The Knight of Swords

by Michael Moorcock

  "And now, Prince," she said. "Will you be my guest?"

  "Tell me one more thing, Lady Rhalina. How did you know of my coming? Why did the Brown Man bring me here?"

  "He brought you at the behest of his master."

  "And his master?"

  "Told me to expect you and let you rest here until your mind and your body were healed. I was more than willing to agree. We have no visitors, normally—and certainly none of the Vadhagh race."

  "But who is that strange being, the Brown Man's master? I saw him only briefly. I could not distinguish his shape too well, though I knew he was twice my size and had a face of infinite sadness."

  "That is he. He comes to the castle at night, bringing sick domestic animals that have escaped our stables at some time or another. We think he is a being from another plane, or perhaps another Age, before even the Age of the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh. We cannot pronounce his name, so we call him simply the Giant of Laahr."

  Corum smiled for the first time. "Now I understand better. To him, perhaps, I was another sick beast. This is where he always brings sick beasts."

  "You could be right, Prince Corum." She indicated the doorway. "And if you are sick, we should be happy to help you mend . . ."

  A shadow passed over Corum's face as he followed her inside. "I fear that nothing can mend my sickness now, Lady. It is a disease of the Mabden and there are no cures known to the Vadhagh."

  "Well," she said with forced lightness, "perhaps we Mabden can devise something."

  Bitterness filled him then. As they descended the steps into the main part of the castle he held up his stump and touched his eyeless socket "But can the Mabden give me back my hand and my eye?"

  She turned and paused on the steps. She gave him an oddly candid look. "Who knows?" she said quietly. "Perhaps they can."

  The Ninth Chapter

  Concerning Love And Hatred

  Although doubtless magnificent by Mabden standards, the Margravine's castle struck Prince Corum as simple and pleasant. At her invitation, he allowed himself to be bathed and oiled by castle servants and was offered a selection of clothing to wear. He chose a samite shirt of dark blue, embroidered in a design of light blue, and a pair of brown linen breeks. The clothes fitted him well.

  "They were the Margrave's," a girl servant told him shyly, not looking at him directly.

  None of the servants had seemed at ease with him. He guessed that his appearance was repellent to them.

  Reminded of this, he asked the girl, "Would you bring me a mirror?"

  "Aye, Lord." She ducked her head and left the chamber.

  But it was the Margravine herself who returned with the mirror. She did not hand it to him immediately.

  "Have you not seen your face since it was injured?" she asked.

  He shook his head.

  "You were handsome?"

  "I do not know."

  She looked at him frankly. "Yes," she said. "You were handsome." Then she gave him the mirror.

  The face he saw was framed by the same light golden hair, but it was no longer youthful. Fear and agony had left their marks. The face was lined and hard and the set of the mouth grim. One eye of gold and purple stared bleakly back at him. The other socket was an ugly hole made up of red, scarred tissue. There was a small scar on his left cheek and another on his neck. The face was still characteristically a Vadhagh face, but it had suffered abuse never suffered by a Vadhagh before. From the face of an angel it had been transformed by Glandyth's knives and irons into the face of a demon.

  Silently, Corum gave her back the mirror.

  He passed his good hand over the scars of his face and he brooded. "If I was handsome, I am ugly now."

  She shrugged. "I have seen much worse."

  Then the rage began to fill him again and his eye blazed and he shook the stump of his hand and he shouted at her. "Aye—and you will see much worse when I have done with Glandyth-a-Krae!"

  Surprised, she recoiled from him and then regained her composure. "If you did not know you were handsome, if you were not vain, then why has this affected you so much?"

  "I need my hands and my eyes so that I may kill Glandyth and watch him perish. With only half of these, I lose half the pleasure!"

  "That is a childish statement, Prince Corum. It is not worthy of a Vadhagh. What else has this Glandyth done?"

  Corum realized that he had not told her, that she would not know, living in this remote place, as cut off from the world as any Vadhagh had been.

