Free The Queen of Swords by Michael Moorcock

sympathy.
    Though she looked at Corum, she spoke to Jhary who was now adjusting his ever-present sack on his shoulder. “Inland would be best, surely, since we have no boat.”
    “And no horses,” Jhary reminded her. “It will be a fearful long walk. And who’s to say those mountains are passable when we reach ’em?”
    Corum gave Rhalina a quick, sad smile of gratitude. He straightened his shoulders. “Well, we made up our minds to enter this realm, now we must make up our minds which way to go.” His hand on the pommel of his sword, he stared towards the mountains. “I have seen something of the power of Chaos when I journeyed to Arioch’s Court, but it seems to me that that power extends further in this realm. We’ll head towards the mountains. There we may discover some inhabitants who may know where lies this City in the Pyramid Lord Arkyn mentioned.”
    And they set off over the unpleasantly mottled rock.
    A while later it became evident that the sun had not moved across the sky. The brooding silence continued, broken only by the ghastly screechings of the black birds which nested in the peaks of the mountains. It was a land which seemed to radiate despair. For a short time Jhary had attempted to whistle a bright little tune, but the sound had died, as if swallowed by the desolate land.
    “I thought Chaos all howling, random creativity,” said Corum. “This is worse.”
    “It is what becomes of a place when Chaos exhausts its invention,” Jhary told him. “Ultimately, Chaos brings a more profound stagnation than anything it despises in Law. It must forever seek more and more sensation, more and more empty marvels, until there is nothing left and it has forgotten what true invention is.”
    * * *
    And at length weariness overcame them and they lay down on the barren rock and slept. When they awoke it was to observe that only one thing had changed…
    The great black birds were closer. They were wheeling overhead in the sky.
    “What can they live on?” Rhalina wondered. “There is no game here, no vegetation. Where is their food?”
    Jhary looked significantly at Corum who shrugged.
    “Come,” said the Prince in the Scarlet Robe. “Let’s continue. Time may be relative, but I have a feeling that unless we accomplish our mission soon, Lywm-an-Esh will fall.”
    And the birds circled lower so that they could see their leathery wings and bodies, their tiny, greedy eyes, their long vicious beaks.
    A small, fierce sound escaped from the throat of Jhary’s cat. It arched its back slightly as it glared at the birds.
    They trudged on until the ground began to rise more sharply and they had reached the nearer slopes of the mountains.
    The mountains squatted over them like sleeping monsters that might at any moment awake and devour them. The rocks were glassy, slippery and they climbed them slowly.
    Still the black birds wheeled among the crags and now they were certain that if they allowed themselves to sleep the birds would descend and attack. This knowledge alone kept them climbing.
    The frightful screeching grew louder, more insistent, almost gleeful. They heard the flap of obscene wings over their heads, but they refused to look up, as this would have wasted a fraction of the energy they had left.
    They were looking now for shelter, for a crack in the rock into which they might crawl and defend themselves against the birds when, finally, they attacked.
    They could hear the sound of their own gasping breath, the scrape of their feet on the stone, mingling with the flappings and screechings of the black birds.
    Corum spared a glance for Rhalina and saw that there was desperate fear in her eyes and that she was weeping as she climbed. He began to feel that he had been tricked by Arkyn, that they had been sent, cynically, to their doom in this wasteland.
    Then the flapping filled his ears and he felt the slap of cold air against his face and a talon grazed his helmet. With a strangled cry he felt for his