Knight of the Swords

by Michael Moorcock

  “It will be eternal,” Jhary said. “But it will not be life. I have travelled to many planes during many ages and I have seen what Chaos comes to -

  barrenness. That alone is eternal, unless Law can save it.”

  “Faugh!” said the horse-thing. “Put them in the chariot - in my chariot - and we shall carry them to Queen Xiombarg.”

  King Noreg-Dan tried to appeal again to Polib-Bav. “You were once handsome, Count of Tern. My daughter loved you and you loved her. You were loyal to me in those days.”

  Polib-Bav turned away. “And now I am loyal to Queen Xiombarg. This is her Realm now. Lord Shalod of Law has fled and shall never rule here again. His armies and his allies were destroyed, as you well know, on the Plain of Blood. . .” Polib-Bav pointed upwards. He accepted the four swords which a frog-thing handed him and tucked them under his arm. “Into the chariot with them. We ride for Queen Xiombarg’s palace.”

  As he was forced to enter Polib-Bav’s chariot with the others Corum was in despair. His hands were tied behind his back with strong cords, he could see no way of escape. Once he was taken before Queen Xiombarg she would recognize him. She would destroy him as she would destroy the rest and all hope of saving Lywm-an-Esh would be gone. With King Lyr victorious, the forces of Chaos would begin to gather strength. Another Sword Ruler would be summoned and the Fifteen Planes would be wholly in the control of the Lords of Entropy.

  He lay at Polib-Bav’s feet now, side by side with his friends, as the Chariots of Hell began to move along the floor of the abyss, wheels creaking and groaning, bumping over the loose rocks. And soon Corum had lost consciousness.

  He awoke blinking in stronger light. The mist was gone. He lifted his head and saw that a great cliff towered behind them. He guessed that they had left the abyss. They seemed to be moving through a sparse forest of sickly, leprous trees which had caught some blight. He moved his bruised head and stared into the face of Rhalina. She had been weeping but now she attempted to smile at him.

  “We left the abyss through a tunnel some hours back,” she told him. “It must be a long way to Queen Xiombarg’s palace. I wonder why they do not use swifter, more sorcerous means to go there?”

  “Chaos is whimsical,” said a voice behind her. It was Jhary-a-Conel’s. “And in a timeless world there is no need for swiftness in such matters.”

  “What has become of your little cat?” Corum murmured.

  “It was wiser than I, it flew off. I did not see ---”

  “Silence!” bellowed the voice of the horse-thing driving the chariot. “Your babbling annoys me.”

  “Perhaps it disturbs you,” Jhary ventured. “Perhaps it reminds you that you could once think coherently, speak well...”

  Polib-Bav kicked him in the face and he spluttered as the blood gushed from his nose.

  Corum growled and vainly tried to free himself. Polib-Bav’s horse face looked down at him and laughed. “You’re grotesque enough, yourself, friend - with that eye and that hand grafted on to you. If I had not known better, I’d have said you served Chaos.”

  “Perhaps I do,” Corum said. “You did not ask. You merely assumed that I served Law.”

  Polib-Bav frowned, but then his stupid face cleared. “You are trying to trick me. I will do nothing until Queen Xiombarg has seen you...” He shook the reins and the reptilian beasts began to move faster. “... after all, it is almost certain that it was you and your friends who killed the strongest member of our legion. We saw it attacked and we saw it vanish.”

  “You speak of the Ghanh!” Corum asked, his spirits beginning to lift. “Of the Ghanh!”

  And, at that moment, the Hand of Kwll moved once more of its own volition and snapped the cords binding Corum’s wrists.

  “You see! said Polib-Bav in triumph. “It was I who tricked you. You knew the Ghanh was slain. Therefore it could only have been --- What! You are free!”

  He hauled on the reins. “Stop!” He drew his sword, but Corum had rolled over the floor of the chariot and leapt to the ground. He pushed back his eye-patch and at once saw the netherworld cave from which his allies had issued in the past. There, with its head a ruin of congealed blood, lay the Ghanh.

  The Hand of Kwll moved into the netherworld as Polib-Bav’s creatures advanced on Corum. It beckoned to the Ghanh which moved its dead head very reluctantly.

  “You must do my bidding,” Corum said. “And then you will be free. You must take many prizes to pay for your release.”

