The Chronicles of Corum (39 page)

Beyond the walls a few barbarians were fleeing, but the Sky Ships found them.

The Sky Ships found them all.

Corum noted that the Army of the Dog and the Army of the Bear had gone, as had the creatures of Chaos he had summoned to his aid. Had they been recalled by their masters - the Dog and the Horned Bear - or were they now occupying the Cavern of Limbo. He put a finger to his jewelled eye-patch but then dropped it. He could not bear, for a long time, to look upon that netherworld.

The King Without a Country came forward. “You see how useful the gift was, Prince Corum.”

“Aye.”

“And now Xiombarg is banished from her Realm only one more Realm has a Sword Ruler. Mabelode must fear us now.”

“I am sure that he does,” said Corum without joy.

“And I am no longer a King Without a Country. I can begin to rebuild my kingdom once I have returned to my own plane.”

“That is good,” said Corum tonelessly.

He went to the battlements and he looked down at the corpse-strewn city. A few of the citizens were beginning to emerge from their houses. The power of the Mabden barbarians was ended for ever. Peace had come to Arkyn’s Realm and peace, no doubt, would come to the Realm now to be ruled by his brother Lord of Law.

“Shall we return to Moidel in the sea?” Rhalina asked him softly, stroking his haggard face.

He shrugged. “I doubt if it exists. Glandyth would have razed it.”

“And what of Earl Glandyth?” Jhary-a-Conel stroked the chin of his purring, winged cat which sat again upon his shoulder. “Where is he? What became of him.”

“I do not think he is dead,” said Corum. “I think I shall encounter him again. I have served Law and performed all the deeds Arkyn asked of me. But I have still to take my vengeance.”

A Sky Ship came towards them. In its prow stood the old, handsome Vadhagh Prince Yurette. He was smiling as the ship of the air settled on the roof.

“Corum. Will you guest with us at Gwlãs-cor-Gwrys? I wish to speak on matters concerning the restoration of Vadhagh lands, of Vadhagh castles - so that your land may once again be called Bro-an-Vadhagh. We will send the remaining Mabden back to their original kingdom of Bro-an-Mabden and the pleasant forests and fields will bloom again.”

And, at last Corum’s gaunt face softened and he smiled.

“I thank you, Prince Yurette. We should be honoured to guest with you.”

“Now that we have returned to our own Realm, I think we shall cease our venturings for a while,” said Prince Yurette.

“And,” Corum added feelingly, “I hope that I, too, may cease my own venturings. A little tranquillity would be welcome.”

Far out across the plain the City in the Pyramid was beginning to descend to Earth.

In those days there were oceans of light and cities in the skies and wild flying beasts of bronze. There were herds of crimson cattle that roared and were taller than castles.

There were shrill, viridian things that haunted bleak rivers.

It was a time of gods, manifesting themselves upon out world in all her aspects; a time of giants who walked on water; of mindless sprites and misshapen creatures who could be summoned by an ill-considered thought but driven away only on pain of some fearful sacrifice; of magics, phantasms, unstable nature, impossible events, insane paradoxes, dreams come true, dreams gone awry, of nightmares assuming reality.

It was a rich time and a dark time. The time of the Sword Rulers. The time when the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh, age-old enemies, were dying. The time when Man, the slave of fear, was emerging, unaware that much of the terror he experienced was the result of nothing else but the fact that he, himself, had come into existence. It was one of many ironies connected with Man (who, in those days, called his race Mabden).

The Mabden lived brief lives and bred prodigiously.

Within a few centuries they rose to dominate the westerly continent on which they had evolved. Superstition stopped them from sending many of their ships toward Vadhagh and Nhadragh lands for another century or two, but gradually they gained courage when no resistance was offered. They began to feel jealous of the older races; they began to feel malicious.

The Vadhagh and the Nhadragh were not aware of this.

