Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [40]
“She loved him?” Count Smiorgan asked.
“She was pledged to marry him, but let me finish my story …” Elric continued: “Well, at length Carolak, now a man of some substance, second only to the king in Shazaar, heard of her fate and swore to rescue her. He came with raiders to Melnibone's shores and, aided by sorcery, sought out Saxif D'Aan's palace. That done, he sought the girl, finding her at last in the apartments Saxif D'Aan had set aside for her use. He told her that he had come to claim her as his bride, to rescue her from persecution. Oddly, the girl resisted, suggesting that she had been too long a slave in the Melnibonean harem to re-adapt to the life of a princess in the Shazaarian court. Carolak scoffed at this and seized her. He managed to escape the castle and had the girl over the saddle of his horse and was about to rejoin his men on the coast when Saxif D'Aan detected them. Carolak, I think, was slain, or else a spell was put on him, but Saxif D'Aan, in his terrible jealousy and certain that the girl had planned the escape with a lover, ordered her to die upon the Wheel of Chaos—a machine rather like that coin in design. Her limbs were broken slowly and Saxif D'Aan sat and watched, through long days, while she died. Her skin was peeled from her flesh, and Earl Saxif D'Aan observed every detail of her punishment. Soon it was evident that the drugs and sorcery used to sustain her life were failing and Saxif D'Aan ordered her taken from the Wheel of Chaos and laid upon a couch. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you have been punished for betraying me and I am glad. Now you may die.’ And he saw that her lips, blood-caked and frightful, were moving, and he bent to hear her words.”
“Those words? Revenge? An oath?” asked Smiorgan.
“Her last gesture was an attempt to embrace him. And the words were those she had never uttered to him before, much as he had hoped that she would. Then she died.”
Smiorgan rubbed at his beard. “Gods! What then? What did your ancestor do?”
“He knew remorse.”
“Of course!”
“Not so, for a Melnibonean. Remorse is a rare emotion with us. Few have ever experienced it. Torn by guilt, Earl Saxif D'Aan left Melnibone, never to return. It was assumed that he had died in some remote land, trying to make amends for what he had done to the only creature he had ever loved. But now, it seems, he sought the Crimson Gate, perhaps thinking it an opening into hell.”
“But why should he plague me!” the girl cried. “I am not she! My name is Vassliss. I am a merchant's daughter, from Jharkor. I was voyaging to visit my uncle in Vilmir when our ship was wrecked. A few of us escaped in an open boat. More storms seized us. I was flung from the boat and was drowning when”—she shuddered—“when his galley found me. I was grateful, then …”
“What happened?” Elric pushed the matted hair away from her face and offered her some of their wine. She drank gratefully.
“He took me to his palace and told me that he would marry me, that I should be his empress for ever and rule beside him. But I was frightened. There was such pain in him—and such cruelty, too. I thought he must devour me, destroy me. Soon after my capture, I took the money and the boat and fled for the gateway, which he had told me about…”
“You could find this gateway for us?” Elric asked.
“I think so. I have some knowledge of seamanship, learned from my father. But what would be the use, sir? He would find us again and drag us back. And he must be very near, even now.”
“I have a little sorcery myself,” Elric assured her, “and will pit it against Saxif D'Aan's, if I must.” He turned to Count Smiorgan. “Can we get a sail aloft quickly?”
“Fairly quickly.”
“Then let's hurry, Count Smiorgan Baldhead. I might have the means of getting us through this Crimson Gate and free from any further involvement