textfiles/sf/argon.txt

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 This is a fannish legend.  It was discovered in an APA by a SF Bay Area
fan in approximately 1970, and has been passed on, as the transcriber's
note at the end mentions.  It has been the object of competitive readings.
The transcriber (not I) wishes to remain anonymous.

There are no copyright notices on the original, and it pre-dates the
current law, so it is NOT protected in any way.

There is a transcriber's note at the end.

			     THE EYE OF ARGON
			       by Jim Theis

     The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked 
climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the 
Norgolian empire.  Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting 
sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of 
earth.  The tireless sun cast its parching rays of incandescense 
from overhead, half way through its daily revolution.  Small 
rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily 
accomplishments of their dismal lives.  Dust sprayed over three 
heaving mounts in blinding clouds, while they bore the burdonsome 
cargoes of their struggling overseers.
     "Prepare to embrace your creators in the stygian haunts of hell,
barbarian", gasped the first soldier.
     "Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death, wretch!"
returned Grignr.
     A sweeping blade of flashing steel riveted from the massive barbarians
hide enameled shield as his rippling right arm thrust forth, sending a
steel shod blade to the hilt into the soldiers vital organs.  The
disemboweled mercenary crumpled from his saddle and sank to the clouded
sward, sprinkling the parched dust with crimson droplets of escaping life
fluid.
     The enthused barbarian swilveled about, his shock of fiery red hair
tossing robustly in the humid air currents as he faced the attack of the
defeated soldier's fellow in arms.
     "Damn you, barbarian" Shrieked the soldier as he observed his comrade
in death.
     A gleaming scimitar smote a heavy blow against the renegade's spiked
helmet, bringing a heavy cloud over the Ecordian's misting brain.  Shaking
off the effects of the pounding blow to his head, Grignr brought down his
scarlet streaked edge against the soldier's crudely forged hauberk,
clanging harmlessly to the left side of his opponent.  The soldier's stead
whinnied as he directed the horse back from the driving blade of the
barbarian.  Grignr leashed his mount forward as the hoarsely piercing
battle cry of his wilderness bred race resounded from his grinding lungs.
A twirling blade bounced harmlessly from the mighty thief's buckler as his
rolling right arm cleft upward, sending a foot of blinding steel ripping
through the Simarian's exposed gullet.  A gasping gurgle from the soldier's
writhing mouth as he tumbled to the golden sand at his feet, and wormed
agonizingly in his death bed.
     Grignr's emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the wallowing soldier
struggling before his chestnut swirled mount.  His scowling voice
reverberated over the dying form in a tone of mocking mirth.  "You city
bred dogs should learn not to antagonize your better."  Reining his weary
mount ahead, grignr resumed his journey to the Noregolian city of Gorzam,
hoping to discover wine, women, and adventure to boil the wild blood
coarsing through his savage veins.
     The trek to Gorzom was forced upon Grignr when the soldiers of Crin
were leashed upon him by a faithless concubine he had wooed.  His
scandalous activities throughout the Simarian city had unleashed throngs of
havoc and uproar among it's refined patricians, leading them to tack a
heavy reward over his head.  He had barely managed to escape through the
back entrance of the inn he had been guzzling in, as a squad of soldiers
tounced upon him.  After spilling a spout of blood from the leader of the
mercenaries as he dismembered one of the officer's arms, he retreated to
his mount to make his way towards Gorzom, rumoured to contain hoards of
plunder, and many young wenches for any man who has the backbone to wrest
them away.

