The Chronicles of Corum (4 page)

Castle Sam lay in the middle of a dense elder forest and was reached by a pathway down which the weary Prince in the Scarlet Robe and his weary horse moved. Small animals scampered away from them and a thin ram fell from a brooding sky. No smoke rose here. And when Corum came to the castle he saw that it was no longer burning. Its black stones were cold, and the crows and ravens had already picked the corpses clean and gone away in search of other carrion.

And then tears came to Corum's eyes for the first time and he dismounted from his dusty horse and clambered over the stones and the bones and sat down and looked about him.

For several hours Prince Corum sat thus until a sound came from his throat. It was a sound he had not heard before and he could not name it. It was a thin sound that could not express what was within his stunned mind. He had never known Prince Opash, though his father had spoken of him with great affection. He had never known the family and retainers who had dwelt in Castle Sarn. But he wept for them until at length, exhausted, he stretched out upon the broken slab of stone and fell into a gloomy slumber.

The rain continued to fall on Corum's scarlet coat. It fell on the ruins and it washed the bones. The red horse sought the shelter of the elder trees and lay down. For a while it chewed the grass and watched its prone master. Then it, too, slept.

When he eventually awoke and clambered back over the ruins to where his horse still lay, Corum's mind was incapable of speculation. He knew now that this destruction must be Mabden work, for it was not the custom of the Nhadragh to burn the castles of their enemies. Besides, the Nhadragh and the Vadhagh had been at peace for centuries. Both had forgotten how to make war.

It had occurred to Corum that the Mabden might have been inspired to their destruction by the Nhadragh, but even this was unlikely. There was an ancient code of war to which both races had, no matter how fierce the fighting, always adhered. And with the decline in their numbers, there had been no Deed for the Nhadragh to expand their territories or for the Vadhagh to defend theirs.

His face thin with weariness and strain, coated with dust and streaked with tears, Prince Corum aroused his horse and mounted him, riding on toward the North, where Castle Gal lay. He hoped a little. He hoped that the Mabden herds moved only in the South and the East, that the North would still be free of then: encroachments, as the West was.

A day later, as he stopped to water his horse at a small lake, he looked across the gorse moor and saw more smoke curling. He took out his map and consulted it. No castle was marked there.

He hesitated. Was the smoke coming from another Mabden camp? If so, they might have Vadhagh prisoners whom Corum should attempt to rescue. He decided to ride toward the source of the smoke.

The smoke came from several sources. This was, indeed, a Mabden camp, but it was a permanent camp, not unlike the smaller settlements of the Nhadragh, though much cruder. A collection of stone huts built close to the ground, with thatched roofs and chimneys of slate from which the smoke came.

Around this camp were fields that had evidently contained crops, though there were no crops now, and others which had a few cows grazing in them.

For some reason Corum did not feel wary of this camp as he had felt wary of the Mabden caravan, but he nonetheless approached it cautiously, stopping his horse a hundred yards away and studying the camp for signs of life.

He waited an hour and saw none.

He moved his horse in closer until he was less than fifty yards away from the nearest single-story building.

Still no Mabden emerged from any of the low doorways.

Corum cleared his throat.

A child began to scream and the scream was muffled suddenly.

"Mabden!" Corum called, and his voice was husky with weariness and sorrow. "I would speak with you. Why do you not come out of your dens?"

From the nearby hovel a voice replied. The voice was a mixture of fear and anger.

"We have done no harm to the Shefanhow. They have done no harm to us. But if we speak to you the Denledhyssi will come back and take more of our food, kill more of our menfolk, rape more of our women. Go away, Shefanhow Lord, we beg you. We have put the food in a sack by the door. Take it and leave us."

Corum saw the sack now. So, it had been an offering to him. Did they not know that their heavy food would not settle in a Vadhagh stomach?

"I do not want food, Mabden," he called back.

"What do you want, Shefanhow Lord? We have nothing else but our souls."

"I do not know what you mean. I seek answers to questions."

"The Shefanhow know everything. We know nothing."

"Why do you fear the Denledhyssi? Why do you call me a fiend? We Vadhagh have never harmed you."

