Part 1

Duar the Accursed

By CLIFFORD BALL

_A surprizing tale about the Black Tower and the intrusion therein of a barbarian adventurer--a strange weird tale of the love of a queen for her enemy._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales May 1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Nione of the Krall Dynasty, ruler of Ygoth, for all her lithe beauty of rounded limbs, sat on her throne like a man, with an elbow resting on crossed knees and knuckles under chin. Before her a ring of guards surrounded a bareheaded man of great stature whose bronze, half-naked body was loaded down with heavy chains. Many scars and sword-cuts testified to the difficulty of his capture. The man stood insolently gazing over the Queen's head at the purple and gold of the tapestries as though something of great interest held his attention to their scarlet colors. The fair occupant of the throne, accustomed to bended knees and supplications, was rapidly losing her temper.

"Speak, dog!" she cried. "Find your tongue, or by Krall I'll have my torturers find it with the plucking-tongs!"

At last the captive deemed it best to answer. He did not hurry. His gaze wandered slowly from the walls to the guards, from the guards to the chains on his limbs, at which he stared as though in surprized discovery, and finally to the enraged features of Queen Nione of Ygoth.

"Faith," he said, and his tone was slurred and deep, "by the look of you you'd be a better warrior than a man's mistress!"

Around him his chains rattled as the guards gave nervous starts. The two women-slaves crouching at the foot of the dais turned as pale as their brown skins would permit. Queen Nione lost all of her regal bearing and some of her dignity.

"I am no man's mistress!" she shrieked like any fish-wife. "But you will learn before long who I am, creature! I'll brand my name on you with letters of fire!"

"And I'll carry it a long way, Your Majesty," interrupted the undaunted captive. A slight curl of his firm lips belied any humility.

"Only to the slave galleys, dog!" taunted Nione. "I see by the marks on your back you are not unacquainted with them. You've felt the weight of the lash before."

"Sure. And I've felt the weight of a crown, too, but perhaps a little less heavily, for the mark of it seems to be gone."

The prisoner smiled with a flash of white teeth that split the tanned grimness of his countenance like a beam of light over a dark battlefield. One of the guards jerked impatiently on a chain. The smile faded as the captive gave his captor a level stare holding the threat of death behind calm blue eyes. The guard shuffled his feet nervously until Queen Nione, watching the byplay, chose to become expressive.

"Fools! What have I in my guardsmen? Dancing-girls from Nyema?"

"Three of them danced into Hell but a little while ago," muttered the chained man.

"What is your name, O Mighty One?" mocked Nione.

"Men call me Duar."

The Queen of Ygoth relaxed on her cushioned throne as a wave of surprize swept the clouds of anger from her face. She raised one hand unconsciously to suddenly pallid features. If the guardsmen had been startled before, now they were certainly in panic, much as if they had captured one of the terrible white apes from the hills of Barsoom and were unable to let it go. Backing to the extreme limits of the chains they held, they attempted to go still farther without endangering themselves or their Queen by entirely releasing the iron bonds. Duar was forced to extend his arms as the chains threatened to pull him asunder.

"I see, Nione," he grimaced, "that even in this barbarous country men have heard of me." He shook his long mane of black hair impatiently. "Tell these jackals to ease my wrists before I tangle their bones in my fetters."

* * * * *

Nione motioned wordlessly. The guards stepped cautiously nearer to leave slack in the weights; but one careful fellow placed his unsheathed sword-tip to the back of Duar's neck and held it there.

"I bring your person no harm, Nione," continued the prisoner, "nor harm to your subjects. The three I killed I was forced to when they attacked me in the mountain pass. Faith, it's a fine welcome you give to visitors to your kingdom!"

"Duar, the Accursed!" breathed Nione. "What demon brings you here?"

"No demon, O Queen. Merely my roving inclinations."

"Demons have always prompted your inclinations, O Duar! Even in this secluded mountain kingdom have we heard of your familiars from Hell! Whence came the red rain of blood that covered the battlefield of Kor and blinded the eyes of the Sivian hosts while your followers cut them to ribbons? And where the giant black raven that flew above your pirate galley when you ravished the coasts of Krem? Why did the mountains of Fuvia shatter themselves over your castles while the mighty hurricane destroyed your villages and your fields as the raging seas finally obliterated the whole of the kingdom King Duar had raised with his pirate hordes? Why, O King who is now a slave?"

"Faith, and I know not," he answered. "Mine has been a strange life, it's true. Perhaps there is a destiny for me. I sometimes think that when I have swerved from the chosen path the Gods ordained, it is the very elements who rise to set me back. But I know little more than you. I have gone with the wind and the tide. When the Gods said I should be a king, I was, and a pirate I became likewise."

"It is easy to blame everything on the Gods!"

"Why not?" inquired the prisoner, and his white teeth flashed again. "I came to this world without asking, but if I leave it 'twill be no fault of mine."

