Free The Sword and the Stallion - 06 by Michael Moorcock Page A

forest ahead of them turned suddenly to blazing scarlet fronds, agitated and whimpering, rustling and chuckling. Looking back, Corum could no longer see the sea. Instead he saw a wall of liquid lead.
    Deliberately, Ilbrec rode toward the fronds and, as he approached, they flattened themselves like supplicants hailing a conqueror. Splendid Mane, disturbed and unwilling to continue, snorted and set his ears back, but Ilbrec clapped his heels against the beast's flanks and on they went. No sooner had they crossed a few feet of these fronds than they sprang up again and the two heroes were surrounded by the plants which reached feathery fingers out and touched their flesh and sighed.
    And Corum felt that the fronds reached through his skin and stroked his bones and he was hard put not to lash out at the things with his sword. He could understand the terror of the Mabden when confronted with such monstrous foliage, but he had experienced much more in his time and knew how to control his panic. He attempted to speak casually to Ilbrec, who also pretended to ignore the plants.
    "Interesting flora, Ilbrec. I've seen nothing like it elsewhere upon this plane."
    "Indeed it is, friend Corum." Ilbrec's voice shook only a little. "It seems to have some kind of primitive intelligence."
    The whispering increased, the touch of the plants became more insistent, but the two rode steadfastly on through the forest, their eyes aching from the scarlet blaze.
    "Could this be an illusion, even?" Corum suggested.
    "Possibly, my friend. A clever one."
    The fronds thinned, giving way to pavements of green marble which lay beneath an inch or two of yellowish liquid smelling several times worse than a stagnant pond. All kinds of small insect life existed in the liquid and occasionally clouds of flying things would rise out of it and hover around their heads as if inspecting them. To their right were several ruins: colonnades covered in festering ivy, partially collapsed galleries, walls of rotting granite and eroded quartz on which grew vines whose livid blooms emitted a sickly stench; while ahead of them they could see two-legged animals bending to drink the liquid, looking at them through glazed, white eyes before stooping to drink again. Something wriggled across Splendid Mane's path. Corum thought at first he had seen a pale snake, but then he wondered if the thing had not had the shape of a human being. He looked for it, but it had disappeared. An ordinary black rat swam steadily through the deeper reaches of the liquid; it ignored Ilbrec and Corum. Then it dived and disappeared through a narrow crack in the surface of the marble.
    By the time they had reached the far side of this expanse the two-legged creatures had gone and Splendid Mane walked on a lawn of spongy grass which gave off disgusting sucking noises whenever the horse pulled its hooves free. So far nothing had menaced them directly and Corum began to think that the Mabden who had landed here had been victims of their own terrors instilled in them by such ghastly sights as these. Now his nose detected a stench not unlike that of cow dung, but rather stronger. It was a nauseating stench and he drew a scarf from under his byrnie and tied it around his mouth, though it made only the slightest difference. Ilbrec cleared his throat and spat upon the turf, guiding Splendid Mane toward a pathway of cracked lapis lazuli leading into a dark corridor of trees which were like and yet unlike ordinary rhododendrons. Large, dark, sticky leaves brushed their faces and soon the corridor had become pitch black, save for a few yellow lights which flickered in the recesses of the foliage on both sides of them. Once or twice it seemed to Corum that the lights revealed grinning faces whose features had been partially eaten away, but he guessed that his imagination, fed by the obscene visions of the recent past, was responsible for these sights.
    "Let us hope this path leads us somewhere," murmured Ilbrec.