The Chronicles of Corum

by Michael Moorcock

  The man’s eyes did not seem to focus on Corum at all, but on some distant goal. That was possibly why his responses were sluggish. Nonetheless, Corum was still winded from his fall and, if he could not kill his opponent, then sooner or later one of those clumsy blows would strike true and Corum would be slain.

  Implacably, swinging the great cutlass from side to side, the white-faced warrior advanced on Corum, who was barely able to do more than parry the blows.

  He was retreating slowly backwards, knowing that behind him, at the edge of the glade, waited the hounds. And the hounds were panting—panting in hot-breathed anticipation, their tongues lolling, as ordinary domestic dogs might pant when they anticipated food.

  Corum could think of no worse fate at that moment than to become meat for the Hounds of Kerenos. He tried to rally, to carry the attack to his enemy, and then his left heel struck a hidden tree root, his ankle twisted, and he fell, hearing the note of a horn from the forest—a horn that could only belong to one considered the greatest of the Fhoi Myore, Kerenos. Now the dogs were up, moving in on him as he tried to struggle up, his sword raised to ward off the blows which the white-faced warrior rained upon him.

  Again the horn sounded.

  The warrior paused, cutlass raised, a dull expression of puzzlement appearing on his heavy features. The dogs, too, were hesitating, red ears cocked, unsure of what they were expected to do.

  And the horn sounded for the third time.

  Reluctantly the hounds began to slink back into the forest. The warrior turned his back on Corum and staggered, dropping his blade, covering his ears, moaning softly, as he, too, followed the dogs from the glade. Then, suddenly, he stopped. His arms dropped limply to his sides, blood suddenly began to spurt from the wounds Corum had inflicted.

  The warrior fell upon the snow and was still.

  Warily, uncertainly, Corum got to his feet. His war-horse plodded up to him and nuzzled him. Corum felt a pang of guilt that he had considered leaving the brave beast to its fate when he had climbed the tree. He rubbed its nose. Though bleeding from several bites, the horse was not seriously hurt, and three of the devil dogs lay dead in the glade, their heads and bodies smashed by the horse’s hooves.

  A quietness fell upon the glade then. Corum used what he considered only a pause in the attack to seek his fallen bow. He found it, near the broken branch. But the arrows and his two lances remained where he had hung them in the tree. He stood on tiptoe, reaching up with his bow to try to dislodge them, but they were too high.

  Then he heard a movement behind him and turned, sword at the ready.

  A tall figure had entered the glade. He wore a long, pleated surcoat of soft leather dyed a deep, rich blue. There were jewels on his slender fingers, a gold and jewelled collar at his throat, and beneath the surcoat could just be seen a samite robe, embroidered with mysterious designs. The face was handsome and old, framed by long gray hair and a gray beard that ended just above the golden collar. In one of his hands the newcomer held a horn—a long horn bound with bands of silver and gold, each band fashioned in the shape of a beast of the forest.

  Corum drew himself up, dropping the bow and taking his sword in both hands.

  ‘ ‘ I face you, Kerenos,” said the Prince in the Scarlet Robe ,” and I defy you.”

  The tall man smiled. “Few have ever faced Kerenos.” His voice was mellow, weary and wise. “Even I have not faced him.”

  “You are not Kerenos? Yet you have his horn. You must have called off those hounds. Do you serve him?”

  ‘ ‘I serve only myself—and those who aid me. I am Calatin. I was famous once, when there were folk in these parts to speak of me. I am a wizard. Once I had twenty-seven sons and a grandson. Now there is only Calatin.”

  “There are many now who mourn sons—and daughters, too,” said Corum, recalling the old woman he had seen some days since.

  “Many,” agreed the wizard Calatin. “But my sons and my grandson died not in the battle against the Fhoi Myore. They died on my behalf, seeking something I require in my own feud with the Cold Folk. But who are you, warrior, who fights the Hounds of Kerenos so well, and who sports a silver hand like the hand of some legendary demigod.”

  “I am pleased that you, at least, do not recognize me,” said Corum. “I am called Corum Jhaelen Irsei. The Vadhagh are my folk.”

