Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [27]
The captain shrugged. “What is reason?”
The ship was gathering speed. The white mist was thicker and a cold wind blew at the rags of cloth and metal Elric wore. He sniffed, thinking for a moment that he smelled smoke upon that wind.
He put his two hands to his face and touched his flesh. His face was cold. He let his hands fall to his sides and he followed the captain into the warmth of the cabin.
The captain poured wine into silver cups from his silver jug. He stretched out a hand to offer a cup to Elric and to Corum. They drank.
A little later the captain said, “How do you feel?”
Elric said, “I feel nothing.”
And that night he dreamed only of shadows and in the morning he could not understand his dream at all.
BOOK TWO
SAILING TO THE PRESENT
CHAPTER ONE
HIS BONE-WHITE, long-fingered hand upon a carved demon's head in black-brown hardwood (one of the few such decorations to be found anywhere about the vessel), the tall man stood alone in the ship's fo'c'sle and stared through large, slanting crimson eyes at the mist into which they moved with a speed and sureness to make any mortal mariner marvel and become incredulous.
There were sounds in the distance, incongruous with the sounds of even this nameless, timeless sea: thin sounds, agonized and terrible, for all that they remained remote—yet the ship followed them, as if drawn by them; they grew louder—pain and despair were there, but terror was predominant.
Elric had heard such sounds echoing from his cousin Yyrkoon's sardonically named “Pleasure Chambers” in the days before he had fled the responsibilities of ruling all that remained of the old Melnibonean Empire. These were the voices of men whose very souls were under siege; men to whom death meant not mere extinction, but a continuation of existence, forever in thrall to some cruel and supernatural master. He had heard men cry so when his salvation and his nemesis, his great black battle-blade Stormbringer, drank their souls.
He did not savour the sound: he hated it, turned his back away from the source and was about to descend the ladder to the main deck when he realized that Otto Blendker had come up behind him. Now that Corum had been borne off by friends with chariots which could ride upon the surface of the water, Blendker was the last of those comrades to have fought at Elric's side against the two alien sorcerers Gagak and Agak.
Blendker's black, scarred face was troubled. The ex-scholar, turned hireling sword, covered his ears with his huge palms.
“Ach! By the Twelve Symbols of Reason, Elric, who makes that din? It's as though we sail close to the shores of hell itself!”
Prince Elric of Melnibone shrugged. “I'd be prepared to forgo an answer and leave my curiosity unsatisfied, Master Blendker, if only our ship would change course. As it is, we sail closer and closer to the source.”
Blendker grunted his agreement. “I've no wish to encounter whatever it is that causes those poor fellows to scream so! Perhaps we should inform the captain.”
“You think he does not know where his own ship sails?” Elric's smile had little humour.
The tall black man rubbed at the inverted V-shaped scar which ran from his forehead to his jawbones. “I wonder if he plans to put us into battle again.”
“I'll not fight another for him.” Elric's hand moved from the carved rail to the pommel of his runesword. “I have business of my own to attend to, once I'm back on real land.”
A wind came from nowhere. There was a sudden rent in the mist. Now Elric could see that the ship sailed through rust-coloured water. Peculiar lights gleamed in that water, just below the surface. There was an impression of creatures moving ponderously in the depths of the ocean and, for a moment, Elric thought he glimpsed a white, bloated face not dissimilar to his own—a Melnibonean face. Impulsively he whirled, back to the rail, looking past Blendker as he strove to control the nausea in his throat.
For the first time since