Chronicles of Corum (12 page)

And then he wondered if he were not still dreaming, for there came in the distance the familiar sound of the baying of hounds, the Hounds of Kerenos. Had they followed him to the island, swimming across a score of miles of sea? Or had they come already to Hy-Breasail, to wait for him. He touched the ornate horn at his belt as their yapping and howling came closer. He scanned the land for sight of them, but all he could see was a startled herd of deer led by a great stag bounding across a meadow and into a forest. Did the hounds pursue the herd? No. The hounds did not appear.

He saw something else moving in a valley on the other side of the hill. He guessed that it was probably another deer, but then he realized that it ran on two legs in peculiar leaping bounds. It was heavy and tall, and it carried something which flashed whenever the sun’s rays touched it. A man?

Corum saw a white hide in the trees some distance behind the man. Then he saw another. Then there burst from the grove a pack of some twelve great dogs with tufted, red-tipped ears. The hounds pursued what was for them more familiar quarry than deer.

The man—if man it was—began to leap up a rocky hillside, following the course of a big waterfall, but this did not deter the dogs, who kept implacably upon his track. The hillside became almost sheer, but still the man climbed—and still the dogs followed. Corum was amazed at their agility. Again something bright flashed. Corum realized that the man had turned and that the bright thing was a weapon which he was wielding to ward off the attack. It was obvious to Corum that the dogs’ victim would not last for long. It was only then that he remembered the horn. Hastily he raised it to his lips and blew three long blasts in quick succession. The notes of the horn sounded out clear and sharp across the valley. The dogs turned and began to circle, as if scenting, though their quarry was in easy sight.

Then the Hounds of Kerenos began to lope away. Corum laughed in delight. For the first time he had won a victory over the hellish dogs.

At his laughter, it seemed, the man on the far side of the valley looked up. Corum waved to him, but the man did not return the wave.

As soon as the Hounds of Kerenos had disappeared, Corum began to run down the hillside towards the one whom he had helped. It did not take him long to reach the bottom of the slope and begin to ascend the next. He recognized the waterfall and the shelf of rock where the man had turned to do battle with the hounds, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen. He had not climbed higher, that was certain, nor had he come down, Corum was sure, for he had a fairly clear view of the waterfall as he ran.

“Ho there!’‘ shouted the Prince in the Scarlet Robe, brandishing his horn. “Where are you hiding, comrade?”

He was answered only by the rattling of water upon rocks as the waterfall continued its progress down the cliff face. He stared about him, peering at every shadow, every rock and bush, but it was as if the man had actually become invisible.

“Where are you, stranger?”

There was a faint echo, but this was drowned quickly by the sound of the water hissing and slapping as it foamed over the crags.

Corum shrugged and turned away, thinking it ironic that the men should be more timid than the beasts on the island.

And then suddenly, from nowhere, he felt a heavy blow in the small of his back and he was tumbling forward onto the heather, arms outstretched to break his fall.

“Stranger, eh?” said a deep surly voice. “Call me stranger, eh?”

Corum struck the ground and rolled over, trying to free his sword from its scabbard. The man who had pushed him was massive. He must have stood eight feet high and was a good four feet broad at the shoulder. He wore a polished iron breastplate, polished iron greaves inlaid with red gold, and an iron helm upon his shaggy, black-bearded head. In his monstrous hands was the largest war-axe Corum had ever seen.

Corum scrambled up, drawing his blade. He suspected that this was the one whom he had saved. But the huge creature appeared to feel no gratitude at all.

Corum managed to gasp: “Who do I fight?”

“You fight me. You fight the Dwarf Goffanon,” said the giant.

In spite of his danger, Corum found himself grinning in disbelief. “Dwarf?”

The Sidhi smith glared at him.

“Aye? What is funny?”

‘ ‘I should be afraid to meet ordinary-sized men on this island!”

‘ ‘I miss your point.’ ‘ Goffanon’s eyes narrowed as he readied his axe and took up a fighting stance. It was only then that Corum realized that the eyes were similar to his own remaining single orb— almond-shaped, yellow and purple—and that the so-called dwarf’s skull structure was more delicate than it had at first appeared due to the beard covering so much of it. His face was, in most particulars, a Vadhagh face. Yet in all other respects Goffanon did not resemble a member of Corum’s own race.