"Aye, O King and pirate and slave! Whence did you come? What far-off country saw your birth, you who have the height of the mountain men, the thin nostrils of the hordesmen of Kor, the black hair of the cavemen, the blue eyes of those who haunt the islands of the seas, and the swift strength of the dwellers of the plains? In all of our world there has never been born such a composite prodigy of nature. Or are you of our world? A demon, perhaps, in the guise of man? You were never a child--to human knowledge. Even the seers can trace you no farther back than your first battles, and your history is not in the stars. Whence?"

"Again I am ignorant, Nione."

The captive's eyes were pensive and his brow furrowed in thought. The ruler of Krall gazed at his features watchfully, but some of the sternness was gone from her face and only the slaves and the wide-eyed guardsmen noticed the easy familiarity with which the prisoner ignored the rightful titles of their Queen. The highest member of the court would have had his tongue torn from its roots for using such a form of address to the Queen of Ygoth.

"My first memories are of the clash and ring of metal upon metal in the heat of a great battle and sweat and blood on my face as I called our battle-cry. I was a mercenary on the field of Sate fighting in the service of the fool King Tærus, whom later I had the satisfaction of spitting on my sword."

"Over a dancing-girl!" concluded the Queen spitefully, and sniffed.

The captive shrugged but remained silent.

Nione contemplated the swordsman through half-closed eyes. Calmly he returned her gaze, and something in the depths of his fierce blue eyes caused her pulse to beat a little faster, and a faint flush tinged her alabaster cheeks.

"If," she asked finally, irritated at these signs of weakness in her august person, "my guards should conduct you in safety to the limits of my borders, on any side you desire, would you go--peacefully?"

Again Duar shrugged and the chains rattled. "Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps--not."

"You fool!" cried Nione, now crimson. "I am giving you your life! Know you I could have you impaled, torn apart, killed a thousand ways! I grant you mercy and you care nothing?"

"Mercy? For what? For defending myself from onslaught? From cruelty? Your eyes belie the name you seek to frighten with!" He sighed. "Almost I wish I were a king again!"

"Throw him into the Pits!" screamed the outraged ruler of Ygoth. "And--and put extra chains on him!"

As the guards led their captive away, the foremost stepping hastily before the long strides of the prisoner, Duar called mockingly back over his shoulder: "Beware, O Queen Nione, lest the red rain come and the black raven perch on the turrets of your castles!"

One of the guards dropped his end of the chain, whereat the captain, to hide his own fears, kicked him lustily as he stooped to recover it.

Nione stared, white-faced, as a peal of laughter rolled back from the dark corridor.

* * * * *

The Pits of Ygoth, far beneath the turrets and spires of the fair city above, reeked of the staleness and corruption of centuries. Age-old dampness permeated the foul atmosphere; small creatures of this dank underworld scampered and scurried just beyond the torchlights of the guards. The clanking of Duar's chains, now multiplied until even his mighty frame staggered beneath their weight, awoke echoes now near, now far, until it seemed to the small body of men that they were intruding into the haunts of all the long-dead kings and warriors of ancient Krall and their lost souls were girding up rusty mail for ghostly conflict.

"This one will do." The captain's voice was harsh.

Duar was pushed through a rusty barred door and flung into a corner, the crash of his irons shattering the stillness of the Pits for a mile or more throughout their silent depths. His chains attached to corroded iron rungs on the wall, he lay watching the last glimmer of torchlight fade from the damp stones as the muffled footsteps of the guards died away down the passage. Darkness rushed in triumphant, clashing against his eyeballs with almost physical impact.

The man who had been a king smiled into the black inferno. A memory of the alabaster features of Nione rose before him and the smile became a grin. He moved into a slightly dryer corner of the cell and stretched out his legs as comfortably as possible, removing some object that felt like a dried shinbone from beneath his spine. His chains grew quiet again. Something scuttled past the doorway and he had an impression of tiny, gleaming red eyes.

Duar slept.

* * * * *

He awoke with a sense of uneasiness, akin to the disturbed nerves of a jungle animal before approaching peril; not as a civilized man, drowsy from deep slumber, but instantly, fully cognizant of his surroundings and predicament. Only a slight twitching of his sword-arm answered his first nervous impulse to reach for the weapon that was not there.

Silence and everlasting night reigned where the cleanliness of the sun had never shone. Duar's straining eyes met only blankness and told his tense figure nothing, but his ears gave proof that even the scamperings and rustlings had stilled, and sub-consciously he knew some alien presence had frightened them away--a presence without sound, but his heart and brain and whatever intangible part of him men called the soul were clamoring a nerve-shattering alarm.

