Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [104]
The first sword was made of ivory, with an ivory blade that looked oddly sharp and an ivory hilt and an ivory grip, bound about with bands of gold which seemed to have grown into the ivory.
The second sword was made of gold, yet was as sharp as its companion, and it was bound with ebony.
The third sword was of blue-grey granite furnished in silver.
These were the swords the Rune had hidden so well and which were now infused with a power to match that of Stormbringer itself …
Princess Tayaratuka, all in flowing gold, reached a golden hand towards the golden sword and took it to her breast with a deep sigh …
Her sister Mishiguya, in grey-blue silks, stretched out her own hand to the granite sword, seized it and gasped, grinning with the ecstasy and triumph of their success …
… and Princess Shanug’a, very grave in white robes, took down the ivory sword and kissed it. “Now,” she said, turning to the others, “we are ready to do battle with a Lord of Chaos.”
Elric, still weak from the rune-weaving, staggered to take hold of his own sword. Out of some sense of respect, or some unremembered ritual, he replaced it with the runestone, from which he had read the beginning of that great Casting …
Elric, my son—hast thou my soulbox? Did the sisters give it thee?
His father’s voice. Some intimation of what he would know for always should he fail. And it seemed that he had certainly failed …
Elric, the time is almost here. My sorcery cannot hold me much longer … I must come to thee, my son … I must come to the one I hate most in the entire multiverse … To live with him for ever …
“I have not found your soulbox, Father,” he murmured and then looked up to see the sisters watching him curiously when, all of a sudden, into the cloister came a breathless Koropith Phatt.
“Oh, thank heaven! I thought you all destroyed! There was a—a kind of storm. But you are here! They did not attack from within as we had feared.”
“Gaynor?” said Elric, rescabbarding the oddly quiescent runeblade. “Has he returned?”
“Not Gaynor—at least, I think not—but a Chaos army—coming against us. Oh, prince, dear princesses, we are upon the point of our extinguishment!”
Which had them running as fast as they could go in the wake of the youth as he took them up to join the others in a room formed from a ledge of rock and disguised by foliage; this formed a natural balcony from which they could look out over the surrounding countryside and see the crystalline trees shattering and smashing as a great river of armoured semi-humanity pressed towards their retreat.
An army of bestial men and manlike beasts, some with natural carapaces, like gigantic beetles, all armed with pikes and morningstars and maces and broadswords and meat-cleavers of every description, some riding one upon the other, some dragging snoring companions, some in mysterious congress, some pausing to throw dice or settle a quarrel before being beaten back into line by their officers, whose helms sported the yellow blazon of eight-arrowed Chaos.
Snorting and wheezing, whiffling and sneezing; grunting and squealing and yelping; bellowing like bulls in a slaughterhouse, the Chaos army advanced: a single appetite.
The Rose turned frightened eyes to greet her friends. “There is nothing we have can withstand that army,” she said. “It is retreat again, then …?”
“No,” said Princess Tayaratuka. “This time we do not need to retreat.” She was leaning on a sword almost as tall as herself but which she carried with considerable panache, as if she and the blade had always been one.
Her sisters, too, bore their swords as casually, and with fresh confidence.
“These swords are powerful enough to challenge Chaos?” Wheldrake was the first to voice the question. “Good heavens, your majesties! See how the old rhyme does poor justice to the true value of the epic! It is what I always tell them when they accuse me of being over-imaginative! I cannot begin to describe what is really out there! What I actually see!” He virtually crowed with excitement. “What, indeed, the world around them is really