Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [29]
“But you say this lies in my future.”
“Be sure—you will return to your own time. Here you are timeless. It is why your memory is so poor. It is why you remember so little of what befalls you. Seek for the gateway—it is crimson and it emerges from the sea off the coast of the island.”
“Which island?”
“The one we approach.”
Elric hesitated. “And where shall you go, when I have landed?”
“To Tanelorn,” said the captain. “There is something I must do there. My brother and I must complete our destiny. We carry cargo as well as men. Many will try to stop us now, for they fear our cargo. We might perish, but yet we must do all we can to reach Tanelorn.”
“Was that not, then, Tanelorn, where we fought Agak and Gagak?”
“That was nothing more than a broken dream of Tanelorn, Elric.”
The Melnibonean knew that he would receive no more information from the captain.
“You offer me a poor choice—to sail with you into danger and never see my own world again, or to risk landing on yonder island inhabited, by the sound of it, by the damned and those which prey upon the damned!”
The captain's blind eyes moved in Elric's direction. “I know,” he said softly. “But it is the best I can offer you, nonetheless.”
The screams, the imploring, terrified shouts, were closer now, but there were fewer of them. Glancing over the side, Elric thought he saw a pair of armoured hands rising from the water; there was foam, red-flecked and noxious, and there was yellowish scum in which pieces of frightful flotsam drifted; there were broken timbers, scraps of canvas, tatters of flags and clothing, fragments of weapons and, increasingly, there were floating corpses.
“But where was the battle?” Blendker whispered, fascinated and horrified by the sight.
“Not on this plane,” the captain told him. “You see only the wreckage which has drifted over from one world to another.”
“Then it was a supernatural battle?”
The captain smiled again. “I am not omniscient. But, yes, I believe there were supernatural agencies involved. The warriors of half a world fought in the sea-battle—to decide the fate of the multiverse. It is—or will be—one of the decisive battles to determine the fate of Mankind, to fix Man's destiny for the coming Cycle.”
“Who were the participants?” asked Elric, voicing the question in spite of his resolve. “What were the issues as they understood them?”
“You will know in time, I think.” The captain's head faced the sea again.
Blendker sniffed the air. “Ach! It's foul!”
Elric, too, found the odour increasingly unpleasant. Here and there now the water was lighted by guttering fires which revealed the faces of the drowning, some of whom still managed to cling to pieces of blackened driftwood. Not all the faces were human, though they had the appearance of having once been human; things with the snouts of pigs and of bulls raised twisted hands to the Dark Ship and grunted plaintively for succour, but the captain ignored them and the steersman held his course.
Fires spluttered and water hissed; smoke mingled with the mist. Elric had his sleeve over his mouth and nose and was glad that the smoke and mist between them helped obscure the sights, for as the wreckage grew thicker not a few of the corpses he saw reminded him more of reptiles than of men, their pale, lizard bellies spilling something other than blood.
“If that is my future,” Elric told the captain, “I've a mind to remain on board, after all.”
“You have a duty, as have I,” said the captain quietly. “The future must be served, as much as the past and the present.”
Elric shook his head. “I fled the duties of an empire because I sought freedom,” the albino told him. “And freedom I must have.”
“No,” murmured the captain. “There is no such thing. Not yet. Not for us. We must go through much more before we can even begin to guess what freedom is. The price for the knowledge alone is probably higher than any you would care to pay at this stage of your life. Indeed,