IIRC, it only needs EMS for the sound effects. Otherwise it runs fine without it.
I tested it over here on 2K and it works without EMS.
It's not a read-only problem either since I just set all the files to read-only and the game still executed.
Here's a dir list:
11/14/1992 06:00a 14,775 ADLIB.ADV
04/14/1993 03:43p 142,704 AESOP.EXE
04/08/1993 04:47p 102 CHARCOPY.DAT
06/03/2001 04:00p 139,264 CHARCOPY.EXE
02/07/2005 09:03p <DIR> CHARGEN
04/14/1993 11:20a 106,752 CINE.EXE
04/10/1993 03:21p 609,406 DARK.GFF
02/26/1997 01:50p 29 Eye.bat
04/14/1993 05:47p 4,405,066 EYE.RES
02/26/1997 01:50p 29 Eye3.bat
06/03/2001 12:28p 967 Eye3DOS.pif
04/10/1993 03:27p 1,135,264 FINALE.GFF
04/10/1993 03:27p 1,281,119 INTRO.GFF
04/10/1993 02:09p 713,460 LICH.GFF
02/07/2005 09:07p 0 list.txt
11/14/1992 06:00a 10,707 MT32MPU.ADV
11/14/1992 06:00a 8,434 PCSPKR.ADV
07/19/2001 09:49p 14,747 Readme.txt
02/07/2005 09:03p <DIR> SAVEGAME
04/11/1993 08:20p 4,853 SBDIG.ADV
02/27/1993 03:08p 3,904 SBLASTER.COM
05/26/1999 02:45p 9 SOUND.BAT
02/07/2005 09:04p 59 SOUND.CFG
04/01/1993 11:47a 33,372 SOUND.EXE
07/21/1992 05:25p 5,162 STDPATCH.AD
06/03/2001 01:45p 45,056 Uninst.dll
02/14/2003 05:14p 28,533 Uninst.isu
12/17/1992 04:46p 33,086 XVA.DRV
04/05/1993 04:22p 20,860 _charcopy.exe