They had dwelt a million or more years upon the planet, which now, at last, seemed at rest. They knew of the Mabden but considered them not greatly different from other beasts. Though continuing to indulge their traditional hatreds of one another, the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh spent their long hours in considering abstractions, in the creation of works of art and the like. Rational, sophisticated, at one with themselves, these older races were unable to believe in the changes that had come. Thus, as it almost always is, they ignored the signs.

There was no exchange of knowledge between the two ancient enemies, even though they had fought their last battle many centuries before.

The Vadhagh lived in family groups occupying isolated castles scattered across a continent called by them Bro-an-Vadhagh. There was scarcely any communication between these families, for the Vadhagh had long since lost the impulse to travel. The Nhadragh lived in their cities built on the islands in the seas to the northwest of Bro-an-Vadhagh. They, also, had little contact, even with their closest kin. Both races reckoned themselves invulnerable.

Both were wrong.

Upstart Man was beginning to breed and spread like a pestilence across the world. This pestilence struck down the old races wherever it touched them. And it was not only death that Man brought, but terror, too. Willfully, he made of the older world nothing but ruins and bones.

Unwittingly, he brought psychic and supernatural disruption of a magnitude which even the Great Old Gods failed to comprehend.

And the Great Old Gods began to know Fear.

And Man, slave of fear, arrogant in his ignorance, continued his stumbling progress. He was blind to the huge disruptions aroused by his apparently petty ambitions. As well, Man was deficient in sensitivity, had no awareness of the multitude of dimensions that filled the universe, each plane intersecting with several others. Not so the Vadhagh or the Nhadragh, who had known what it was to move at will between the dimensions they termed the Five Planes.

They had glimpsed and understood the nature of the many planes, other than the five, through which the Earth moved

Therefore it seemed a dreadful injustice that these wise races should perish at the hands of creatures who were still little more than animals. It was as if vultures feasted on and squabbled over the paralyzed body of the youthful poet who could only stare at them with puzzled eyes as they slowly robbed him of an exquisite existence they would never appreciate, never know they were taking.

"If they valued what they stole, if they knew what they were destroying," says the old Vadhagh in the story, "The Only Autumn Flower," "then I would be consoled."

It was unjust.

By creating Man, the universe had betrayed the old races.

But it was a perpetual and familiar injustice. The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe cannot perceive and love the sentient. The universe sees no distinction between the multitude of creatures and elements which comprise it. All are equal.

None is favored. The universe, equipped with nothing but the materials and the power of creation, continues to create: something of this, something of that. It cannot control what it creates and it cannot, it seems, be controlled by its creations (though a few might deceive themselves otherwise). Those who curse the workings of the universe curse that which is deaf. Those who strike out at those workings fight that which is inviolate. Those who shake their fists, shake their fists at blind stars.

But this does not mean that there are some who will not try to do battle with and destroy the invulnerable.

There will always be such beings, sometimes beings of great wisdom, who cannot bear to believe in an insouciant universe.

Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei was one of these. Perhaps the last of the Vadhagh race, he was sometimes known as the Prince in the Scarlet Robe.

This chronicle concerns him.

We have already learned how the Mabden followers of Earl Glandyth-a-Krae (who called themselves the Denledhyssi—or Murderers) killed Prince Corum's relatives and his nearest kin and thus taught the Prince in the Scarlet Robe how to hate, how to kill, and how to desire vengeance. We have heard how Glandyth tortured Corum and took away a hand and an eye and how Corum way rescued by the Giant of Laahr and taken to the castle of the Margravine Rhalina—a castle set upon a mount surrounded by the sea. Though Rhalina was a Mabden woman (of the gentler folk of Lywm-an-Esh), Corum and she fell in love. When Glandyth roused the Pony Tribes, the forest barbarians, to attack the Margravine's castle, she and Corum sought supernatural aid and thus fell into the hands of the sorcerer Shool, whose domain was the island called Svi-an-Fanla-Brool—Home of the Gorged God.

