Quotes from book
The Knight of the Swords

The Knight of the Swords

The Hand of Kwll and the Eye of Rhynn in exchange for the Heart of Airioch. There were Gods abroad in the old days. It was their whim to wipe clean the slate of history, to destroy the old races: the Vadhagh, the Nhadragh, the remnants of still more ancient peoples. Mankind, the Mabden, was their instrument. But the Gods themselves fell out, and Chaos gained the advantage over Law. Onto this stage stepped the Vadhagh Prince Corum. Driven mad for revenge by the callous slaughter of his family and race, and by his own grotesque mutilation at the hands of the Mabden, he agreed to accept, from the treacherous sorcerer Shool, the Eye of Rhynn and the Hand of Kwll in exchange for a lien on his soul. Thus armed he set out upon a personal crusade against the Sword Rulers: the Lords of Chaos and puppetmasters to Man. The first of these was the loathsome Arioch, Knight of the Swords, master of five of the fifteen planes of reality. From Arioch, Prince Corum required his heart...


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“Everything may exist for a short while—even justice. But the true state of the universe is anarchy. It is the mortal’s tragedy that he can never accept this.”

Source: Book 3, Chapter 6 “The God Feasters” (p. 139), Corum, The Knight of the Swords (1971)

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“The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe cannot perceive and love the sentient.”

Source: Prologue (p. 9), Corum, The Knight of the Swords (1971)

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