The Sleeping Sorceress Read Online Free PDF Page A

he saw that several eagles had grasped his clothing in their claws and beaks and were slowing his descent so that he struck the snow with little more than a painful bump.
    The eagles flew back to the fray.
    A few yards away Moonglum came down, deposited by another flight of eagles which immediately returned to where their comrades were fighting the remaining Oonai.
    Moonglum picked up the sword which had fallen from his hand. He rubbed his right calf. “I’ll do my best never to eat fowl again,” he said feelingly. “So you remembered a spell, eh?”
    “Aye.”
    Two more piglike corpses thudded down not far away.
    For a few moments the birds performed a strange, wheeling dance in the sky, partly a salute to the two men, partly a dance of triumph, and then they divided into their groups of species and flew rapidly away. Soon there were no birds at all in the ice-blue sky.
    Elric picked up his bruised body and stiffly he sheathed his sword Stormbringer. He drew a deep breath and peered upwards.
    “Fileet, I thank thee again.”
    Moonglum still seemed dazed. “How did you summon them, Elric?”
    Elric removed his helmet and wiped sweat from within the rim. In this clime that sweat would soon turn to ice. “An ancient bargain my ancestors made. I was hard pressed to remember the lines of the spell.”
    “I’m mightily pleased that you did remember!”
    Absently, Elric nodded. He replaced his helmet on his head, staring about him as he did so.
    Everywhere stretched the vast, snow-covered Lormyrian steppe.
    Moonglum understood Elric’s thoughts. He rubbed his chin.
    “Aye. We are fairly lost, Lord Elric. Have you any idea where we may be?”
    “I do not know, friend Moonglum. We have no means of guessing how far those beasts carried us, but I’m fairly sure it was well to the north of Iosaz. We are further away from the capital than we were . . .”
    “But then so must Theleb K’aarna be! If we were, indeed, being borne to where he dwells . . .”
    “It would be logical, I agree.”
    “So we continue north?”
    “I think not.”
    “Why so?”
    “For two reasons. It could be that Theleb K’aarna’s idea was to take us to a place so far away from anywhere that we could not interfere with his plans. That might be considered a wiser action than confronting us and thus risking our turning the tables on him . . .”
    “Aye, I’ll grant you that. And what’s the other reason?”
    “We would do better to try to make for Iosaz where we can replenish both our gear and our provisions and enquire of Theleb K’aarna’s whereabouts if he is not there. Also we would be foolish to strike further north without good horses and in Iosaz we shall find horses and perhaps a sleigh to carry us the faster across this snow.”
    “And I’ll grant you the sense of that, too. But I do not think much of our chances in this snow, whichever way we go.”
    “We must begin walking and hope that we can find a river that has not yet frozen over—and that the river will have boats upon it which will bear us to Iosaz.”
    “A faint hope, Elric.”
    “Aye. A faint hope.” Elric was already weakened from the energy spent in the invocation to Fileet. He knew that he must almost certainly die. He was not sure that he cared overmuch. It would be a cleaner death than some he had been offered of late—a less painful death than any he might expect at the hands of the sorcerer of Pan Tang.
    They began to trudge through the snow. Slowly they headed south, two small figures in a frozen landscape, two tiny specks of warm flesh in a great waste of ice.

C HAPTER F OUR
    Old Castle Standing Alone
    A day passed, a night passed.
    Then the evening of the second day passed and the two men staggered on, for all that they had long since lost their sense of direction.
    Night fell and they crawled.
    They could not speak. Their bones were stiff, their flesh and their muscles numb.
    Cold and exhaustion drove the very sentience from them so that when they