But Aleryon did not reply for, while Corum had conversed with the weary god, he had died.
Rhalina and Jhary-a-Conel were already standing by the sky ship, staring upward as the great black beasts began to descend on Halwyg.
"I spoke to Arkyn," Corum told them. "He was of little help. He said we must escape through the dimensions and seek Tanelorn. I told him that you could not guide the craft beyond this plane. He said that we must."
Jhary shrugged and helped Rhalina aboard. "Then we must. Or, at least, we must try."
"If only we could rally defenders from the City in the Pyramid. Their weapons would destroy even Glandyth's Chaos allies."
"But they destroy each other with them. This is what Glandyth knew."
They stood all three in the sky ship as Jhary passed his hands over the crystals and brought them to life. The craft began to rise. Jhary pointed its prow toward the west, away from Glandyth.
But Glandyth had seen them now. The black wings beat louder and the cries increased in volume. The Denledhyssi began to sweep down toward the only three mortals in the world who were aware of what had happened to them.
Jhary bit his lip as he studied the crystals. "It is a question of making accurate passes over these things," he said. "I am striving to remember what Bwydyth taught me."
The sky ship was moving swiftly now, but their pursuers kept pace with them. The long necks of the flying beasts were poised like snakes about to strike. Red mouths stretched wide. Fangs flashed.
Something foul streamed from those mouths like oily black smoke. Like the tongues of lizards they shot toward the sky ship. Desperately Jhary turned the craft this way and that, attempting to avoid the tendrils. One curled around the stern and the ship stopped moving for a moment before it broke free. Rhalina clung to Corum. Uselessly, he had drawn his sword.
The little black-and-white cat clung with all its claws to Jhary's shoulder. It had recognized Glandyth and its eyes had widened in something akin to fear.
Now Corum heard a yell and he knew that Glandyth realized who it was trying to escape from Halwyg. Although the barbarian was a good distance away, Corum thought he felt Glandyth's eyes glaring into his own. He stared back with his one human eye, the sword raised to protect himself and Rhalina, and he saw that Glandyth, too, brandished his great iron broadsword, almost as if challenging him to single combat. The flying serpents hissed and cackled and sent from their throats more of the smoky tendrils.
Four of the things coiled around the ship. Jhary attempted to increase the speed.
"We can go no faster! We are trapped!"
"Then you must try to move through the planes. We might escape them that way."
"Those are Chaos creatures. It is likely they too can cross the walls between the realms!"
Hopelessly Corum hacked at the tendrils with his blade, but it was as if he cut through smoke. Inexorably they were being pulled back to where the Denledhyssi hovered, triumphantly waiting for them to be drawn close enough so that they could board the sky ship and slay its occupants.
Then the black wings grew hazy and Corum saw that the city below was beginning to fade. Lightning seemed to flicker through sudden darkness. Globes of purple light appeared. The boat shuddered like a frightened deer and Corum felt a familiar nausea seize him. Furiously the black wings beat as they became clearer. He had guessed rightly, had Jhary. The creatures were able to follow them through the dimensions.
Jhary made more passes over the instruments. The boat rocked and threatened to turn over. Again came the peculiar sensations, the vibrations, the lightnings and globes of golden flame in a rushing, turbulent cloud of red and orange.
The tongues of smoke which restrained them disappeared. The black creatures still flew on, sighted through the zigzags of utter darkness and blinding brightness. Their voices could still be heard, as also could be heard the roaring rage of Glandyth-a-Krae.
And then there was silence.
Corum could not see Rhalina. He could not see Jhary. He could only feel the boat still beneath his feet.
They were drifting in total blackness and absolute silence, in neither one dimension nor another.
BOOK TWO
In which Prince Corum and his companions learn the full import of what Chaos is and what it intends to become and discover something more concerning the nature of time and identity
The First Chapter
CHAOS UNBOUNDED
"Corum."
It was Rhalina's voice.
"Corum?"
"I am here."
He stretched out his right hand and tried to touch her. At last he felt her hair beneath his fingers. He encircled her shoulders with his arm.
"Jhary?" he said. "Are you there?"
"I am here. I am trying different configurations, but the crystals do not respond. Is this Limbo, Corum?"
"I assume so. If it were not that we can breathe and it is relatively warm, I would think the sky ship adrift in the cosmos, beyond the sky."
Silence.
And then a thin line of golden light could be seen, cutting across the blackness as if dividing it in two, rather like a horizon, or the crack of light from beneath a gigantic door. And while they remained in the blackness the area of blackness above the golden line began, it seemed, to move upward, like a curtain in a vast theater.
And now, though they could still not see each other, they saw the wide area of gold, saw it begin to change.
"What is it, Corum?"
"I know not, Rhalina, Jhary?"
"This Limbo might be the domain of the Cosmic Balance-a neutral territory, as it were, where no gods or mortals come in ordinary circumstances."
"Have we drifted into it by accident?"
"I do not know."
This is what they saw then:
All was huge, but in proportion. A rider spurring his horse across a desert beneath a white and purple sky. The rider had milk-white hair and it streamed behind him. His eyes were red and full of wild bitterness, his skin was bone white. Physically he somewhat resembled the Vadhagh, for he had the same unhuman face. He was an albino, clothed all in black, baroque armor, every part of it covered in fine, detailed metal-work, a huge helm upon his head, a black sword at his side.
And now the rider was no longer upon a horse. He rode a beast that somewhat resembled those which had pursued them-a flying beast-a dragon. The black sword was in his hand and it gave off a strange, black radiance. The rider rode the dragon as if it were a horse, seated in a saddle, his feet in stirrups, but he was strapped to the saddle to save him from falling. He was crying out.
And below him there were other dragons, evidently brothers to the one he rode. They were engaged in aerial battles with misshapen things with the jaws of whales. A green mist drifted across the scene and obscured it.
Now they saw the asymmetrical outlines of a gigantic castle, flowing upward to form its shape even as they watched. Battlements, turrets, towers all appeared. The dragon-rider ordered his beasts toward it and they released flaming venom from their mouths, directing it at the castle. A few others who followed the rider also sat upon the backs of the dragons.
They passed the blazing castle and came now to an undulating plain. Upon this plain stood all the demons and corrupt, warped things of Chaos, arranged as if for battle. And here, too, were gods-Dukes of Hell every one-Malohin, Xiombarg, Zhortra and more-Chardros the Reaper, with monstrous, hairless head and sweeping scythe-and the oldest of the gods, Slortar the Old, slender and lovely as a youth of sixteen.
And it was this massed might that the dragon-riders attacked.