The Chronicles of Corum (48 page)

The Fourth Chapter
 The Manor in the Forest

"You know this world, Jhary?"

The dandy put a finger to his lips and drew Corum into the shadows as the parade went by. "I know most worlds,"

he murmured, "but this less well then many. The sky ship's destruction flung us through time as well as through the dimensions and we are marooned in a world whose logic is in most cases essentially different. Secondly our 'selves'

exist here and we therefore threaten to upset the fine balance of this age and, doubtless, others, too. To create paradoxes in a world not used to them would be dangerous, you see ..."

"Then let us leave this world with all speed! Let us find Rhalina and go!"

Jhary smiled. "We cannot leave an age and a plane as we would leave a room, as you well know. Besides, I do not believe Rhalina to be here if she has not been seen. But that can be discovered. There used to be a lady not far from here who was something of a seeress. I am hoping that she will help us. The folk of this age have an uncommon respect for people like ourselves—though often that respect turns to hatred and they hound us. You know you are sought by a priest who wants to burn you at the stake?"

"I knew a man disliked me."

Jhary laughed. "Aye—disliked you enough to want to torture you to death. He is a dignitary of their religion. He has great power and has already called out warriors to search for you. We must get horses as soon as possible."

Jhary paced the rickety floor, stroking his chin. "We must return to the Fifteen Planes with all speed. We have no right to be here . . ."

"And no wish to be," Corum reminded him.

Outside the sound of pipes and drums faded and the crowd began to disperse.

"I remember her name now!" Jhary muttered. He snapped his fingers. "It is the Lady Jane Pentallyon and she dwells in a house close to a village called Warleggon."

"These are strange names, Jhary-a-Conel!"

"No stranger than ours are to them. We must make speed for Warleggon as soon as possible and we must pray that Lady Jane Pentallyon is in residence and has not, herself, been burned by now."

Corum stepped closer to the window and glanced down.

"The priest comes," he said, "with his men."

"I thought it likely you would be seen entering here.

They have waited until after the parade lest you escaped in the confusion. I like not the thought of killing them, when we have no business in their age at all. . ."

"And I like not the thought of being killed," Corum pointed out. He drew his long, strong sword and made for the stairs.

He was halfway down when the first of them burst in, the priest in the gown at their head. He called out to them and made a sign at Corum—doubtless some superstitious Mabden charm. Corum sprang forward and stabbed him in the throat, his single eye blazing fiercely. The warriors gasped at this. Evidently they had not expected their leader to die so soon. They hesitated in the doorway.

Jhary said softly from behind Corum, "That was foolish.

They take it ill when their holy men are slain. Now the whole town will be against us and our leavetaking will be the harder."

Corum shrugged and began to advance toward the three warriors crowded in the doorway. "These men have horses.

Let us take them and have done with it, Jhary. I am weary of hesitation. Defend yourselves, Mabden!"

The Mabden parried his thrusts but, in so doing, became entangled with each other. Corum took one in the heart and wounded another in the hand. The pair fled into the street yelling.

Corum and Jhary followed, though Jhary's face was set and disapproving. He preferred subtler plans than this. But his own sword whisked out to take the life of a mounted man who tried to ride him down and he pushed the body from the saddle, leaping upon the back of the horse. It reared and arched its neck but Jhary got it under control and defended himself against two more who came at him from the end of the street.

Corum was still on his feet. He used his jeweled hand as a club, forcing his way through to where several horses stood without riders. The Mabden were terrified, it seemed, of the touch of his six-fingered, alien hand and dodged to avoid it. Two more died before Corum reached the horses and sprang into the saddle. He called out,

"Which way, Jhary?"

"This way!" Without looking behind him, Jhary galloped the horse down the street.

Striking aside one who tried to grab at his reins, Corum followed the dandy. A great hubbub began to spread through the city as they raced toward the west wall.

Tradesmen and peasants tried to block their path, they were forced to leap over carts and force a path through cattle or sheep. More warriors were coming, too, from two sides.

And then they had ducked under the archway and were through the low wall and riding swiftly down the white, dusty road away from the city, a pack of warriors at their backs.

Arrows began to whistle past their heads as archers came to the walls and shot at them. Corum was astonished at the range of the bowmen. "Are these sorcerous arrows, Jhary?"

