The Oak and the Ram - 04 (6 page)

Corum restrained his impulse to ask Prince Gaynor further questions. He must not let his old enemy know that he had not, until recently, any hint of Craig Don's properties.

"Yet you, too, are from Limbo," Corum reminded Gaynor. "I cannot understand why the—the vortex does not claim you."

' 'Limbo is not my natural home. I was banished there—banished by you, Corum. Only those who came originally from Limbo need fear Craig Don. But what you think to gain from coming here, I know not. As naive as ever, Corum, you doubtless hoped that the

Fhoi Myore knew nothing of Craig Don and would follow you here. Well, my friend, I must tell you that my masters, while apparently stupid in some matters, have a proper regard for this place. They would not come an inch within the outer circle. Your journey has been for nothing." Gaynor laughed his bleak laugh. "Only once were your Sidhi ancestors successful in luring their foes to this place. Only once did Fhoi Myore warriors find themselves engulfed and drawn back to Limbo. And that was many centuries ago. Beastlike, the remaining Fhoi Myore keep a safe distance from Craig Don, barely realizing why they do so."

"They would not rather return to their own Realm?"

' 'They do not understand that that is where they would go. And it is scarcely in the interest of those, like me, who
do
know, to try to communicate this knowledge to them. I have no wish to be abandoned here without their protecting power?"

"So," said Corum as if to himself, "my journey has been fruitless."

' 'Aye. Moreover, I think it unlikely you'll return to Caer Mahlod alive. When I go back to Caer Llud I shall tell them I have seen their Sidhi foe. Then all the Hounds will come. All the Hounds, Corum. I suggest you remain here, where you are safe." Gaynor laughed again. "Stay in this sanctuary. There is nowhere else in this land that you can escape the Fhoi Myore and the Hounds of Kerenos.''

"But," replied Corum, pretending to miss Gaynor's meaning, "we have food only for a little while. We should starve here, Gaynor."

' 'Possibly,'' said Gaynor with evident relish.' 'On the other hand I could come from time to time with food-—when it pleased me. You could live for years, Corum. You could experience something of what I felt while I enjoyed my banishment in Limbo."

"So that is what you hope for. That is why you did not harry us on our way here!" Jhary-a-Conel began to descend the hill, drawing one of his curved blades.

"No!" Corum cried out to his friend. "You cannot harm him, Jhary, but he can slay you!"

"It will be pleasant," Gaynor said, retreating slowly as Jhary came to a reluctant stop. "It will be pleasant to see you squabbling for the scraps I bring. It will be pleasant to see your friendship die as hunger grows. Perhaps I'll bring you a hound's corpse—one that you slew, Jhary-a-Conel, eh? Would that be tasty? Or perhaps you will begin to find human flesh wholesome. Which one of you will first begin to desire to slay and eat the other?"

"This is an ignoble vengeance that you take, Gaynor," said Corum.

' 'It was an ignoble fate you sent me to, Corum. Besides, I do not claim nobility of spirit. That is your province, is it not?"

Gaynor turned, and his step was almost light as he walked away from them.

"I will leave the dogs," he said. "I am sure you'll appreciate their company."

Corum watched Gaynor until he had reached the outer circle and climbed onto his horse. The wind made a low sound in the distance, a melancholy murmuring, as if it wished to enter the seven stone rings but could not.

"So," said Corum musingly, "we have gained something from the encounter. Craig Don is more than a holy place. It is a place of great power—an opening between the Fifteen Realms, perhaps—or even more. We were right to be reminded of Tanelorn, Jhary-a-Conel. But how is the gateway formed? What ritual opens it? Perhaps the High King will know."

"Aye," said Jhary, "we have, as you say, gained something, Corum. But we have lost something, too. How are we to reach the High King now? Listen."

And Corum listened, and he heard the ferocious baying of the frightful Hounds of Kerenos as they ranged about the outer stone circle. If they rode from the sanctuary of Craig Don, the dogs would instantly be upon them.

