The Queen of Swords Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Michael Moorcock

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Book One

  1. What the Sea God Discarded

  2. The Gathering at Kalenwyr

  3. Lywm-an-Esh

  4. The wall Between the Realms

  Book Two

  1. The Lake of Voices

  2. The White River

  3. Beasts of the Abyss

  4. The Chariots of Chaos

  5. The Frozen Army

  6. The City in the Pyramid

  Book Three

  1. The Horde from Hell

  2. The Siege Begins

  3. Prince Gaynor the Damned

  4. The Barbarian Attack

  5. The Fury of Queen Xiombarg

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books and Titan Comics

  Also available from Michael Moorcock, Titan Books and Titan Comics

  A NOMAD OF THE TIME STREAMS

  The Warlord of the Air

  The Land Leviathan

  The Steel Tsar

  THE ETERNAL CHAMPION SERIES

  The Eternal Champion

  Phoenix in Obsidian

  The Dragon in the Sword

  THE CORUM SERIES

  The Knight of the Swords

  The King of the Swords (July 2015)

  The Bull and the Spear (August 2015)

  The Oak and the Ram (September 2015)

  The Sword and the Stallion (October 2015)

  THE CORNELIUS QUARTET

  The Final Programme (February 2016)

  A Cure for Cancer (March 2016)

  The English Assassin (April 2016)

  The Condition of Muzak (May 2016)

  THE MICHAEL MOORCOCK LIBRARY

  Elric of Melniboné

  Elric: Sailor on the Seas of Fate

  MICHAEL MOORCOCK’S ELRIC

  Volume 1: The Ruby Throne

  Volume 2: Stormbringer

  The Queen of the Swords

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783291670

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783291663

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First Titan edition: June 2015

  12345678910

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 1971, 2015 by Michael Moorcock. All rights reserved.

  Edited by John Davey

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  This book is for Diane Boardman

  INTRODUCTION

  IN THOSE DAYS there were oceans of light and cities in the skies and wild flying beasts of bronze. There were herds of crimson cattle that roared and were taller than castles. There were shrill, viridian things that haunted bleak rivers. It was a time of gods, manifesting themselves upon our world in all her aspects; a time of giants who walked on water; of mindless sprites and misshapen creatures who could be summoned by an ill-considered thought but driven away only on pain of some fearful sacrifice; of magics, phantasms, unstable nature, impossible events, insane paradoxes, dreams come true, dreams gone awry, of nightmares assuming reality.

  It was a rich time and a dark time. The time of the Sword Rulers. The time when the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh, age-old enemies, were dying. The time when Man, the slave of fear, was emerging, unaware that much of the terror he experienced was the result of nothing else but the fact that he, himself, had come into existence. It was one of many ironies connected with Man (who, in those days, called his race “Mabden”).

  The Mabden lived brief lives and bred prodigiously. Within a few centuries they rose to dominate the westerly continent on which they had evolved. Superstition stopped them from sending many of their ships towards Vadhagh and Nhadragh lands for another century or two, but gradually they gained courage when no resistance was offered. They began to feel jealous of the older races; they began to feel malicious.

  The Vadhagh and the Nhadragh were not aware of this. They had dwelt a million or more years upon the planet which now, at last, seemed at rest. They knew of the Mabden but considered them not greatly different from other beasts. Though continuing to indulge their traditional hatreds of one another, the Vadhagh and the Nhadragh spent their long hours in considering abstractions, in the creation of works of art and the like. Rational, sophisticated, at one with themselves, these older races were unable to believe in the changes that had come. Thus, as it almost always is, they ignored the signs.

  There was no exchange of knowledge between the two ancient enemies, even though they had fought their last battle many centuries before.

  The Vadhagh lived in family groups occupying isolated castles scattered across a continent called by them Bro-an-Vadhagh. There was scarcely any communication between these families, for the Vadhagh had long since lost the impulse to travel. The Nhadragh lived in their cities built on the islands in the seas to the north-west of Bro-an-Vadhagh. They, also, had little contact, even with their closest kin. Both races reckoned themselves invulnerable. Both were wrong.

  Upstart Man was beginning to breed and spread like a pestilence across the world. This pestilence struck down the Old Races wherever it touched them. And it was not only death that Man brought, but terror, too. Willfully, he made of the older world nothing but ruins and bones. Unwittingly, he brought psychic and supernatural disruption of a magnitude which even the Great Old Gods failed to comprehend.

  And the Great Old Gods began to know Fear.

  And Man, slave of fear, arrogant in his ignorance, continued his stumbling progress. He was blind to the huge disruptions aroused by his apparently petty ambitions. As well, Man was deficient in sensitivity, had no awareness of the multitude of dimensions that filled the universe, each plane intersecting with several others. Not so the Vadhagh or the Nhadragh, who had known what it was to move at will between the dimensions they termed the Five Planes. They had glimpsed and understood the nature of the many planes, other than the Five, through which the Earth moved.