  “Sidhi folk, then?” The tall old man’s eyes became reflective. “What do you on the mainland?”

  “Iam upon a quest. I seek something for a people who dwell now at Caer Mahlod. They are my friends.”

  “So Sidhi befriend mortals now. Perhaps there are some advantages to the Fhoi Myore’s coming.”

  ‘ ‘Of advantages and disadvantages I know naught,” said Corum. “I thank you, wizard, for calling off those dogs.”

  Calatin shrugged and tucked the horn away in the folds of his blue robe. “If Kerenos himself had hunted with his pack, I should not have been able to aid you. Instead he sent one of those.” Calatin nodded towards the dead creature whom Corum had fought.

  “And what are those?” Corum asked. He crossed the glade to look down at the corpse. It had stopped bleeding now, but the blood had congealed in all its wounds. “Why could I not kill it with my blade while you could kill it by the blast of a horn?”

  ‘ ‘The third blast always slays the Ghoolegh,” said Calatin with a shrug. ‘ ‘If ‘slay’ is the proper word to use, for the Ghoolegh folk are half-dead already. That is why you doubtless found that one hard to slay. Normally they are bound to obey the first blast. A second blast will warn them and the third blast will kill them for failing to obey the first. They make good slaves, as a result. My horn-note, being subtly different to that of Kerenos’s own horn, confused both dogs and Ghoolegh. But one thing the Ghoolegh knew—the third blast kills. So he died.”

  “Who are the Ghoolegh?”

  ‘ ‘The Fhoi Myore brought them with them from across the water to the East. They are a race bred to serve the Fhoi Myore. I know little else about them.”

  “Do you know from where the Fhoi Myore came originally?” asked Corum. He began to move around the camp, finding sticks to build up the fire he had extinguished. He noted that the mist had disappeared entirely now.

  “No, I have ideas, of course.”

  All the while he had spoken, Calatin had not moved but had watched Corum through narrowed eyes. “I would have thought,” he continued, “that a Sidhi would know more than a mere mortal wizard.”

  ‘ ‘I do not know what the Sidhi folk are like,” Corum said.’ ‘I am a Vadhagh—and not of your time. I came from another age, an earlier age, or even an age which does not exist, as such, in your universe. I know no more than that.”

  “Why did you choose to come here?” Calatin seemed to accept Corum’s explanation without surprise.

  “I did not choose. I was summoned.”

  “An incantation?” Now Calatin was surprised. “You know a folk with power to summon the Sidhi to their aid? In Caer Mahlod? It is hard to believe.”

  ‘ ‘In that,” Corum told him, ‘ ‘I had some choice. Their incantation was weak. It could not have brought me to them against my will.”

  “Ah,” Calatin seemed satisfied.

  Corum wondered whether the wizard had been displeased when he thought there were mortals more powerful at sorcery than himself. He looked hard into Calatin’s face. There was something most enigmatic about the wizard’s eyes. Corum was not sure that he trusted the man very much, even though he’d saved his life.

  At last the fire began to blaze and Calatin moved towards it, extending his hands to warm them.

  “What if the hounds attack again?” Corum asked.

  ‘ ‘Kerenos is nowhere near. It will take him some days to discover what happened here, and then we shall be gone, I hope.”

  “You wish to accompany me?” Corum asked.

  “I was going to offer you the hospitality of my lodgings,” said Calatin with a smile. “They are not far fro
m here.”

  “Why were you wandering the forest at night?”

  Calatin drew his blue robe about him and seated himself on cleared ground near the fire. The light from the blaze stained his face and beard red, giving him a somewhat demonic appearance. He raised his eyebrows at Corum’s question.

  “I was looking for you,” he said.

  “Then you did know of my presence?”

  “No. I saw smoke a day or so ago and I came to investigate it. I wondered what mortal could be daring the dangers of Laahr. Happily I got to you before the hounds could dine on your corpse. Without my horn, I could not, myself, have survived in these parts. Oh, and I have one or two other small sorceries to help me remain alive.” Calatin smiled a thin smile. “It is the Day of the Sorcerer in this world, again. Once, only a few years since, I was deemed eccentric because of my interests. I was thought mad by some, evil by others. Calatin, they said, escapes from the real world by studying occult matters. What use can such things be to our people?” He chuckled. It was not an entirely pleasant sound to Corum’s ears. ‘ ‘Well, I have found some uses for the old lore. And Calatin is the only one to remain alive in the whole of the peninsula.”

