Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [69]
“How handsome they are!” he remarked. It was true that though they were of all shapes and sizes the people had a beauty which was not easily defined. Their skins were all healthy, their eyes bright, their movements dignified and easy. They bore themselves with confidence and good humour and while it was clear they noticed Oone and Elric walking down the steps, they acknowledged them without making any great effort to greet them or ask them their business. Dogs, cats and monkeys ran about in the crowd and children played the cryptic games all children play. The air was warm and balmy and full of scents of fruit, flowers and the other goods being sold. “Would that all worlds were like this,” Elric added, smiling at a young woman who offered him embroidered cloth.
Oone bought oranges from a boy who ran up to her. She handed one to Elric. “This is a sweet realm indeed. I had not expected it to be so pleasant.” But when she bit into the fruit she spat it into her hand. “It has no taste!”
Elric tried his own orange and he, too, found it a dry, flavourless thing.
The disappointment he felt at this was out of all proportion to the occurrence. He threw the orange from him. It struck a step below and bounced until it was out of sight.
The grey-green plain appeared unpopulated. There was a road sweeping across it, wide and well-paved, but there was not a single traveler visible, in spite of the great crowd. “I wonder why the road is empty,” he said to Oone. “Do all these people sleep at nights on these steps? Or do they disappear into another realm when their business here is done?”
“Doubtless that question will be answered for us soon enough, my lord.”
She linked her arm in his own. Since their love-making in the wood a sense of considerable comradeship and mutual liking had grown up between them. He knew no guilt; he knew in his heart that he had betrayed no-one and it was clear she was equally untroubled. In some strange way they had restored each other, making their combined energy something more than its sum. This was the kind of friendship he had never really known before and he was grateful for it. He believed that he had learned much from Oone and that the dreamthieves would teach him more that would be valuable to him when he returned to Melniboné to claim his throne back from Yyrkoon.
As they descended the steps it seemed to Elric that the costumes became more and more elaborate, the jewels and headdresses and weapons richer and more exotic, while the stature of the people increased and they grew still more handsome.
From curiosity he stopped to listen to a story-teller who held a crowd entranced, but the man spoke in an unfamiliar language—high and flat—which meant nothing to him. He and Oone paused again, beside a bead-seller, and he asked her politely if those gathered on the steps were all of the same nation.
The woman frowned at him and shook her head, replying in still another language. There seemed few words in it. She repeated much. Only when they were stopped by a sherbet-seller, a young boy, could they ask their question and be understood.
The lad frowned, as if translating their words in his head. “Aye, we are the people of the steps. Each of us has a place here, one below the other.”
“You grow richer and more important as you descend, eh?” asked Oone.
He was puzzled by this. “Each of us has a place here,” he said again and, as if alarmed by their questions, he ran off up into the dense crowd above. Here, too, there were fewer people and Elric could see that their numbers thinned increasingly as the steps neared the plain. “Is this an illusion?” he murmured at Oone. “It has the air of a dream.”
“It is our sense of what should be that intrudes here,