Suddenly tiny molecules of light flickered in the black chaos before him, twisting and tumbling in a circular area like separate parts, as if each held a tiny life of its own. They spread no beams to reveal the rude chamber; outside of their small circumference the dungeon remained as dark as ever, but within the whirling area of infinitesimal sparks an unearthly glow became brighter and brighter.

Duar had seen sorcery before over half the world, even in the black mountains of his own forbidding kingdom before the great walls fell to bury it for ever from the sight of man, but some intuition told him he was confronted by a hitherto unwitnessed demonstration. This, thought he, was a witch-fire. He sat quietly; he had not once moved a limb from the moment he awoke.

A voice came from the light, a sweet, soft, woman's voice that nevertheless, in spite of its obvious femininity, held undertones of power.

"Duar!" it called. "Duar! Do you hear, O Duar?"

"I hear you, devil," growled the man in chains. "What wizardry is this, you spawn of Hell, and what do you want of me?"

"Duar, my lord!" The scintillating area of light, if the unnatural glow could be described as light, expanded until it was nearly eight feet in diameter. The dethroned king felt terrific forces struggling in wild efforts for freedom there before him, but though the outlines of the circle quivered and writhed they held fast to their shape. Somehow the captive knew he should be glad that this was so; his barbarian blood felt the touch of fear.

"Duar, beloved, have you forgotten my voice in these few short eons?"

"What talk is this of love and eons?" growled the beleaguered man. "Faith, and I've never known the two to be associated outside of song! And if I had free hands with a sword in them I'd see what cold steel would find in that fire-ball of yours, demon or succuba, or whatever you are!"

"Perhaps if you saw me you would remember," said the sweet tones. "I had hopes----"

The center of the fire grew dim and blurred as a maid's breath blurs her mirror. Slowly, by degrees, appeared the face and figure of a woman--or a Thing resembling a woman.

"In the Name of----" gasped Duar, shocked from his philosophic calm at last.

"Nay, do not name the lesser Gods, O Duar," counseled the figure. "Rather, call on Him Whom you have the right to call on, the God of Gods, the Ancient One Who is older than the earth or men, He of Whom _you_ were the high priest!"

The words only half penetrated the captive's mind. He was staring at a vision that within the innermost chambers of his mind he knew could not have been born of human flesh. Her form was incased in one long robe of shimmering white, a robe of strange weave and texture to Duar's astonished eyes, held by a black girdle at the waist. The perfect figure beneath the single garment was obvious in every line and curve up to the white column of the shapely throat and the queenly contour of face and brow. Her raven-black hair fell in a long cascade over the proudly held shoulders. In the depths of her dark, hypnotic eyes swam all the black suns of the universe in a constant play of ebony light. Neither flaw nor blemish marred the ivory perfection of her features. Beauty incarnate in the Pits of Ygoth!

"Do you remember yet, O Duar?" she of the fire was asking. "Can you recall--the Name?"

The barbarian warrior who had never flinched before man or beast or devil placed his hands over his face and crouched in the corner of his dungeon as a thousand wild memories and desires crashed at his brain--_from within!_ The walls of the Pits seemed to shake, the very earth to tumble from its balance; great winds from the outer voids pulled and tore at his body. Or was it _his_ body, this form composed of flesh and blood that called itself Duar? For an instant he and the figure in white were high among the stars in the infinity of space, and earth and men and kingdoms were no more. He was about to see, to comprehend, some great knowledge.

Suddenly the universe began to spin. A black cloud from nowhere enveloped his brain and it became a blank thing. He was back in the Pits of Ygoth with a whirling light and the Thing that was too beautiful to be a woman.

"Failure, O Ancient One!" the voice was saying. "Again I have come too soon! How many more eons must your servant wait? How many more earths must crumble and suns grow cold before he remembers Shar, this poor earth-bound spirit that was once your greatest worshipper? Then, and then only, with his aid and the knowledge which is locked in his spirit, I may resurrect the truths so that your greatness and our elder race will prevail once more! How long?"

* * * * *

King Duar, now released from the power waves that had enmeshed his mind, became his bold self again. He set his eyes fiercely on the shining form, and although his limbs still shook from the internal holocaust he spoke bravely.

"Curse these hell-haunted dungeons where a man cannot even die in peace! And curse your chattering, woman--if woman you are! If I had but freedom and a sword----"

"Pity, O Duar! I never gave pity to anyone else, and the feeling of it is strange. You, who could have all the kingdoms of the world--yes, and of other worlds--and all you want is a sword!"

"With a sword I cut my own kingdom!" boasted Duar, undaunted. "With a sword I could cut your throat!"

"Poor Duar, housing a spirit too great for himself! Do you ever dream you are not as other men? That once, long ago, you were one of the Masters? I trailed you across time, O little man----"

"Little man!" exploded the fuming barbarian, his rage bursting all mental bonds and carrying away his power of coherent speech in a red torrent of madness.

