Knight of the Swords

by Michael Moorcock

  Jhary spoke to them in their own language—a language which was not that Corum had heard in the city but a language which seemed to hold faint echoes of the Vadhagh speech.

  One of the men took their horses to be stabled. The other entered the house by the main door. Corum and Jhary waited without.

  And then she came to the door.

  She was an old, beautiful woman, her long hair pure white and braided, a mantle upon her brow. She wore a flowing gown of light blue silk, with wide sleeves and gold embroidery at neck and hem.

  Jhary spoke to her in her own tongue, but she smiled then.

  She spoke in the pure, rippling speech of the Vadhagh.

  "I know who you are," she said. "We have been waiting for you here at the Manor in the Forest."

  The Fifth Chapter

  The Lady Jane Pentallyon

  The old, beautiful lady led them into the cool room. Meats and wines and fruits were upon the table of polished oak.

  Jars of flowers everywhere made the air sweet. She looked at Corum more often than she looked at Jhary. And at Corum she looked almost fondly.

  Corum removed his helm with a bow. "We thank you, lady, for this gracious hospitality. I find much kindness in your land, as well as hatred."

  She smiled, nodding. "Some are kind," she said, "but not many. The elf folk as a race are kinder."

  He said politely: "The elf folk, lady?"

  "Your folk."

  Jhary removed a crumpled hat from within his jerkin. It was the hat he always wore. He looked at it sorrowfully.

  "It will take much to straighten that to its proper shape.

  These adventures are hardest of all on hats, I fear. The Lady Jane Pentallyon speaks of the Vadhagh race, Prince Corum, or their kin, the Eldren, who are not greatly different, save for the eyes, just as the Melniboneans and the Nilanrians are offshoots of the same race. In this land they are known sometimes as elves—sometimes as devils, djinns, even gods, depending upon the region."

  "I am sorry," said the Lady Jane Pentallyon gently. "I had forgotten that your people prefers to use its own names for its race. And yet the name 'elf" is sweet to my ears, just as it is sweet to speak your language again after so many years."

  "Call me what you will, lady," Corum said gallantly,

  "for almost certainly I owe you my life and, perhaps, my peace of mind. How came you to learn our tongue?"

  "Eat," she said. "I have made the food as tender as I could, knowing that the elf folk have more delicate palates than we. I will tell you my story while you banish your hunger."

  And Corum began to eat, discovering that this was the finest Mabden food he had ever eaten. Compared with the food he had had in the town it was light as air and delicately flavored. The Lady Jane Pentallyon began to speak, her voice distant and nostalgic.

  ''I was a girl," she said, "of seventeen years, and I was already mistress of this manor, for my father had died crusading and my mother had contracted the plague while on a visit to her sister. So, too, had my little brother died, for she had taken him with her. I was distressed, of course, but not old enough to know then that the best way of dealing with sorrow is to face it, not try to escape it. I affected not to care that all my family were dead. I took to reading romances and to dreaming of myself as a Guinevere or an Isolde. These servants you have seen were with me then and they seemed little younger in those days.

  They respected my moods and there was none to check me as a kind of quiet madness came over me and I dwelt more and more in my own dreams and less and less thought of the world, which, anyway, was far away and sent no news.

  And then one day there came an Egyptian tribe past the manor and they begged permission to set up their camp in a glade in the woods not far from here. I had never seen such strange, dark faces and glittering black eyes and I was fascinated by them and believed them to be the guardians of magic wisdom such as Merlin had known. I know now that most of them knew nothing at all. But there was one girl of my own age who had been orphaned like me and with whom I identified myself. She was dark and I was fair, but we were of a height and shape and, doubtless because narcissism had become one of my faults, I invited her to live in the house with me after the rest of the tribe had moved on—taking, I need not say, much of our livestock with them. But I did not care, for Aireda's tales—learned from her parents, I understood—were far wilder than any I had read in my books or imagined for myself. She spoke of dark old ones who could still be summoned to carry young girls off to lands of magic delight, to worlds where great demigods with magic swords disrupted the very stuff of nature if their moods willed it. I think now that Aireda was inventing much of what she told me—elaborating stories she had heard from her mother and father—but the essence of what she told me was, of course, true. Aireda had learned spells which, she said, would summon these beings, but she was afraid to use them. I begged her to conjure each of us a god from another world to be our lovers, but she became afraid and would not. A year passed and our deep, dark games went on, our minds became more and more full of the idea of magic and demons and gods, and Aireda, at my constant behest, slowly weakened in her resolve not to speak the spells and perform the rituals she knew . . ."

  The Lady Jane Pentallyon took up a dish of sliced fruit and offered it to Corum. He accepted it. "Please continue, lady."