                               -2-

     Arriving after dusk in Gorzom,grignr descended down a dismal alley,
reining his horse before a beaten tavern.  The redhaired giant strode into
the dimly lit hostelry reeking of foul odors, and cheap wine.  The air was
heavy with chocking fumes spewing from smolderingtorches encased within
theden's earthen packed walls.  Tables were clustered with groups of
drunken thieves, and cutthroats, tossing dice, or making love to willing
prostitutes.
     Eyeing a slender female crouched alone at a nearby bench, Grignr
advanced wishing to wholesomely occupy his time.  The flickering torches
cast weird shafts of luminescence dancing over the half naked harlot of his
choice, her stringy orchid twines of hair swaying gracefully over the lithe
opaque nose, as she raised a half drained mug to her pale red lips.
     Glancing upward, the alluring complexion noted the stalwart giant as
he rapidly approached.  A faint glimmer sparked from the pair of deep blue
ovals of the amorous female as she motioned toward Grignr, enticing him to
join her.  The barbarian seated himself upon a stool at the wenches side,
exposing his body, naked save for a loin cloth brandishing a long steel
broad sword, an iron spiraled battle helmet, and a thick leather sandals,
to her unobstructed view.
     "Thou hast need to occupy your time, barbarian",questioned the female?
     "Only if something worth offering is within my reach."  Stated
Grignr,as his hands crept to embrace the tempting female, who welcomed them
with open willingness.
     "From where do you come barbarian, and by what are you called?" Gasped
the complying wench, as Grignr smothered her lips with the blazing touch of
his flaming mouth.
     The engrossed titan ignored the queries of the inquisitive female,
pulling her towards him and crushing her sagging nipples to his yearning
chest.  Without struggle she gave in, winding her soft arms around the
harshly bronzedhide of Grignr corded shoulder blades, as his calloused
hands caressed her firm protruding busts.
     "You make love well wench," Admitted Grignr as he reached for the
vessel of potent wine his charge had been quaffing.
     A flying foot caught the mug Grignr had taken hold of, sending its
blood red contents sloshing over a flickering crescent; leashing tongues of
bright orange flame to the foot trodden floor.
     "Remove yourself Sirrah, the wench belongs to me;" Blabbered a drunken
soldier, too far consumed by the influences of his virile brew to take note
of the superior size of his adversary.
     Grignr lithly bounded from the startled female, his face lit up to an
ashen red ferocity, and eyes locked in a searing feral blaze toward the
swaying soldier.
     "To hell with you, braggard!" Bellowed the angered Ecordian, as he
hefted his finely honed broad sword.
     The staggering soldier clumsily reached towards the pommel of his
dangling sword, but before his hands ever touched the oaken hilt a silvered
flash was slicing the heavy air.  The thews of the savages lashing right
arm bulged from the glistening bronzed hide as his blade bit deeply into
the soldiers neck, loping off the confused head of his senseless tormentor.
     With a nauseating thud the severed oval toppled to the floor, as the
segregated torso of Grignr's bovine antagonist swayed, then collapsed in a
pool of swirled crimson.
     In the confusion the soldier's fellows confronted Grignr with
unsheathed cutlasses, directed toward the latters scowling make-up.
     "The slut should have picked his quarry more carefully!"  Roared the
victor in a mocking baritone growl, as he wiped his dripping blade on the
prostrate form, and returned it to its scabbard.
     "The fool should have shown more prudence, however you shall rue your
actions while rotting in the pits." Stated one of the sprawled soldier's
comrades.
     Grignr's hand began to remove his blade from its leather housing, but
retarded the motion in face of the blades waving before his face.
     "Dismiss your hand from the hilt, barbarbian, or you shall find a foot
of steel sheathed in your gizzard."
     Grignr weighed his position observing his plight, where-upon he took
the soldier's advice as the only logical choice.  To attempt to hack his
way from his present predicament could only warrant certain death.  He was
of no mind to bring upon his own demise if an alternate path presented
itself.  The will to necessitate his life forced him to yield to the
superior force in hopes of a moment of carlessness later upon the part of
his captors in which he could effect a more plausible means of escape.
     "You may steady your arms, I will go without a struggle."
     "Your decision is a wise one, yet perhaps you would have been better
off had you forced death," the soldier's mouth wrinkled to a sadistic grin
of knowing mirth as he prodded his prisoner on with his sword point.
     After an indiscriminate period of marching through slinking alleyways
and dim moonlighted streets the procession confronted a massive seraglio.
The palace area was surrounded by an iron grating, with a lush garden upon
all sides.
     The group was admitted through the gilded gateway and Grignr was
ledalong a stone pathway bordered by plush vegitation lustfully enhanced by
the moon's shimmering rays.  Upon reaching the palace the group was granted
entrance, and after several minutes of explanation, led through several
winding corridors to a richly draped chamber.
     Confronting the group was a short stocky man seated upona golden
throne.  Tapestries of richly draped regal blue silk covered all walls of
the chamber, while the steps leading to the throne were plated with
sparkling white ivory.  The man upon the throne had a naked wench seated at
each of his arms, and a trusted advisor seated in back of him.  At each
cornwr of the chamber a guard stood at attention, with upraised pikes
supported in their hands, golden chainmail adorning their torso's and
barred helmets emitting scarlet plumes enshrouding their heads.  The man
rose from his throne to the dias surrounding it.  His plush turquois robe
dangled loosely from his chuncky frame.
     The soldiers surrounding Grignr fell to their knees with heads bowed
to the stone masonry of the floor in fearful dignity to their sovereign,
leige.
     "Explain the purpose of this intrusion upon my chateau!"
     "Your sirenity, resplendent in noble grandeur, we have brought this
yokel before you (the soldier gestured toward Grignr) for the redress or
your all knowing wisdon in judgement regarding his fate."
     "Down on your knees, lout, and pay proper homage to your sovereign!"
commanded the pudgy noble of Grignr.
     "By the surly beard of Mrifk, Grignr kneels to no man!"  scowled the
massive barbarian.
     "You dare to deal this blasphemous act to me!  You are indeed brave
stranger, yet your valor smacks of foolishness."
     "I find you to be the only fool, sitting upon your pompous throne,
enhancing the rolling flabs of your belly in the midst of your elaborate
luxuryand ..."  The soldier standing at Grignr's side smote him heavily in
the face with the flat of his sword, cutting short the harsh words and
knocking his battered helmet to the masonry with an echo-ing clang.
     The paunchy noble's sagging round face flushed suddenly pale, then
pastily lit up to a lustrous cherry red radiance.  His lips trembled with
malicious rage, while emitting a muffled sibilant gibberish.  His sagging
flabs rolled like a tub of upset jelly, then compressed as he sucked in his
gut in an attempt to conceal his softness.
     The prince regained his statue, then spoke to the soldiers surrounding
Grignr, his face conforming to an ugly expression of sadistic humor.
     "Take this uncouth heathen to the vault of misery, and be sure that
his agonies are long and drawn out before death can release him."
     "As you wish sire, your command shall be heeded immediately," answered
the soldier on the right of Grignr as he stared into the barbarians
seemingly unaffected face.
     The advisor seated in the back of the noble slowly rose and advanced
to the side of his master, motioning the wenches seated at his sides to
remove themselves.  He lowered his head and whispered to the noble.
     "Eminence, the punishment you have decreed will cause much misery to
this scum, yet it will last only a short time, then release him to a land
beyond the sufferings of the human body.  Why not mellow him in one of the
subterranean vaults for a few days, then send him to life labor in one of
your buried mines.  To one such as he, a life spent in the confinement of
the stygian pits will be an infinitely more appropiate and lasting
torture."
     The noble cupped his drooping double chin in the folds of his briming
palm, meditating for a moment upon the rationality of the councilor's
word's, then raised his shaggy brown eyebrows and turned toward the
advisor, eyes aglow.
     "...As always Agafnd, you speak with great wisdom.  Your words ring of
great knowledge concerning the nature of one such as he ," sayeth , the
king.  The noble turned toward the prisoner with a noticable shimmer
reflecting in his frog-like eyes, and his lips contorting to a greasy grin.
"I have decided to void my previous decree.  The prisoner shall be removed
to one of the palaces underground vaults.  There he shall stay until I have
decided that he has sufficiently simmered, whereupon he is to be allowed to
spend the remainder of his days at labor in one of my mines."
     Upon hearing this, Grignr realized that his fate would be far less
merciful than death to one such as he, who is used to roaming the
countryside at will.  A life of confinement would be more than his body and
mind could stand up to.  This type of life would be immeasurably worse than
death.
     "I shall never understand the ways if your twisted civilization.  I
simply defend my honor and am condemned to life confinement, by a pig who
sits on his royal ass wooing whores, and knows nothing of the affairs of
the land he imagines to rule!" Lectures Grignr ?
     "Enough of this!  Away with the slut before I loose my control!"
     Seeing the peril of his position, Grignr searched for an opening.
Crushing prudence to the sward, he plowed into the soldier at his left arm
taking hold of his sword, and bounding to the dias supporting the prince
before the startled guards could regain their composure.  Agafnd leaped
Grignr and his sire, but found a sword blade permeating the length of his
ribs before he could loosed his weapon.
     The councilor slumped to his knees as Grignr slid his crimsoned blade
from Agfnd's rib cage.  The fat prince stood undulating in insurmountable
fear before the edge of the fiery maned comet, his flabs of jellied blubber
pulsating to and fro in ripples of flowing terror.
     "Where is your wisdom and power now, your magjesty?" Growled Grignr.
     The prince went rigid as Grignr discerned him glazing over his
shoulder.  He swlived to note the cause of the noble's attention, raised
his sword over his head, and prepared to leash a vicious downward cleft,
but fell short as the haft of a steel rimed pike clashed against his
unguarded skull.  Then blackness and solitude.  Silence enshrouding and
ever peaceful reind supreme.
     "Before me, sirrah!  Before me as always! Ha, Ha Ha, Haaaa...", nobly
cackled.

                               -3-

     Consciousness returned to Grignr in stygmatic pools as his mind
gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the
stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained.  An incompatible shield of
blackness, enhanced by the bleak abscense of sound.
     Grignr's muddled brain reeled from the shock of the blow he had
recieved to the base of his skull.  The events leading to his predicament
were slow to filter back to him.  He dickered with the notion that he was
dead and had descended or sunk, however it may be, to the shadowed land
beyond the the aperature of the grave, but rejected this hypothesis when
his memory sifted back within his grips.  This was not the land of the
dead, it was something infinitely more precarious than anything the grave
could offer.  Death promised an infinity of peace, not the finite misery of
an inactive life of confined torture, forever concealed from the life
bearing shafts of the beloved rising sun.  The orb that had been before
taken for granted, yet now cherished above all else.  To be forever refused
further glimpses of the snow capped summits of the land of his birth, never
again to witness the thrill of plundering unexplored lands beyond the crest
of a bleeding horizon, and perhaps worst of all the denial to ever again
encompass the lustful excitement of caressing the naked curves of the body
of a trim yound wench.
     This was indeed one of the buried chasms of Hell concealed within the
inner depths of the palace's despised interior.  A fearful ebony chamber
devised to drive to the brinks of insanity the minds of the unfortunately
condemned, through the inapt solitude of a limbo of listless dreary
silence.

