The Chronicles of Corum (33 page)

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 YOU 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 - 

an image, perhaps, of childhood. He stared curiously at it as it began to land and a small object rose up from it and flew towards them.

It was Jhary’s cat.

Suddenly Corum stared at Jhary and laughed. The cat came and settled on the shoulder of the companion to heroes and it nuzzled his ear.

“You sent the cat to find help when the Chaos Pack set upon us!” Rhalina said before Corum could speak. “That is why you told Xiombarg who Corum was - for you knew that help was coming and thought your plan thwarted at the last moment.”

Jhary shrugged. “I did not know the cat would find help, but I guessed.”

“From where has that strange flying craft come?” asked the King Without a Country.

“Why, where else but from the City in the Pyramid? It was my instruction to the cat to look for it. I would gather that it found it.”

“And how did it communicate with the folk of that city?” Corum asked as they drew nearer to the blue ship of the air.

“In emergencies, as you know, the cat can communicate quite clearly with me.

In a very serious emergency it will use more energy and communicate with whom it pleases.”

Whiskers purred and licked Jhary’s face with its little rough tongue. He murmured something to it and smiled. Then he said to Corum: “We’d best hurry, though, for Xiombarg may begin to wonder why I did reveal your name. It is one of the characteristics of many of the Chaos Lords that they are impetuous and not given overmuch to thinking.”

The ship of the air was a good forty feet long and had seats running the whole of its length on both sides. It appeared to be empty, but then a tall, comely man stepped from the wheel-house and came forward towards them. He was smiling at Corum’s complete astonishment.

For the steersman of the ship of the air was quite plainly of no other race but Corum’s. He was a Vadhagh. His skull was long, his slanting eyes purple and gold, his ears pointed and his body slender and delicate but containing a great deal of energy.

“Welcome Corum in the Scarlet Robe,” he said. “I have come to take you to Gwlãs-cor-Gwrys, the one bastion this Realm has against that Chaos creature you have just met.”

Dazed, Corum Jhaelen Irsei entered the ship of the air while the steersman continued to smile at his astonishment.

They took their places near the wheel-house in the stern and the tall Vadhagh made the ship rise slowly and begin to head in the direction it had come.

Rhalina looked backward at the forest of frozen warriors they left behind.

“Is there nothing we could do to help those poor souls?” she asked Jhary.

“Only help make Law strong in our own Realm so that it can one day send aid to this Realm, just as Chaos now sends aid to ours,” Jhary told her.

They were soon crossing a land of oozing stuff which flung up tendrils at them and sought to drag them down into itself. Sometimes faces appeared in the stuff, sometimes hands raised as if in supplication. “A Chaos Sea,” King Noreg-Dan told them. “There are several such places in the Realm now. Some say that that is what those mortals who serve Chaos finally degenerate to.”

“I have seen its like,” nodded Jhary.

Strange forests passed below them and valleys filled with perpetually burning fire. They saw rivers of molten metal and beautiful castles made all of jewels. Horrid flying creatures sometimes rushed into the air towards them but turned aside when they recognized the craft, though it was apparently without protection.

“These people must have a powerful sorcery to make boats fly,” Rhalina whispered to Corum. And Corum made no reply at first, for he was deep in thought, racking his memory.

At last he spoke. “This is not sorcery, as such,” he told her. “It requires no spells and few incantations but is instead mechanical in its nature.

Certain forces are harnessed to give power to machines - some of them much more delicate than anything the Mabden could imagine - which propel such vessels through the air and do many other things. Some of the machines could once sunder the fabric of the Walls Between the Realms and pass easily from plane to plane. My ancestors are said to have created such machines but most chose not to use them, preferring a different logic to their living. I dimly remember a legend which says that one Sky City - that was the name they gave to their cities - left our Realm altogether, to explore the other worlds of the multiverse. Perhaps there was more than one such city, for I know that one did destroy itself when it went out of control during the Battle of Broggfythus and crashed close to Castle Erorn, as I told you. Perhaps another city was called Gwlãs-cor-Gwrys and is now known as the City in the Pyramid.”