"No! It is a land of bow unknown in your age. These people are masters of it. We are lucky, however, that it is too bulky a bow to be shot from a horse. There, see, the arrows are beginning to fall short. But the horsemen stay with us. Into yonder wood, Corum. Swiftly!"

They plunged off the road and into a deep, sweet-smelling forest, leaping a small stream, the horses' hooves slipping for a moment in damp moss.

"How will the doctor fare?" Corum called. "The one who took me in."

"He will die unless he is clever and denounces you,"

Jhary told him.

"But he was a man of great intelligence and humanity.

A man of science, too—of learning."

"All the more reason for killing him, if their priesthood has its way. Superstition, not learning, is respected here."

"Yet it is such a pleasant land. The people seem well-meaning and kind!"

"You can say that, with those warriors at our backs?"

Jhary laughed as he slapped his horse's rump to make it gallop faster. "You have seen too much of Glandyth and his kind, of Chaos and the like, if this seems paradise to you!"

"Compared with what we have left behind, it is paradise, Jhary."

"Aye, perhaps you speak truth."

By much backtracking and hiding they had managed to throw off their pursuers before sunset and they now walked along a narrow track, leading their tired horses.

"It is a good many miles to Warleggon yet," Jhary said.

"I would that I had a map, Prince Corum, to guide us, for it was in another body with different eyes that I last saw this land."

"What is the land itself called?" asked the Prince in the Scarlet Robe.

"It is, like Lywm-an-Esh, divided into a number of lands under the dominion of one monarch. This one is called Kernow—or Cornwall, depending whether you speak the language of the region or the language of the realm as a whole. It's a superstition-ridden land, though its traditions go back further than most other parts of the country of which it is part, and you will find much of it like your own Bro-an-Vadhagh. Its memories stretch back longer than do the memories of the rest of the realm. The memories have darkened, but they still have partial legends of a people like yourself who once lived here."

"You mean this Kernow lies in my future?"

"In one future, probably not yours. The future of a corresponding plane, perhaps. There are doubtless other futures where the Vadhagh have proliferated and the Mabden died out. The multiverse contains, after all, an infinity of possibilities."

"Your knowledge is great, Jhary-a-Conel."

The dandy reached into his shirt and drew out his little black-and-white cat. It had been there all the time they had been fighting and escaping. It began to purr, stretching its limbs and its wings. It settled on Jhary's shoulder.

"My knowledge is partial," said Jhary wearily. "It consists generally of half-memories."

"But why do you know so much of this plane?"

"Because I dwell here even now. There is really no such thing as time, you see. I remember what to you is the

'future.' I remember one of my many incarnations. If you had watched the parade longer you would have seen not only yourself but myself. I am called by some grand title here, but I serve the one you saw on the yellow horse. He was born in that city we have left and he is reckoned a great soldier by these people, though, like you, I think he would prefer peace to war. That is the fate of the Champion Eternal."

"I'll hear no more of that," Corum said quickly. "It disturbs me too much."

"I cannot blame you."

They stopped at last to water their horses and take turns to sleep. Sometimes in the distance groups of horsemen would ride by, their brands flaring in the night, but they never came close enough to be a great threat.

In the morning they reached the edges of a wide expanse of heather. A light rain fell but it did not discomfort them, rather it refreshed them. Their surefooted horses began to canter over the moor and brought them soon to a valley and a forest.

"We have skirted Warleggon now," said Jhary. "I thought it wise. But there is the forest I sought. See the smoke rising deep within. That, I hope, is the manor of the Lady Jane."

Along a winding path protected on each side by high banks of rich-scented moss and wild flowers they rode and there at last were two posts of brown stone which were topped by two carvings of spread-winged hawks, mellowed by the weather. The gates of bent iron were open and they walked their horses along a gravel path until they turned a corner and saw the house. It was a large house of three stories, made of the same light brown stone, with a gray slate roof and five chimneys of a reddish tint. Lattice windows were set into the house and there was a low doorway in the center. Two old men came round the side of the house at the sound of their horses' hooves on the gravel. The men had dark features, heavy brows, and long, gray hair. They were dressed in leather and skins and, if they wore any expression at all, their eyes seemed to hold a look of grim satisfaction as they looked at Corum in his high helm and his silver byrnie.

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 . . ."