                             -3 1/2-

     A tightly rung elliptical circle or torches cast their wavering shafts
prancing morbidly over the smooth surface of a rectangular, ridged alter.
Expertly chisled forms of grotesque gargoyles graced the oblique rim
protruberating the length of the grim orifice of death, staring forever
ahead into nothingness in complete ignorance of the bloody rites enacted in
their prescence.  Brown flaking stains decorated the golden surface of the
ridge surrounding the alter, which banked to a small slit at the lower
right hand corner of the altar.  The slit stood above a crudely pounded
pail which had several silver meshed chalices hanging at its sides.
Dangling at the rimof golden mallet, the handle of which was engraved with
images of twisted faces and groved at its far end with slots designed for a
snug hand grip.  The head of the mallet was slightly larger than a clenched
fist and shaped into a smooth oval mass.
     Encircling the marble altar was a congregation of leering shamen.
Eerie chants of a bygone age, originating unknown eons before the memory of
man, were being uttered from the buried recesses of the acolytes' deep
lings.  Orange paint was smeared in generous globules over the tops of thw
Priests' wrinkled shaven scalps, while golden rings projected from the
lobes of their pink ears.  Ornate robes of lusciour purple satin enclosed
their bulging torsos, attached around their waists with silvered silk
lashes latched with ebony buckles in the shape of morose mis-shaped skulls.
Dangling around their necks were oval fashoned medalions held by thin gold
chains, featuring in their centers blood red rubys which resembled crimson
fetish eyeballs.  Cushoning their bare feet were plush red felt slippers
with pointed golden spikes projecting from their tips.
     Situated in front of the altar, and directly adjacent to the copper
pail was a massive jade idol; a misshaped, hideous bust of the shamens'
pagan diety.  The shimmering green idol was placed in a sitting posture on
an ornately carved golden throne raised upon a round, dvory plated dias; it
bulging arms and webbed hands resting on the padded arms of the seat.  Its
head was entwined in golden snake-like coils hanging over its oblong ears,
which tappered off to thin hollow points.  Its nose was a bulging
triangular mass, sunken in at its sides with tow gaping nostrils.  Dramatic
beneath the nostrils was a twisted, shaggy lipped mouth, giving the
impression of a slovering sadistic grimace.
     At the foot of the heathen diety a slender, pale faced female, naked
but for a golden, jeweled harness enshrouding her huge outcropping breasts,
supporting long silver laces which extended to her thigh, stood before the
pearl white field with noticable shivers traveling up and down the length
of her exquisitely molded body.  Her delicate lips trembled beneath soft
narrow hands as she attemped to conceal herself from the piercing stare of
the ambivalent idol.
     Glaring directly down towards her was the stoney, cycloptic face of
the bloated diety.  Gaping from its single obling socket was scintillating,
many fauceted scarlet emerald, a brilliant gem seeming to possess a life
all of its own.  A priceless gleaming stone, capable of domineering the
wealth of conquering empires...the eye of Argon.

                               -4-

     All knowledge of measuring time had escaped Grignr.  When a person is
deprived of the sun, moon, and stars, he looses all conception of time as
he had previously understood it.  It seemed as if years had passed if time
were being measured by terms of misery and mental anguish, yet he estimated
that his stay had only been a few days in length.  He has slept three times
and had been fed five times since his awakening in the crypt.  However,
when the actions of the body are restricted its needs are also affected.
The need for nourishmnet and slumber are directly proportional to the
functions the body has performed, meaning that when free and active Grignr
may become hungry every six hours and witness the desire for sleep every
fifteen hours, whereas in his present condition he may encounter the need
for food every ten hours, and the want for rest every twenty hours.  All
methods he had before depended upon were extinct in the dismal pit.  Hence,
he may have been imprisoned for ten minutes or ten years, he did not know,
resulting in a disheartened emotion deep within his being.
     The food, if you can honor the moldering lumps of fetid mush to that
extent, was born to him by two guards who opened a portal at the top of his
enclosure and shoved it to him in wooden bowls, retrieving the food and
water bowels from his previous meal at the same time, after which they
threw back the bolts on the iron latch and returned to their other duties.
Since deprived of all other means of nourishment, Grignr was impelled to
eat the tainted slop in order to ward off the paings of starvation, though
as he stuffed it into his mouth with his filthy fingers and struggled to
force it down his throat, he imagined it was that which had been spurned by
the hounds stationed at various segments of the palace.
     There was little in the baren vault that could occupy his body or
mind.  He had paced out the length and width of the enclosure time and time
again and tested every granite slab which consisted the walls of the prison
in hopes of finding a hidden passage to freedom, all of which was to no
avail other than to keep him busy and distract his mind from wandering to
thoughts of what he believed was his future.  He had memorized the number
of strides from one end to the other of the cell, and knew the exact number
of slabs which made up the bleak dungeon.  Numorous schemes were introduced
and alternately discarded in turn as they succored to unravel to him no
means of escape which stood the slightest chance of sucess.
     Anguish continued to mount as his means of occupation were rapidly
exhausted.  Suddenly without no tive, he wasrouted from his contemplations
as he detected a faint scratching sound at the end of the crypt opposite
him.  The sound seemed to be caused by something trying to scrape away at
the grantite blocks the floor of the enclosure consisted of, the sandy
scratching of something like an animal's claws.
     Grignr gradually groped his way to the other end of the vault
carefully feeling his way along with his hands ahead of him.  When a few
inches from the wall, a loud, penetrating squeal, and the scampering of
small padded feet reverberated from the walls of the roughly hewn chamber.
     Grignr threw his hands up to shield his face, and flung himself
backwards upon his buttocks.  A fuzzy form bounded to his hairy chest,
burying its talons in his flesh while gnashing toward his throat with its
grinding white teeth;its sour, fetid breath scortching the sqirming
barbarians dilating nostrils.  Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor
muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to
hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular, as its beady grey organs of
sight glazed into the flaring emeralds of its prey.
     Taking hold of the rodent around its lean, growling stomach with both
hands Grignr pried it from his crimson rent breast, removing small patches
of flayed flesh from his chest in the motion between the squalid black
claws of the starving beast.  Holding the rodent at arms length, he cupped
his righthand over its frothing face, contrcting his fingers into a
vice-like fist over the quivering head.  Retaining his grips on the rat,
grignr flexed his outstretched arms while slowly twisting his right hand
clockwise and his left hand counter clockwise motion.  The rodent let out a
tortured squall, drawing scarlet as it violently dug its foam flecked fangs
into the barbarians sweating palm, causing his face to contort to an ugly
grimace as he cursed beneath his braeth.
     With a loud crack the rodents head parted from its squirming torso,
sending out a sprinking shower of crimson gore, and trailing a slimy string
of disjointed vertebrae, snapped trachea, esophagus, and jugular,
disjointed hyoid bone, morose purpled stretched hide, and blood seared
muscles.
     Flinging the broken body to the floor, Grignr shook his blood streaked
hands and wiped them against his thigh until dry, then wiped the blood that
had showered his face and from his eyes.  Again sitting himself upon the
jagged floor, he prepared to once more revamp his glum meditations.  He
told himself that as long as he still breathed the gust of life through his
lungs, hope was not lost; he told himself this, but found it hard to
comprehend in his gloomy surroundings.  Yet he was still alive, his bulging
sinews at their peak of marvel, his struggling mind floating in a miral of
impressed excellence of thought.  Plot after plot sifted through his mind
in energetic contemplations.
     Then it hit him.  Minutes may have passed in silent thought or days,
he could not tell, but he stumbled at last upon a plan that he considered
as holding a slight margin of plausibility.  He might die in the attempt,
but he knew he would not submit without a final bloody struggle.  It was
not a foolproof plan, yet it built up a store of renewed vortexed energy in
his overwroughtsoul, though he might perish in the execution of the escape,
he would still be escaping the life of infinite torture in store forhim.
Either way he would still cheat the gloating prince of the succored revenge
his sadistic mind craved so dearly.
     The guards would soon come to bear him off to the prince's buried
mines of dread, giving him the sought after opportunity to execute his
newly formulated plan.  Groping his way along the rough floor Grignr
finally found his tool in a pool of congealed gore; the carcass of the
decapitated rodent; the tool that the very filth he had been sentenced too,
spawned.  When the time came for action he would have to be prepared, so he
set himself to rending the sticky hulk in grim silence, searching by the
touch of his fingertips for the lever to freedom.
     
