The Bull and the Spear - 05 by Michael Moorcock

gulf at the ruined tower that was all that remained of Castle Erorn. Even to his eyes it did not look mortal-built. Perhaps, after all, the wind and the sea had carved the tower and his memories were false. He was afraid.
     
    She, too, now stared at the tower.
     
    ' 'That is where the music comes from,'' he said.' 'The harp plays the music of time."
     
     
     
    THE FOURTH CHAPTER
     
    THE WORLD TURNED WHITE
     
     
    Garbed in fur, Corum set forth.
     
    He wore a white fur robe over his own clothes and there was a huge hood on the robe to cover his helmet, all made from the soft pelt of the winter marten. Even the horse they had given him had a coat of fur-trimmed doeskin embroidered with scenes of a valiant past. They gave him fur-lined boots and gauntlets of doeskin, also embroidered, and a high saddle and saddle-panniers and soft cases for his bow, his lances and the blade of his war-axe. He wore one of the gauntlets on his silver hand, so that no casual eye would know him. He kissed Medhbh and he saluted the folk of Caer Mahlod as they stood regarding him with grave and hopeful eyes upon the walls of the fortress town. He was kissed upon his forehead by King Mannach.
     
    "Bring us back our spear, Bryionak," said King Mannach, "so that we may tame the bull, the black bull of Crinanass, so that we may defeat our enemies and make our land green again."
     
    "I will seek it," promised Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei, and his single eye shone brightly, with tears or with confidence, none could tell. And he mounted his great horse, the huge and heavy war-horse of the Tuha-na-Cremm Croich, and he placed his feet in the stirrups he had had them make for him (for they had forgotten the use of stirrups) and put his tall lance in the stirrup rest, though he did not unfurl his banner, stitched for him all the previous night by the maidens of Caer Mahlod.
     
    "You look a great war-knight, my lord," murmured Medhbh, and he reached down to stroke her red-gold hair and touch her soft cheek.
     
    He said: "I will return, Medhbh."
     
    He had ridden southeast for two days and the riding had not been difficult, for he had ridden this way more than once and time had not destroyed many of the landmarks that had once been familiar to him. Perhaps because he had found so little and yet so much at Castle Erorn, he now headed for Moidel's Mount where Rhalina's castle had stood once. It was easy to justify this goal in terms of his quest, for Moidel's Mount had once been the last outpost of Lwym-an-Esh and now the last of Lwym-an-Esh was Hy-Breasail. He would lose neither time nor direction by seeking out Moidel's Mount, if that, too, had not sunk when Lwym-an-Esh sank.
     
    South and east he rode, and the world grew colder. Showers of bright, bouncing hailstones capered on the hard earth, pattered on his armored shoulders and his horse's neck and withers. Many times his road across the great, wild moot was obscured by sheets of this frozen rain. Sometimes it grew so bad that he was forced to take shelter where he could, usually behind a boulder, for there were few trees on the moor, save some gorse and stunted birch; and all the bracken and heather, which should have been flourishing at this season, was either Completely dead or feebly alive. Once deer and pheasant had been everywhere, and now Corum saw no pheasant and had seen only one wary stag—thin, mad-eyed—on the whole of his journey.
     
    And the further east he rode, the worse the prospect of the land became, and soon there was heavy frost sparkling on every piece of vegetation and coverings of snow on every hilltop, on every boulder. And the land rose higher and the air grew thinner and colder, and Corum was glad of the heavy robe his friends had given him, for slowly the frost gave way to snow. Every way he looked the world was white and its whiteness reminded him of the color of the Hounds of Kerenos. And now his horse waded through snow up to its hocks and Corum knew that, if