Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock [58]
‘Elric!’
Rackhir stood behind him, pale and sweating. He had abandoned the brand and followed Elric through.
Elric licked dry lips and tried to speak.
Rackhir came closer.
Elric said thickly: ‘Rackhir. You should not be here.’
‘I said I would help.’
‘Aye, but . . .’
‘Then help I shall.’
Elric had no strength for arguing, so he nodded and with his hands forced back the soft walls of the second aperture and saw that it led into a cavern whose round wall quivered to a steady pulsing. And in the centre of the cavern, hanging in the air without any support at all were two swords. Two identical swords, huge and fine and black.
And standing beneath the swords, his expression gloating and greedy, stood Prince Yyrkoon of Melniboné, reaching up for them, his lips moving but no words escaping from him. And Elric himself was able to voice but one word as he climbed through and stood upon that shuddering floor. ‘No,’ he said.
Yyrkoon heard the word. He turned with terror in his face. He snarled when he saw Elric and then he, too, voiced a word which was at once a scream of outrage.
‘No!’
With an effort Elric dragged Aubec’s blade from its scabbard. But it seemed too heavy to hold upright, it tugged his arm so that it rested on the floor, his arm hanging straight at his side. Elric drew deep breaths of heavy air into his lungs. His vision was dimming. Yyrkoon had become a shadow. Only the two black swords, standing still and cool in the very centre of the circular chamber, were in focus. Elric sensed Rackhir enter the chamber and stand beside him.
‘Yyrkoon,’ said Elric at last, ‘those swords are mine.’
Yyrkoon smiled and reached up towards the blades. A peculiar moaning sound seemed to issue from them. A faint, black radiance seemed to emanate from them. Elric saw the runes carved into them and he was afraid.
Rackhir fitted an arrow to his bow. He drew the string back to his shoulder, sighting along the arrow at Prince Yyrkoon. ‘If he must die, Elric, tell me.’
‘Slay him,’ said Elric.
And Rackhir released the string.
But the arrow moved very slowly through the air and then hung halfway between the archer and his intended target.
Yyrkoon turned, a ghastly grin on his face. ‘Mortal weapons are useless here,’ he said.
Elric said to Rackhir, ‘He must be right. And your life is in danger, Rackhir. Go...’
Rackhir gave him a puzzled look. ‘No, I must stay here and help you...’
Elric shook his head. ‘You cannot help, you will only die if you stay. Go.’
Reluctantly the Red Archer unstrung his bow, glanced suspiciously up at the two black swords, then squeezed his way through the doorway and was gone.
‘Now, Yyrkoon,’ said Elric, letting Aubec’s sword fall to the floor. ‘We must settle this, you and I.’
4
Two Black Swords
* * *
AND THEN THE runeblades Stormbringer and Mournblade were gone from where they had hung so long.
And Stormbringer had settled into Elric’s right hand. And Mournblade lay in Prince Yyrkoon’s right hand.
And the two men stood on opposite sides of the Pulsing Cavern and regarded first each other and then the swords they held.
The swords were singing. Their voices were faint but could be heard quite plainly. Elric lifted the huge blade easily and turned it this way and that, admiring its alien beauty.
‘Stormbringer,’ he said.
And then he felt afraid.
It was suddenly as if he had been born again and that this runesword was born with him. It was as if they had never been separate.
‘Stormbringer.’
And the sword moaned sweetly and settled even more smoothly into his grasp.
‘Stormbringer!’ yelled Elric and he leapt at his cousin.
‘Stormbringer!’
And he was full of fear—so full of fear. And the fear brought a wild kind of delight—a demonic need to fight and kill his cousin, to sink the