The Star Magicians
Lin Carter
PROLOGUE
FOR 6,000 YEARS the great Carina Empire controlled the larger part of the Milky Way Galaxy. But slowly it yielded before the remorseless erosion of centuries. And as it weakened, the power of the wild, untamed barbarians of the Rim grew stronger. For a time, the inevitable was staved off by a brilliant stroke of political genius. The Emperor Rinald Tenth, the extraordinary mastermind of his age, commissioned the Rim Barbarians themselves to patrol the very stars they menaced. It was little more than a disguised method of buying safety with tribute, but it worked—for a time.
Over generations, the Imperial line ran out in weaklings and soft degenerates, and the Sacred Blood no longer brought forth leaders like Carmion or Rinald or Diovar. More and more the princelings of the fading Empire in eclipse came to rely on the mighty “Barbarian Legions”—now so powerful they had a major voice in the Imperial Council. At last, the Barbarian Legions dominated. At their whim they could depose or create Emperors. And finally came that dreaded day when the Imperial Treasury could no longer pay the gigantic tribute. The legions struck … and, in a single day and night, the mightiest Empire in galactic history fell in a ruin of flame and thunder.
In the ages that followed, the Empire decayed. Province by province it fell apart into Star-Kingdoms. Torn by rivalry and civil war, as competing Star-Kings and Cluster-Lords struggled for the lost Imperial diadem, the fragments of the Empire lost touch. Communications were failing. Trade declined. Technology ebbed and entire sciences were lost, obscured in the darkness that was closing over the once-great civilization like a tremendous wave of darkness.
The civilization of the Galaxy was disintegrating, while, by an ironic trick of destiny, the Barbarians themselves remained the most monolithic power among the Near Stars. In their huge nomad fleets, these Star Rovers (as they came to call themselves) wandered at will from star to star, hastening the collapse of interstellar culture. No planet could stand against them. Their fleets drifted the star-trails, looting, destroying, crushing everything that stood in their way.
One world alone stood against the dark night of savagery that was engulfing the stars. Barren and small, rocky, desolate, inhabited only by a tiny band of ascetics called The White Adepts, the mystery-world of Parlion alone held out. The Adepts preserved the lost science, working technological miracles that seemed magic to the half-civilized worlds of this latter day. Tirelessly they strove in secrecy and darkness, using their powers of scientific wizardry to reshape history and forge the Empire anew.
Yet even their strange, awesome powers dwindled to smallness before the overwhelming armed might of the Star Rovers. World after world the barbarian Rovers laid seige to, and conquered, pausing only briefly to loot the wealth of the planets they took, before moving on to another prey.
Then came the rich trader’s world of Argion.
Then came—Calistor, the White Wizard.
1.
SCARLET SANDS
ON THE SIXTH PLANET of Havory 36, a binary star in the Wyvern Cluster, the last scene of a tense drama was being acted out on the bloody sands of the arena, to the south of Argion City.
The double sun blazed down on crowded tiers of stone seats, and flashed from barbaric ornaments of rare metals, the gem-studded hilts of rapier and laser gun, the rich banners of stiff silk blazoned with Clan heraldries. The throng that filled the stone benches was mostly composed of the conquerors, the Star Rovers and their captive women. But here and there among the crowd could be seen a few native Argionids in their distinctive feather-robes … traitors and quislings who joined the star-traveling barbarians at their triumphal games, hoping to curry favor with the new lords of Argion planet.
Although the crowd had been drinking heavily and the men were hoarse from shouting, all was still in this suspenseful moment. The throng gazed down in delicious anticipation … waiting for the moment of death, when the bright sands below would drink hot red blood.
In the center of the arena, the naked Argionid swordsman blinked sweat and blood from his eyes, narrowing them against the sun-glare. His gaze was riveted on the monster thard and his brawny hand tightened on the worn hilt of his longsword, knuckles whitening. A dozen paces from where he stood, the beast crouched, belly scraping the sand, motionless save for the uncontrollable twitching of its twenty-foot tail, which bristled with thorny spikes. Its brass-colored, bird-like beak gaped hungrily, foam dripping from scaled jaws, flaming eyes glazed with fury.
The Argionid was superb: a blond titan, thewed like the bronze statue of the hero Lionus that stood before the arena gate. Although little more than a youth, he was tall, and for all his well-muscled bulk he was lithe and quick-footed as a jungle-cat. For seventeen Carina Standard minutes now the youth had successfully evaded the frenzied lunges of the monster reptile. The marks of his agile bladework showed: dribbles of green blood marked the thard’s blue-and-yellow-mottled hide. And along its back, where the spinal ridge of jagged horns rose bristling, several had been sheared away. The young swordsman himself had received only one wound, a narrow slash across the brow. Slight though it was, it would prove his undoing, for the blood was running down into his eyes, blinding him. He blinked again, as the scene swam in a red haze before him.
In the stone rows, the thronged barbarians held their breath, waiting—for, despite his valiant efforts, the longsword was useless against the giant strength of the thard, mailed in tough scales that were proof against anything less than a sizzling laser-bolt.
This the swordsman knew well. His only hope lay in tiring the monster. And this seemed an empty hope, for the jungle dragons of Argion planet were tireless engines of muscle and bone.
The blood flowed steadily, trickling into his eyes, the salt-stinging gore drawing tears that blurred his vision to a swimming haze. He blinked his eyes clear again, knuckles tautening on the sweaty sword-pommel. At any second now the thard would charge again …
Above, in the royal box, Drask reclined at his ease on the satin cushions, half his cynical attention on the tragic drama unfolding below, and half on the trembling young girl beside him, whose nude breasts he was idly fondling. A philosopher in his rough way, the Warlord of the Star Rovers mused on the changeful ways of Fate. In this moment of time the young Argionid swordsman was filled with robust life, bursting with manly vigor in the full hot morning of his youth … in the next moment, his splendid, virile body would be an awful bundle of bloody rags, crushed in the inexorable jaws of the slavering thard.
We are toys at the feet of the gods, he thought.
So it was, too, with the pale maiden at his side. But yesterday she had been the proud princess of a free world, daughter of the 76th Lord Argion, reigning merchant-prince of this trader’s world, heiress to a magificent fortune with half the princelings of the Near Stars bidding for her hand. Then, in a moment, all had been changed forever. Out of nowhere had come the star-wandering nomad fleets of the dread barbarians—the fury of battle, the ravening flame of planet-mounted laser-batteries—the buffeting thunder of mobile ship-to-planet hydrolithium bombs—and today she was the listless slave of the conqueror, a plaything, the toy of a moment, to be cast aside after he had had his amusement. And so sudden had the change struck, she still seemed dazed, stunned.