Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [84]
The road, when they reached it, proved to be of pure marble, but the horses’ hoofs were so well shod they did not slip once. The noise of their galloping began to echo through the wide pass and herds of gazelles and wild sheep looked up from their grazing to watch them pass, two silver riders on silver horses on their way to do battle with the forces who had seized power at the Fortress of the Pearl.
“You have understood these people better than I,” he said to Oone, as the road began to twist upwards towards the centre of the range and the light had grown colder, the sky a bright, hard grey. “Do you know what we might expect to find at the Fortress of the Pearl?”
She shook her head in regret. “It is like understanding a code without knowing what the words actually relate to,” she told him. “The force is powerful enough to banish a hero as potent as Chamog Borm.”
“I know only the legend, and that from a little I heard in the Slave Market at Quarzhasaat.”
“He was summoned by the Holy Girl as soon as she realized that she was under further attack. That is what I believe, at any rate. She did not expect him to fail her. Somehow, indeed, he made matters worse. She felt betrayed by him and banished him to the edge of the Nameless Land, there perhaps to greet and assist others who might come to help her. That is no doubt why we are given all the appurtenances of the hero, so that we may be as much like heroes as he.”
“Yet we know this world less well. How may we succeed where he failed?”
“Perhaps because of our ignorance,” she said. “Perhaps not. I cannot answer you, Elric.” She rode close to him, leaning from her saddle to kiss that part of his cheek exposed by the helmet. “Only know this. I will neither betray her nor, if I can help it, you. Yet if I must betray one of you, I suppose it will be you.”
Elric looked at her in bafflement. “Is that likely to be an issue?”
She shrugged and then she sighed. “I do not know, Elric. Look. I think we have come to the Fortress of the Pearl!”
It was like a palace carved from the most delicate ivory. White against the silver sky it rose above the snows of the mountain, a great multitude of slender spires and turreted towers, of cupolas, of mysterious structures which seemed almost as if they had been arrested in mid-flight. There were bridges and stairways, curving walls and galleries, balconies and roof-gardens whose colours were a spectrum of pastel shades, a myriad of different plants, flowers, shrubs and trees. In all his travels Elric had only seen one place that was the equal to the Fortress of the Pearl and that was his own city, Imrryr. Yet the Dreaming City was exotic, rich, earthy in comparison, a romantic fancy compared to the complicated austerity of this palace.
As they approached on the marble road, Elric realized that the Fortress was not pure white, but contained shades of blue, silver, grey and pink, sometimes a little yellow or green, and he had the notion that the entire thing had been carved from a single gigantic pearl. Soon they had reached the Fortress’s only gate, a great circular opening protected by spiked grilles which came from above and below and both sides to meet at the centre. The Fortress was vast but even its gate dwarfed them.
Elric could think of nothing to do but cry out, “Open in the name of the Holy Girl! We come to do battle with those who imprison her spirit here!”
His words echoed through the towers of the Fortress and through the jagged peaks of the mountains beyond and seemed to lose themselves in the heights of a cavern’s roof. In the shadows beyond the gateway he saw something scarlet move and then vanish again. There came the smell of delicious perfume, mixed with the same strange ocean scent they had noticed when they first reached the Nameless Land.
Then the gates had parted, so swiftly that they seemed to melt into the