The Queen of Swords (9 page)

And they set off over the unpleasantly mottled rock.

A while later it became evident that the sun had not moved across the sky. The brooding silence continued, broken only by the ghastly screechings of the black birds which nested in the peaks of the mountains. It was a land which seemed to radiate despair. For a short time Jhary had attempted to whistle a bright little tune, but the sound had died, as if swallowed by the desolate land.

“I thought Chaos all howling, random creativity,” said Corum. “This is worse.”

“It is what becomes of a place when Chaos exhausts its invention,” Jhary told him. “Ultimately, Chaos brings a more profound stagnation than anything it despises in Law. It must forever seek more and more sensation, more and more empty marvels, until there is nothing left and it has forgotten what true invention is.”

* * *

And at length weariness overcame them and they lay down on the barren rock and slept. When they awoke it was to observe that only one thing had changed…

The great black birds were closer. They were wheeling overhead in the sky.

“What can they live on?” Rhalina wondered. “There is no game here, no vegetation. Where is their food?”

Jhary looked significantly at Corum who shrugged.

“Come,” said the Prince in the Scarlet Robe. “Let’s continue. Time may be relative, but I have a feeling that unless we accomplish our mission soon, Lywm-an-Esh will fall.”

And the birds circled lower so that they could see their leathery wings and bodies, their tiny, greedy eyes, their long vicious beaks.

A small, fierce sound escaped from the throat of Jhary’s cat. It arched its back slightly as it glared at the birds.

They trudged on until the ground began to rise more sharply and they had reached the nearer slopes of the mountains.

The mountains squatted over them like sleeping monsters that might at any moment awake and devour them. The rocks were glassy, slippery and they climbed them slowly.

Still the black birds wheeled among the crags and now they were certain that if they allowed themselves to sleep the birds would descend and attack. This knowledge alone kept them climbing.

The frightful screeching grew louder, more insistent, almost gleeful. They heard the flap of obscene wings over their heads, but they refused to look up, as this would have wasted a fraction of the energy they had left.

They were looking now for shelter, for a crack in the rock into which they might crawl and defend themselves against the birds when, finally, they attacked.

They could hear the sound of their own gasping breath, the scrape of their feet on the stone, mingling with the flappings and screechings of the black birds.

Corum spared a glance for Rhalina and saw that there was desperate fear in her eyes and that she was weeping as she climbed. He began to feel that he had been tricked by Arkyn, that they had been sent, cynically, to their doom in this wasteland.

Then the flapping filled his ears and he felt the slap of cold air against his face and a talon grazed his helmet. With a strangled cry he felt for his sword and tried to tug it from the scabbard. He looked up in terror and saw a mass of black, flapping, savage things with glaring eyes and snapping beaks. The sword came free and, wearily, he lunged out at the birds. They cackled sardonically as his sword failed to find flesh. Suddenly his six-fingered jeweled hand reached out instead, moving without his volition, and it clutched one of the birds by its scrawny throat and squeezed that throat as it had squeezed human throats before. The bird gave a single surprised squawk and died. The Hand of Kwll threw the corpse to the glassy rock. The birds flapped a little distance away in consternation and settled in the nearby crags watching Corum warily. It had been so long since the hand had acted in that way that Corum had almost forgotten its powers. For the first time since it had destroyed the Heart of Arioch he was grateful to it. He displayed it to the birds and they made disturbed sounds in their throats, eyeing the corpse of their dead companion.

Rhalina, who had not witnessed the power of the Hand of Kwll before, looked with relieved astonishment at Corum. But Jhary merely pursed his lips and took advantage of the pause to draw his sword and lay propped on his elbows against the hard rock, his cat still on his shoulder.

And thus they sat, the birds and the human beings, regarding each other beneath the silent, brooding sky on the slopes of the bleak mountains, until it occurred to Corum that if the Hand of Kwll had saved them from their immediate danger, the Eye of Rhynn might prove even more useful. But he was reluctant to raise the eye-patch and look with the eye’s full powers into that strange nether region from which he could sometimes summon ghostly allies—the dead men earlier slain at his command. And, particularly, he did not want to summon those last who had been slain at the command of the Hand and the Eye—Queen Ooresé’s subjects, the Vadhagh riders, his own race, who had been slain by accident. But something must be done to break this impasse, for none of them had the strength to resist a mass attack by the birds and even if the Hand of Kwll should slay one or two more it would not save Rhalina and Jhary-a-Conel. Reluctantly his hand began to rise towards the jeweled eye-patch.

And then the patch was off and the horrid, faceted, alien eye of the dead god Rhynn glared into a world even more dreadful than the one they presently inhabited.

Again Corum saw a cavern in which dim shapes moved hopelessly this way and that. And in the foreground were the beings he had least wished to see. Their dead eyes peered out at him and there was a frightening sadness about the set of their faces. They had wounds in their bodies, but the wounds did not bleed, for these were now the creatures of limbo, neither dead nor alive. Their mounts were with them, too—creatures with thick, scaly bodies, cloven feet and nests of horns jutting from their snouts. The last of the Vadhagh folk—a lost part of the race which had once inhabited the Flamelands created by Arioch for his amusement. They were dressed from head to foot in red, tight-fitting garments, with red hoods on their heads. In their hands were their long, barbed lances.

Corum could not bear to look upon them and he made to move the eye-patch back into place, but then the Hand of Kwll had reached out, reached into that frightful limbo, and was gesturing to the dead Vadhagh. Slowly the score of corpses moved forward in answer to the summons. Slowly they mounted their horned beasts. Slowly they rode out of that ghastly cavern in a nameless netherworld and stood, a company of death, upon the slippery slopes of the mountains.