  “You have used your knowledge for selfish ends alone, it seems,” said Corum. He drew a skin of wine from his pack and offered it to Calatin, who accepted it without suspicion and who seemed to experience no rancor at Corum’s remark. Calatin raised the skin to his lips and drank deeply before replying.

  “I am Calatin,” said the wizard. “I had a family. I have had several wives. I had twenty-seven sons and a grandson. They were all I could care for. And now that they are dead, I care for Calatin. Oh, do not judge me too harshly, Sidhi, for I was mocked by my fellows for many years. I divined something of the Fhoi Myore’s coming, but they ignored me. I offered my help, but they laughed and rejected it. I have no cause to love mortals much. But I have less cause to hate the Fhoi Myore, I suppose.”

  ‘ ‘What became of your twenty-seven sons and your grandson?”

  “They died together or individually in different parts of the world.”

  “Why did they die if they did not fight the Fhoi Myore?”

  “The Fhoi Myore killed some of them. They were all upon quests, seeking things I needed to continue my researches into certain aspects of mystic lore. One or two were successful and, dying of their wounds, brought me those things. But there are still several things I need and, I suppose, shall not have now.”

  Corum made no response to Calatin’s statement. He felt faint. As the fire warmed his blood and brought pain to the minor wounds he had sustained, he began to realize the full extent of his tiredness. His eyes began to close.

  “You see,” Calatin continued, “I have been frank with you, Sidhi. And what quest are you upon?”

  Corum yawned. “I seek a spear.”

  In the dim firelight Corum thought he saw Calatin’s eyes narrow. “A spear?”

  ” Aye.” Corum yawned again and stretched his body beside the fire.

  “And where do you seek this spear?”

  “In a place that some doubt exists, where the race I call Mabden—your race—dares not go, or cannot go on pain of death, or …” Corum shrugged. “It is hard to separate one superstition from another in this world of yours.”

  “Is this place you go to this place which might not exist—an island?”

  “An island, aye.”

  “Called Hy-Breasail?”

  “That is its name.” Corum forced sleep away, becoming a little more alert. “Do you know it?”

  “I have heard it lies out to sea, to the west, and that the Fhoi Myore dare not visit it.”

  “I have heard that, also. Do you know why the Fhoi Myore cannot go there?”

  “Some say that the air of Hy-Breasail, while beneficial to mortals, is deadly to the Fhoi Myore. But it is not the air of the island that endangers mortals. It is the enchantments of the place, they say, that brings death to ordinary men.”

  “Enchantments …?’’ Corum could resist sleep no longer.

  ” Aye,” echoed the wizard Calatin thoughtfully,’ ‘enchantments of fearful beauty, it is said.”

  They were the last words Corum heard before he fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.

  THE SIXTH CHAPTER

  OVER THE WATER TO HY-BREASAIL

  In the morning Calatin led Corum from the forest and they stood beside the sea. Warm sun shone upon white beaches and blue water, yet behind them the forest still lay crushed by snow.

  Corum was not riding his horse; he was reluctant to mount the brave beast until its wounds had healed. But he had gathered his gear, including his arrows and his lances, and laid it upon his mount’s back where the load would not irritate the wounds it had sustained in the previous night’s fight. Corum’s own body was bruised and aching, but he forgot his discomfort as soon as he recognized the shore.

  ‘ ‘So,” said Corum, ‘ ‘I was merely a mile or two from the coast when those beasts attacked.” He smiled ironically. “And there is Moidel’s Mount.” He pointed along the shore to where the hill could be seen, rising from a deeper sea than when Corum had last visited it—unmistakably the place where Rhalina’s castle had stood, guarding the margravate of Lwym-an-Esh. “Moidel’s Mount remains.”

  “I do not know the name you speak,” said Calatin, stroking his beard and arranging his finery as if about to receive a distinguished visitor, “but my house is built upon that tor. It is where I have always lived.”

