full height. “Get out, you dog. Tell Yogoroth I will see him on the morrow. Go!”

  The acolyte backed out, leaving L’Etoile and Johnson alone.

  Johnson regarded the tower in which resided the wizard of Parthenia. He was beginning to enjoy himself. What was back in his world where Yogoroth’s tower now stood? Would it be possible to dynamite it without killing part of the population of Sydney? Then he remembered: dynamite never featured in Robert E Howard novels.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got any beer?”

  “Let me tell you my plan,” L’Etoile said as she summoned the manservant.

  It was a simple plan, which suited Bob Johnson, who’d always believed that simple plans were best. There was a secret passage, the young queen explained, that would take them from her apartments to the door of the wizard’s underground lair. Tomorrow, with the aid of the amulet, they would slay him as the sun rose, and she and the kingdom would be grateful to Johnson for ever.

  “If he is underground,” Johnson objected, “how will we use the amulet to kill him as the sun’s rising?”

  “His laboratory is built into a hill. But on the eastern side the land has fallen away to present an insurmountable cliff. The wizard, some whisper, likes to use the power of the moon to enhance his dark spells.”

  “Show me this secret way,” Johnson ordered.

  L’Etoile led him to one of the heavy tapestries that hung on the wall. She lifted the tapestry and pulled on a small metal ring set into the rock. With a grating sound, part of the wall slid back to reveal the beginnings of a staircase, cut into the stone.

  “This staircase goes down for one hundred steps,” L’Etoile told him. “Then there is a corridor three hundred paces long. At the end of that corridor is a stout oak door that leads to the wizard’s spell room. It is barred on this side.”

  Johnson was mystified. “Why build a secret passageway from the royal apartments to a wizard’s incantation room?”

  L’Etoile withdrew from the top of the secret staircase and worked the mechanism that closed the door.

  “Once, it is said, the reigning king had a great favourite. He loved her so much, “tis said, that he built that tower for her with its hidden door. But you must be hungry, warrior, after your great journey. Let us eat.” She pulled on the velvet cord she used to summon her servants and resumed her place among the cushions on the sofa.

  Johnson’s eyes took in the queen’s slender form as she settled herself once more upon the crimson velvet. He wondered how far being a great warrior from the outlands might get you in Parthenia.

  “And after lunch?”

  “After lunch,” L’Etoile answered as servants, led by Bildethius, came bearing great salvers of bread and fruit and a joint of meat, which they set out on the ebony table, “I am sure we can find something to while away the hours until four o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Johnson smiled as he settled himself among the cushions.

  With a clashing of tiny gears, the queen’s water clock chimed four hours past midnight. Johnson woke with a jolt and felt about on the bed.

  The young queen was gone.

  He rose from the rumpled bed and strode through L’Etoile’s apartments. The sitting room showed signs of a struggle. Near the fireplace a small ivory table had been overturned. One of the queen’s slippers lay by itself on the carpet beside an upturned candle sconce.

  Johnson cursed his capacity for the beer of every realm. He pulled on the velvet rope he’d seen L’Etoile use the day before to summon her servants. Bildethius appeared so quickly he must have been sleeping outside the door.

  “Where’s the queen?” Johnson shouted.

  “She is gone, my lord?” The servant gave no sign of surprise at seeing Johnson naked, clad only in the long string of pearls the young queen had hung about his neck during their lovemaking.

  “Search the palace from top to bottom!” Johnson shouted. “I fear the queen has been taken by Yogoroth before the appointed time.”

  Soon the palace echoed to the hue and cry of servants searching for their sovereign. Johnson pulled on his overalls and tool belt, poured a jug of water over his head to clear it and went out onto the parapet.

  The wizard’s tower gleamed in the moonlight. Johnson fished a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from a pocket in his overalls. As he stood, smoking, he caught sight of a strong steel hook lodged securely under the balustrade’s rounded top. From it hung a thick rope. The rope went down over the sheer wall and disappeared among the bushes of the palace garden, where now the lights of searchers’ torches showed through the trees. Johnson swore as he pulled up the rope.

