The Chronicles of Corum Read Free Page A

plane of the Earth, with pommel and guard worked in silver and both red and black onyx. His shirt was of blue samite and his breeks and boots were of soft brushed leather, as was his saddle, which was finished in silver.
    From beneath his helm, some of Prince Corum's fine, silvery hair escaped and his youthful face now bore an expression that was half introspection, half excited anticipation at the prospect of his first sight of the ancient lands of his kinfolk.
    He rode alone because none of tie castle's retainers could be spared, and he rode on horseback rather than in a carriage because he wished to make the fastest possible speed.
    It would be days before he would reach the first of the several castles he must visit, but he tried to imagine how different these dwelling places of his kinfolk would be and how the people themselves would strike him. Perhaps he would even find a wife among them. He knew that, while his father had not mentioned this, it had been an extra consideration in Prince Khlonskey's mind when the old man had begged him to go on this mission.
    Soon Corum had left the forest and had reached the great plain called Broggfythus where once the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh had met in bloody and mystical battle.
    It had been the last battle ever fought between the two races and, at its height, it had raged through all five planes. Producing neither victor nor defeated, it had destroyed more than two thirds of each of their races. Corum had heard that there were many empty castles across Bro-an-Vadhagh now, and many empty cities in the Nhadragh Isles which lay across the water from Castle Erorn.
    Toward the middle of the day Corum found himself in the center of Broggfythus and he came to the spot that marked the boundaries of the territories he had roamed as a boy. Here was the weed-grown wreckage of the vast sky city that, during the month-long battle of his ancestors, had careered from one plane to another, rupturing the fine fabric that divided the different dimensions of the Earth until, crashing at last upon the gathered ranks of the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh, it had destroyed them. Being of a different plane, the tangled metal and stone of the sky city still retained that peculiar shifting effect. Now it had the appearance of a mirage, though the weeds, gorse, and birch trees that twined around it looked solid enough.
    On other, less urgent, occasions, Prince Corum had enjbyed shifting his perspective out of this plane and into another, to see different aspects of the city, but the effort took too much energy these days and at the present moment the diaphanous wreckage represented nothing more than an obstacle around which he was forced to make various detours, for it stretched in a circumference of more than twenty miles.
    But at last he reached the edge of the plain called Broggfythus and the sun set and he left behind him the world he knew and rode on toward the Southwest, into lands he knew only from the maps he carried.
    He rode steadily for three more days without pause until the red horse showed signs of tiredness and, in a little valley through which a cold stream flowed, he made camp and rested for a while.
    Corum ate a slice of the light, nourishing bread of his people and sat with his back against the bole of an old oak while his horse cropped the grass of the river bank.
    Corum's silver helm lay beside him, together with his axe and sword. He breathed the leafy air and relaxed as he contemplated the peaks of the mountains, blue, gray, and white in the distance. This was pleasant, peaceful country and he was enjoying his journey through it. Once, he knew, it had been inhabited by several Vadhagh estates, but there was no trace of them now. It was as if they had grown into the landscape or been engulfed by it. Once or twice he had seen strangely shaped rocks where Vadhagh castles had stood, but they had been no more than rocks. It occurred to him that these rocks were the transmogrified remains of