  Corum accepted this and began to walk on towards the mount .’ ‘I have lived there, too,” he said. “And I was happy.”

  Calatin, with long strides, caught up with him. ‘ ‘You lived there, Sidhi? I know nothing of that.”

  ‘ ‘It was before Lwym-an-Esh was drowned,” Corum explained. ‘ ‘Before this cycle of history began. Mortals and gods come and go, but nature remains.”

  “It is all relative,” Calatin said. Corum thought his tone a little peevish, as if he resented hearing this truism. Nearing the place, Corum saw that once the old causeway had been replaced by a bridge, but now that bridge was in ruins, deliberately destroyed, it seemed. He commented on this to Calatin.

  The wizard nodded. “I destroyed the bridge. The Fhoi Myore and the things of the Fhoi Myore are, like the Sidhi, reluctant to cross western water.”

  “Why western water?”

  “I have no understanding of their customs. Have you any fear of wading through the shallows to the island, Sir Sidhi?”

  “None,” said Corum. “I have made the same journey many times. And do not draw too many conclusions from that, wizard, for I am not of the Sidhi race, though you seem to insist otherwise.”

  ” You spoke of Vadhagh and that is an old name for the Sidhi. ‘’

  ”Perhaps legend has confused the two races.”

  “You have the Sidhi look, nonetheless,” Calatin said flatly. “The tide is retreating. Soon it will be possible to cross. We shall make our way along what remains of the bridge and enter the water from there.”

  Corum continued to lead his horse, following Calatin as he set foot on the stone bridge and walked as far as he could until he reached crude steps which led down into the sea.

  “It is shallow enough,” the wizard announced.

  Corum looked at the green mount. There it was lush spring. He looked behind him. There it was cruel winter. How could nature be thus controlled?

  He had difficulty with the horse. Its hooves threatened to slip on the wet rocks. But eventually both rider and horse were shoulder deep in the water and feeling with their feet for the remains of the old causeway below. Through the clear sea Corum could just make out the worn cobblestones that might have been the same ones he had stepped on a thousand or more years past. He remembered his first coming to Moidel’s Mount. He remembered the hatred he had had then, of all Mabden. And he had been betrayed by Mabden many times.

  The wizard Calatin’s cloak floated out behind him on the sur
face of the water as the tall old man led the way.

  Slowly they began to emerge from the sea until they were two-thirds of the way across and the water was only up to their shins. The horse snorted with pleasure. Evidently its soaking had soothed its wounds. It shook its mane and dilated its nostrils. Perhaps the sight of the good, green grass on the slopes of the tor also improved its spirits.

  Now there was no trace at all of Rhalina’s castle. Instead, a villa had been built near the top—a villa two stories high, made of white stone that sparkled in the sunshine. Its roof was of gray slate. A pleasant house, thought Corum, and not a typical one for a man who dabbled in the occult arts. He recalled his last sight of the old castle, burned by Glandyth in revenge.

  Was that why he felt so suspicious of this Mabden, Calatin? Was there something of the Earl of Krae about him? Something in the eyes, the bearing, or perhaps the voice? It was foolish to make comparisons. Calatin did not have an agreeable manner, it was true, but it was possible that his motives were kindly. He had saved Corum’s life, after all. It would not be fair to judge the wizard on his outward and seemingly very cynical comportment.

  Now they began to climb the winding track to the top of the mount. Corum smelled the spring, the flowers and the rhododendrons, the grass and the budding trees. Sweet-scented moss covered the old rocks of the hill; birds nested in the larches and the alders and flew about among the new, bright leaves. Corum had another reason now to be grateful to Calatin, for he had become profoundly weary of the deadness of the previous landscape.

  And then they came to the house itself. Calatin showed Corum where he could stable his horse and then flung open wide a door so that Corum could go first into the place. The ground floor consisted mainly of one large room. Its wide windows were filled with glass and looked out on one side to the open sea and on the other to the white and desolate land. Corum observed how clouds formed over the land but not over the sea; they remained in one place, as if forbidden to cross an invisible barrier.