                               -5-

     "Up to the altar and be done with it wench;" ordered a fidgeting
shaman as he gave the female a grim stare accompanied by the wrinkling of
his lips to a mirthful grin of delight.
     The girl burst into a slow steady whimper, stooping shakily to her
knees and cringing woefully from the priest with both arms wound snake-like
around the bulging jade jade shin rising before her scantily attired
figure.  Her face was redly inflamed from the salty flow of tears spouting
from her glassy dilated eyeballs.
     With short, heavy footfals the priest approached the female, his
piercing stare never wavering from her quivering young countenance.
Halting before the terrified girl he projected his arm outward and motioned
her to arise with an upward movement of his hand.  the girl's whimpering
increased slightly and she sunk closer to the floor rather than arising.
The flickering torches outlined her trim build with a weird ornate glow as
it cast a ghostly shadow dancing in horrid waves of splendor over smoothly
worn whiteness of the marble hewn altar.
     The shaman's lips curled back farther, exposing a set of blackened,
decaying molars which transformed his slovenly grin into a wide greasy arc
of sadistic mirth and alternately interposed into the female a strong
sensation of stomach curdling nausea.  "Have it as you will female;"
gloated the enhanced priest as he bent over at the waist, projecting his
ape-like arms forward, and clasped the female's slender arms with his hairy
round fists.  With an inward surge of of his biceps he harshly jerked the
trembling girl to her feet and smothered her salty wet cheeks with the
moldy touch of his decrepid, dull red lips.
     The vile stench of the Shaman's hot fetid breath over came the
nauseated female with a deep soul searing sickness, causing her to wrench
her head backwards and regurgitate a slimy, orange- white stream of
swelling gore over the richly woven purple robe of the enthused acolyte.
     The priest's lips trembled with a malicious rage as he removed his
callous paws from the girl's arms and replaced them with tightly around her
undulating neck, shaking her violently to and fro.
     The girl gasped a tortured groan from her clamped lungs, her sea blue
eyes bulging forth from damp sockets.  Cocking her right foot backwards,
she leashed it desperately outwards with the strength of a demon possessed,
lodging her sandled foot squarely between the shaman's testicles.
     The startled priest released his crushing grip, crimping his body over
at the waist overlooking his recessed belly; wide open in a deep chasim.
His face flushed to a rose red shade of crimson, eyelids fluttering wide
with eyeballs protruding blindly outwards from their sockets to their
outmost perimeters, while his lips quivered wildly about allowing an
agonized wallow to gust forth as his breath billowed from burning lungs.
His hands reached out clutching his urinary gland as his knees wobbled
rapidly about for a few seconds then buckled, causing the ruptured shaman
to collapse in an egg huddled mass to the granite pavement, rolling
helplessly about in his agony.
     The pathetic screeches of the shaman groveling in dejected misery upon
the hand hewn granite laid pavement, worn smooth by countless hours of
arduous sweat and toil, a welter of ichor oozing through his clenched
hands, attracted the purturbed attention of his comrades from their foetid
ulations.  The actions of this this rebellious wench bespoke the creedence
of an unheard of sacrilige.  Never before in a lost maze of untold eons had
a chosen one dared to demonstrate such blasphemy in the face of the cult's
idolic diety.
     The girl cowered in unreasoning terror, helpless in the face of the
emblazoned acolytes' rage; her orchid tusseled face smothered betwixt her
bulging bosom as she shut her curled lashed tightly hoping to open them and
find herself awakening from a morbid nightmare.  yet the hand of destiny
decreed her no such mercy, the antagonized pack of leering shaman
converging tensely upon her prostrate form were entangled all too lividly
in the grim web of reality.
     Shuddering from the clamy touch of the shaman as they grappled with
her supple form, hands wrenching at her slender arms and legs in all
directions, her bare body being molested in the midst of a labyrnth of
orange smudges, purpled satin, and mangled skulls, shadowed in an eerie
crimson glow; her confused head reeled then clouded in a mist of
enshrouding ebony as she lapsed beneath the protective sheet of
unconsiousness to a land peach and resign.