  "Well, I learned from her the patterns to carve upon the stones of the floor, the herbs to brew, the arrangements of precious stones and particular lands of rocks, of candles, and the like. I got from her every piece of knowledge save the incantations and the signs which must be traced in the air with a witch knife of glowing crystal. So I carved the patterns in the stones, I gathered the herbs, I collected the stones and the rocks, and I sent to the city for the candles. And I presented them all to Aireda one day, telling her that she must call for the old ones who ruled this land before the druids, who, themselves, came before the Christians. And she agreed to do it, for by this time she had become as mad as I. We chose All Hallows Eve for the ritual, though I do not believe now that it has any special significance. We arranged the stones and the rocks and we traced the designs in the air with the crystal witch knife and we burned the candles and we brewed the herbs and we drank what we brewed and we were successful..."

  Jhary sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the Lady Jane Pentallyon. He was eating an apple. "You were successful, lady," he said, "in conjuring up a demon?"

  "A demon? I think not, though he looked to us like a demon with his slanting eyes and his pointed ears—a face not unlike your own, Prince Corum—and we were at first afraid, for he stood in the center of our magic ring and he was furious, shouting, threatening in a language which I could not, in those days, understand. Well, the tale grows long and I will not bore you, save to say that this poor

  'demon' was of course a man of your race, dragged from his own world by our incantations and our diagrams and our crystals, and most anxious to return there."

  "And did he return, lady?" Corum asked gently, for he saw that her eyes had a suggestion of tears in them. She shook her head.

  "He could not, for we had no means of returning him.

  After the astonishment—for truly we had not really believed in our game!—we made him as comfortable here as we could, for we instantly felt sorry for what we had done when we realized that he was helpless. He learned something of our language and we learned something of his. We thought him very wise, though he insisted he was only a minor member of a large and not very important family of moderate nobility, that he was a soldier and not a scholar or a sorcerer. We understood his modesty but continued to admire him very much. I think he enjoyed that, although he continued to beg us to try to return him to his own age and his own plane."

  Corum smiled. "I know how I should feel if two young girls had been responsible for tearing me suddenly away from all I knew and cared for and had then told me that they had only been playing a game and could not send me back!"

  And the
Lady Jane smiled in reply. "Aye. Well, by and by Gerane—that was one of his names—became reconciled to some degree and he and I fell in love and were happy for a short while. Sadly, I had not accounted for the fact that Aireda was also in love with Gerane." She sighed. "I had dreamed of being Guinevere, of Isolde, of other heroines of romance, but I had forgotten that all these women were the victims of tragedy in the end. Our tragedy began to play itself out and at first I was not aware of it. Jealousy took power over Aireda and she grew to hate first me and then Gerane. She would plan revenges on us of varying sorts, but they were never completely satisfying to her. She had heard that Gerane's people had enemies

  —another race with bleaker souls—and she had guessed that one of her mother's rituals had to do with summoning members of this race—other demons, her mother had thought. Her first attempts were unsuccessful, but she absorbed herself in remembering every detail of those old spells."

  "She conjured up Gerane's enemies?"

  "Aye. Three of them came one night into the house. She was their first victim, for they hate humans as much as they hate elves—your folk. Shambling, awkward, poorly fashioned creatures they were, completely unlike your folk, Prince Corum. We should call them trolls or some such name."

  "And what did they do after they had slain Aireda?"

  "She was not slain, but badly wounded, for it was in conversation with her later that I learned what she had done . . ."

  "And Gerane?"

  "He had no sword. He had come with none. He had needed none in the Manor in the Forest."

  "He was killed?"

  "He heard the noise in the hall and came down to see what caused it. They butchered him there, by the door."

  She pointed. The tears shone on her cheeks now. "They cut him into sections, my elfin love..." She lowered her head.

  Corum got up and went to comfort the old, beautiful Lady Jane Pentallyon. She gripped his mortal hand just once and had once again contained her grief. She straightened her back. "The—trolls—did not remain in the house. Doubtless they were confused by what had happened to them. They ran off into the night."

  "Do you know what became of them?" Jhary asked.

  "I heard several years later that beasts resembling men had begun to terrorize the folk of Exmoor and had eventually been taken and had stakes driven through their hearts, for they were thought to be the Devil's spawn. But the story spoke of only two, so perhaps one still lives in some lonely spot, still unaware of what had happened to him or where he is. I feel a certain sympathy for him ..."

  "Do not grieve yourself, lady, by any further telling of this tale," said Corum gently.

  "Since then," she went on, "I have concerned myself with the study of old wisdom. I learned something from Gerane and I have since spoken with various men and women who reckon themselves versed in the mystic arts. It was my hope, once, to seek the plane of Gerane's people, but it is evident now that our planes are no longer in conjunction, for I have learned enough to know that the planes circle as some say the planets circle about each other. I have learned a little of the art of seeing into the future and the past, into other planes, as Gerane's folk could . . ."

  "My folk also possess something of that art," said Corum in confirmation of her questioning glance, "but we have been losing it of late and can do nothing now beyond see into the five planes which comprise our realm."

  "Aye." She nodded. "I cannot explain why these powers wax and wane as they do."

