The Chronicles of Corum (6 page)

The Mabden bloodlust was rising. Their eyes gleamed in the firelight, their breath steamed and their nostrils dilated. Red tongues licked thick lips and small, anticipatory, smiles were on several faces.

Earl Glandyth had been supervising the pinning of Corum to the board. Now he came up and stood in front of the Vadhagh and he drew a slim sharp blade from his belt.

Corum watched as the blade came toward his chest. Then there was a ripping sound as the knife tore the samite shirt away from his body.

Slowly, his grin spreading, Glandyth-a-Krae worked at the rest of Corum's clothing, the knife only occasionally drawing a thin line of blood from his body, until at last Corum was completely naked.

Glandyth stepped back.

"Now," he said, panting, "you are doubtless wondering what we intend to do with you."

"I have seen others of my people whom you have slain," Corum said. "I think I know what you intend to do."

Glandyth raised the little finger of his right hand while he tucked his dagger away with his left.

"Ah, you see. You do not know. Those other Vadhagh died swiftly—or relatively so—because we had so many to find and to kill. But you are the last. We can take our time with you. We think, in fact, that we will give you a chance to live. If you can survive with your eyes gone, your tongue put out, your hands and feet removed, and your genitals taken away, then we will let you so survive."

Corum stared at him in horror.

Glandyth burst into laughter. "I see you appreciate our joke!"

He signaled to his men.

"Bring the tools! Let's begin."

A great brazier was brought forward. It was full of red-hot charcoal and from it poked irons of various sorts. These were instruments especially designed for torture, thought Corum. What sort of race could conceive such things and call itself sane?

Glandyth-a-Krae selected a long iron from the brazier and turned it this way and that, inspecting the glowing tip.

"We will begin with an eye and end with an eye," he said. "The right eye, I think."

If Corum had eaten anything in the last few days, he would have vomited then. As it was, bile came into his mouth and his stomach trembled and ached.

There were no further preliminaries.

Glandyth began to advance with the heated iron. It smoked in the cold night air.

Now Corum tried to forget the threat of torture and concentrate on his second sight, trying to see into the next plane. He sweated with a mixture of terror and the effort of his thought. But his mind was confused. Alternately, he saw glimpses of the next plane and the ever-advancing tip of the iron coming closer and closer to his face.

The scene before him shivered, but still Glandyth came on, the gray eyes burning with an unnatural lust.

Corum twisted in the chains, trying to avert his head. Then Glandyth's left hand shot out and tangled itself in his hair, forcing the head back, bringing the iron down.

Corum screamed as the red-hot tip touched the lid of his closed eye. Pain filled his face and then his whole body. He heard a mixture of laughter, his own shouts, Glandyth's rasping breathing . . .

. . . and Corum fainted.

Corum wandered through the streets of a strange city. The buildings were high and seemed but recently built, though already they were grimed and smeared with slime.

There was still pain, but it was remote, dull. He was blind in one eye. From a balcony a woman's voice called him. He looked around. It was his sister, Pholhinra. When she saw his face, she cried out in horror.

Corum tried to put his hand to his injured eye, but he could not.

Something held him. He tried to wrench his left hand free from whatever gripped it. He pulled harder and harder. Now the wrist began to pulse with pain as he tugged.

Pholhinra had disappeared, but Corum was now absorbed in trying to free his hand. For some reason, he could not turn to see what it was that held him. Some kind of beast, perhaps, holding on to his hand with its jaws.

Corum gave one last, huge tug and his wrist came free.

He put up the hand to touch the blind eye, but still felt nothing.

He looked at the hand.

There was no hand. Just a wrist. Just a stump.

Then he screamed again ...

. . . and he opened his eyes and saw the Mabden holding the arm and bringing down white-hot swords on the stump to seal it.

They had cut off his hand.

And Glandyth was still laughing, holding Corum's severed hand up to show his men, with Corum's blood still dripping from the knife he had used.

Now Corum saw the other plane distinctly, superimposed, as it were, over the scene before him. Summoning all the energy born of his fear and agony, he shifted himself into that plane.