  Bildethius reappeared. When he saw the rope in Johnson’s hand, he gave a low moan. “It is true then. That fiend has taken our queen!”

  “Leave me, Bildethius,” said Johnson, “I need to think. But continue your search of the palace gardens.”

  The servant backed away. Johnson strode to the secret door the queen had shown him. Catching up the queen’s ceremonial knife, he stuck it into his belt and, holding aloft a flaming torch pulled from a wall cresset, he stepped inside.

  The stone steps went steeply down. Johnson could not make out more than a few metres in front of him, but he trusted L’Etoile’s description and counted as he went. Just as she’d said, the steps ceased at the hundredth, and an arched passageway lay before him.

  Johnson held one hand out in front of him as he traversed the winding corridor. He was expecting to run into spiders’ webs, but the passageway was clear of them. It even seemed as if its floor had been swept in recent times. But the queen had said the corridor was known only to the royal family, and she was the last surviving member of hers.

  Johnson couldn’t see the imperious young queen wielding a broom. He put the question out of his mind and went on counting his steps. At the halfway mark of one-hundred-and-fifty he began to hallucinate. Was that soot on the walls? It couldn’t be.

  He began to wonder what he would encounter when he reached the wizard’s laboratory. Surely Yogoroth would not kill L’Etoile. He needed her to gain the throne.

  Johnson was pulled out of these thoughts by the stealthy tread of a person on the steps behind him. He rounded the next corner and an alcove revealed itself on his left, large enough for a man to stand in. He extinguished the torch and pressed himself against the alcove’s stone wall, muscles tensed to leap upon the would-be assailant when he was past.

  Whoever it was showed no light. Quietly the footsteps came on, with a surety in that pitch blackness that made Johnson’s flesh creep. How could this person—if it was a person—be so sure of his footing in this unknown place?

  When the assailant was one pace past, Johnson leapt from the alcove and knocked the unknown on the head with the butt of the extinguished torch. Then he pulled the queen’s knife from his belt and threw himself upon the fallen man.

  “My lord, my lord!” cried a familiar voice. “It is I, Bildethius!”

  Johnson fumbled in the pocket of his overalls for the lighter. The small flame showed him Bildethius’s face. “Ah, shit.” He got to his feet and relit the torch.

  Bildethius sat up on the corrido
r floor, rubbing the back of his head. “Sooth, sire,” he grinned,“I had thought to get your knife in my ribs.”

  “You know about the secret tunnel?”

  Bildethius smiled through his pain. “All the personal servants of royalty know about the passageway, my lord,” he said. “But Queen L’Etoile, it pleased her to think it was a secret, so I kept it that way. People of royal blood do not stop to wonder why the floors are swept.” He rose to his feet. “Let me come with you. The wizard is strong, and two are better than one. See? I have brought you this.” He picked up the broadsword that had fallen some distance away when Johnson had ambushed him. “Take it, sire,” he said, “for I know little of swordplay. It belonged to King Aeides. Also,” he fumbled in his loincloth and produced a small packet containing some kind of powder, “I have this.”

  Johnson hefted the torch to see better. “What is it?”

  “The dust from the black lotus that grows in the wizard’s garden. ‘Tis rumoured it gives protection from the Lost Ones of the Pit.” He pushed the small packet back into the top of his loincloth. “And now make haste, lord, for dawn will soon be upon us.”

  Johnson led on. He was having a good time. He tested the weight of the sword Bildethius had given him. A king’s sword, no less. At length, they came to a stout oak door bound in brass.

  “Notice, my lord, the strong bar that secures the door on this side.” Bildethius pointed. A great log had been cut in halves lengthways, and one of its halves dropped into iron slots set into the stone on either side of the door. “When our late King Aeides saw how Yogoroth was declining into loathsome practices and foul debauches, he had this replace the original lock that held the door.”