  Therefore it seemed a dreadful injustice that these wise races should perish at the hands of creatures who were still little more than animals. It was as if vultures feasted on and squabbled over the paralyzed body of the youthful poet who could only stare at them with puzzled eyes as they slowly robbed him of an exquisite existence they would never appreciate, never know they were taking.

  “If they valued what they stole, if they knew what they were destroying,” says the old Vadhagh in the story, Now The Clouds Have Meaning, “then I would be consoled.”

  It was unjust.<
br />
  By creating Man, the universe had betrayed the Old Races.

  But it was a perpetual and familiar injustice. The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe cannot perceive and love the sentient. The universe sees no distinction between the multitude of creatures and elements which comprise it. All are equal. None is favoured. The universe, equipped with nothing but the materials and the power of creation, continues to create: something of this, something of that. It cannot control what it creates and it cannot, it seems, be controlled by its creations (though a few might deceive themselves otherwise). Those who curse the workings of the universe curse that which is deaf. Those who strike out at those workings fight that which is inviolate. Those who shake their fists, shake their fists at blind stars.

  But this does not mean that there are some who will not try to do battle with and destroy the invulnerable.

  There will always be such beings, sometimes beings of great wisdom, who cannot bear to believe in an insouciant universe.

  Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei was one of these. Perhaps the last of the Vadhagh race, he was sometimes known as the Prince in the Scarlet Robe.

  This chronicle concerns him.

  We have already learned how the Mabden followers of Earl Glandyth-a-Krae (who called themselves the Denledhyssi—or murderers) killed Prince Corum’s relatives and his nearest kin and thus taught the Prince in the Scarlet Robe how to hate, how to kill and how to desire vengeance. We have heard how Glandyth tortured Corum and took away a hand and an eye and how Corum was rescued by the Giant of Laahr and taken to the castle of the Margravine Rhalina—a castle set upon a mount surrounded by the sea. Though Rhalina was a Mabden woman (of the gentler folk of Lywm-an-Esh) Corum and she fell in love. When Glandyth roused the Pony Tribes, the forest barbarians, to attack the Margravine’s castle, she and Corum sought supernatural aid and thus fell into the hands of the sorcerer Shool, whose domain was the island called Svi-an-Fanla-Brool—Home of the Gorged God. And now Corum had direct experience of the morbid, unfamiliar powers at work in the world. Shool spoke of dreams and realities. (“I see you are beginning to argue in Mabden terms,” he told Corum. “It is just as well for you, if you wish to survive in this Mabden dream.” – “It is a dream…?” said Corum. – “Of sorts. Real enough. It is what you might call the dream of a god. There again you might say that it is a dream that a god has allowed to become reality. I refer of course to the Knight of the Swords who rules the Five Planes.”)

  With Rhalina his prisoner Shool could make a bargain with Corum. He gave him two gifts—the Hand of Kwll and the Eye of Rhynn—to replace his own missing organs. These jeweled and alien things were once the property of two brother gods known as the Lost Gods since they mysteriously vanished.

  Now Shool told Corum what he must do if he wished to see Rhalina saved. Corum must go to the Realm of the Knight of the Swords—Lord Arioch of Chaos who ruled the Five Planes since he had wrested them from the control of Lord Arkyn of Law. There Corum must find the heart of the Knight of the Swords—a thing which was kept in a tower of his castle and which enabled him to take material shape on Earth and thus wield power (without a material shape—or a number of them—the Lords of Chaos could not rule mortals).

  With little hope, Corum set off in a boat for the domain of Arioch but on his way was wrecked when a huge giant passed by him, merely fishing. In the land of the strange Ragha-da-Kheta he discovered that the eye could summon dreadful beings from those worlds to aid him—also the hand seemed to sense danger before it came and was ruthless in slaying even when Corum did not desire to slay. Then he realized that, by accepting Shool’s gifts, he had accepted the logic of Shool’s world and could not escape from it now.

  During these adventures Corum learned of the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos. A cheerful traveler from Lywm-an-Esh enlightened him. It was, he said, “the Chaos Lords’ will that rules you. Arioch is one of them. Long since there was a war between the forces of Order and the forces of Chaos. The forces of Chaos won and came to dominate the Fifteen Planes and, as I understand it, much that lies beyond them. Some say that Order was defeated completely and all her gods vanished. They say the Cosmic Balance tipped too far in one direction and that is why there are so many arbitrary events taking place in the world. They say that once the world was round instead of dish-shaped…” – “Some Vadhagh legends say it was once round,” Corum informed him. – “Aye. Well, the Vadhagh began their rise before Order was banished. That is why the Sword Rulers hate the Old Races so much. They are not their creation at all. But the Great Gods are not allowed to interfere too directly in mortal affairs, so they have worked through the Mabden, chiefly…” – Corum, said: “Is this the truth?” – Hanafax shrugged. “It is a truth.”

