Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock [26]
Yyrkoon’s face was almost as pale as Elric’s. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The little pieces of Captain Valharik’s flesh which our Doctor Jest will carve from his limbs will be the meat on which you feast. You may give instructions as to how you wish the captain’s flesh prepared. We should not expect you to eat it raw, cousin.’
Even Dyvim Tvar looked astonished at Elric’s decision. Certainly it was in the spirit of Melniboné and a clever irony improving on Prince Yyrkoon’s own idea, but it was unlike Elric—or, at least, it was unlike the Elric he had known up until a day earlier.
As he heard his fate, Captain Valharik gave a great scream of terror and glared at Prince Yyrkoon as if the would-be usurper were already tasting his flesh. Yyrkoon tried to turn away, his shoulders shaking.
‘And that will be the beginning of it,’ said Elric. ‘The feast will start at midnight. Until that time, confine Yyrkoon to his own tower.’
After Prince Yyrkoon and Captain Valharik had been led away, Dyvim Tvar and Princess Cymoril came and stood beside Elric who had sunk back in his great throne and was staring bitterly into the middle-distance.
‘That was a clever cruelty,’ Dyvim Tvar said. Cymoril said: ‘It is what they both deserve.’
‘Aye,’ murmured Elric. ‘It is what my father would have done. It is what Yyrkoon would have done had our positions been reversed. I but follow the traditions. I no longer pretend that I am my own man. Here I shall stay until I die, trapped upon the Ruby Throne—serving the Ruby Throne as Valharik claimed to serve it.’
‘Could you not kill them both quickly?’ Cymoril asked. ‘You know that I do not plead for my brother because he is my brother. I hate him most of all. But it might destroy you, Elric, to follow through with your plan.’
‘What if it does? Let me be destroyed. Let me merely become an unthinking extension of my ancestors. The puppet of ghosts and memories, dancing to strings which extend back through time for ten thousand years.’
‘Perhaps if you slept...’ Dyvim Tvar suggested.
‘I shall not sleep, I feel, for many nights after this. But your brother is not going to die, Cymoril. After his punishment—after he has eaten the flesh of Captain Valharik—I intend to send him into exile. He will go alone into the Young Kingdoms and he will not be allowed to take his grimoires with him. He must make his way as best he can in the lands of the barbarian. That is not too severe a punishment, I think.’
‘It is too lenient,’ said Cymoril. ‘You would be best advised to slay him. Send soldiers now. Give him no time to consider counterplots.’
‘I do not fear his counterplots.’ Elric rose wearily. ‘Now I should like it if you would both leave me, until an hour or so before the feasting begins. I must think.’
‘I will return to my tower and prepare myself for tonight,’ said Cymoril. She kissed Elric lightly upon his pale forehead. He looked up, filled with love and tenderness for her. He reached out and touched her hair and her cheek. ‘Remember that I love you, Elric,’ she said.
‘I will see that you are safely escorted homeward,’ Dyvim Tvar said to her. ‘And you must choose a new commander of your guard. Can I assist in that?’
‘I should be grateful, Dyvim Tvar.’
They left Elric still upon the Ruby Throne, still staring into space. The hand that he lifted from time to time to his pale head shook a little and now the torment showed in his strange, crimson eyes.
Later, he rose up from the Ruby Throne and walked slowly, head bowed, to his own apartments, followed by his guards. He hesitated at the door which led onto the steps going up to the library. Instinctively he sought the consolation and forgetfulness of a certain kind of knowledge, but at that moment he suddenly hated his scrolls and his books. He blamed them for his ridiculous concerns regarding ‘morality’ and ‘justice’; he blamed them for the feelings of guilt and despair which now filled him as a result of his decision to behave as a Melnibonéan monarch was expected