  “Okay, okay.” Johnson was edgy now that he was close to discovering L’Etoile’s fate. “Here’s the plan: you grab the queen, I’ll deal with the wizard. Get back here with her and bar the door. Wait for me in her apartments.”

  “But what of you, lord?”

  “Either I’ll kill Yogoroth or he’ll kill me. Either way my worries will be over.”

  The half-log bar lifted easily in the hands of two men. The door creaked open with a sound that made their hearts lurch. Beyond the opened door hung a tapestry, through which they could see into the wizard’s den.

  The room was hung with curtains of black velvet. On three walls candles burned in cast-iron sconces. The floor consisted of a mosaic, sombre but beautiful. Along one wall ran a bench covered in laboratory equipment. Potions in glass containers stood on the shelves that lined the walls behind the bench. Where the east wall should have been was a gigantic archway. Beyond that was open space, through which Johnson could see the sky.

  “You took your time, Johnson of Annandale,” a smooth voice said.

  The wizard was drinking red wine from a crystal goblet. He wore a long robe of gold silk and a matching cloak of gold velvet. His hair was long and flecked with grey. It was hard to estimate his age.

  “We are lost, my lord,” Bildethius muttered.

  Johnson looked around for the young queen. L’Etoile was sprawled on an altar, her clothes slashed. Her wrists and ankles had been tied with rawhide to chains that ran to iron rings set into the sides of the altar. A myriad scratches covered her breasts and stomach. Otherwise she appeared unharmed.

  “What kept you, Johnson?” the wizard asked. “For hours we have waited for you—haven’t we, my dear?” He walked over to the captive and ran his long fingernails across her breasts. She shrank at his touch.

  Johnson leapt from the doorway with sword extended.

  “Put that thing away,” Yogoroth said. “She is only a woman. What do you want with her?”

  Johnson paused. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “She is my pathway—and a very pleasant one, at that—to the throne of Parthenia. Or is that it, stranger—would you be king?” Bildethius emerged from behind the tapestry. “Ah, I see you have brought Aeides’ faithful pup with you.”

  The young servant seemed frozen to the spot. “How did you know we were coming, dread lord?”

  Yogoroth pointed to a small table, its legs constructed of human thigh bones. On its copper surface stood a large ball of clear quartz.

  “You thought it was a myth, didn’t you, Johnson—wizards and their crystal balls? When my acolyte told me the queen was entertaining a strange warrior in her apartments, I dusted it off, and lo!”

  The wizard struck the ball lightly with the staff he held in one hand. The surface of the ball grew cloudy, then L’Etoile’s apartment appeared. Johnson could see clearly the queen’s small silk slipper, the overturned table, the fallen candle sconce. And beyond, the queen’s bed.

  “Such things I have beheld these past hours before my servants spirited her away. Have you not done with her yet, Johnson of Annandale? I had hoped sometimes that you would leave something over for me and for my pet.”

  “You could’ve had me killed while I slept.”

  The wizard gave a short, sharp laugh. “That would not have been nearly so amusing. Imagine, Johnson: for years I waited for that fool Aeides to die. For years I lusted after his daughter, who never cast an eye on me except in loathing. Locked up in my tower reading parchments all day, consigning screaming peasant girls to death at the full moon—do you really think that’s much of a life. Well, do you?”

  Johnson took his chance and leapt towards the altar. Using the dead king’s broadsword, he began to slash at the rawhide bonds that held L’Etoile. He had freed one of her feet when a ray of light from the sorcerer’s staff knocked him to the floor.

  “Flee while you can, Johnson,” the wizard laughed. “Go back from whence you came. The girl is mine.”

  Johnson’s head rang. He fingered the amulet hidden under the sleeve of his overalls, but a glance through the open archway showed him only pre-dawn light. Somehow he must survive until the sun rose.

