Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [86]
Elric turned the heavy corpse over to make sure that no life was left in the Pearl Warrior and to inspect the shattered armour. He remained admiring of Oone’s manoeuvre. “I have never seen that done before,” he said, “and I have fought beside and against famous warriors.”
“A dreamthief must know many things,” she said, by way of acknowledgment of his praise. “I learned such tactics from my mother, who was a greater battle-woman than I shall ever be.”
“Your mother was a dreamthief?”
“No,” said Oone absently as she inspected her ruined sword and then picked up the Pearl Warrior’s, “she was a queen.” She tested the weight of the dead creature’s blade and discarded her own, trying it in her scabbard and finding that it was a little too wide. Carelessly she stuck it in her belt and unhooked the scabbard, throwing it upon the ground. The water from the fountain was around their ankles now and was disturbing their horses.
Leading the steeds they passed under a heart-shaped arch and into another courtyard. Here, too, fountains played, but these were not flooding. They seemed carved out of ivory, like so much of the Fortress, and represented stylized herons, their beaks meeting at a point above their heads. Elric was reminded vaguely of the architecture of Quarzhasaat, though this had none of the decadence of that place, none of the look of senile old age which characterized the city at its worst. Had the Fortress been built by the ancestors of the present Lords of Quarzhasaat, the Council of Six and One Other? Had some great king fled the city millennia before and journeyed here to the Dream Realm? Was that how the legend of the Pearl had come to Quarzhasaat?
Courtyard after courtyard, each in its own way of extraordinary beauty, followed until Elric began to wonder if this path were merely leading them through the Fortress to the other side.
“For such a large building it’s somewhat underpopulated,” he said to Oone.
“We shall find the inhabitants soon enough, I think,” Oone murmured. Now they ascended a spiral causeway which led around a huge central dome. Although the palace had such a mood and look of austerity, Elric did not find its architecture cold and there was something almost organic about it, as if it had been formed from flesh, then petrified.
Their horses still with them, the sound now muffled by luxurious carpet, they moved through halls and corridors whose walls were hung with tapestries and decorated with mosaics, though they saw no pictures of living things, only geometrical designs.
“We near the heart of the Fortress, I think,” Oone told him in a whisper. It was as if she feared to be overheard, yet they had seen no-one. She looked beyond tall columns, through a series of rooms seemingly lit by sunshine from without. Following her gaze, Elric had the impression of blue fabric wafting through a door and vanishing. “Who was that?”
“All the same,” said Oone to herself. “All the same.” Her sword was drawn again, however, and she signed to Elric to imitate her. They entered another courtyard. This one seemed to be open to the sky—the same grey sky they had first seen in the mountains. Gallery after gallery rose up all around them, many storeys to the top. Elric thought he saw faces peering back at him, then something liquid struck his face and he almost inhaled the sickly red stuff which covered his body. More of it was pouring down on them from every part of the gallery and already the courtyard was knee-deep in what seemed to Elric to be human blood. He heard a muttering overhead, soft laughter, a cry.
“Stop this!” he shouted, wading to the side of the chamber. “We are here to parley. All we want is the Holy Girl! Give her spirit back to us and we shall leave!