Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [81]
“Elric! The last gate! We are almost there! Hold on, Prince of Melniboné. You have been courageous and resourceful until now. This will require still more of you and you must be ready!”
And Elric began to laugh. He laughed at his own fate, at the fate of the Holy Child, at Anigh’s fate and at Oone’s. He laughed when he thought of Cymoril waiting for him on the Dragon Isle, not knowing even now if he lived or died, if he were free or a slave.
When Oone shouted at him again, he laughed in her face.
“Elric! You betray us all!”
He paused in his laughter long enough to say softly, almost in triumph, “Aye, madam, that is so. I betray you all. Have you not heard? It is my destiny to betray!”
“You shall not betray me, sir!” She slapped at his face. She punched him. She kicked his legs. “You shall not betray me and you shall not betray the Holy Girl!”
He knew intense pain, not from her blows but from his own mind. He cried out and then he began to sob. “Oh, Oone. What is happening to me?”
“This is Falador,” she said simply. “Are you recovered, Prince Elric?”
The faces still gibbered at him from the rock. The air was still alive with all he feared, all he most misliked in himself.
He was trembling. He could not meet her gaze. He realized he was weeping. “I am Elric, last of Melniboné’s royal line,” he said. “I have looked upon horror and I have courted the Dukes of Hell. Why should I know fear now?”
She did not answer and he expected no answer from her.
The boat surged, swung again, lifted and dipped.
Suddenly he was calm. He took hold of Oone’s hand in a gesture of simple affection.
“I am myself again I think,” he said.
“There is the gateway,” said Queen Sough from behind them. She had her grip on the tiller again and with her other hand was pointing ahead.
“There is the land you call the Nameless Land,” she said. She spoke plainly now, not in the cryptic phrasing she had used since they had met her. “There you will find the Fortress of the Pearl. She cannot welcome you.”
“Who?” said Elric. The waters were calm again. They ran slowly towards a great archway of alabaster, its edges trimmed by soft leaves and shrubs. “The Holy Girl?”
“She can be saved,” said Queen Sough. “Only by you two, I think. I have helped her remain here, awaiting rescue. But it is all I can do. I am afraid, you see.”
“We are all that, madam,” said Elric feelingly.
The boat was caught by new currents and traveled still more slowly, as if reluctant to enter the last gate of the Dream Realm.
“But I am of no help,” said Queen Sough. “I might even have conspired. It was those men. They came. Then more came. There was only retreat thereafter. I wish I could know such words. You would understand them if I had them. Ah, it is hard here!”
Elric, looking into her agonized eyes, realized that she was probably more of a prisoner in this world than he and Oone. It seemed to him that she longed to escape and was only kept here by her love of the Holy Girl, her protective emotions. Yet surely she had been here long before Varadia had come?
The boat had begun to pass under the alabaster arch now. There was a salty, pleasant taste to the air, as if they approached the ocean.
Elric decided he must ask the question which was on his mind.
“Queen Sough,” he said. “Are you Varadia’s mother?”
The pain in the eyes grew even more intense as the veiled woman turned away from him. Her voice was a sob of anguish and he was shocked by it.
“Oh, who knows?” she cried. “Who knows?”
BOOK THREE
Is there a brave lord birthed by Fate To wield old weapons, win new estates And tear down the walls Time sanctifies, Raze ancient temples as hallowed lies, His pride to break, his love to lose, Destroying his race, his history, his muse, And, relinquishing peace for a life of strife, Leave only a corpse that the flies refuse?
—The Chronicle of the Black Sword
CHAPTER ONE
At the Court of the Pearl
AGAIN ELRIC EXPERIENCED that strange frisson of recognition at the landscape before him, though he could not remember