                               -6-

     "Take hold of this rope," said the first soldier, "and climb out from
your pit, slut.  Your presence is requested in another far deeper hell
hole."
     Grignr slipped his right hand to his thigh, concealing a small opaque
object beneath the folds of the g-string wrapped about his waist.  Brine
wells swelled in Grignr's cold, jade squinting eyes, which grown accustomed
to the gloom of the stygian pools of ebony engulfing him, were bedazzled
and blinded by flickerering radiance cast forth by the second soldiers's
resin torch.
     Tightly gripped in the second soldier's right hand, opposite the
intermittent torch, was a large double edged axe, a long leather wound
oaken handled transfixing the center of the weapon's iron head.  Adorning
the torso's of both of the sentries were thin yet sturdy hauberks, the
breatplates of which were woven of tightly hemmed twines of reinforced
silver braiding.  Cupping the soldiers' feet were thick leather sandals,
wound about their shins to two inches below their knees.  Wrapped about
their waists were wide satin girdles, with slender bladed poniards dangling
loosely from them, the hilts of which featured scarlet encrusted gems.
Resting upon the manes of their heads, and reaching midway to their brows
were smooth copper morions.  Spiraling the lower portion of the helmet were
short, up-curved silver spikes, while a golden hump spired from the top of
each basinet.  Beneath their chins, wound around their necks, and draping
their clad shoulders dangled regal purple satin cloaks, which flowed midway
to the soldiers feet.
     hand over hand, feet braced against the dank walls of the enclosure,
huge Grignr ascended from the moldering dephs of the forlorn abyss.  His
swelled limbs, stiff due to the boredom of a timeless inactivity,
compounded by the musty atmosture and jagged granite protuberan against his
body, craved for action.  The opportunity now presenting itself served the
purpose of oiling his rusty joints, and honing his dulled senses.
     He braced himself, facing the second soldier.  The sentry's stature
was was wildly exaggerated in the glare of the flickering cresset cuppex in
his right fist.  His eyes were wide open in a slightly slanted owlish
glaze, enhanced in their sinister intensity by the hawk-bill curve of his
nose andpale yellow pique of his cheeks.
     "Place your hands behind your back," said the second soldier as he
raised his ax over his right shoulder blade and cast it a wavering glance.
"We must bind your wrists to parry any attempts at escape.  Be sure to make
the knot a stout one, Broig, we wouldn't want our guest to take leave of
our guidance."
     Broig grasped Grignr's left wrist and reached for the barbarians's
right wrist.  Grignr wrenched his right arm free and swilveled to face
Broig, reach- beneath his loin cloth with his right hand.  The sentry
grappled at his girdle for the sheathed dagger, but recoiled short of his
intentions as Grignr's right arm swept to his gorge.  The soldier went
limp, his bobbing eyes rolling beneath fluttering eyelids, a deep welt
across his spouting gullet.  Without lingering to observe the result of his
efforts, Grignr dropped to his knees.  The second soldier's axe cleft over
Grignr's head in a blze of silvered ferocity, severing several scarlet
locks from his scalp.  Coming to rest in his fellow's stomach, the iron
head crashed through mail and flesh with splintering force, spilling a pool
of crimsoned entrails over the granite paving.
     Before the sentry could wrench his axe free from his comrade's
carcass, he found Grignr's massive hands clasped about his throat, choking
the life from his clamped lungs.  With a zealous grunt, the Ecordian flexed
his tightly corded biceps, forcing the grim faced soldier to one knee.  The
sentry plunged his right fist into Grignr's face, digging his grimy nails
into the barbarians flesh.  Ejaculating a curse through rasping teeth,
grignr surged the bulk of his weight foreard, bowling the beseiged soldier
over upon his back.  The sentry's arms collapsed to his thigh, shuddering
convulsively; his bulging eyes staring blindly from a bloated ,cherry red
face.
     Rising to his feet, Grignr shook the bllod from his eyes, ruffling his
surly red mane as a brush fire swaying to the nightime breeze.  Stooping
over the spr sprawled corpse of the first soldier, Grignr retrieved a small
white object from a pool of congealing gore.  Snorting a gusty billow of
mirth, he once more concealed th e tiny object beneath his loin cloth; the
tediously honed pelvis bone of the broken rodent.  Returning his attention
toward the second soldier, Grignr turned to the task of attiring his limbs.
To move about freely through the dim recesses of the castle would require
the grotesque garb of its soldiery.
     Utilizing the silence and stealth aquired in the untamed climbs of his
childhood, Grignr slink through twisting corridors, and winding stairways,
lighting his way with the confisticated torch of his dispatched guardian.
Knowing where his steps were leading to, Grignr meandered aimlessly in
search of an exit from the chateau's dim confines.  The wild blood coarsing
through his veins yearned for the undefiled freedom of the livid wilderness
lands.
     Coming upon a fork in the passage he treaked, voices accompanied by
clinking footfalls discerned to his sensitive ears from the left corridor.
Wishing to avoid contact, Grignr veered to the right passageway.  If
aquested as to the purpose of his presence, his barbarous accent would
reveal his identity, being that his attire was not that of the castle's
mercenary troops.
     In grim silence Grignr treaded down the dingily lit corridor; a
stalking panther creeping warily along on padded feet.  After an
interminable period of wandering through the dull corridors; no gaps to
break the monotony of the cold gray walls, Grignr espied a small winding
stairway.  Descending the flight of arced granite slabs to their posterior,
Grignr was confronted by a short haalway leading to a tall arched wooden
doorway.
     Halting before the teeming portal portal, Grignr restes his shaggy
head sideways against the barrier.  Detecting no sounds from within, he
grasped the looped metel handle of the door; his arms surging with a
tremendous effort of bulging muscles, yet the door would not budge.
Retrieving his ax from where he had sheathed it beneath his girdle, he
hefted it in his mighty hands with an apiesed grunt, and wedging one of its
blackened edges into the crack between the portal and its iron rimed sill.
Bracing his sandaled right foot against the rougjly hewn wall, teeth
tightly clenched, Grignr appilevered the oaken haft, employing it as a
lever whereby to pry open the barrier.  The leather wound hilt bending to
its utmost limits of endurance, the massive portal swung open with a
grating of snapped latch and rusty iron hinges.
     Glancing about the dust swirled room in the gloomily dancing glare of
his flickering cresset, Grignr eyed evidences of the enclosure being
nothing more than a forgotten storeroom.  Miscellaneous articles required
for the maintainance of a castle were piled in disorganized heaps at
infrequent intervals toward the wall opposite the barbarian's piercing
stare.  Utilizing long, bounding strides, Grignr paced his way over to the
mounds of supplies to discover if any articles of value were contained
within their midst.
     Detecting a faint clinking sound, Grignr sprawed to his left side with
the speed of a striking cobra, landing harshly upon his back; torch and axe
loudly clattering to the floor in a morass of sparks and flame.  A elmwoven
board leaped from collapsed flooring, clashing against the jagged flooring
and spewing a shower of orange and yellow sparks over Grignr's startled
face.  Rising uneasily to his feet, the half stunned Ecordian glared down
at the grusome arm of death he had unwittingly sprung.  "Mrifk!"
     If not for his keen auditory organs and lighting steeled reflexes,
Grignr would have been groping through the shadowed hell-pits of the Grim
Reaper.  He had unknowingly stumbled upon an ancient, long forgotton booby
trap; a mistake which would have stunted the perusal of longevity of one
less agile.  A mechanism, similar in type to that of a minature catapult
was concealed beneath two collapsable sections of granite flooring.  The
arm of the device was four feet long, boasting razor like cleats at regular
intervals along its face with which it was to skewer the luckless body of
its would be victim.  Grignr had stepped upon a concealed catch which
relaesed a small metal latch beneath the two granite sections, causing them
to fall inward, and thereby loose the spiked arm of death they precariously
held in.
     Partially out of curiosity and partially out of an inordinate fear of
becoming a pincushion for a possible second trap, Grignr plunged his torch
into the exposed gap in the floor.  The floor of a second chamber stood out
seven feet below the glare.  Tossing his torch through the aperature,
Grignr grasped the side of an adjoining tile, dropping down.
     Glancing about the room, Grignr discovered that he had decended into
the palace's mausoleum.  Rectangular stone crypts cluttered the floor at
evenly placed intervals.  The tops of the enclosures were plated with thick
layers of virgin gold, while the sides were plated with white ivory; at one
time sparkling, but now grown dingy through the passage of the rays of
allencompassing mother time.  Featured at the head of each sarcophagus in
tarnished silver was an expugnisively carved likeness of its rotting
inhabitant.
     A dingy atmosphere pervaded the air of the chamber; which sealed in
the enclosure for an unknown period had grown thick and stale.
Intermingling with the curdled currents was the repugnant stench of slowly
moldering flesh, creeping ever slowly but surely through minute cracks in
the numerous vaults.  Due to the embalming of the bodies, their flesh
decayed at a much slower rate than is normal, yet the nauseous oder was
none the less repellant.
     Towering over Grignr's head was the trap he released.  The mechanism
of the miniaturized catapolt was cluttered with mildew and cobwebs.
Notwithstanding these relics of antiquity, its efficiency remained
unimpinged.  To the right of the trap wound a short stairway through a
recess in the ceiling; a concealed entrance leading to the mausoleum for
which the catapult had obviously been erected as a silent, relentless
guardian.
     Climbing up the side of the device, Grignr set to the task of
resetting its mechanism.  In the e event that a search was organized, it
would prove well to leave no evidence of his presence open to wandering
eyes.  Besides, it might even serve to dwindle the size of an opposing
force.
     Descending from his perch, Grignr was startled by a faintly muffled
scream of horrified desperation.  His hair prickled yawkishly in