  The Ghanh did not speak, but it gave a scream from its fanged jaws as if to acknowledge that it had heard.

  “Come!” Corum cried. “Come - take your prizes.”

  And the Ghanh’s crimson wings began to beat as it flapped slowly from the cave, leaving the netherworld behind it and coming back, once again, into the world from which the birds had but lately banished it.

  “The Ghanh has come back!” Polib-Bav shouted in triumph. “Oh, lovely Ghanh thou hast returned to us!”

  The Chaos Pack had seized Corum again, but now he was smiling as, with a tortured screech, the Ghanh’s great body engulfed a near-by chariot and its strange wings wrapped themselves around the whole thing and began to crush the occupants to death.

  So astonished were the Chaos Beasts holding Corum that he was able to tug himself free. They came after him but he turned and the Hand of Kwll smashed into the face of one, cracked another’s collar-bone. He raced for Polib-Bav’s chariot. The leader of the Beasts had left his chariot and stood beside it, his huge, horse’s eyes fixed on what was happening to his companions. Before he had really noticed Corum, the Prince in the Scarlet Robe had grabbed his sword from the pile on the floor of the chariot and aimed a blow at Polib-Bav. The horse-thing jumped back, drawing his own sword. But his movements were dazed and clumsy. He parried, tried to stab, missed as Corum dodged aside, and received the Vadhagh metal in his throat. Choking, he died.

  Quickly Corum cut the bonds of his friends and they, too, retrieved their swords, ready to fight the Chaos creatures. But the Pack, recovering from its initial horror, was fleeing. Its chariots raced hither and yon through the pale, sickly trees as the Ghanh left its first victims and pursued some more.

  Corum bent and stripped the corpse of Polib-Bav, taking his water bottle and the pouch of coarse bread at his belt. Soon the Chaos Pack had disappeared and they were left alone on the road through the forest.

  Corum inspected the chariot. The reptiles seemed passive enough.

  “Could we drive this, do you think, King Noreg-Dan?” he asked.

  The King Without a Country shook his head dubiously. “I am not sure. Perhaps.

  . .”

  “I think I could drive it,” Jhary told them. “I’ve had a little experience of such chariots and the creatures which pull them.” His sack bouncing at his belt, the wide brim of his hat waving, he jumped into the chariot, taking up the reins. He turned and grinned at them. “Where would you go? Still to Xiombarg’s palace?”

  Corum laughed. “Not yet, I think. She’ll send for us when she learns what became of her Pack. We’ll take that direction, I think.” He pointed away through the trees. He helped Rhalina into the chariot, then waited while King Noreg-Dan climbed aboard. Finally, he got in himself. Jhary shook the reins, turned the chariot and soon it had bounced through the leprous forest and was rolling down a hill towards a valley full of what seemed to be upright, slender stones.

  The Fifth Chapter

  The Frozen Army

  They were not stones.

  They were men.

  Each man a warrior - each warrior frozen like a statue, his weapons in his hands.

  “This,” said Noreg-Dan in quiet awe, “is the Frozen Army. The last army to take arms against Chaos.

  “Was this its punishment?” Corum asked.

  “Aye.”

  Jhary, gripping the reins, said: “They live? Is that so? They know that we pass through their ranks?”

  “Aye. I heard that Queen Xiombarg said that
since they supported Law so wholeheartedly they should have a taste of what Law aimed for - they should know the ultimate in tranquillity,” Noreg-Dan said.

  Rhalina shivered. “Is this really what Law comes to?”

  “So Chaos would have us believe,” Jhary said. “But it matters not, for the Cosmic Balance requires equilibrium - something of Chaos, something of Law -

  so that each stabilizes the other. The difference is that Law acknowledges the authority of the Balance, while Chaos would deny it. But Chaos cannot deny that authority completely for its adherents know that to disobey some things is to be destroyed. Thus Queen Xiombarg dare not enter the Realm of another Great Old God and, as in the case of your Realm, must work through others. She, like the rest, must also watch her dealings with mortals, for they cannot be destroyed by her willy-nilly - there are rules...”

  “But no rules to protect these poor creatures,” Rhalina said.

  “Some. They have not died. She has not killed them.”

  Corum remembered the tower where he had found Arioch’s heart. There, too, had been frozen men.