  "He has slain all the Vadhagh," he said. "Glandyth has destroyed my race and would have destroyed me if it had not been for your friend, the Giant of Laahr."

  "He has done what . . . ?" Her voice was faint. She was plainly shocked.

  "He has put all my folk to death.”

  "For what reason? Have you been warring with this Glandyth?"

  "We did not know of his existence. It did not occur to us to guard against the Mabden. They seemed so much like brutes, incapable of harming us in our castles. But they have razed all our castles. Every Vadhagh save me is dead and most of the Nhadragh, I learned, who are not their cringing slaves."

  "Are these the Mabden whose king is called Lyr-a-Brode of Kalenwyr?"

  "They are."

  "I, too, did not know they had become so powerful. I had assumed that it was the Pony Tribes who had captured you. I wondered why you were traveling alone so far from the nearest Vadhagh castle."

  "What castle is that?" For a moment Corum hoped that there were Vadhagh still alive, much further west than he had guessed.

  "It is called Castle Eran—Erin—some such name."

  "Erorn?"

  "Aye. That sounds the right name. It is over five hundred miles from here , . ."

  "Five hundred miles? Have I come so far? The Giant of Laahr must have carried me much further than I suspected. That castle you mention, my lady, was our castle. The Mabden destroyed it. It will take me longer than I thought to return and find Earl Glandyth and his Denledhyssi."

  Suddenly Corum realized just how alone he was. It was if he had entered another plane of Earth where everything was alien to him. He knew nothing of this world. A world in which the Mabden ruled. How proud his race had been. How foolish. If only they had concerned themselves with knowledge of the world around them instead of seeking after abstractions.

  Corum bowed his head.

  The Margravine Rhalina seemed to understand his emotion. She lightly touched his arm. "Come, Prince of the Vadhagh. You must eat."

  He allowed her to lead him from the room and into another where a meal had been laid out for them both. The food—mainly fruit and forms of edible seaweed—was much closer to his taste than any Mabden food he had seen previously. He realized that he was very hungry and that he was deeply tired. His mind was confused and his only certainty was the hatred he still felt for Glandyth and the vengeance he intended to take as soon as possible.

  As they ate, they did not speak, but the Margravine watched his face the whole time and once or twice she opened her lips as if to say something, but then seemed to decide against it.

  The room in which they ate was small and hung with rich tapestries covered in fine embroidery. As he finished his food and began to observe the details of the tapestry, the scenes thereon began to swim before his eyes. He looked questioningly at the Margravine, but her face was expressionless. His head felt light and he had lost the use of his limbs.

  He tried to form words, but they would not come.

  He had been drugged.

  The woman had poisoned his food.

  Once again he had allowed himself to become a victim of the Mabden.

  He rested his head on his arms and fell, unwillingly, into a deep sleep.

  Corum dreamed again.

  He saw Castle Erorn as he had left it when he had first ridden out. He saw his father's wise face speaking and strained to hear the words, but could not. He saw his mother at work, writing her latest treatise on mathematics. He saw hi
s sisters dancing to his uncle's new music.

  The atmosphere was joyful.

  But now he realized that he could not understand their activities. They seemed strange and pointless to him. They were like children playing, unaware that a savage beast stalked them.

  He tried to cry out—to warn them—but he had no voice.

  He saw fires begin to spring up in rooms—saw Mabden warriors who had entered the unprotected gates without the inhabitants' being in the least aware of their presence. Laughing amongst themselves, the Mabden put the silk hangings and the furnishings to the torch.

  Now he saw his kinfolk again. They had become aware of the fires and were rushing to seek their source.

  His father came into a room in which Glandyth-a-Krae stood, hurling books onto a pyre he had erected in the middle of the chamber. His father watched in astonishment as Glandyth burned the books. His father's lips moved and his eyes were questioning—almost polite surprise.

  Glandyth turned and grinned at him, drawing his axe from his belt. He raised the axe . . .