disorganized clumps along his scalp.  As a cold danced along the length of
his spinal cord.  No moral/mortal barrier, human or otherwise, was capable
of arousing the numbing sensation of fear inside of Grignr's smoldering
soul.  However, he was overwrought by the forces of the barbarians'
instinctive fear of the supernatural.  His mighty thews had always served
to adequately conquer any tangible foe., but the intangible was something
distant and terrible.  Dim horrifying tales passed by word of mouth over
glimmering camp fires and skins of wine had more than once served the
purpose of chilling the marrowed core of his sturdy limbed bones.
     Yet, the scream contained a strangely human quality, unlike that which
Grignr imagined would come from the lungs of a demon or spirit, making
Grignr take short nervous strides advancing to the sarcophagus from which
the sound was issuing.  Clenching his teeth in an attempt to steel his
jangled nerves, Grignr slid the engraved slab from the vault with a sharp
rasp of grinding stone.  Another long drawn cry of terror infested anguish
met the barbarian, scoring like the shrill piping of a demented banshee;
piercing the inner fibres of his superstitious brain with primitive dread
dread and awe.
     Stooping over to espy the tomb's contents, the glittering Ecordians
nostrills were singed by the scorching aroma of a moldering corpse, long
shut up and fermenting; the same putrid scent which permeated the entire
chamber, though multiplied to a much more concentrated dosage.  The
shriveled, leathery packet of crumbling bones and dried flacking flesh
offered no resistance, but remained in a fixed position of perpetual
vigilance, watching over its dim abode from hollow gaping sockets.
     The tortured crys were not coming from the tomb but from some hidden
depth below!  Pulling the reaking corpse from its resting place, Grignr
tossed it to the floor in a broken, mangled heap.  Upon one side of the
crypt's bottom was attached a series of tiny hinges while running parallel
along the opposite side of a convex railing like protruberance; laid so as
to appear as a part of the interior surface of the sarcophagus.
     Raising the slab upon its bronze hinges, long removed from the gaze of
human eyes, Grignr percieved a scene which caused his blood to smolder not
unlike bubbling, molten lava.  Directly below him a whimpering female lay
stretched upon a smooth surfaced marble altar.  A pack of grasy faced
shamen clustered around her in a tight circular formation.  Crouched over
the girl was a tall, potbellied priest; his face dominated by a disgusting,
open mouthed grimace of sadistic glee.  Suspended from the acolyte's
clenched right hand was a carven oval faced mallet, which he waved
menacingly over the girl's shadowed face; an incoherent gibberish flowing
from his grinning, thick lipped mouth.
     In the face of the amorphos, broad breated female, stretched out
aluringly before his gaping eyes; the universal whim of nature filing a
plea of despair inside of his white hot soul; Grignr acted in the only
manner he could perceive.  Giving vent to a hoarse, throat rending battle
cry, Grignr plunged into the midst of the startled shamen; torch simmering
in his left hand andax twirling in his right hand.
     A gaunt skull faced priest standing at the far side of the altar
clutched desperately at his throat, coughing furiously in an attempt to
catch his breath.  Lurching helplessly to and fro, the acolyte pitched
headlong against the gleaming base of a massive jade idol.  Writhing
agonizedly against the hideous image, foam flecking his chalk white lips,
the priest struggled helplessly - - - the victim of an epileptic siezure.
     Startled by the barbarians stunning appearance, the chronic fit of
their fellow, and the fear that Grignr might be the avantgarde of a
conquering force dedicated to the cause of destroying their degenerated
cult, the saman momentarily lost their composure.  Giving vent to heedless
pandemonium, the priests fell easy prey to Grignr's sweeping arc of
crimsoned death and maiming distruction.
     The acolyte performing the sacrifice took a vicious blow to the
stomach; hands clutching vitals and severed spinal cord as he sprawled over
the altar.  The disor anized priests lurched and staggered with split
skulls, dismembered limbs, and spewing entrails before the enraged
Ecordian's relentless onslaught.  The howles of the maimed and dying
reverberated against the walls of the tiny chamber; a chorus of hell
frought despair; as the granite floor ran red with blood.  The entire
chamber was encompassed in the heat of raw savage butchery as Grignr
luxuriated in the grips of a primitive, beastly blood lust.
     Presently all went silenet save for the ebbing groans of the sinking
shaman and Grignr's heaving breath accompanied by several gusty curses.
The well had run dry.  No more lambs remained for the slaughter.
     The rampaging stead of death having taken of Grignr for the moment,
left the barbarian free to the exploitation of his other perusials.
Towering over his head was the misshaped image of the cult's hideous diety
- - - Argon.  The fantastic size of the idol in consideration of its being
of pure jade was enough to cause the senses of any man to stagger and reel,
yet thus was not the case for the behemoth.  he had paid only casual notice
to this incredible fact, while riviting the whole of his attention upon the
jewel protruding from the idol's sole socket; its masterfully cut faucets
emitting blinding rays of hypnotising beauty.  After all, a man cannot
slink from a heavily guarded palace while burdened down by the intense bulk
of a squatting statue, providing of course that the idol can even be
hefted, which in fact was beyond the reaches of Grignr's coarsing stamina.
On the other hand, the jewel, gigantic as it was, would not present a
hinderence of any mean concern.
     "Help me ... please ... I can make it well worth your while," pleaded
a soft, anguish strewn voice wafting over Grignr's shoulders as he plucked
the dull red emerald from its roots.  Turning, Grignr faced the female that
had lured him into this blood bath, but whom had become all but forgotten
in the heat of the battle.
     "You"; ejaculated the Ecordian in a pleased tone.  "I though that I
had seen the last of you at the tavern, but verilly I was mistaken." Grignr
advanced into the grips of the female's entrancing stare, severing the
golden chains that held her captive upon the altars highly polished face of
ornamental limestone.
     As Grignr lifted the girl from the altar, her arms wound dexterously
about his neck; soft and smooth against his harsh exterior.  "Art thou
pleased that we have chanced to meet once again?" Grignr merely voiced an
sighed grunt, returning the damsels embrace while he smothered her trim,
delicate lips between the coarsing protrusions of his reeking maw.
     "Let us take leave of this retched chamber." Stated Grignr as he
placed the female upon her feet.  She swooned a moment, causing Grignr to
giver her support then regained her stance.  "Art thou able to find your
way through the accursed passages of this castle?  Mrifk!  Every one of the
corridors of this damned place are identical."
     "Aye; I was at one time a slave of prince Agaphim.  His clammy touch
sent a sour swill through my belly, but my efforts reaped a harvest.  I
gained the pig's liking whereby he allowed me the freedom of the palace.
It was through this means that I eventually managed escape at the western
gate.  His trust found him with a dagger thrust his ribs," the wench stated
whimsicoracally.
     "What were you doing at the tavern whence I discovered you?"  asked
Grignr as he lifted the female through the opening into the mausoleum.
     "I had sought to lay low from the palace's guards as they conducted
their search for me.  The tavern was seldom frequented by the palace guards
and my identity was unknown to the common soldiers.  It was through the
disturbance that you caused that the palace guards were attracted to the
tavern.  I was dragged away shortly after you were escorted to the palace."
     "What are you called by female?"
     "Carthena, daughter of Minkardos, Duke of Barwego, whose lands border
along the northwestern fringes of Gorzom.  I was paid as homage to Agaphim
upon his thirty-eighth year," husked the femme!
     "And I am called a barbarian!" Grunted Grignr in a disgusted tone!
     "Aye!  The ways of our civilization are in many ways warped and
distorted, but what is your calling," she queried, bustily?
     "Grignr of Ecordia."
     "Ah, I have heard vaguely of Ecordia.  It is the hill country to the
far east of the Noregolean Empire.  I have also heard Agaphim curse your
land more than once when his troops were routed in the unaccustomed
mountains and gorges." Sayeth she.
     "Aye.  My people are not tarnished by petty luxuries and baubles.
They remain fierce and unconquerable in their native climes."  After
reaching the hidden panel at the head of the stairway, Grignr was at a loss
in regard to its operation.  His fiercest heaves were as pebbles against
burnished armour!  Carthena depressed a small symbol included within the
elaborate design upon the panel whereopen it slowly slid into a cleft in
the wall.  "How did you come to be the victim of those crazed shamen?"
Quested Grignr as he escorted Carthena through the piles of rummage on the
left side of the trap.
     "By Agaphim's orders I was thrust into a secluded cell to await his
passing of sentence.  By some means, the Priests of Argon acquired a set of
keys to the cell.  They slew the guard placed over me and abducted me to
the chamber in which you chanced to come upon the scozsctic sacrifice.
Their hell-spawned cult demands a sacrifice once every three moons upon its
full journey through the heavens.  They were startled by your unannounced
appearance through the fear that you had been sent by Agaphim.  The prince
would surely have submitted them to the most ghastly of tortures if he had
ever discovered their unfaithfulness to Sargon, his bastard diety.  Many of
the partakers of the ritual were high nobles and high trustees of the inner
palace; Agaphim's pittiless wrath would have been unparalled."
     "They have no more to fear of Agaphim now!" Bellowed Grignr in a deep
mirthful tome; a gleeful smirk upon his face.  "I have seen that they were
delivered from his vengence."
     Engrossed by Carthena's graceful stride and conversation Grignr failed
to take note of the footfalls rapidly approaching behind him.  As he swung
aside the arched portal linking the chamber with the corridors beyond, a
maddened, blood lusting screech reverberated from his ear drums.  Seemingly
utilizing the speed of thought, Grignr swiveled to face his unknown foe.
With gaping eyes and widened jaws, Grignr raised his axe above his surly
mein; but he was too late.

