Chronicles of Corum by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online

galloped harder, its hooves pounding the soft turf, plunging deeper and deeper into the dark wood. “Corum!”
    Corum leaned forward in his saddle, ducking as branches brushed his face. “I come!”
    He saw the shadowy group in the grove. They surrounded him, yet still he rode and his speed grew even faster. He began to feel dizzy.
    “Corum!”
    And it seemed to Corum that he had ridden like this before, that he had been in this way before and it was why he had known what to do.
    The trees blurred, he rode with such speed. “Corum!”
    White mist began to boil all around him. Now the faces of the chanting group could be seen in; sharper detail. The voices grew faint, then loud, then faint again. Corum spurred the snorting horse on into the mist. That mist was history. It was legend. It was time. He glimpsed sights of buildings, the like of which he had never seen, rising hundreds and thousands of feet into the air. He saw armies of millions, weapons of terrifying power, flying machines and dragons. He saw creatures of every shape, size and form. All seemed to cry out to him as he rode by. And he saw Rhalina.
    He saw Rhalina as a girl, as a boy, as a man, as an old woman. He saw her alive and he saw her dead.
    And it was mat sight which made him scream, and it was why he was still screaming as he rode suddenly into a forest clearing, bursting through a circle of men and women who had stood with hands linked around a mound, chanting as with a single voice. He was still screaming as he drew his bright sword and raised it high in his silver hand as he reined his horse to a halt on the top of the mount.
    “Corum!” cried the folk in the clearing.
    And Corum ceased to scream and lowered his head, though his sword was still raised.
    The red Vadhagh horse in all its silken trappings pawed at the grass of the mound and again it snorted.
    Then Corum said in a deep, quiet voice, “I am Corum and I will help you. But remember, in this land, in this age, I am a virgin.”
    “Corum,” they said. “Corum Llaw Ereint.” And they pointed out his silver hand to each other and their faces were joyful.
    “I am Corum,” he said. “You must tell me why I have been summoned.”
    A man older than the others, his red beard veined with white, a great gold collar about his neck, stepped forward.
    “Corum,” he said. “We called you because you are Corum.”

THE THIRD CHAPTER
THE TUHA-NA -CREMM CROICH
    Corum’s mind was clouded. For all that he could smell the night air, see the people around him, feel the horse beneath him, it still seemed that he dreamed. Slowly he rode back down the mound. A light wind caught the folds of his scarlet robe and lifted them, swirling them about his head. He tried to realize that somehow he was now separated from his own world by at least a millennium. Or could it be, he wondered, that he really did still dream. He felt the detachment that he sometimes felt when he was dreaming.
    As he reached the bottom of the grassy mound the tall Mabden folk stood back respectfully. By the expressions on their well-formed features it seemed plain that they, too, were dazed by this event, as if they had not really expected their invocation to be successful. Corum felt sympathetic toward them. These were not the superstitious barbarians he had first suspected he would find. There was intelligence on those faces, a clarity about their gaze, a dignity about the way in which they held themselves, even though they thought they were in the presence of a supernatural being. These, it seemed, were the true descendants of the best of his wife’s folk. At that moment he felt no regret that he had answered their summons.
    He wondered if they felt the cold as he did. The air was sharp and yet they wore only thin cloaks, which left their arms, chests and legs bare, save for the gold ornaments, leather straps and high sandals which all—men and women—had.
    The older man who had first spoken to Corum was powerfully built and as