  “Unless directly attacked,” Jhary explained, “Xiombarg cannot kill mortals.

  But she can use those loyal to her to kill other mortals, do you see, and she can suspend the lives of warriors like these.”

  “So we are safe from Queen Xiombarg,” Corum said.

  “If you choose to think so.” Jhary smiled. “You are by no means safe from her minions and, as you have seen, she has many of those.”

  “Aye,” said the King Without a Country feelingly. “Aye. Many.”

  Holding his reins in one hand Jhary dusted at his clothes. They were tattered and bloodstained from the various flesh-wounds he had sustained in the battle with the Chaos Pack. “I would give much for a new suit,” he murmured. “I’d make a bargain with Xiombarg herself...”

  “We mention that name too often,” King Noreg-Dan said nervously as he clung to the side of the jolting chariot. “We shall bring her down on us if we are not more discreet.”

  Then the sky laughed.

  Golden light began to dapple the clouds. A brilliant orange aura sprang up in the distance ahead and cast giant shadows for the frozen warriors.

  Jhary jerked the chariot to a halt, his face suddenly pale.

  Purple brilliance came from the sky in fragments the size of raindrops.

  And the laughter went on and on.

  “What is it?” Rhalina’s hand went to her sword.

  The King Without a Country put his haggard face in his hands and his shoulders slumped. “It is she. I warned you. It is she.”

  “Xiombarg?” Corum drew his own sword. “Is it Xiombarg, Noreg-Dan?”

  “Aye, it is she.”

  The ground shook with the laughter. Several of the frozen warriors toppled and fell, still in the same positions. Corum looked about for the source of the laughter. Was it in the aura? Or in the golden light? Or the purple rain?

  “Where are you Queen Xiombarg!” He brandished his sword. His mortal eye flashed his defiance. “Where are you, creature of Evil?”

  “I AM EVERYWHERE!” answered a huge, sweet voice. “I AM THIS REALM AND THIS

  REALM IS XIOMBARG OF CHAOS!”

  “We are surely doomed,” stuttered the King Without a Country.

  “You said she could not attack us,” Corum said to Jhary-a-Conel.

  “I said she could not directly attack us. But see...”

  Corum looked. Over the valley now came hopping things. They hopped on several legs and from their bodies sprouted a dozen or more tentacles. Their huge eyes rolled, their massive fangs clashed.

  “The Karmanal of Zert”, Jhary said in mild surprise as he dropped the reins and armed himself with sword and poignard. “I have encountered these before.”

  “How did you escape them?” Rhalina asked.

  “I was at that time companion to a champion who had the power to destroy them.”

  “I too, have a power,” Corum said grimly, raising his hand to his eye. But Jhary shook his head and grimaced.

  “I fear not. The Karmanal of Zert are indestructible. Both Law and Chaos have, in their time, taken steps to do away With them - they are fickle creatures who fight for one side or another without apparent reason. They have no souls, no true existence.”

  “Therefore they should not be able to harm us!”

  The laughter rang on.

  “I agree that, logically, they should not be able to harm us,” Jhary answered equably. “But I am afraid that they can.”

  About ten of the hopping creatures were nearing their chariot, weaving between the statue-like warriors.

  And they were singing.

  “The Karmanal of Zert always sing before they feast,” Jhary told them.

  “Always.”

  Corum wondered if Jhary had gone mad. The tentacled monsters were almost upon them and the companion to champions continued to chat without apparent awareness of their danger.

  The singing was harmonious and somehow made the creatures even more terrifying while, as a counterpoint, Xiombarg’s laughter continued to fill the sky.

  When the hopping things were almost upon them Jhary raised his hands, dagger in one, sword in the other, and cried: “Queen Xiombarg! Queen Xiombarg! Who do you think you would destroy?”

  The Karmanal of Zert stopped suddenly, as frozen as the army which surrounded them.

  “I destroy a few mortals who have set themselves against me, who have caused the deaths of those I loved,” said a voice from behind them.

  Corum turned to see the most beautiful woman who had ever existed. Her hair was dark gold with streaks of red and black, her face was perfection and her eyes and lips offered a thousand times more than any woman had offered a man in the whole of history. Her body was tall and of exquisite shape, clothed in drapes of gold and orange and purple. She smiled tenderly at him.