                               -7-

     With wobbling knees and swimming head, the priest that had lapsed into
an epileptic siezure rose unsteadily to his feet.  While enacting his
choking fit in writhing agony, the shaman was overlooked by Grignr.  The
barbarian had mistaken the siezure for the death throes of the acolyte,
allowing the priest to avoid his stinging blade.  The sight that met the
priests inflamed eyes nearly served to sprawl him upon the floor once more.
The sacrificial sat it grim, blood splattered silence all around him,
broken only by the occasional yelps and howles of his maimed and butchered
fellows.  Above his head rose the hideous idol, its empty socket holding
the shaman's ifurbished infuriated gaze.  His eyes turned to a stoney glaze
with the realization of the pillage and blasphemy.  Due to his high
succeptibility following the siezure, the priest was transformed into a
raving maniac bent soley upon reaking vengeance.  With lips curled and
quivering, a crust of foam dripping from them, the acolyte drew a long,
wicked looking jewel hilted scimitar from his silver girdle and fled
through the aperature in the ceiling uttering a faintly perceptible
ceremonial jibberish.

                             -7 1/2-

     A sweeping scimitar swung towards Grignr's head in a shadowed blur of
motion.  With Axe raised over his head, Grignr prepared to parry the blow,
while gaping wideeyed in open mouthed perplexity.  Suddenly a sharp snap
resounded behind the frothing shaman.  The scimitar, halfway through its
fatal sweep, dropped from a quivering nerveless hand, clattering harmlessly
to the stoneage.  Cutting his screech short with a bubbling, red mouthed
gurgle, the lacerated acolyte staggered under the pressure of the released
spring-board.  After a moment of hopeless struggling, the shaman buckled,
sprawling face down in a widening pool of bllod and entrails, his regal
purple robe blending enhancingly with the swirling streams of crimson.
     "Mrifk!  I thought I had killed the last of those dogs;" muttered
Grignr in a half apathetic state.
     "Nay Grignr.  You doubtless grew careless while giving vent to your
lusts.  But let us not tarry any long lest we over tax the fates.  The
paths leading to freedom will soon be barred.  The wretch's crys must
certainly have attracted unwanted attention," the wench mused.
     "By what direction shall we pursue our flight?"
     "Up that stair and down the corridor a short distance is the concealed
enterance to a tunnel seldom used by others than the prince, and known to
few others save the palace's royalty.  It is used mainly by the prince when
he wishes to take leave of the palace in secret.  It is not always in the
Prince's best interests to leave his chateau in public view.  Even while
under heavy guard he is often assaulted by hurtling stones and rotting
fruits.  The commoners have little love for him." lectured the nerelady!
     "It is amazing that they would ever have left a pig like him become
their ruler.  I should imagine that his people would rise up and crucify
him like the dog he is."
     "Alas, Grignr, it is not as simple as all that.  His soldiers are well
paid by him.  So long as he keeps their wages up they will carry out his
damned wished.  The crude impliments of the commonfolk would never stand up
under an onslaught of forged blades and protective armor; they would be
going to their own slaughter," stated Carthena to a confused, but angered
Grignr as they topped the stairway.
     "Yet how can they bear to live under such oppression?  I would sooner
die beneath the sword than live under such a dog's command." added Grignr
as the pair stalked down the hall in the direction opposite that in which
Grignr had come.
     "But all men are not of the same mold that you are born of, they
choose to live as they are so as to save their filthy necks from the
chopping block." Returned Carthena in a disgusted tone as she cast an
appiesed glance towards the stalwart figure at her side whose left arm was
wound dextrously about her slim waist; his slowly waning torch casting
their images in intermingling wisps as it dangled from his left hand.
     Presently Carthena came upon the panel, concealed amonst the other
granite slabs and discernable only by the burned out cresset above it.  "As
I push the cresset aside push the panel inwards."  Catrhena motioned to the
panel she was refering to and twisted the cresset in a counterclockwise
motion.  Grignr braced his right shoulder against the walling,
concentrating the force of his bulk against it.  The slab gradually swung
inward with a slight grating sound.  Carthena stooped beneath Grignr's
corded arms and crawled upon all fours into the passage beyond.  Grignr
followed after easing the slab back into place.
     Winding before the pair was a dark musty tunnel, exhibiting tangled
spider webs from it ceiling to wall and an oozing, sickly slime running
lazily upon its floor.  Hanging from the chipped wall upon GrignR's right
side was a half mouldered corpse, its grey flacking arms held in place by
rusted iron manacles.  Carthena flinched back into Grignr's arms at sight
of the leering set in an ugly distorted grimmace; staring horribly at her
from hollow gaping sockets.
     "This alcove must also be used by Agaphim as a torture chamber.  I
wonder how many of his enemies have disappeared into these haunts never to
be heard from again," pondered the hulking brute.
     "Let us flee before we are also caught within Agaphim's ghastly
clutches.  The exit from this tunnel cannot be very far from here!" Said
Carthena with a slight sob to her voice, as she sagged in Grignr's
encompasing embrace.
     "Aye; It will be best to be finished with this corridor as soon as it
is possible.  But why do you flinch from the sight of death so?  Mrift!
You have seen much death this day without exhibiting such emotions."
Exclaimed Grignr as he led her trembling form along the dingy confines.
     "---The man hanging from the wall was Doyanta.  He had committed the
folly of showing affections for me in front of Agaphim --- he never meant
any harm by his actions!"  At this Carthena broke into a slow steady
whimpering, chokking her voice with gasping sobs.  "There was never
anything between us yet Agaphim did this to him!  The beast!  May the
demons of Hell's deepest haunts claw away at his wretched flesh for this
merciless act!" she prayed.
     "I detect that you felt more for this fellow than you wish to let on
... but enough of this, We can talk of such matters after we are once more
free to do so."  With this Grignr lifted the grieved female to her feet and
strode onward down the corridor, supporting the bulk of her weight with his
surging left arm.
     Presently a dim light was perceptibly filtering into the tunnel,
casting a dim reddish hue upon the moldy wall of the passage's grim
confines.  Carthena had ceased her whimpering and partially regained her
composure.  "The tunnel's end must be nearing.  Rays of sunlight are
beginning to seep into ..."
     Grignr clameed his right hand over Carthena's mouth and with a slight
struggle pulled her over to the shadows at the right hand wall of the path,
while at the same time thrusting this torch beneath an overhanging stone to
smother its flickering rays.  "Be silent; I can hear footfalls approaching
through the tunnel;" growled Grignr in a hushed tone.
     "All that you hear are the horses corraled at the far end of the