  "It is something to do with the gods," said Jhary. "Or our belief in them, perhaps."

  "Your second sight gave you a glimpse into the future and that is how you knew we were seeking your help," Corum said.

  Again she nodded.

  "So you know that we are trying to return to our own age, where urgent deeds are necessary?"

  "Aye."

  "Can you help us?"

  "I know of one who can put you on the road which leads to the achievement of that desire, but he can do no more."

  "A sorcerer?"

  "Of sorts. He, like you, is not of this age. Like you, he seeks constantly to return to his own world. He can move easily through the few centuries bordering this time, but he seeks to travel many millenia and that he cannot do."

  "Is his name Bolorhiag?" asked Jhary suddenly. " An old man with a withered leg?"

  "You describe the man, but to us he is known merely as the Friar, for he is inclined to wear clerical garb since this offers him the greatest protection in the periods of history he visits."

  "It is Bolorhiag," said Jhary. "Another lost one. There are a few such souls who are whisked about the multiverse in this manner. Sometimes they are not at fault at all, but have been plucked, willy-nilly, by whatever winds they are which blow through the dimensions. Others, like Bolorhiag, are experimenters—sorcerers, scientists, scholars, call them what you will—who have understood something of the nature of time and space but not enough to protect themselves. They, too, find themselves blown by those winds. There are also, as you know, ones like me who appear to be natural dwellers in the whole multiverse—or there are heroes, like yourself, Corum, who are doomed to move from age to age and plane to plane, from identity to identity, fighting for the cause of Law. And there are women of a certain sort, like yourself, Lady Jane, who love these heroes. And there are malicious ones who hate them.

  What object there is to this myriad of existences I know not and it is probably better that we know nothing of them..."

  Lady Jane nodded gravely. "I think you are right, Sir Jhary, for the more one discovers, the less point there seems in life at all. However, we are concerned not with philosophy but with immediate problems. I have sent out a summoning for the Friar and hope that he hears it and comes—it is not always the case. Meanwhile I have a gift for you, Prince Corum, for I feel that it may be useful to you. It appears that there is a mighty conjunction about to take place in the multiverse, when for a moment in tune all ages and all planes will meet. I have never heard of such a thing before. That is part of my gift, the information. The Other part is this . . ." From a thong around her neck she now drew out a slender object which though of a milky white color also sparkled with every color in the spectrum.

  It was a knife carved of a crystal which Corum had never seen before.

  "Is it... ?" he began.

  She inclined her head to remove the thong. "It is the witch knife which brought Gerane to me. It will, I think, bring aid to you when you need it greatly. It will call your brother to you . . ."

  "My brother? I have no—"

  "I was told this," she said. "And I can add nothing to it.

  But here is the witch knife. Please take it."

  Corum accepted it and placed the thong around his own neck. "Thank you, lady."

  "Another will tell you when and how to use it," she said.

  "And now, gentlemen, will you rest here at the Manor in the Forest, until such time as the Friar may present himself to us?"

  "We should be honored," said Corum. "But tell me, lady, if you know anything of the woman I love, for we are separated. I speak of the Lady Rhalina of Allomglyl and I fear much for her safety."

  The Lady Jane frowned, "There was something concerning a woman which came momentarily into my head. I have the feeling that if you succeed in your present quest, then you will succeed in being reunited with her. If you fail, then you shall never see her again."

  Corum's smile was grim.

  "Then I must not fail," he said.

  The Sixth Chapter

  Sailing on the Seas of Time

  Three days went by and in normal circumstances Corum would have grown frustrated, impatient. But the old, beautiful lady calmed him, telling him something of the world she lived in but hardly ever saw. Some aspects of it were strange to him, but he began to understand why strange folk such as himself were, in the main, treated with suspicion, for what the Mabden of this world desired more than anything was equilibrium, stability not threatened by the doings of gods and
demons and heroes, and me to sympathize with them, though he felt that an understanding of what they feared would give them less to fear. They had invented for themselves a remote god whom they called simply the God and they had placed him far away from them. Some half-remembered fragments of the knowledge concerning the Cosmic Balance were theirs, and they had legends which might relate to the struggle between Law and Chaos. As he told the Lady Jane, all the Balance stood for was equilibrium—but stability could be achieved only by an understanding of the forces which were at work in the world, not a rejection of them.

  On the third day one of the old retainers came running along the path up to the house, where Jhary-a-Conel, Corum, and the Lady Jane stood conversing. Speaking in his own language the man pointed into the forest.

  "They still search for you, it seems," she told them.

  "Your horses were released a day's ride away in order to put them off the scent and make them think you hid near Liskeard, but doubtless they come here because I am suspected a witch." She smiled. "I deserve their suspicion far more than do the poor souls they sometimes catch and burn."

  "Will they find us?"

  "There is a place for you to hide. Others have been hidden there in the past. Old Kyn will take you there." She spoke to the old man and he nodded, grinning as if he enjoyed the excitement.