  Now Corum saw his mother. Two Mabden held her while another heaved himself up and down on her naked body.

  Corum tried to enter the scene, but something stopped him.

  He saw his sisters and his cousin suffering the same fate as his mother. Again his path to them was blocked by something invisible.

  He struggled to get through, but now the Mabden were slitting the girls' throats. They quivered and died like slain fawns.

  Corum began to weep.

  He was still weeping, but he lay against a warm body and from somewhere in the distance came a soothing voice.

  His head was being stroked and he was being rocked back and forth in a soft bed by the woman on whose breast he lay.

  For a moment he tried to free himself, but she held him tight.

  He began to weep again, freely this time, great groans racking his body, until he slept again. And now the sleep was free from dreams . . .

  He awoke feeling anxious. He felt that he had slept for too long, that he must be up and doing something. He half raised himself in the bod and then sank down again into the pillows.

  It slowly came to him that he was much refreshed. For the first time since he had set off on his quest, he felt full of energy and well-being. Even the darkness in his mind seemed to have retreated.

  So the Margravine had drugged him, but now, it seemed, it had been a drug to make him sleep, to help him regain his strength.

  But how many days had he slept?

  He stirred again in the bed and felt the soft warmth of another beside him, on his blind side. He turned his head and there was Rhalina, her eyes closed, her sweet face at peace.

  He recalled his dreaming. He recalled the comfort he had been given as all the misery in him poured forth.

  Rhalina had comforted him. He reached out with his good hand to stroke the tumbled hair. He felt affection for her—an affection almost as strong as he had felt for his own family.

  Reminded of his dead kin, he stopped stroking her hair and contemplated, instead, the puckered stump of his left hand. It was completely healed now, leaving a rounded end of white skin. He looked back at Rhalina. How could she bear to share her bed with such a cripple?

  As he looked at her, she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

  He thought he detected pity in that smile and was immediately resentful. He began to climb from the bed, but her hand on his shoulder stopped him.

  "Stay with me, Corum, for I need your comforting now.”

  He paused, looked back at her suspiciously.

  "Please, Corum, I believe that I love you."

  He frowned. "Love? Between Vadhagh and Mabden? Love of that kind?" He shook his head. "Impossible. There could be no issue."

  "No children, I know. But love gives birth to other things . . .”

  "I do not understand you."

  "I am sorry," she said. "I was selfish. I am taking advantage of you." She sat up in bed. "I have slept with no one else since my husband went away. I am not used . . .”

  Corum studied her body. It moved him and yet it should not have. It was unnatural for one species to feel such emotion for another . . .

  He reached down and kissed her breast. She clasped his head. They sank, again, into the sheets, making gentle love, learning of one another as only those truly in love may.

  After some hours, she said to him, "Corum, you are the last of your race. I will never see my people again, save for those retainers who are here. It is peaceful in this castle. There is little that would disturb that peace. Would you not consider staying here with me—at least for a few months?"

  "I have sworn to avenge the deaths of my folk," he reminded her softly, and kissed her cheek.

  "Such oaths are not true to your nature, Corum. You are one who would rather love than hate, I know."

  "I cannot answer that," he replied, "for I will not consider my life fulfilled unless I destroy Glandyth-a-Krae. This wish is not so hate-begotten as you might think. I feel, perhaps, like one who sees a disease spreading through a forest. One hopes to cut out the diseased plants so that the others may grow straight and live. That is my feeling concerning Glandyth-a-Krae. He has formed the habit of frilling. Now that he has killed all the Vadhagh, he will want to kill others. If he finds no more strangers, he will begin to kill those wretches who occupy the villages ruled by Lyr-a-Brode. Fate has given me the impetus I need to pursue this attitude of mine to its proper conclusion, Rhalina."

  "But why go from here now? Sooner or later we will receive news concerning this Glandyth. When that moment arrives, then you can set forth to exact your vengeance."

  He pursed his lips. "Perhaps you are right."