tunnel.  That is a further sign that we are nearing our goal." She stated!
     "All that you hear is less than I hear!  I heard footsteps coming
towards us.  Silence yourself that we may find out whom we are being
brought into contact with.  I doubt that any would have thought as yet of
searching this passage for us.  The advantage of surprize will be upon our
side." Grignr warned.
     Carthena cast her eyes downward and ceased any further pursuit towards
conversation, an irritating habit in which she had gained an amazing
proficiency.  Two figures came into the pairs view, from around a turn in
the tunnel.  They were clothed in rich luxuriant silks and rambling o on in
conversation while ignorant of their crouching foes waiting in an ambush
ahead.
     "...That barbarian dog is cringing beneath the weight of the lash at
this moment sire.  He shall cause no more disturbance."
     "Aye, and so it is with any who dare to cross the path of Sargon's
chosen one." said the 2nd man.
     "But the peasants are showing signs of growing unrest.  They complain
that they cannot feet their families while burdened with your taxes."
     "I shall teach those sluts the meaning of humility!  Order an
immediate increase upon their taxes.  They dare to question my sovereign
authority, Ha-a, they shall soon learn what true oppression can be.  I will
... "
     A shodowed bulk leapt from behind a jutting promontory as it brought
down a double edged axe with the spped of a striking thought.  One of the
nobles sagged lifeless to the ground, skull split to the teeth.
     Grignr gasped as he observed the bisected face set in its leering
death agonies.  It was Agafnd!  The dead mans comrade having recovered from
his shock drew a jewel encrusted dagger from beneath the folds of his robe
and lunged toward the barbarians back.  Grignr spun at the sound from
behind and smashed down his crimsoned axe once more.  His antagonist lunged
howling to a stream of stagnent green water, grasping a spouting stump that
had once been a wrist.  Grignr raised his axe over his head and prepaired
to finish the incomplete job, but was detered half way through his lunge by
a frenzied screech from behind.
     Carthena leapt to the head of the writhing figure, plunging a
smoldering torch into the agonized face.  The howls increased in their
horrid intensity, stifled by the sizzling of roasting flesh, then died down
until the man was reduced to a blubbering mass of squirming, insensate
flesh.
     Grignr advance to Carthena's side wincing slightly from the putrid
aroma of charred flesh that rose in a puff of thick white smog throughout
the chamber.  Carthena reeled slightly, staring dasedly downward at her
gruesome handywork.  "I had to do it ...  it was Agaphim ... I had to, "
she exclaimed!
     "Sargon should be more carful of his right hand men." Added Grignr, a
smug grin upon his lips.  "But to hell with Sargon for now, the stench is
becoming bothersome to me."  With that Grignr grasped Carthena around the
waist leading her around the bend in the cave and into the open.
     A ball of feral red was rising through the mists of the eastern
horizon, disipating the slinking shadows of the night.  A coral stood
before the pair, enclosing two grazing mares.  Grignr reached into a
weighted down leather pouch dangling at his side and drew forth the
scintillant red emerald he had obtained from the bloated idol.  Raising it
toward the sun he said, "We shall do well with bauble, eh!"
     Carthena gaped at the gem gasping in a terrified manner "The eye of
Argon, Oh!  Kalla!"  At this the gem gave off a blinding glow, then
dribbled through Grignr's fingers in a slimy red ooze.  Grignr stepped
back, pushing Carthena behind him.  The droplets of slime slowly converged
into a pulsating jelly-like mass.  A single opening transfixed the blob,
forminf into a leechlike maw.
     Then the hideous transgressor of nature flowed towards Grignr, a trail
of greenish slime lingering behind it.  The single gap puckered repeatedly
emitting a ghastly sucking sound.
     Grignr spread his legs into a battle stance, steeling his quivering
thews for a battle royal with a thing he knew not how to fight.  Carthena
wound her arms about her protectors neck, mumbling, "Kill it!  Kill!" While
her entire body trembled.
     The thing was almost upon Grignr when he buried his axe into the
gristly maw.  It passed through the blob and clanged upon the ground.
Grignr drew his axe back with a film of yellow-green slime clinging to the
blade.  The thing was seemingly unaffected.  Then it started to slooze up
his leg.  The hairs upon his nape stoode on end from the slimey feel of the
things buly, bulk.  The Nautous sucking sound became louder, and Grignr
felt the blood being drawn from his body.  With each hiss of hideous pucker
the thing increased in size.
     Grignr shook his foot about madly in an attempt to dislodge the blob,
but it clung like a leech, still feeding upon his rapidly draining life
fluid.  He grasped with his hands trying to rip it off, but only found his
hands entangled in a sickly glue- like substance.  The slimey thing
continued its puckering ; now having grown the size of Grignr's leg from
its vampiric feast.
     Grignr began to reel and stagger under the blob, his chalk white face
and faltering muscles attesting to the gigantic loss of blood.  Carthena
slipped from Grignr in a death-like faint, a morrow chilling scream upon
her red rubish lips.  In final desperation Grignr grasped the smoldering
torch upon the ground and plunged it into the reeking maw of the travestry.
A shudder passed through the thing.  Grignr felt the blackness closing upon
his eyes, but held on with the last ebb of his rapidly waning vitality.  He
could feel its grip lessoning as a hideous gurgling sound erupted from the
writhing maw.  The jelly like mass began to bubble like a vat of boiling
tar as quavers passed up and down its entire form.

                     -END OF STORY-

Transcriber's note:
     No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original
printing of The Eye of Argon.  It was mimeographed with stencils cut on an
elite manual typewriter.  Many letters were so faint as to be barely
readable, others were overstruck, and some that were to be removed never
got painted out with correction fluid.  Usually, only one space separated
sentences, while paragraphs were separated by a blank line and were
indented ten spaces.  Many words were grotesquely hyphenated.  And there
were illustrations. I cannot do them justice in mere words, but they were
a match for the text.  These are the major losses of this version (#02) of
TEoA.
     Otherwise, all effort has been made to retain the full and correct
text, preserving even mis-spellings and dropped spaces.  An excellent
proofreader has checked it for errors both ommitted and committed.  What
mis-matches remain are mine.
     I shall endeavor to keep a copy of the original available for viewing,
so it may be appreciated in all its fullness.  But as a labor of love for
those whose 3rd-generation copies have now succumbed to the bitter
vicissitudes of time and entropy, worn away by the ravages of countless
re-readings before enthralled audiences, yet who have found that the heady
flavor of its stylistic paragraphs has seeped into their soul and still
grips it with a fervid grasp, I dedicate this machine-readable version of
the inimitable The Eye of Argon.