Corum frowned and he shivered as he drew his fur cloak about him. He squatted by the altar while Jhary-a-Conel paced back and forth and the horses snorted nervously as they pricked their ears and heard the hounds. It seemed to become colder as the evening settled upon the place of the seven stone circles. Craig Don's properties might protect them from the Fhoi Myore, but they could not protect them from the marrow-chilling cold. Neither were there materials here from which they could build a fire. Night came down. The noise of the wind increased, but it could not drown the persistent and terrible howling of the Hounds of Kerenos.

BOOK TWO

In which Prince Corum makes use of one Treasure only to discover his lack of two others . . .

THE FIRST CHAPTER

A SAD CITY IN THE MIST

They stood between two of the great stone pillars of Craig Don and faced the prowling devil dogs of the Fhoi Myore. The Hounds of Kerenos were both fierce and wary; they snapped, they snarled, but they gave the stone circle wide clearance. Others of the dogs sat some distance off, barely visible against the wind-swirled snow which ruffled their shaggy coats. From somewhere Gaynor had added five more hounds.

Corum narrowed his eyes and fixed them on the nearest dog, then he drew back the arm which held the long and heavy lance, shifted his feet a little to get the best balance, and hurled the weapon with all the force of his fear, anger and desperation.

The lance flew true, driving deep into the canine body, knocking the hound from its feet.

^‘
‘
Now!'' called Corum to Jhary-a-Conel, who held the end of the rope and began to tug. Corum pulled too. The line had been securely attached to the lance and the lance was buried deep in the hound's body so that this, too, was dragged back into the sanctuary of the stone circle. The hound still lived, and when it realized what was happening to it, it began to make feeble efforts to get free. It whined, it tried to snap at the shaft of the lance, but then it had been pulled under the arch and it became suddenly supine as if it accepted its doom. It died.

Corum and Jhary-a-Conel were jubilant. Putting his booted foot on the carcass, Corum jerked his lance free and immediately ran back to the arch, selecting a fresh target, hurling his weapon out with the line flickering behind it, striking a second hound in the throat and instantly dragging the lance back. This time the lance came free from the corpse and bounced back through the snow to them. Now there were six hounds left. But they had become more wary. Not for the first time, Corum wished that he had brought his bone bow and his arrows upon this quest.

A hound came forward and sniffed at the corpse of its fellow. It nuzzled the throat from where the fresh blood poured. It began to lap the blood with its long, red tongue.

And a third hound paid dearly for its meal as the lance sprang out again from between the tall columns and plunged into its left flank. The hound yelled, whirled, tried to get free, fell writhing into the blood-flecked snow, rose again and wrenched itself away, leaving a large part of its flank on the head of the spear. It ran in circles for a while as its life-blood gushed from it and then, about a hundred yards from the corpse it had only recently been feeding from, it flopped down.

Feeling that they were at a safe distance from the deadly lance, its brother hounds moved in and began to feast off its still living flesh.

"It is our one great advantage," said Corum as he and Jhary-a-Conel mounted their horses, "that the Hounds of Kerenos possess no moral sense concerning the eating of their fellows! It is their weakness, I think."

Then, while the hounds slavered around their feast, Corum and Jhary-a-Conel rode back through the seven circles, past the carved stone altar at the center of the first circle, out again through the circles until they were on the far side from the hounds.

The hounds had not yet guessed Corum's plan. There were a few minutes in hand.

Digging their heels deep into the flanks of their horses, they galloped as fast as they could away from Craig Don, heading not for Caer Mahlod (as Gaynor would think they did) but for their original destination of Caer Llud. With any luck the wind would obscure their tracks and spread their scent in all directions and they would have time to reach Caer Llud and find Amergin the Archdruid before Gaynor or the Fhoi Myore had any hint of their plan.

