Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [153]
“Yes,” she whispered, “it is what you know it is. It cost my forefathers a great fortune for, as you can imagine, your folk were not readily forthcoming with such things. It was smuggled from Melniboné and traded through many nations before it reached us, some two and a half centuries ago.”
Elric found himself almost singing to the thing as he caressed it. He felt a mixture of nostalgia and deep sadness.
“It is dragon ivory, of course.” Her hand joined his on the hard, brilliant surface of the great curved tusk. Few Phoorn had owned such fangs. Only the greatest of the patriarchs, legendary creatures of astonishing ferocity and wisdom, who had come from their old world to this, following their kin, the humanlike folk of Melniboné. The Phoorn, too, had not been native to this world, but had fled another. They, too, had always been alien and cruel, impossibly beautiful, impossibly strange. Elric felt kinship even now for this piece of bone. It was perhaps all that remained of the first generation to settle on this plane.
“It is a holy thing.” His voice was growing cold again. Inexplicable pain forced him to withdraw from her. “It is my own kin. Blood for blood, the Phoorn and the folk of Melniboné are one. It was our power. It was our strength. It was our continuity. This is ancestral bone. Stolen bone. It would be sacrilege …”
“No, Prince Elric, in my hands it would be a unification. A resolution. A completion. You know why I have brought you here.”
“Yes.” His hand fell to his side. He swayed, as if faint. He felt a need for the herbs he carried with him. “But it is still sacrilege …”
“Not if I am the one to give it life.” Her veil was drawn back now and he saw how impossibly young she was, what beauty she had: a beauty mirrored in all the things she had carved and moulded. Her desire was, he was sure, an honest one. Two very different emotions warred within him. Part of him felt she was right, that she could unite the two kinsfolk in a single image and bring honour to all his ancestors, a kind of resolution to their mutual history. Part of him feared what she might create. In honouring his past, would she be destroying the future? Then some fundamental part of him made him gather himself up and turn to her. She gasped at what she saw burning in those terrible, ruby eyes.
“Life?”
“Yes,” she said. “A new life honouring the old. Will you sit for me?” She too was caught up in his mood, for she too was endangering everything she valued, possibly her own soul, to make what might be her very last great work. “Will you allow me to create your memorial? Will you help me redeem that destruction whose burden is so heavy upon you? A symbol for everything that was Melniboné?”
He let go of his caution but felt no responsive glee. The fire dulled in his eyes. His mask returned. “I will need you to help me brew certain herbs, madam. They will sustain me while I sit for you.”
Her step was light as she led him into a room where she had lit a stove and on which water already boiled, but his own face still resembled the stone of her carvings. His gaze was turned inward, his eyes alternately flared and faded like a dying candle. His chest moved with deep, almost dying breaths as he gave himself up to her art.
CHAPTER THREE
The Sitting
How many hours did he sit, still and silent in the chair? At one time she remarked on the fact that he scarcely moved. He said that he had developed the habit over several