  "And you must learn to do without your hand and your eye," she said. "That will take much practice, Corum."

  "True."

  "So stay here, with me."

  "I will agree to this much, Rhalina. I will make no decision for a few more days."

  And Corum made no decision for a month. After the horror of his encounters with the Mabden raiders, his brain needed time to heal and this was difficult with the constant reminder of his injuries every time he automatically tried to use his left hand or glimpsed his reflection.

  When not with him, Rhalina spent much of her time in the castle's library, but Corum had no taste for reading. He would walk about the battlements of the castle or take a horse and ride over the causeway at low tide (though Rhalina was perturbed by this for fear that he would fail prey to one of the Pony Tribes, which occasionally ranged the area) and ride for a while among the trees.

  And though the darkness in his mind became less noticeable as the pleasant days passed, it still remained. And Corum would sometimes pause in the middle of some action or stop when he witnessed some scene that reminded him of his home, the Castle Erorn.

  The Margravine's castle was called simply Moidel's Castle and was raised on an island called Moidel’s Mount, after the name of the family that had occupied it for centuries. It was full of interesting things. There were cabinets of porcelain and ivory figurines, rooms filled with curiosities taken at different times from the sea, chambers in which arms and armor were displayed, paintings (crude by Corum's standards) depicting scenes from the history of Lywm-an-Esh, as well as scenes taken from the legends and folktales of that land, which was rich in them. Such strange imaginings were rare amongst the Vadhagh, who had been a rational people, and they fascinated Corum. He came to realize that many of the stories concerning magical lands and weird beasts were derived from some knowledge of the other planes. Obviously the other planes had been glimpsed and the legend makers had speculated freely from the fragments of knowledge thus gained. It amused Corum to trace a wild folktale back to its rather more mundane source, particularly where these folktales concerned the Old Races—the Vadhagh and the Nhad-ragh—to whom were attributed the most alarming range of supernatural powers. He was also, by this study, offered some insight concerning the at
titudes of the Mabden of the East, who seemed to have lived in awe of the Old Races before they had discovered that they were mortal and could be slain easily. It seemed to Corum that the vicious genocide engaged upon by these Mabden was partly caused by their hatred of the Vadhagh for not being the great seers and sorcerers the Mabden had originally thought them to be.

  But this line of thought brought back the memories and the sorrow and the hatred, and Corum would become depressed, sometimes for days, and even Rhalina's love could not console Him then.

  But then one day he inspected a tapestry in a room he had not previously visited and it absorbed his attention as he looked at the pictures and studied the embroidered text.

  This was a complete legend telling of the adventures of Mag-an-Mag, a popular folk hero. Mag-an-Mag had been returning from a magical land when his boat had been set upon by pirates. These pirates had cut off Mag-an-Mag's arms and legs and thrown him overboard, then they had cut off the head of his companion, Jhakor-Neelus, and tossed his body after that of his master, but kept the head, apparently to eat. Eventually Mag-an-Mag's limbless body had been washed up on the shore of a mysterious island and Jhakor-Neelus's headless body had arrived at a spot a little further up the beach. These bodies were found by the servants of a magician who, in return for Mag-an-Mag's services against his enemies, offered to put back his limbs and make him as good as new. Mag-an-Mag had accepted on condition that the sorcerer find Jhakor-Neelus a new head. The sorcerer had agreed and furnished Jhakor-Neelus with the head of a crane, which seemed to please everyone. The pair then left the island loaded down with the sorcerer's gifts and went on to fight his enemies.

  Corum could find no origin for this legend in the knowledge of his own folk. It did not seem to fit with the others.

  At first he dismissed his obsession with the legend as being fired by his own wish to get back the hand and the eye he had lost, but he remained obsessed.

  Feeling embarrassed by his own interest, he said nothing of the legend to Rhalina for several weeks.

  Autumn came to Moidel's Castle and with it a warm wind that stripped the trees bare and lashed the sea against the rocks and drove many of the birds away to seek a more restful clime.