"Losing the world and caring naught," said she of the light. "Losing a kingdom and caring naught. Losing liberty--all for the sake of the Rose of Gaon!"

The prisoner ceased to rattle his chains in his frenzy. With great gulps of the foul air he stifled the madness in his blood.

"How did you know that?" he whispered harshly. "How did you know what only I, the only living man on earth, had knowledge of?"

The figure smiled at him. "The only living--yes. But I am Shar, who knows everything save the knowledge locked in your spirit that belongs to another greater than common men, the knowledge of the high priest you once were and which you do not know you possess."

"Indeed you are a demon," grunted Duar.

"No demon. You have forgotten the arts. Demons are my slaves. It is a demon who guards the Rose of Gaon in the northwestern tower of Ygoth. If you must, go strike him down. Maybe combat with the evil forces will shrink this human flesh of yours and the true spirit will escape to join me and end my quest. Perhaps! Even I, Shar, cannot tell! Go."

"Go?" roared Duar. "You may go, you devil sent here from Hell to torture me! You may be as beautiful as the Devil's mistress, but if I could get my fingers on that white neck of yours----"

He rattled the mocking chains in an agony of despair.

"Those?" Shar smiled.

Suddenly a portion of the light circle broke away from the revolving main mass, and darting like a flash of steel in campfire light it touched the heavy chains on the prisoner's body. Amazed, the barbarian leapt to his feet as a hundred severed links of iron that had been his fetters clattered about his ankles.

"Go," said Shar, "to the Rose of Gaon and the demon in the tower. I will be watching, my lord, even as when I blinded your enemies in battle and guided your ship at sea. Perhaps even Time will relent its waywardness!"

Abruptly Duar stood alone in the blackness of the Ygoth Pits.

"Accursed witch!" he exclaimed aloud. "Rescue it may be, but no good will come of it! In another hour or two Nione would have been curious enough to send for me. Now where in the name of the Seven Gods is that door?"

* * * * *

The Queen of Krall braided her golden hair in preparation for retirement to the royal bed and smiled an appreciative commendation to her reflection in the jewel-studded mirror. She was fully aware of her beauty and exercised it on occasions before visiting diplomats. Before the nobles of her own court she retained the masculine manners of her dead father, and although she knew they penetrated her bruskness, she cared little. In her judgment there was no one in the kingdom of Ygoth fit to share the double throne.

As she completed the last plait and thrust the braids back, a vision arose before her of the statuesque adventurer she had that day committed to the Pits. He _was_ a handsome man; obviously interesting. A bold warrior, also, with a hundred legends to his record. Apparently a temper to match her own. Her thoughts strayed. If _he_ had been a noble of the court instead of the vagrant, dispossessed ruler of a buried kingdom!... A tinge of pink embellished her fair complexion. Nione, thinking like a courtezan!

Suddenly her eyes grew wide with terror and the blush became a pallor as reflected movement in the glass surface showed billowings in the draperies. Someone had entered, unannounced, the sacred precinct that was the bedchamber of the Queen. Her personal handmaiden had already been dismissed; the guardsmen outside would never have had the temerity to enter unless an alarm had been given. What danger stalked here? Assassination?

In spite of the trembling in her limbs and the pounding heart beneath her flimsy night attire, regal Nione of Ygoth spoke in a calm, authoritative voice: "What coward comes skulking in the dark?"

"One who resents the appellation, Your Majesty," replied Duar, stepping through the portieres, and still damp from the dungeons. His right hand held a sword, unsheathed.

However the apparition of a vengeful prisoner released in her boudoir may have affected Nione, there seemed to be more color to her cheeks and a returned ease to her posture as she swung to face him. In her heart she knew here was no assassin.

"Apparently my Pits are not deep enough!"

"Nor would be the pits of Hell if I wished to view Your glorious Majesty!"

"Nor my guards strong enough!"

"Nor guards, nor swords----"

"Whence came the one you hold?" asked the Queen, pointing to the bright blade Duar held at rest.

"The guard without, my Queen, is now without his sword." Again the white teeth flashed. "I was hungry and I could not find the kitchens. But as I wandered about, marveling at the splendor--and the inhospitality--of so magnificent a Queen, I perceived before these doors a certain belligerent person who rudely accosted me. When he became vicious I was forced to relieve him of his weapon. I trust his skull is not so badly cracked; I but wished to pacify his war-like inclinations."

Nione interrupted with a gale of silvery laughter. Her merriment, the thrown-back head and pulsing throat, momentarily swept his senses with a surge of admiration. Whatever Shar was, she might be, but here was something human!

"You burst the heaviest chains in my deepest Pits, find your way through endless corridors, wander through my halls at will and, unarmed, smite down one of the best warriors in my kingdom to force your way into the chambers of the Queen where no man has trod in years--then you apologize!"

She rocked in unqueenly mirth.

"You--are not afraid?" he asked softly.