He saw the Mabden clearly, but their voices had become faint. He heard them cry out in astonishment and point at him. He saw Glandyth wheel, his eyes widening. He heard the Earl of Krae call out to his men to search the woods for Corum.

The board was abandoned as Glandyth and his men lumbered off into the darkness seeking their Vadhagh captive.

But their captive was still chained to the board, for it, like him, existed on several planes. And he still felt the pain they had caused him and he was still without his right eye and his left hand.

He could stay away from further mutilation for a little while, but eventually his energy would give out completely and he would return to their plane and they would continue their work.

He struggled in the chains, waving the stump of his left wrist in a futile attempt to free himself of those manacles still holding his other limbs.

But he knew it was hopeless. He had only averted his doom for a short while. He would never be free—never be able to exercise his vengeance on the murderer of his kin.

The Seventh Chapter
 The Brown Man

Corum sweated as he forced himself to remain in the other plane, and he watched nervously for the return of Glandyth and his men,

It was then that he saw a shape move cautiously out of the forest and approach the board.

At first Corum thought it was a Mabden warrior, without a helmet and dressed in a huge fur jerkin. Then he realized that this was some other creature.

The creature moved cautiously toward the board, looked about the Mabden camp, and then crept closer. It lifted its head and stared directly at Corum.

Corum was astonished. The beast could see him! Unlike the Mabden, unlike the other creatures of the plane, this one had second sight.

Corum's agony was so intense that he was forced to screw up his eye at the pain. When he opened it again, the creature bad come right up to the board.

It was a beast not unlike the Mabden in general shape, but it was wholly covered in its own fur. Its face was brown and seamed and apparently very ancient. Its features were flat. It had large eyes, round like a cat's, and gaping nostrils and a huge mouth filled with old, yellowed fangs.

Yet there was a look of great sorrow on its face as it observed Corum. It gestured at him and grunted, pointing into the forest as if it wanted Corum to accompany it. Corum shook his head, indicating the manacles with a nod.

The creature stroked the curly brown fur of its own neck thoughtfully, then it shuffled away again, back into the darkness of the forest.

Corum watched it go, almost forgetful of his pain in his astonishment.

Had the creature witnessed his torture? Was it trying to save him?

Or perhaps this was an illusion, like the illusion of the city and his sister, induced by his agonies.

He felt his energy weakening. A few more moments and he would be returning to the plane where the Mabden would be able to see him. And he knew that he would not find the strength again to leave the plane.

Then the brown creature reappeared and it was leading something by one of its hands, pointing at Corum.

At first Corum saw only a bulky shape looming over the brown creature—a being that stood some twelve feet tail and was some six feet broad, a being that, like the furry beast, walked on two legs.

Corum looked up at it and saw that it had a face. It was a dark face and the expression on it was sad, concerned, doomed. The rest of its body, though in outline the same as a man's, seemed to refuse light—no detail of it could be observed. It reached out and it picked up the board as tenderly as a father might pick up a child. It bore Conim back with it into the forest.

Unable to decide if this were fantasy or reality, Corum gave up his efforts to remain on the other plane and merged back into the one he had left. But still the dark-faced creature carried him, the brown beast at its side, deep into the forest, moving at great speed until they were far away from the Mabden camp.

Corum fainted once again.

He awoke in daylight and he saw the board lying some distance away. He lay on the green grass of a valley and there was a spring nearby and, close to that, a little pile of nuts and fruit. Not far from the pile of food sat the brown beast. It was watching him.

Corum looked at his left arm. Something had been smeared on the stump and there was no pain there anymore. He put his right hand to his right eye and touched a sticky stuff that must have been the same salve as that which was on his stump.

Birds sang in the nearby woods. The sky was clear and blue. If it were not for his injuries, Corum might have thought the events of the last few weeks a black dream.

Now the brown, furry creature got up and shambled toward him. It cleared its throat. Its expression was still one of sympathy. It touched its own right eye, its own left wrist.

