Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [120]
The sword now in Zenith's hand was actually darker than the ebony which had contained it. Along its slim length writhed bloody scarlet characters, the runes of some long-forgotten lexicon. Sinclair turned to question Begg and to his astonishment saw his colleague laughing and holding his Webley so loosely in his hand that it threatened to fall into the void.
“Aha!” exclaimed Begg, almost in delight. “Here is your sought-for demonic aid, my dear Klosterheim! What a jest! What a jest!” He stepped back as his cousin advanced holding before him the thrumming epee now crying with its own voice. Bewildered at last, Klosterheim looked from Mrs. Persson to Zenith to the sword.
“Mrs. Persson, you assured me …”
“I told you that the black broadsword you call Stormbringer was no longer in Monsieur Zenith's possession. I said nothing of any other blade perhaps bearing similar characteristics, which he finds convenient to carry in a more modern form under a different name.” The Englishwoman grinned like a lioness who had just made a kill. “You must know, Herr Klosterheim, that just as the wielder of the sword takes many guises, so does the sword itself. And even the creature which inhabits the sword has more than one identity!”
She stepped aside as Klosterheim began to back away from the advancing albino. “I shall not be threatened, Monsieur! Arioch! Lord Arioch of the Seven Darks! Aid me, I beg thee. Arioch, thou promised me …”
“Lord Arioch's promises are of a practical and volatile nature, also,” declared Zenith, the slender sword still pointed at Klosterheim's throat. “It surprises me that you did not consider this when laying out your equation for this particular adventure.”
“But you forget, monsieur. That blade and your master feed on souls as well as blood.” Klosterheim's smile was bitterly sardonic. “Nein?” With a quavering laugh, somehow even more disgusting than any of his previous expressions, he folded his arms and challenged Zenith to stab him.
If anything, the albino's smile stilled the onlookers’ blood more than the other eternal's laughter. Without hesitation, Monsieur Zenith lunged forward in an elegant fencer's position, and his delicate, black blade took Klosterheim in the throat.
For a second the ex-priest continued to laugh … and then his eyes widened. He clutched at his neck, at the shivering blade …He gasped. He groaned. He staggered backwards towards the very edge of the moonbeam road and hung there, swaying, as blood bubbled from the wound Zenith had made. “Nein!” he said again, this time with fear. “Nein!”
He realized suddenly where he stood and attempted to regain his balance, but it was too late. His deep-set eyes burned with terror, lighting his cadaverous head with an unholy fire. Begg and the others were uncertain what emotion they witnessed, but they all agreed that it was emotion.
“How can this be?” Klosterheim spoke in the old, Hoch Deutsch German of his youth. “How—?”
“You forgot, Herr Klosterheim.” With a lithe, reverse movement Zenith resheathed the black blade. “My sword is capable of conferring souls as well as stealing them.” He stepped forward again, his hand light on Klosterheim's chest, as with two fingers he tipped him gently off into the void above the pulsing Balance. “And only a creature with a human soul, no matter how corrupt, can enjoy that moment of forever, poised between eternity and oblivion, which comes with the end of everything. Meanwhile, I send you to consider that thought for as long as you shall last. Which is, of course, until the end of time.”
Klosterheim fell backwards screaming and joined the others whose distant bodies hung in the void, like flies in a web, conscious and frozen in the instant before their deaths.
Monsieur Zenith turned with a bow. Reaching