  “Is that what I destroy?” she murmured. “Then what do I destroy, Master Timeras?”

  “I am called Jhary-a-Conel now,” he said pleasantly. “May I introduce... ?”

  Corum stepped forward. “Have you betrayed us, Jhary? Are you in league with Chaos?”

  “He is not, sadly, in league with Chaos,” said Queen Xiombarg. “But I know he rides often with those who serve Law.” She looked at him affectionately. “You do not change, Timeras, basically. And I like you best as a man, I think.”

  “And I like you best as a woman, Xiombarg.”

  “As a woman I must rule this Realm. I know you for a sometime hero’s lickspittle, Jhary-Timeras, and assume this handsome Vadhagh with his strange eye and hand is a hero of sorts...”

  She glared suddenly at Corum.

  “Now I know!”

  Corum drew himself up.

  “NOW I KNOW!”

  Her shape began to alter. It began to flow outwards and upwards. Her face was that of a skull, then that of a bird, then that of a man, until at last it had reverted to that of a beautiful woman. But now Xiombarg stood a hundred feet high and her expression was no longer tender.

  “NOW I KNOW!”

  Jhary laughed. “May I, as I said, introduce Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei - he of the Scarlet Robe?”

  “HOW DO YOU DARE ENTER MY REALM - YOU WHO DESTROYED MY BROTHER? EVEN NOW

  THOSE STILL LOYAL TO ME IN MY BROTHER’S REALM ARE SEEKING FOR YOU. YOU ARE

  FOOLISH, MORTAL. AH, THE IGNOMINY. I THOUGHT A BRAVE HERO BANISHED MY BROTHER

  - BUT NOW I KNOW IT WAS A MORON! KARMANAL CREATURES - BEGONE!”

  The hopping things vanished.

  “I WILL HAVE A SWEETER VENGEANCE ON YOU, CORUM JHAELEN IRSEI

  -AND ON ALL WHO TRAVEL WITH YOU!”

  The golden light faded, the orange aura disappeared and the purple rain ceased to fall, but Xiombarg’s huge shape still flickered there in the sky.

  “I SWEAR THIS BY THE COSMIC BALANCE -I WILL RETURN WHEN I HAVE CONSIDERED THE

  FORM OF MY VENGEANCE. I WILL FOLLOW Y
OU WHEREVER YOU TRY TO ESCAPE. AND I WILL GIVE YOU CAUSE TO WISH THAT YOU HAD NEVER ENCOUNTERED LORD ARIOCH OF

  CHAOS AND THUS WON THE ANGER OF HIS SISTER XIOMBARG!”

  Xiombarg faded and silence returned.

  Corum, much shaken, turned to Jhary. “Why did you tell her? Now there is no escape for us! She has promised to pursue us wherever we go - you heard her.

  Why did you do it?”

  “I thought she was about to find out,” Jhary said mildly. “Also it was the only way to save us.”

  “To save us!”

  “Aye. Now the Karmanal of Zert no longer threaten us. I assure you that we should have been in their bellies by now if I had not spoken to Queen Xiombarg. I guessed that she could not know very well what you looked like -

  most of us seem very alike to the Gods - but that she might learn when we fought. Corum - it was the only way to stop the Karmanal.”

  “But it had done us no good. Now she goes to summon whatever horrors she plans to set upon us. Soon she will return and we shall suffer a worse fate.”

  “I must admit,” said Jhary, “that there was another consideration. Now we have time to see what this is coming yonder.”

  They looked.

  It was something that flew and flashed and droned.

  “What is it?” Corum asked.

  “It is, I believe, a ship of the air,” said Jhary. “I hope it has come to save us.”

  “Perhaps it has come to harm us?” Corum said reasonably enough. “I still feel you should not have revealed who I was, Jhary...”

  “It is always best to bring these things out into the open,” Jhary said cheerfully.

  The Sixth Chapter

  The City in the Pyramid

  The ship of the air had a hull of blue metal in which were set enamels and ceramics of various rich colours, making a number of complicated designs. It brought a slight smell of almonds with it as it began to descend, and its moan was almost like that of a human voice.

  Now Corum could see its brass rails, its steel, silver and platinum fixtures, its ornate wheel-house, and he felt that he was reminded of something by it -