Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

And so they were noted and exclaimed over-along with the excited words of Ros and Brian, but one of whom was so much as a score of years of age.

Others remained outside in the still-warm sunlight of early fall.

With his soiled robe flapping in a little breeze, Bas walked away to be alone with himself and his gods. Cormac sat on a rounded stone, heedless of his wounds. Someone or other had salved and bandaged them; someone or other not Samaire. Again and again he examined and worked at his doffed coat of linked steel chain, though he was hardly aware of what he did. Cormac spoke not now to gods; he was alone with his thoughts.

Samaire, too, had remained outside. Around the castle she had walked, into the shadowy gloom betwixt it and the cliff. Her helmet of lacquered and bronze-studded cowhide she had removed, so that her wealth of orange-and-gold hair stirred about her shoulders and bounced when she walked.

Cormac noted well her departure, while making sure his noticing went unnoticed. He assumed she had gone to relieve herself; it was no privacy she’d had on the ship, and soon they’d be aboard again. Morosely, he ruminated.

Thulsa Doom.

Thulsa Doom, Doom, Doom, Thool-sah… Doooommmm. The name and its ominous sound pulsed within his head like a gloomy drum, thrumming there and somberly booming. Thulsa Doooommmm…

What was a Thulsa Doom?

Who was Thuls-

He knew.

He saw . It was what his former crewmen had called “the remembering” that was upon him once again; the pictures, the words and memories or “memories” within his brain.

A bronzed hand tore away the shielding veil from a tall, spectrally thin man in a dark, well-made robe. A woman screamed; white faces, including those of soldiers in uniforms and with weapons unfamiliar to Cormac mac Art, shrank bank. Revealed behind the veil was the face of the living man in the robe. But it was no living face; it was a bare white skull, in whose eye sockets flamed livid fire!

Cormac heard … a voice thrumming in his mind as if in an echoic cavern, and he knew that this was the voice of the faceless man…

“Aye, Thulsa Doom, fools! The greatest of all wizards and your eternal foe, Kull of Atlantis! You have won this tilt, but beware, there shall be others.”

Cormac saw that death’s head man burst the cords that bound him; saw him swing to stalk, dark robe whirling and flapping about his heels to the tall ornate door. The back of his head, too, was the skull of a man long dead. Cormac saw a sharp blade transpierce the tall figure… and emerge unblooded. Seated on a stone on a lonely island plain incalculable years later, Cormac saw the skull-faced mage turn, saw him laugh, heard him speak, sneering-

“Ages ago I died as men die! Nay, I shall pass to some other sphere when my time comes, not before. I bleed not, for my veins are empty… Stand back, fool, your master goes. But he shall come again to you, and you shall scream and shrivel and die in that coming!”

Cormac saw…

The skull faced wizard step to a door bordered all about with squared, runic decor, and pass through it, and… vanish.

He heard… a man’s voice-what man? Could there be men with names such as Ka-nu, and Tu?

Aye, there had been, time out of mind.

“Next time we must be more wary, “ one said, within the mind of the seemingly stricken mac Art, “for he is a fiend incarnate-an owner of magic black and unholy. He hates you, for he is a satellite of the Great Serpent.”

“Me? Hates me? I broke? I broke his power, I? But I am… I am…”

“He has the gift of illusion and invisibility… you must beware of Thulsa Doom, for he vanished into another dimension, and as long as he is there he is invisible and harmless to us… but he will come again.”

Dimension? What other dimension?

What is a “dimension”?

And Cormac saw…

…a death-duel with swords, all shrouded in a swirling eerie mist not of nature born. One man fought with a green-glowing blade, and his face was a pallid, awful skull… Thulsa Doom once again! The other man Cormac could not see… the other man was himself.

And they fought well and with the clangour of blades of steel within the mist, and the wizard’s flashing green glaive was ensorceled, so I (he? I? He? He is I; I was he; I am he!) contrived to switch swords, warned by some shade or god from without the machina and aye, he was stronger at once, for the enchanted green brand of the wizard drank the source of life and energy itself, and gave it to the wielder that he became ever more strong and virile.

Cormac spoke aloud, dully, sitting and staring down at the earth. His voice was that of an old and weary man.

“And I grew strong and he weak, until he was drained. Then sank he down into naught but dust for the fickle winds to play with. For dust he was or should have been afore, a man long dead, a servant of… a servantish minion of… ka nama kaa lajerama! ”

Well away along the plain of the Castle of Atlantis, another robed man with knowledge arcane stood, ruminating. At sound of those words he whirled about. A great look of surprise, of astonishment was writ on his well-boned face… well-boned, but fleshy that face, and not unpleasant to look upon, while his robe was of Nature’s green, not night-dark like that of the mage whose age was measured in millenia. A servant of the gods of men was this man, not of rustling spiteful serpents who must ever hate the race possessed of voices and legs.

“ Ka nama kaa lajerama ,” Bas repeated. “ La ka nam’an vorankh amarejal! ” Sweat stood out on the druid’s brow as he stared at the hunched and slackfaced Cormac mac Art. “And he thinks he be but a descendant of that great ancient Kull, King Kull, that once and always King Kull! For it is all the same, Celt and Kelt, the Keltoi of the Greeks and the Celtii/Keltii of the Latins. All the same: Cormac and Kull, Cull and Kormak!”

The druid shook as with palsy. He murmured on, “And that I, I , Miall’s son Bas of Tir Conaill, am alive at this time, and him alive and abroad in goodly body once more. Aye… and menaced!”

Bas the Druid strode to the seated, bowed man. His hand fell gently on Cormac’s shoulder.

Up jerked a dark head, and eyes like ice from within the crevasses of their slits stared wildly up at Bas. “Tu! It’s he! We must-”

Cormac broke off. Bas waited a moment longer, feeling his own hand quiver on that powerful shoulder. He saw Cormac’s eyes come into focus. Then the druid said what he had come to say, what he must say.

“Cormac mac Art! You are in more danger than any man on earth, for a timeless master of evil and illusion has marked you for his own. Vengeance he seeks, not on you whom he knows not in this life, but on him ye once were. Cormac mac Art! I who was there too, as councillor and enemy of the same enemy… I shall not leave your side, for sword and prowess alone will not prevail against the one who seeks grim vengeance from a time so far removed from this that men have not the numbers to count the years!”

Cormac did not move; it was as if the powerful weapon-man did not hear, so lost was he in visions and memories that were not memories, and voices of the past that was never past, never wholly gone, but one more portion of the flowing river of the eternal present.

With a hand on the shoulder of ‘that seated, hunched man, Bas looked about. His chin rose and he put back his shoulders. The robe flapping like massy foliage in the wind, he strode to the far corner of the Castle of Atlantis. The druid looked into the gloom alongside it; he spoke into the gloom.