The Chronicles of Corum by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online Page B

reappeared and it was leading something by one of its hands, pointing at Corum.
    At first Corum saw only a bulky shape looming over the brown creature—a being that stood some twelve feet tail and was some six feet broad, a being that, like the furry beast, walked on two legs.
    Corum looked up at it and saw that it had a face. It was a dark face and the expression on it was sad, concerned, doomed. The rest of its body, though in outline the same as a man's, seemed to refuse light—no detail of it could be observed. It reached out and it picked up the board as tenderly as a father might pick up a child. It bore Conim back with it into the forest.
    Unable to decide if this were fantasy or reality, Corum gave up his efforts to remain on the other plane and merged back into the one he had left. But still the dark-faced creature carried him, the brown beast at its side, deep into the forest, moving at great speed until they were far away from the Mabden camp.
    Corum fainted once again.
    He awoke in daylight and he saw the board lying some distance away. He lay on the green grass of a valley and there was a spring nearby and, close to that, a little pile of nuts and fruit. Not far from the pile of food sat the brown beast. It was watching him.
    Corum looked at his left arm. Something had been smeared on the stump and there was no pain there anymore. He put his right hand to his right eye and touched a sticky stuff that must have been the same salve as that which was on his stump.
    Birds sang in the nearby woods. The sky was clear and blue. If it were not for his injuries, Corum might have thought the events of the last few weeks a black dream.
    Now the brown, furry creature got up and shambled toward him. It cleared its throat. Its expression was still one of sympathy. It touched its own right eye, its own left wrist.
    "How—pain?" it said in a slurred tone, obviously voicing the words with difficulty.
    "Gone," Corum said. "I thank you, Brown Man, for your help in rescuing me."
    The brown man frowned at him, evidently not understanding all the words. Then it smiled and nodded its head and said, "Good."
    "Who are you?" Corum said. "Who was it you brought last night?"
    The creature tapped its chest. "Me Serwde. Me friend of you."
    "Serwde," said Corum, pronouncing the name poorly. "I am Corum. And who was the other being?"
    Serwde spoke a name that was far more difficult to pronounce than his own. It seemed a complicated name.
    "Who was he? I have never seen a being like him. I have never seen a being like yourself, for that matter. Where do you come from?"
    Serwde gestured about him. "Me live here. In forest. Forest called Laahr. My master live here. We live here many, many, many days—since before Vadhagh, you folk."
    "And where is your master now?" Corum asked again.
    "He gone. Not want be seen folk."
    And now Corum dimly recalled a legend. It was a legend of a creature that lived even further to the west than the people of Castle Erorn. It was called by the legend the Brown Man of Laahr. And this was the legend come to life. But he remembered no legend concerning the other being whose name he could not pronounce.
    "Master say place nearby will tend you good," said the Brown Man.
    "What sort of place, Serwde?"
    "Mabden place."
    Corum smiled crookedly. "No, Serwde. The Mabden will not be kind to me."
    "This different Mabden."
    "All Mabden are my enemies. They hate me." Corum looked at his stump. "And I hate them."
    "These old Mabden. Good Mabden."
    Corum got up and staggered. Pain began to nag in his head, his left wrist began to ache. He was still completely naked and his body bore many bruises and small cuts, but it had been washed.
    Slowly it began to dawn on him that he was a cripple. He had been saved from the worst of what Glandyth had planned for him, but he was now less of a being than he had been. His face was no longer pleasing for others to look at. His body had become ugly.
    And the wretch that he had become was all