‘ ‘ Are there others of your kind in Hy-Breasail?” Corum used the pure tongue of the Vadhagh, not the dialect spoken by most Mab-den, and produced an expression of gaping-mouthed astonishment on Goffanon’s features.

“I am the only one,” the smith replied in the same tongue. “ Or thought so. Yet if you be of my folk, why did you set your dogs upon me?”

“They are not my dogs. I am Corum Jhaelen Irsei, of the Vadhagh race.” With his left, his silver, hand, Corum held up the horn. “This is what controls the dogs. This horn. They think their master sounds it.”

Goffanon lowered his axe a fraction. “So you are not some servant of the Fhoi Myore?”

“I hope that I am not. I battle the Fhoi Myore and all that they stand for. Those dogs have attacked me more than once. It was to save me from further attacks that I was loaned the horn by a Mabden wizard.” Corum decided that this was a judicious time to sheath his sword and hoped that the Sidhi smith did not take the opportunity to split his skull.

Goffanon frowned, sucking at his lips as he debated Corum’s words.

“How long have the Hounds of Kerenos been on your island?” Corum asked.

“This time? A day—no more. But they have been before. They seem the only things unaffected by the madness which comes upon the rest of the denizens of this world when they set foot upon my shores. And since the Fhoi Myore have had an abiding hatred for Hy-Breasail, they do not rest in sending their minions to hunt me. Often I am able to anticipate their coming and take precautions, but this time I had grown too confident, not expecting them back so soon. I thought you to be some new creature, some huntsman like the Ghoolegh, of whom I have heard, who serve Kerenos. But it seems to me now that I once listened to a tale concerning a Vadhagh with a strange hand and only one eye—but that Vadhagh died, even before the Sidhi came.”

“You do not call yourself Vadhagh?”

“Sidhi, we are called.” Now Goffanon had lowered his axe completely. “We are related to your folk. Some of your people visited us once, I know—and we visited you. But that was when access to the Fifteen Planes was possible, before the last Conjunction of the Million Spheres.”

“You are from another plane. Then how did you reach this one?”

“A disruption in the walls between the realms. Thus came the Fhoi Myore, from the Cold Places, from Limbo. And thus we came—to help the folk of Lwym-an-Esh and their Vadhagh friends—and fought the Fhoi Myore. There was great slaying in those days, long ago, and huge wars, which sank Lwym-an-Esh, killing all the Vadhagh and most of the Mabden. Also my folk, the Sidhi, were slain, for we could not return to our own plane, since the rupture swiftly mended. We thought all the Fhoi Myore destroyed, but lately they have returned.”

“And you do not fight them?”

“I am not strong enough, alone. This island is physically part of my own plane. Here I can live in peace, save for the dogs. I am old. I shall die in a few hundred years.”

“I am weak,” Corum said. “Yet I fight the Fhoi Myore.”

Goffanon nodded. Then he shrugged. “Only because you have not fought them before,” he said.

‘ ‘Yet why can they not come to Hy-Breasail? Why do no Mabden return from the island?”

“I try to keep the Mabden away,” said Goffanon, “but they are an intrepid little race. Their very courage brings about their dreadful deaths. But I will tell you more when we have eaten. Will you guest with me, cousin?”

‘ ‘Gladly,” said Corum.

“Then come.”

Goffanon began to climb back up the rocks, working his way around the ledge on which he had stood to fight the Hounds of Kerenos, and disappeared again. His head reappeared almost instantly.

‘ ‘This way. I have lived here since the dogs began to plague me.”

Corum climbed slowly after the Sidhi, reached the ledge and saw that it went around a slab of rock which hid an entrance to a cave. The slab could be moved in grooves to block the entrance and, as Corum stepped through, Goffanon put his gigantic shoulder to the slab and heaved it into place. Inside was light coming from well-made lamps set in niches in the walls. The furniture was plain but expertly carved and there were woven tapestries upon the floor. Save for the lack of a window, Goffanon’s lair was more than comfortable.