Gaynor had spoken the truth when he had told them that they could never reach Caer Mahlod with all the Hounds of Kerenos hunting for them, but when Gaynor found them gone it was almost certain that for a while he would waste time riding in the wrong direction while his dogs cast for their scent. Gaynor's jaundiced view of mortal character had worked this time to his disadvantage. He had reckoned without the quick thinking of Corum and Jhary-a-Conel, without their determination or their willingness to risk their lives for a cause. He had spent too long in the company of the weak, the greedy and the decadent. Doubtless he preferred such company, since he basked in it.

As he rode, Corum considered what he had learned from Gaynor the Damned. Did-Craig Don still possess the properties Gaynor had described, or had they only worked for the Sidhi? Was Craig Don now only a shell, avoided by the Fhoi Myore out of superstition rather than knowing respect for its powers? He hoped that there would come a time when he could discover the truth for himself. If Craig Don was still truly a place of power there might be a way found to make use of it again.

But now he must forget Craig Don as the pillars faded to black shadows in the distance and then were obscured entirely by the swirling snow. Now he must think ahead, of Caer Llud and Amergin under a glamour in his tower by the river, guarded both by men and things which were not men.

They were cold and they were hungry. The coats of their horses were rimed and their own cloaks sparkled with frost. Their faces were numbed by the cold wind and their bodies ached whenever they moved.

But they had found Caer Llud. They drew rein upon a hill and saw a wide, frozen river. On both banks of the river and connected by well-constructed wooden bridges was the City of the High King, pale granite coated with snow, some of the buildings rising several stories. For this world it was a large city, perhaps the largest, and must once have contained a population of twenty or thirty thousand.

But now the city had the appearance of having been abandoned, for all that shapes could be seen moving through the mist which hung in its streets.

The mist was everywhere. Thinner in some places, it clung to Caer Llud like a threadbare shroud. Corum recognized the mist. It was Fhoi Myore mist. It was the mist which followed the Cold Folk wherever they traveled in their huge, poorly made wicker war-carts. Corum feared that mist, as he feared the primitive, amoral power of the surviving Lords of Limbo. Even as they watched, he saw a movement where the mist was thickest, close to the river bank. He saw a suggestion of a dark, homed head; of a gigantic torso which faintly resembled the body of a toad; of the outlines of a huge, creaking cart drawn by something as oddly formed as the rider. Then it had gone.

From Corum's frost-cracked lips came a single word: "Kerenos."

"He who is master to the hounds?" Jhary sniffed.

"And master of much more," Corum added.

Jhary blew his nose upon a large linen rag he took from under his jerkin. "I fear this weather affects my health badly," he said. "I would not mind coming to blows with some of those who created such weather!"

Corum shook his head. "We are not strong enough, you and I. We must wait. We must be as careful to avoid conflict with the Fhoi Myore as Gaynor is in avoiding direct conflict with me." He peered through the mist and the eddying snow. ' 'Caer Llud is not guarded. Plainly they fear no attack from the Mabden. Why should they? That is to our advantage." He looked at Jhary ‘ s face which was blue with cold. ' 'I think we'd both pass for living corpses if we entered Caer Llud now. If stopped, we shall announce that we are Fhoi Myore men. While it is impossible to reason either with the Fhoi Myore or their slaves because of their primitive mentalities, it also means that they are slow to recognize a deception. Come." Corum urged his horse down the hill toward that sad city, the once-great city of Caer Llud.

Leaving the relatively clean air for the mist of Caer Llud was like going from midsummer into midwinter. If Corum and Jhary-a-Conel had considered themselves cold, it was now as nothing to the totality of coldness in which they now found themselves. The mist seemed virtually sentient, eating into their flesh, their bones and their vitals so that they were hard-put not to cry out and reveal their ordinary humanity. For Gaynor the Damned, for the Ghoolegh, the living dead, for the Brothers of the Pines like Hew Argech whom Corum had once fought, such cold doubtless meant little. But for mortals of the conventional mold it meant a great deal. Corum, gasping, shuddering, wondered if they could hope to live through it. With set faces they rode on, avoiding the worst of the mist as best they could, seeking the great tower by the river where they hoped Amergin was still imprisoned.