Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [72]
Elric shuddered and turned his back on the Pearl Warrior. He went to help Oone to her feet.
Oone was able to move all her limbs but she was still dazed. She looked back at the steps which disappeared above them. Not a single one of the people who had occupied that vast staircase was visible.
Troubled, Elric glanced at the newcomer. Her robes were of different shades of blue, with silver threads running through them, hemmed with gold and dark green. She carried herself with extraordinary grace and dignity and stared back at Oone and Elric with an air of amusement. Meanwhile the Pearl Warrior climbed to his feet and stood defiantly to one side, alternately glaring at Lady Sough and offering Elric a hideous conspiratorial smile.
“Where are all the folk of the steps gone?” Elric asked her.
“They have merely returned to their home, my lord,” said Lady Sough. Her voice, when she addressed him, was warm and full, yet retained all the authority with which she had ordered the Pearl Warrior to stop his attack. “I am Lady Sough and I bid you welcome to this land.”
“We are grateful for your intervention, my lady.” Oone spoke for the first time, though with a degree of suspicion. “Are you the ruler here?”
“I am merely a guide and a navigator.”
“That mad thing there accepts your command.” Oone rose, rubbing at her arms and legs, glaring at the Pearl Warrior who sneered, becoming shifty as Lady Sough gave him her attention.
“He is incomplete.” Lady Sough was dismissive. “He guards the Pearl. But he has such an insubstantial intelligence, he cannot understand the nature of his task, nor who is friend or who foe. He can make only the most limited choices, poor corrupt thing. The ones who put him to this work had, themselves, only the faintest understanding of what was required in such a warrior.”
“Bad! I will not!” The Pearl Warrior began to utter his chuckle again. “Never! It is why! It is why!”
“Go!” cried Lady Sough, gesturing once more with her staff, her eyes glaring above her veil. “You have no business with these.”
“Dying is unwise, madam,” said the Pearl Warrior, lifting his shoulder in a gesture of defiant arrogance. “Beware thine own corruption. We may all dissolve if this achieves that resolution.”
“Go, stupid brute!” She pointed at his horse. “And leave that spear behind you. Destructive, insensate grotesque that you are.”
“Am I mistaken,” said Elric, “or does he speak gibberish?”
“Possibly,” murmured Oone. “But it could be he speaks more of the truth than those who would protect us.”
“Anything will come and anything will have to be resisted!” said the Pearl Warrior darkly as he mounted. He began to ride to where his lance had fallen after he had thrown it at Elric. “This is why we are to be!”
“Begone! Begone!”
He leaned from his saddle, reaching towards the lance.
“No,” she said firmly, as if to a silly child. “I told you that you should not have it. Look what you have done, Pearl Warrior! You are forbidden to attack these people again.”
“No alliance, then. Not now! But soon this freedom will be exchanged and all shall come together!” Another appalling chuckle from the half-crazed rider and he was digging his spurs into his horse’s flanks, going at a gallop in the direction he had come. “There shall be bonds! Oh, yes!”
“Do his words make sense to you, Lady Sough?” Elric asked politely, when the warrior had disappeared.
“Some of them,” she said. It seemed that she was smiling behind her veil. “It is not his fault that his brain is malformed. There are few warriors in this world, you know. He is perhaps the best.”
“Best?”
Oone’s sardonic question went unanswered. Lady Sough reached out a hand on which delicately coloured jewels glowed and she