Prince Corum was smiling joyfully and speaking excitedly. With his mortal hand he pressed Rhalina’s arm. “Oh, Rhalina, can you understand what I feel at finding that some of my race still live, that Glandyth did not destroy them all?”

She smiled back at him. “I think so, Corum.”

The air about them began to vibrate and the boat shuddered. The steersman called from the wheel-house: “Do not be afraid. We are passing into another plane.”

“Does that mean we are escaping Xiombarg?” asked the King Without a Country eagerly.

Jhary answered him. “No. Xiombarg’s Realm extends for five planes and we are merely going from one of those into a different one. Or so I would think.”

The quality of the light changed and they looked over the side of the ship. A multicoloured gas swirled below them.

“The raw stuff of Chaos,” said Jhary. “Queen Xiombarg has, as yet, made nothing with it.”

They crossed the great gas and flew over a range of mountains, each more than a thousand feet high, but each one a perfect cube. Beyond the mountains was a dark jungle and beyond that a crystalline desert. The crystals of the desert moved constantly, their motion creating a tinkling music which was not pleasant. Among these crystals moved ochre beasts of enormous proportions but of primitive development. They were feeding off the crystals.

Then the crystal desert gave way to a flat, black plain and they saw ahead of them the City of the Pyramid.

The city was, in fact, a many-sided ziggurat. On each terrace were a large number of houses. Flowers, shrubs and trees grew along the terraces and the streets teemed with people. Over the whole city a greenish light flickered and the light took the form of a pyramid, enclosing the ziggurat. As the ship of the air flew towards it, a darker oval of green appeared in the flickering light and through this the ship passed. It circled the topmost building - a many-towered castle built all of metal - and then began to descend until it landed on a raised platform on the castle’s battlements. Corum shouted with pleasure as he saw the gathering which welcomed him.

“They are my people!” he exclaimed to his companions. “They are all my people!”

The steersman left the wheel-house and put his hand on Corum’s shoulder. He signed to the men and women below and suddenly they were no longer on the ship of the air but were standing with the group, beneath the platform, looking up at the faces of Rhalina, Jhary and the King Without a Country as they peered over the rail of the ship in astonishment.

Corum was equally astonished to see the three suddenly vanish and appear beside him. One of the group then stepped forward. He was a thin, ancient man with a straight bearing, dressed in a thick robe and holding a staff.

“Welcome,” he said, “to Law’s last bastion.”

Later they sat around a table of beautifully fashioned ruby-metal and listened to the old man who had introduced himself as Prince Yurette Hasdum Nury, Commander of Gwlãs-cor-Gwrys, the City in the Pyramid. He had explained how Corum’s speculations were substantially correct.

As they had eaten he had explained how Corum’s people had chosen to remain in their castles after the Battle of Broggfythus and devote themselves to learning while his people had decided to take their Sky City and try to fly it beyond the Five Planes, through the Wall Between the Realms. They had succeeded, but had failed to return due to some power loss which they could not then restore. Since then they had managed only to explore these Five Planes and then, when the struggle between Law and Chaos had begun to build, they had remained neutral.

“We were fools to do so. We thought we were above such disputes. And slowly we saw Law conquered and Chaos emerge in all its grisly triumph to create its travesties of beauty. But by that time, though we did take our city against Xiombarg’s creatures, we were too late. Chaos had gained all power and we could not fight it. Xiombarg sent - and still sends - armies against us.

These we resisted, not without danger. And now it is stalemate. Every so often Xiombarg will send another army - some frightful, monstrous army - and we are forced to fight it. But we can do no more than that. I fear we are all that is left of Law, save you.”

“Law has regained its power in our Five Planes,” Corum told him. He described his adventures, his battle with Arioch and the final result which was to restore Lord Arkyn to his Realm. “But that, too, is threatened for Law has still only a slender hold on the Realm and all the forces of Chaos are being brought to bear on it.”

“But Law still has some power!” Prince Yurette said. “We did not know that.

We learned that the Sword Rulers controlled all the Realms. If only we could return - take our city back through the Wall Between the Realms - and give you our aid. But we cannot. We have tried so often. The materials are not available on these planes for building up the massive power it needs.”