The birds screeched in surprise and anger but for some reason they did not take to the air. They shifted from foot to foot and darted their beaks at the scarlet warriors who now advanced upon them.

The black birds waited until the dead Vadhagh were almost upon them before they began to flap their wings and fly skyward.

Rhalina was staring in horror at the scene. “By all the Great Old Gods, Corum—what new foulness is this?”

“It is a foulness which aids us,” said Corum grimly. And he called out, “Strike!”

And the barbed lances were flung by scarlet arms and found the heads of each black bird. There was an agitation in the air and then the creatures had fallen to the slopes.

Rhalina continued to watch wide-eyed as the living-dead riders dismounted and went to collect their prizes. Corum had learned what happened in that netherworld whenever he summoned aid from it. By calling upon his earlier victims he could have their aid if he supplied them with victims of their own—then these victims would replace them and presumably the souls of the first victims would be released to find peace. He hoped that this was so.

The leading Vadhagh picked up two of the birds by their throats and slung them over his back. He turned a face that was half shorn away and looked through eyeless sockets at Corum.

“It is done, master,” droned the dead voice.

“Then you may return,” said Corum, half-choking.

“Before I go, I must impart a message to you, master.”

“A message? From whom?”

“From One Who is Closer to You than You Know,” said the dead Vadhagh mechanically. “He says that you must seek the Lake of Voices, that if you have the courage to sail across it then you might find help in your quest.”

“The Lake of Voices. Where is it? Who is this creature you speak of…”

“The Lake of Voices lies beyond this mountain range. Now I depart, master. We thank you for our prizes.”

Corum could bear no longer to look at the Vadhagh. He turned away, replacing the jeweled patch over his eye. When he looked back the Vadhagh had gone and so had the birds, all save the one which had been slain by the Hand of Kwll.

Rhalina’s face was pale. “These ‘allies’ of yours are no better than creatures of Chaos! It must corrupt us to use them, Corum…”

Jhary got up from the position in which he had been before the arrival of Corum’s ghastly warriors. “It is Chaos which corrupts us,” he said lightly, “which makes us fight. Chaos brutalizes all—even those who do not serve it. That you must accept, Lady Rhalina. I know it is the truth.”

She lowered her eyes. “Let us make our way to this lake,” she said. “What was its name?”

“A strange one.” Corum looked back at the last dead bird. “The Lake of Voices.”

They trudged on through the mountains, resting frequently now that the danger of the birds had been removed, beginning to feel a new threat—that of hunger and thirst, for they had no provisions with them.

Eventually they began to descend and they saw sparse grass growing on the lower slopes and beyond the grass a lake of blue water—a calm and beautiful lake which they could not believe existed in any realm of Chaos.

“It is lovely!” Rhalina gasped. “And we might find food there—and at least we shall be able to quench our thirst.”

“Aye…” said Corum, more suspiciously.

And Jhary said, “I think your informant said we should need courage to cross it. I wonder what danger it holds.”

* * *

They could barely walk by the time they reached the grassy slopes and left the harsh rock behind them. On the grass they rested and they found a spring nearby so that they did not have to wait until they reached the lake to quench their thirst. Jhary murmured a word to his cat which sprang suddenly into the air on its wings and was soon lost from sight.

“Where have you sent the cat, Jhary?” asked Corum.

Jhary winked at him. “Hunting,” he said.

Sure enough, in a very short time the cat returned with a small rabbit, almost as big as itself, in its claws. It deposited the rabbit and then left to find another. Jhary busied himself with the building of a fire and soon they had feasted and were sleeping while one of their number kept watch until he was relieved by another.

Then they continued on their way until they were less than a quarter of a mile from the shores of the lake.

It was then that Corum paused, cocking his head on one side.

“Do you hear them?” he asked.

“I hear nothing,” Rhalina said.

But Jhary nodded. “Aye—voices—as of a great throng heard in the distance. Voices…”

“That is what I hear,” Corum agreed.

And as they neared the lake, walking swiftly over the springy turf, the babble of voices increased until it filled their heads and they covered their ears in horror for they realized now why it would take courage to cross the Lake of Voices.

The words—the murmurings, the pleadings, the oaths, the shouts, the crying, the laughter—they were all issuing from the blue waters of the apparently peaceful lake.

It was the water that spoke.

It was as if a million people had been drowned in it and continued to talk although their bodies had rotted and been dispersed by the liquid.

Looking desperately about him, his hands still covering his ears, Corum saw that it would be impossible to try to skirt the Lake of Voices for it was apparent that on both sides of them there stretched marshland which they would be unable to cross.

He forced himself to move closer to the water and the voices of the men and the women and the children were like the voices which must populate hell.

“
Please…
”

“
I wish—I wish—I wish…
”

“
Nobody will…
”

“
This agony…
”

“
There is no peace…
”

“
Why…?
”

“
It was a lie. I was deceived…
”

“
I, too, was deceived. I cannot…
”

“
Aaaaaaa! Aaaaaaa! Aaaaaaa!
”

“
Help me, I beg thee…
”

“
Help me!
”

“
Me!
”

“
The fate which cannot be borne except with…
”

“
Ha!
”

“
Help…
”

“
Be merciful…
”

“
Save her—save her—save her…
”

“
I suffer so much…
”

“
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…
”

“
It seemed so splendid and there were lights all around…
”

“
Beasts, beasts, beasts, beasts, beasts…
”

“
The child… It was the child…
”

“
All morning it wept until the lurching thing entered me…
”

“
Soweth! Tebel art…
”

“
Forlorn in Rendane I composed that strain…
”

“
Peace…
”

* * *

And then Corum saw that a boat was waiting for them on the shore of the Lake of Voices.

And he wondered if he would be sane by the time they reached the other side.

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