Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

With both hands and all his might Cormac mac Art drove his sword into the mage’s back, through his body, and into the shield.

On her knees, Samaire faced him across the spitted body. “Gods,” she murmured, and shivered.

The writhing form of the wizard strove to break the impaling prison. Like claws his hands tore at the sand. Suddenly he changed again, into a whipping lunging serpent, but still he could not break free. Again he resumed man-shape, and put back his hands in an attempt to tear the blade free of his back.

“My next shield,” Cormac muttered, “will have a sharpened boss!” He grunted the words with exertion; With the flat of Wulfhere’s ax he struck his sword’s upstanding pommel. The sword seemed to shorten as its tip drove farther into the buckler. No splintering sound came; the shield held. Again, Cormac struck.

Wulfhere sat up, touching the small trickle of blood that ran down from under the helmet that had skinned his head, even with its shaggy mop of hair, before the unnatural force of Thulsa Doom’s blow.

“Odin and Thor and Woten and Thunor, my he-by all the gods! What are ye about, Wolf?”

“Carpentry.”

Cormac stood over the wizard who was helplessly impaled, face down, betwixt sword-hilt, and stout shield. Bas and Samaire, the one sitting dazedly as Wulfhere and the other on one knee, stared at the constantly moaning, twisting mage.

“Making fast one who cannot be slain,” Cormac said in a sepulchral voice. “Thulsa Doom: You are my prisoner!”

Chapter Nineteen:

Doom-heim

“In times more ancient than we count,” Bas said, “an exile from Atlantis found employment as weaponman in a land called Valusia. Time came when he made challenge to the king, and brought defeat and death on him, and the Atlantean was king over Valusia. His name was Kull. Trusted counsellor to him was a man named Tu; just that: Tu. I am… I was Tu, as I have been others since, in the endless cycle of birth and death and rebirth. And Cormac, who has been others as well, is and was Kull.”

Wulfhere Skullsplitter of the Danes gave ear in silence. This talk was alien to that which he had been taught, but others of the beliefs he’d held true had been shaken, more than once. Father Odin… will I not dine and drink with you, but return once more in another body to live another life on this same Midgard?

Brian, too, listened, and Samaire. She believed. She knew ; certainty was upon her that she had known Cormac mac Art in a life lived out before this one. Though actual memory was not there, knowledge was. She had not been attracted instantly to him; she had recognized him, as did others who liked or loved at first sight. Whether she had been of Atlantis or Valusia or indeed had known of Kull or no, she did not know. It mattered not; afore now she had known the life-force that had been Kull, and Conan, and Cormac, and others. The when of it was of no import. Now was important. This time, and the time to come. Nor did she assume there had been or would be ease; this life-force to which hers was connected throughout time was a volatile one.

Cormac was most likely Cuchulain himself , Brian mac Dairb thought, and was glad and proud.

“A great enemy and plotter against King Kull,” Bas who had been Tu went on, “was Thulsa Doom. In no less than four several plots did Kull foil the wizard and put defeat on him, though in each wise Thulsa Doom prevailed for a time. On two occasions did the king like to lose his life to this unrelenting enemy. And eventually Kull and Tu and a mage on Kull’s behalf won the final victory-on the isle where we’re just after being.”

At those reminding words all looked back to where Samaire-heim was receding behind their ship-very slowly, in the gentlest and most unsteady of little breezes.

There were but five of them, and their captive, and Quester was both large and well-laden. Not for them was the using of oars. Cormac and Wulfhere did give constant attention to sail and rudder. Bas had promised better winds; they had learned to listen to Bas, and to believe.

The druid spoke on.

“There Thulsa Doom was left, trapped by sorcerous bonds; the bondage of a body without hands or feet or voice. There he existed for eighteen thousand years. Then those forces that control such matters brought Thulsa Doom’s ancient enemy himself to the isle, and another too; Cutha Atheldane from Norge. It fell out that Cormac himself proved the instrument of the wizard’s release, for it was you slew the serpent, son of Art. Thus was liberated the wizard’s life force-and in time he found a home in the body of Cutha Atheldane. With his powers he replaced it with one like his own, of old, though it’s Cutha Atheldane’s robe he wears yet. It was on him then to remain yet, for there was no means of leaving the island.”

“Doom-heim,” Wulfhere muttered, for all had been happy to rename the isle that had eaten so many men.

“He used that time of his further incarceration,” Bas the Druid said, “to practice his dark arts, and raised the dead as his legion. All else we know.”

“Vengeance over eighteen thousand years!” Brian said in a voice quieted by awe.

“Was all that sustained him,” Bas said, with a glance at the wizard. Though it made or kept him less than sane , he mused, while that hideous travesty of a face clashed its lipless teeth in fury.

“And the vanishing?” Samaire asked. “Those several times he vanished whilst we laboured to place the dead aboard Amber Rowan , when we saw only the buckler impaled by Cormac’s sword, and the mage both there and not there?”

Laden with their dead, Amber Rowan wallowed behind them, slowing them the more.

“Of old,” Bas made reply, “Thulsa Doom effected escape into another dimension, a sort of world parallel to this and not unlike it and yet different. There he is invisible to eyes from this world of ours. That explains his disappearings; he sought similar escape from us. But his body holds him. Sword and shield held him fast, pinioned between them in the only way he can be held. Was Cormac saw the key to this, when he pinned him that morn in the corridor beneath the castle of Kull.”

“He will… attempt again?” Brian asked.

“Yessss,” Thulsa Doom hissed in rage, and he vanished from Quester .

“He be still here,” Cormac said grimly.

“During the night he somehow gained control of Findbar,” Samaire began, after their awestruck silence and Cormac’s words of certainty. But Bas shook his head.

“Nay. He was Findbar. Rather he was not; he slew Findbar and assumed his form. Mayhap Findbar rose to fare outside for a natural reason-and such was his mental state by then he paid no mind to our one overweening rule. Or flaunted it.”

“He paid,” Wulfhere said in a rumble.

“Aye. Then did he return-but he was Findbar mac Lirchain no more. One by one, he gained control of the minds of the others-”

“Why not us? Brian demanded.

“Mayhap only we were too determined of purpose,” the druid said.

“Too staunch,” Cormac mac Art said.

“Too loyal to yourself,” Samaire said, looking at him.

Cormac glanced at Brian, and he thought of Lugh, who had been loyal, and who had been of them, and who was dead for his determination and staunchness and loyalty. Brian’s face had gone dour again, and none doubted but that his thoughts were again on Ros. Brian, Cormac reflected without pride or comfort, was young; he’d not experienced the loss of friends and comrades-at-arms again and again. It never became commonplace and easy; that it was now so readily bearable, Cormac thought, bespoke the existence of as many inner scars as he bore on his body.