Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [41]
“I promise that, aye. And as you asked, the moment you tell me to carry the dreamwand from the Bronze Tent, I shall do so.”
“That is all you can do and I thank you for that,” said the dreamthief. “Now I’ll begin. Farewell for the moment, Elric. I think we are fated to meet again, but perhaps not in this existence.”
And with those mysterious words Alnac Kreb approached the sleeping girl, placing his dreamwand over her unblinking eyes, laying his ear against her heart, his own gaze growing distant and strange, as if he entered a trance himself. He straightened, swaying, then took the girl in his arms and lowered her gently to the carpets. Next he lay down beside her, putting her lifeless hand within his own, his dreamwand in the other. His breathing grew slower and deeper and Elric almost thought he heard a faint song coming from within the dreamthief’s throat.
Raik Na Seem bent forward, peering into Alnac’s face, but Alnac did not see him. With his other hand he brought up the dreamwand so that the hook passed over their clasped hands, as if to secure them, to bind them together.
To his surprise, Elric saw that the dreamwand was beginning to glow faintly and to pulse a little. Alnac’s breathing grew deeper still, his lips opening, his eyes staring directly above him, just as Varadia’s stared.
Elric thought he heard the child murmur and it was no illusion that a tremor passed between Alnac and the Holy Girl while the dreamwand pulsed in tempo with their mutual breathing and glowed brighter.
Then suddenly the dreamwand was curling and writhing, moving with astonishing speed between the two, as if it had entered their very veins and was following the blood itself. Elric had the impression of a tangle of arteries and nerves, all touched by the strange light from the dreamwand, then Alnac gave a single cry and his breathing was no longer the steady movement it had been. Instead it had become shallow, almost non-existent, while the child continued to breathe with the same slow, deep, steady rhythm.
The dreamwand had returned to Alnac. It seemed to burn from within his body, almost as if it had become fused with his spine and cortex. The hook end appeared to glow from within his brain, flooding his flesh with indescribable luminance, displaying every bone, every organ, every vein.
The child herself seemed unchanged until Elric looked at her more closely, seeing almost with horror that her eyes had turned from vibrant blue to jet black. Reluctantly he looked from Varadia’s face to Alnac’s and saw what he had not wished to see. The dreamthief’s own eyes were now bright blue. It was as if the two of them had exchanged souls.
The albino, with all his experience of sorcery, had never witnessed anything like this and he found it disturbing. Gradually he was beginning to understand the strange nature of a dreamthief’s calling, why it could be so dangerous, why there were so few who could practise the trade and why fewer still would wish to.
Now a further change began to take place. The crooked staff seemed to writhe again and begin to absorb the dreamthief’s very substance, taking the blood and the vitality of flesh and bones and brain into itself.
Raik Na Seem groaned with terror. He stepped backwards, unable to control himself. “Ah, my son! What have I asked of thee!”
Soon all that remained of Alnac’s splendid body seemed little more than a husk, like the discarded skin of some transmuted dragonfly. But the dreamwand lay where Alnac had first placed it upon his own hand and Varadia’s, though it seemed larger and glowed with an impossible brilliance, its colours constantly moving through a spectrum part natural, part supernatural.
“I think he is giving much in his attempt to save my daughter,” said Raik Na Seem. “Perhaps more than anyone should give.”
“He would give everything,” Elric said. “I think that it is in his nature. That is why you call him your son and why you trust him.”
“Aye,” said Raik Na Seem, “but now I fear that I lose a