And now Corum had direct experience of the morbid, unfamiliar powers at work in the world. Shool spoke of dreams and realities. ("I see you are beginning to argue in Mabden terms," he told Corum. "It is just as well for you, if you wish to survive in this Mabden dream." — "It is a dream . . . ?" said Corum.—"Of sorts. Real enough. It is what you might call the dream of a God. There again you might say that it is a dream that a God has allowed to become reality. I refer of course to the Knight of the Swords, who rules the Five Planes.") With Rhalina his prisoner Shool could make a bargain with Corum. He gave him two gifts—the Hand of Kwll and the Eye of Rhynn—to replace his own missing organs.

These jeweled and alien things were once the property of two brother gods known as the Lost Gods since they mysteriously vanished.

Now Shool told Corum what he must do if he wished to see Rhalina saved. Corum must go to the realm of the Knight of the Swords—Lord Arioch of Chaos, who ruled the Five Planes since he had wrested them from the control of Lord Arkyn of Law. There Corum must find the heart of the Knight of the Swords—a thing which was kept in a tower of his castle and which enabled him to take material shape on Earth and thus wield power (without a material shape—or a number of them—the Lords of Chaos could not rule mortals).

With little hope Corum set off in a boat for the domain of Arioch but on his way was wrecked when a huge giant passed by him, merely fishing. In the land of the strange Ragha-da-Kheta he discovered that the Eye could summon dreadful beings from those worlds to aid him—also the Hand seemed to sense danger before it came and was ruthless in slaying even when Corum did not desire to slay.

Then he realized that, by accepting Shoots gifts, he had accepted the logic of Shool's world and could not escape from it now.

During these adventures Corum learned of the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos. A cheerful traveler from Lywm-an-Esh enlightened him. It was, he said, "the Chaos Lords' will that rules you. Arioch is one of them. Long since there was a war between the forces of Order and the forces of Chaos. The forces of Chaos won and came to dominate the Fifteen Planes and, as I understand it, much that lies beyond them. Some say that Order was defeated completely and all her Gods vanished. They say the Cosmic Balance tipped too far in one direction and that is why there are so many arbitrary events taking place in the world. They say that once the world was round instead of dish-shaped ..." — "Some Vadhagh legends say it was once round," Corum informed him. — "Aye. Well, the Vadhagh began their rise before Order was banished. That is why the Sword Rulers hate the old races so much. They are not their creation at all. But the Great Gods are not allowed to interfere too directly in mortal affairs, so they have worked through the Mabden, chiefly ..." — Corum said, "Is this the truth?"— Hanafax shrugged. "It is a truth."

Later, in the Flamelands where the Blind Queen Oorese lived, Corum saw a mysterious figure who almost immediately vanished after he had slain poor Hanafax with the Hand of Kwll (which knew Hanafax would betray him). He learned that Arioch was the Knight of the Swords and that Xiombarg was the Queen of the Swords ruling the next group of Five Planes, while the most powerful Sword Ruler of all ruled the last of the Five Planes—Mabelrode, King of the Swords. Corum learned that all the hearts of the Sword Rulers were hidden where even they could not touch them. But after further adventures in Arioch's castle, he at last succeeded in finding the heart of the Knight of the Swords and, to save his life, destroyed it, thus banishing Arioch to limbo and allowing Arkyn of Law to return to occupy his old castle. But Corum had earned the Bane of the Sword Rulers and by destroying Arioch's heart had set a pattern of destiny for himself. A voice told him, "Neither Law nor Chaos must dominate the destinies of the mortal planes. There must be equilibrium." But it seemed to Corum that there was no equilibrium, that Chaos ruled all.

"The balance sometimes tips," replied the voice. "It must be righted. And that is the power of mortals, to adjust the balance. You have begun the work already. Now you must continue until it is finished. You may perish before it is complete, but some other will follow you."