The Queen of Swords Read Free

order but sought to establish throughout the Fifteen Planes a harmony in which all things could exist in all their variety. Law offered an environment in which all the mortal virtues could flourish.
    Yet while Glandyth and all he represented survived, Corum knew that Law would be under constant threat and that the corrupting monster Fear would destroy all virtue.
    As they rode, one pretty day, through the woods, he cast about him with his mismatched eyes and he said to Rhalina, “Glandyth must die!”
    And she nodded but did not question why he had made this sudden statement, for she had heard it many times in similar circumstances. She tightened the rein on her chestnut mare and brought the beast to a prancing halt in a glade of lupines and hollyhocks. She dismounted and picked up her long skirts of embroidered samite as she waded gracefully through the knee-high grass. Corum sat on his tawny stallion and watched her, taking pleasure in her pleasure as she had known he would. The glade was warm and shadowy, sheltered by kindly elm and oak and ash in which squirrels and birds had made their nests.
    “Oh, Corum, if only we could stay here for ever! We could build a cottage, plant a garden…”
    He tried to smile. “But we cannot,” he said. “Even this is but a respite. Shool was right. By accepting the logic of conflict I have accepted a particular destiny. Even if I forgot my own vows of vengeance, even if I had not agreed to serve Law against Chaos, Glandyth would still come and seek us out and make us defend this peace. And Glandyth is stronger than these gentle woods, Rhalina. He could destroy them overnight and, I think, would relish so doing if he knew we loved them.”
    She knelt and smelled the flowers. “Must it always be so? Must hate always breed hate and love be powerless to proliferate?”
    “If Lord Arkyn is right, it will not always be so. But those who believe that love should be powerful must be prepared to die to ensure its strength.”
    She raised her head suddenly and there was alarm in her eyes as they stared into his.
    He shrugged. “It is true,” he said.
    Slowly, she got to her feet and went back to where her horse stood. She put a foot into the stirrup and pulled herself into the side-saddle. He remained in the same position, staring at the flowers and at the grass which was gradually springing back into the places it had occupied before she had walked through it.
    “It is true.”
    He sighed and turned his horse towards the shore.
    “We had best return,” he murmured, “before the sea covers the causeway.”
    A little while later they emerged from the forest and trotted their steeds along the shore. Blue sea shifted on the white sand and, still some distance away, they saw the natural causeway leading through the shallows to the mount on which stood Castle Moidel, the farthest and forgotten outpost of the civilization of Lywm-an-Esh. Once the castle had stood among woods on the mainland of Lywm-an-Esh, but the sea now covered that land.
    Seabirds called and wheeled in the cloudless sky, sometimes diving to spear a fish with their beaks and return with their catch to their nests amongst the rocks of Moidel’s Mount. The hoofs of the horses thumped the sand or splashed through the surf as they neared the causeway which would soon be covered by the tide.
    And then Corum’s attention was caught by a movement far out to sea. He craned forward as he rode and peered into the distance.
    “What is it?” she asked him.
    “I am not sure. A big wave, perhaps. But this is not the season of heavy seas.” He pointed. “Look.”
    “There seems to be a mist hanging over the water a mile or two out. It is hard to observe…” She gasped. “It is a wave!”
    Now the water near the shore became slightly more agitated as the wave approached.
    “It is as if some huge ship were passing by at great speed,” Corum said. “It is familiar…”
    Then he looked more sharply into the distant haze. “Do