While Corum rested in a chair Goffanon busied himself at his stove, preparing soup, vegetables and meat. The smell that arose from his pots was delicious, and Corum congratulated himself for curbing his desire to spear fish from the stream. This meal promised to be much more appetizing.

Goffanon, apologizing for the scarcity of his plate, for he had lived alone for hundreds of years, put a huge bowl of soup before Corum. The Vadhagh prince ate gratefully.

Next followed meat and a variety of succulent vegetables which were, in turn, followed by the best-tasting fruit Corum had ever eaten. When, at last, he sank back in his chair it was with a feeling of well-being such as he had not experienced in years. He thanked Goffanon profusely, and the self-styled dwarf’s huge frame seemed to writhe in embarrassment. He apologized again and then seated himself in his own chair and put an object into his mouth which was a long stalk which projected from a small cup. Goffanon sucked at the stalk, holding over the bowl of the little cup apiece of burning wood. Soon clouds of smoke issued from the bowl and from his mouth and he smiled with contentment, only noticing Corum’s surprised expression some time later. “A custom of my folk,” he explained. “It is an aromatic herb which we burn in this way and inhale the smoke. It pleases us.”

The smoke did riot smell particularly sweet to Corum, but he accepted the Sidhi’s explanation, though refusing Goffanon’s offer of a bowl of his own smoke.

“You asked,” said Goffanon slowly, half-closing his huge, almond-shaped eyes, “why the Fhoi Myore fear this island and why the Mabden perished here. Well, neither is any deliberate doing of mine, though I am glad that the Fhoi Myore avoid me. Long ago, during the first Fhoi Myore invasion when we were called to help our Vadhagh cousins and their friends, we had great difficulty in breaching the wall between the realms. Finally we did so, causing enormous disruptions in the world of our own plane, resulting in a great piece of land coming with us through the dimensions to your world. That piece of land settled, luckily, upon a relatively unpopulated part of the kingdom of Lwym-an-Esh. However, it retained the properties of our plane—it is, as it were, part of the Sidhi dream, rather than the Vadhagh, the Mabden or the Fhoi Myore dreams. Though, as you will have noted, of course, since the Vadhagh are closely related to the Sidhi they have little difficulty in adapting themselves to it. The Mabden and the Fhoi Myore, on the other hand, cannot survive here at all. Madness overwhelms them as soon as they land. They enter a world of nightmare. All their fears multiply and become completely real for them, and they are thus destroyed by their own terrors.”

‘ ‘I guessed something of this,” Corum told Goffanon, “for I had a hint of what might happen when I slept earlier today.”

“Exactly. Even the Vadhagh sometimes experience a little of what it means for a mortal Mabden to land on Hy-Breasail. I try to hide the island’s outlines with a mist I am able to prepare, but it is not always possible to keep a sufficient supply of the mist in the air. That is when the Mabden find the island and suffer enormously as a result.”

‘ ‘And where do the Fhoi Myore originate from? You spoke of the Cold Places.”

“The Cold Places, aye. Do you know of them in Vadhagh lore? The places between the planes—a chaotic limbo which occasionally spawns intelligence of sorts. That is what the Fhoi Myore are— creatures from Limbo who fell through the breach in the wall between the realms and arrived upon this plane. Whereupon they embarked upon conquest of your world, planning to turn it into another limbo where they might best survive. They cannot live for much longer, the Fhoi Myore. Their own diseases destroy them. But they will live long enough, I fear, to bring freezing death to all but Hy-Breasail—to bring freezing death to Mabden and to all beasts, even the smallest sea-creature, on this world. It is inevitable. They will probably outlive me, some of them—Kerenos anyway. But their plagues will slay them at last. Virtually all this world, save the land from which you have just come, has died under their rule. It happened quickly, I think. We thought them all dead, but they must have found hiding places —perhaps at the edge of the world where ice always may be found. Now their patience is rewarded, eh?” Goffanon sighed. “Well, well—there are other worlds—and those they cannot reach.”