  Later, in the Flamelands where the Blind Queen Ooresé lived, Corum saw a mysterious figure who almost immediately vanished after he had slain poor Hanafax with the Hand of Kwll (which knew Hanafax would betray him). He learned that Arioch was the Knight of the Swords and that Xiombarg was the Queen of the Swords ruling the next group of Five Planes, while the most powerful Sword Ruler of all ruled the last of the Five Planes—Mabelode, King of the Swords. Corum learned that all the hearts of the Sword Rulers were hidden where even they could not touch them. But after further adventures in Arioch’s castle, he at last succeeded in finding the heart of the Knight of the Swords and, to save his life, destroyed it, thus banishing Arioch to limbo and allowing Arkyn of Law to return to occupy his old castle. But Corum had earned the bane of the Sword Rulers and by destroying Arioch’s heart had set a pattern of destiny for himself. A voice told him: “Neither Law nor Chaos must dominate the destinies of the mortal planes. There must be equilibrium.” But it seemed to Corum that there was no equilibrium, that Chaos ruled All. “The Balance sometimes tips,” replied the voice. “It must be righted. And that is the power of mortals, to adjust the Balance. You have begun the work already. Now you must continue until it is finished. You may perish before it is complete, but some other will follow you.”

  Corum shouted: “I do not want this. I cannot bear such a burden.”

  The voice replied:

  “YOU MUST!”

  And then Corum returned to find Shool’s power gone and Rhalina free.

  They returned to the lovely castle on Moidel’s Mount, knowing that they were no longer in any sense in control of their own fates…

  — The Book of Corum

  BOOK ONE

  IN WHICH PRINCE CORUM MEETS A POET, HEARS A PORTENT AND PLANS A JOURNEY

  1

  WHAT THE SEA GOD DISCARDED

  NOW THE SKIES of summer were pale blue over the deeper blue of the sea; over the golden green of the mainland forest; over the grassy rocks of Moidel’s Mount and the white stones of the castle raised on its peak. And the last of the Vadhagh race, Prince Corum in the Scarlet Robe, was deep in love with the Mabden woman, Margravine Rhalina of Allomglyl.

  Corum Jhaelen Irsei, whose right eye was covered by a patch encrusted with dark jewels so that it resembled the orb of an insect, whose left eye (the natural one) was large and almond-shaped with a yellow centre and purple surround, was unmistakeably Vadhagh. His skull was narrow and long and tapering at the chin and his ears were tapered, too. They had no lobes and were flat against the skull. The hair was fair and finer than the finest Mabden maiden’s, his mouth was wide, full-lipped, and his skin was rose-pink and flecked with gold. He would have been handsome save for the baroque blemish that was now his right eye and for the somewhat grim twist to his lips. Then, too, there was the alien hand which strayed often to his sword hilt, visible when he pushed back his scarlet robe.

  This left hand bore six fingers on it and seemed encased in a jeweled gauntlet (not so—the ‘jewels’ were the hand’s skin). It was a sinister thing and it had crushed the heart of the Knight of the Swords himself—my lord Arioch of Chaos—and allowed Arkyn, Lord of Law, to return.

  Corum certainly seemed a being bent on ve
ngeance and he was, indeed, pledged to avenge his murdered family by slaying Earl Glandyth-a-Krae, servant of King Lyr-a-Brode of Kalenwyr, who ruled the south and the east of the continent once ruled by the Vadhagh. And he was also pledged to the cause of Law against the cause of Chaos (whose servants Lyr and his subjects were). This knowledge made him sober and manly, but it also made his soul heavy. He was also unsettled by the thought of the power grafted to his flesh—the power of the Hand and the Eye.

  The Margravine Rhalina was womanly and beautiful and her gentle face was framed by thick, black tresses. She had huge dark eyes and red, loving lips. She, too, was nervous of the sorcerous gifts of the dead wizard Shool, but she tried not to brood upon them, just as earlier she had refused to brood upon the loss of her husband, the Margrave, when he had been drowned in a shipwreck while on his way to Lywm-an-Esh, the land he served and which was gradually being covered by the sea.

  She found more to laugh at than did Corum and she was his comfort, for once he had been innocent and had laughed a great deal, and he remembered this innocence with longing. But the longing brought other memories—of his family lying dead, mutilated, dishonoured on the sward outside Castle Erorn as it burned and Glandyth brandished his weapons which were clothed in Vadhagh blood. Such violent images were stronger than the images of his earlier, peaceful life. They forever inhabited his skull, sometimes filling it, sometimes lurking in the darker corners and merely threatening to fill it. And when his revenge-lust seemed to wane, they would always bring it back to fullness. Fire, flesh and fear; the barbaric chariots of the Denledhyssi—brass, iron and crude gold. Short, shaggy horses and burly, bearded warriors in borrowed Vadhagh armour—opening their red mouths and bellowing their insensate triumph, while the old stones of Castle Erorn cracked and tumbled in the yelling blaze and Corum discovered what hate and terror were…