"The Denledhyssi call you Shefanhow. And because we dwelt in peace with your folk, the Denledhyssi punish us. They say that Mabden must kill the Shefanhow—the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh—that you are evil. They say our crime is to let evil live. They say that the Mabden are put upon this Earth to destroy the Shefanhow. The Denledhyssi are the servants of the great Earl, Glandyth-a-Krae, whose own liege is our liege, King Lyr-a-Brode whose stone city called Kalenwyr is in the high lands of the Northeast. Do you not know all this, Shefanhow Lord?"

"I did not know it," said Prince Corum softly, turning his horse away. "And now that I know it, I do not understand it." He raised his voice, "Farewell, Mabden. I’ll give you no further cause for fear . . ." And then he paused. "But tell me one last thing."

"What is that, Lord?" came the nervous voice.

"Why does a Mabden destroy another Mabden?"

"I do not understand you, Lord."

"I have seen members of your race killing fellow members of that race. Is this something you often do?"

"Aye, Lord. We do it quite often. We punish those who break our laws. We set an example to those who might consider breaking those laws."

Prince Corum sighed. "Thank you, Mabden. I ride away now."

The red horse trotted off over the moor, leaving the village behind.

Now Prince Corum knew that Mabden power had grown greater than any Vadhagh would have suspected. They had a primitively complicated social order, with leaders of different ranks. Permanent settlements of a variety of sizes. The larger part of Bro-an-Vadhagh seemed ruled by a single man—King Lyr-a-Brode. The name meant as much as, or something like, in their coarsened dialect, King of All the Land.

Corum remembered the rumors. That Vadhagh castles had been taken by these half-beasts. That the Nbadragh Isles had fallen completely to them.

And there were Mabden who devoted their whole lives to seeking out members of the older races and destroying them. Why? The older races did not threaten Man. What threat could they be to a species so numerous and fierce? All that the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh had was knowledge. Was it knowledge that the Mabden feared?

For ten days, pausing twice to rest, Prince Corum rode north, but now he had a different vision of what Castle Gal would look like when he reached it. But he must go there to make sure. And he must warn Prince Faguin and his family of their danger, if they still lived.

The settlements of the Mabden were seen often and Prince Corum avoided them. Some were of the size of the first he had seen, but many were larger, built around grim stone towers. Sometimes he saw bands of warriors riding by and only the sharper senses of the Vadhagh enabled him to see them before they sighted him.

Once, by a huge effort, he was forced to move both himself and his horse into the next dimension to avoid confrontation with Mabden. He watched them ride past him, less than ten feet away, completely unable to observe him. Like the others he had seen, these did not ride horses, but had chariots drawn by shaggy ponies. As Corum saw their faces, pocked with disease, thick with grease and filth, their bodies strung with barbaric ornament, he wondered at their powers of destruction. It was still hard to believe that such insensitive beasts as these, who appeared to have no second sight at all, could bring to ruin the great castles of the Vadhagh.

And at last the Prince in the Scarlet Robe reached the bottom of the hill on which Castle Gal stood and saw the black smoke billowing and the red flames leaping and knew from what fresh destruction the Mabden beasts had been riding.

But here there had been a much longer siege, by the look of it. A battle had raged here that had lasted many days. The Vadhagh had been more prepared at Castle Gal.

Hoping that he would find some wounded kinsmen whom he could help, Corum urged his horse to gallop up the hill.

But the only thing that lived beyond the blazing castle was a groaning Mabden, abandoned by his fellows. Corum ignored him.

He found three corpses of his own folk. Not one of the three had died quickly or without what the Mabden would doubtless consider humiliation. There were two warriors who had been stripped of their arms and armor. And there was a child. A girl of about six years.

Corura bent and picked up the corpses one by one, carrying them to the fire to be consumed. He went back to his horse.

The wounded Mabden called out. Corum paused. It was not the usual Mabden accent.

"Help me, Master!"

This was the liquid tongue of the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh.

Was this a Vadhagh who had disguised himself as a Mabden to escape death? Corum began to walk back, leading his horse through the billowing smoke.