  Bildethius was edging towards the altar on which the queen lay struggling. Yogoroth seemed not to notice. He was walking over to a small brazier that burned on the laboratory bench. From an open bowl he took a spoonful of black powder and threw its contents onto the brazier’s fire. Bildethius reached the altar and began hacking at the remaining thongs that held the queen.

  As Johnson dragged himself to his feet the sorcerer spoke. “You don’t understand, do you, Johnson? You think you’re in love. But I am not so blind to reality. I care not how many slake their thirst on her. It is my plan to take this vain queen and turn her into the Whore of Parthenia. People will talk of her depravity for centuries to come—”

  “Never!” L’Etoile screamed. “There is nothing you can devise that will persuade me!”

  Yogoroth smiled. “You’ll learn.”

  Dense black smoke had begun to issue from the brazier. The smoke rose in coils towards the ceiling, forming a column ten feet high that hung in the room. The wizard prodded the column with his staff and muttered an incantation. The column of dense smoke began to solidify. Gradually it took the shape of a huge man covered in scales. His head was shaped like a snake’s, his forked tongue flicked in and out, tasting the air. He stood on two legs. A long tail hung down behind him.

  L’Etoile gave one cry, “The Snake Man of Dagon!” and fainted away.

  “That is no good,” Yogoroth said. He seized a jug of water from the bench, glided across to the altar and dashed the water into the queen’s face. “We want her awake, don’t we, Johnson? When he is finished with her, she will come gladly into my arms, will gladly do whatever I bid, knowing this fiend is mine to command. Mind you leave her undamaged,” he told the demon. “I intend to breed her with him,” he said to Johnson. “Their issue would be pretty, would it not?”

  Johnson sprang towards the wizard with sword extended. The wizard gestured. A second bolt of light shot from his staff, and the sword flew from Johnson’s grasp. Still Johnson came on. Like a running back on a football field, he tackled the wizard. They fell to the floor together, rolling and grappling on the mosaic.<
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  The huge snake man was advancing on the altar, intent on the queen, who’d regained consciousness when the water hit her. When the monster was barely a metre away, Bildethius sprang from behind the altar and struck him a blow with the scimitar that would have decapitated a man.

  The snake man was undamaged. He batted Bildethius out of the way, raking the side of his head with talons that drew blood. Bildethius regrouped and rushed to the other side of the altar. He managed to sever the last of the young queen’s bonds, but now the snake man was upon her. He shoved her back, fighting and screaming, onto the altar.

  With trembling hands Bildethius produced the black lotus powder from the packet in his loincloth and blew it into the monster’s face.

  The snake man gave a horrible cry and reeled back from the altar. The queen leapt free and ran for the door to the corridor. Before Bildethius’s horrified eyes the demon began to dissolve. Great globs of grey mucous and silver scales fell onto the mosaic.

  “The corridor, Bildethius!” Johnson yelled, still struggling with the wizard. “Bar the door behind you!”

  Yogoroth released Johnson and reached for his staff, which lay some distance away on the floor. Seeing his intention, Johnson leapt for the staff and seized it, but he had no idea how to use it.

  “My lord, my lord!” L’Etoile cried.

  Yogoroth had regained his feet and was hurrying across the chamber, intent on reaching the door to the corridor before Bildethius and the queen. Johnson hurled the staff across the room like a javelin. It struck the wizard squarely between the shoulder blades. He fell to the floor, gasping for air. Bildethius and the queen disappeared behind the tapestry that hid the door to the secret tunnel.

  “Bar the door!” Johnson shouted to Bildethius.

  The wizard dragged himself to his feet and stumbled to the doorway. As he ripped aside the tapestry the door clanged to. There came the dull thud of the log bar landing in place on the other side.

  The wizard hurled himself against the door, but it was as Bildethius had said: it would take a battering ram to bring it down. He whirled on Johnson.

  “Fool! Your interference merely postpones my triumph. I command the army and while I live they dare not disobey me.” He reached towards a velvet rope, intending to summon men to knock down the door.