"How—pain?" it said in a slurred tone, obviously voicing the words with difficulty.

"Gone," Corum said. "I thank you, Brown Man, for your help in rescuing me."

The brown man frowned at him, evidently not understanding all the words. Then it smiled and nodded its head and said, "Good."

"Who are you?" Corum said. "Who was it you brought last night?"

The creature tapped its chest. "Me Serwde. Me friend of you."

"Serwde," said Corum, pronouncing the name poorly. "I am Corum. And who was the other being?"

Serwde spoke a name that was far more difficult to pronounce than his own. It seemed a complicated name.

"Who was he? I have never seen a being like him. I have never seen a being like yourself, for that matter. Where do you come from?"

Serwde gestured about him. "Me live here. In forest. Forest called Laahr. My master live here. We live here many, many, many days—since before Vadhagh, you folk."

"And where is your master now?" Corum asked again.

"He gone. Not want be seen folk."

And now Corum dimly recalled a legend. It was a legend of a creature that lived even further to the west than the people of Castle Erorn. It was called by the legend the Brown Man of Laahr. And this was the legend come to life. But he remembered no legend concerning the other being whose name he could not pronounce.

"Master say place nearby will tend you good," said the Brown Man.

"What sort of place, Serwde?"

"Mabden place."

Corum smiled crookedly. "No, Serwde. The Mabden will not be kind to me."

"This different Mabden."

"All Mabden are my enemies. They hate me." Corum looked at his stump. "And I hate them."

"These old Mabden. Good Mabden."

Corum got up and staggered. Pain began to nag in his head, his left wrist began to ache. He was still completely naked and his body bore many bruises and small cuts, but it had been washed.

Slowly it began to dawn on him that he was a cripple. He had been saved from the worst of what Glandyth had planned for him, but he was now less of a being than he had been. His face was no longer pleasing for others to look at. His body had become ugly.

And the wretch that he had become was all that was left of the noble Vadhagh race. He sat down again and he began to weep.

Serwde grunted and shuffled about. He touched Coram's shoulder with one of his handlike paws. He patted Corum's head, trying to comfort him.

Corum wiped his face with his good hand. "Do not worry, Serwde. I must weep, for if I did not I should almost certainly die. I weep for my kin. I am the last of my line. There are no more Vadhagh but me . . ."

"Serwde too. Master too," said the Brown Man of Laahr. "We have no more people like us."

"Is that why you saved me?"

"No. We helped you because Mabden were hurting you."

"Have the Mabden ever hurt you?"

"No. We hide from them. Their eyes bad. Never see us. We hide from Vadhagh, the same."

"Why do you hide?"

"My master know. We stay safe."

"It would have been well for the Vadhagh if they had hidden. But the Mabden came so suddenly. We were not warned. We left our castles so rarely, we communicated amongst ourselves so little, we were not prepared."

Serwde only half understood what Corum was saying, but he listened politely until Corum stopped, then he said, "You eat. Fruit good. You sleep. Then we go to Mabden place."

"I want to find arms and armor, Serwde. I want clothes. I want a horse. I want to go back to Glandyth and follow him until I see him alone. Then I want to kill him. After that, I will wish only to die."

Serwde looked sadly at Corum. "You kill?"

"Only Glandyth. He killed my people."

Serwde shook his head. "Vadhagh not kill like that."

"I do, Serwde. I am the last Vadhagh. And I am the first to learn what it is to kill in malice. I will be avenged on those who maimed me, on those who took away my family."

Serwde grunted miserably.

"Eat. Sleep."

Corum stood up again and realized he was very weak. "Perhaps you are right there. Perhaps I should try to restore my strength before I carry on." He went to the pile of nuts and fruits and began to eat. He could not eat much at first and lay down again to sleep, confident that Serwde would rouse him if danger threatened.

For five days Corum stayed in the valley with the Brown Man of Laahr. He hoped that the dark-faced creature would come back and tell him more of his and Serwde's origin, but this did not happen.