He looked down at the Mabden. He wore a bulky wolfskin coat covered by a half-byrnie of iron links and a helmet that covered most of his face, which had slipped to blind him. Corum tugged at the helmet until it was free, tossed it aside, and then gasped.

This was no Mabden. Nor was it a Vadhagh. It was die bloodied face of a Nhadragh, dark with flat features and hair growing down to the ridge of the eye sockets.

"Help me, Master," said the Nhadragh again. "I am not too badly hurt I can still be of service."

"To whom, Nhadragh?" said Corum softly. He tore off a piece of the man's sleeve and wiped the blood free of the eyes. The Nhadragh blinked, focusing on him.

"Who would you serve, Nhadragh? Would you serve me?"

The Nhadragh's dazed eyes cleared and then filled with an emotion Corum could only surmise was hatred.

"Vadhagh!” snarled the being. "A Vadhagh lives!"

"Aye. I live. Why do you hate me?"

"All Nhadragh hate the Vadhagh. They have hated them through eternity! Why are you not dead? Have you been hiding?"

"I am not from Castle Gal."

"So I was right. This was not the last Vadhagh castle." The being tried to stir, tried to draw his knife, but he was too weak. He fell back.

"Hatred was not what the Nhadragh had once," Corum said. "You wanted our lands, yes. But you fought us without this hatred, and we fought you without it. You have learned hatred from the Mabden, Nhadragh, not from your ancestors. They knew honor. You did not. How could one of the older races make himself a Mabden slave?"

The Nhadragh's lips smiled slightly. "All the Nhadragh that remain are Mabden slaves and have been for two hundred years. They only suffer us to live in order to use us like dogs, to sniff out those beings they call Shefanhow. We swore oaths of loyalty to them in order to continue living."

"But could you not escape? There are other planes."

"The other planes were denied to us. Our historians held that the last great battle of the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh so disrupted the equilibrium of those planes that they were closed to us by the Gods . . ."

"So you have relearnt superstition, too," mused Corum. "Ah, what do these Mabden do to us?"

The Nhadragh began to laugh and the laugh turned into a cough and blood came out of his mouth and poured down his chin. As Corum wiped away the blood, he said, "They supersede us, Vadhagh. They bring the darkness and they bring the terror. They are the bane of beauty and the doom of truth. The world is Mabden now. We have no right to continue existing. Nature abhors us. We should not be here!"

Corum sighed. "Is that your thinking, or theirs?"

"It is a fact."

Corum shrugged. "Perhaps."

"It is a fact, Vadhagh. You would be mad if you denied it"

"You said you thought this the last of our castles.”

"Not I. I sensed there was another one. I told them."

"And they have gone to seek it?"

"Yes."

Corum gripped the being's shoulder. "Where?"

The Nhadragh smiled. "Where? Where else but in the West?"

Corum ran to his horse.

"Stay!" croaked the Nhadragh. "Slay me, I pray you, Vadhagh! Do not let me linger!"

"I do not know how to kill," Corum replied as he mounted the horse.

"Then you must learn, Vadhagh. You must learn!" cackled the dying being as Corum frantically forced his horse to gallop down the hill.

The Fifth Chapter
 A Lesson Learned

And here was Castle Erora, her tinted towers entwined with greedy fires. And still the surf boomed in the great black caverns within the headland on which Erora was raised and it seemed that the sea protested, that the wind wailed its anger, that the lashing foam sought desperately to drench the victorious flame.

Castle Erora shuddered as she perished and the bearded Mabden laughed at her downfall, shaking the brass and gold trappings of their chariots, casting triumphant glances at the little row of corpses lying in a semicircle before them.

They were Vadhagh corpses.

Four women and eight men.

In the shadows on the far side of the natural bridge of rock that led to the headland, Corum saw glimpses of the bloody faces and he knew them all: Prince Khlonskey, his father. Colatalarna, his mother. His twin sisters, Hastru and Pholhinra. His uncle, Prince Rhanan. Sertreda, his cousin. And the five retainers, all second and third cousins.

Three times Corum counted the corpses as the cold grief transformed itself to fury and he heard the butchers yell to one another in their coarse dialect.

Three times he counted, and then he looked at them and his face really was the face of a Shefanfaw.