Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [113]
“Perhaps he awaits us,” said Elric. “Perhaps he knows we will come …”
“We must go to reclaim the Rose’s treasures,” said Princess Tayaratuka. “We cannot allow Prince Gaynor to hold them.”
“Indeed,” agreed Elric with some feeling and a renewing sense of urgency. He had remembered that his father’s soul remained in Gaynor’s keeping and that very soon Arioch or some other Duke of Hell would try to claim it, whereupon it would flee to him and hide within his own being, forever united, father and son.
Elric drew off his black gauntlets and put his hands upon his horse’s muscular flanks, but nothing would take away the chill that gripped his being. No ordinary warmth could comfort him.
“What of the others?” said Charion. “What of my uncle and my grandma, my cousin and my betrothed? I think they must be reassured.”
They rode slowly back towards the cavern city, stabling their horses before beginning the long climb up the steps and walkways hidden within the walls, and when they finally reached the balcony where they had left the others, they found only Wheldrake.
He was distraught. His eyes were full of tears. He embraced Charion Phatt but his gesture was one of consolation rather than joy. “They have gone,” he said. “They saw that you were losing the battle. Or thought they saw that. Fallogard had to consider his son and his mother. He did not want to leave, but I made him. He had the power to do it. He could have taken me, but there was no time and I would not go.”
“Gone?” said Charion, holding him at arm’s length now. “Gone, my love?”
“Mother Phatt opened what she called a ‘tuck’ and they crawled under it, to disappear—at the very moment when that vast thicket materialized. It was too late. They have escaped!”
“From what?” yelled Charion Phatt, enraged. “To what? Oh, must we begin this search all over again?”
“It seems so, my dear,” said Wheldrake meekly, “if we are to have your uncle’s blessing, as we had hoped.”
“We must follow them,” she said firmly.
“Not yet,” said the Rose softly. “First we must ride to The Ship That Was. I have a small reckoning to extract from Gaynor the Damned—and from the company I suspect he keeps.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Concerning the Capturing and the Auctioning of Certain Occult Artifacts: Reverses in the Higher Worlds; The Rose Exacts her Revenge; Resolving a Cosmic Compromise.
The little caravan came to a ragged halt as the cliffs were reached at last. Their remaining horses, sometimes carrying double, were almost completely exhausted. But they had found the Heavy Sea; dragging its dark and weighty waves upon the shore, then dragging them back again, all beneath a slow, morbid sky. They looked down now at the narrow entrance of a bay, where the sea seemed calmer. Its high, obsidian walls enclosed a beach of oddly coloured shingle, of bits of quartz and shards of limestone, of semi-precious stones and glaring flint.
Anchored in the bay was a ship which Elric recognized at once. Her sail was furled, but the great covered cage in the forecastle made her prow-heavy. Gaynor’s ship and her crew had rejoined their master. On the far side of a spur of rock, which obscured their sight of the rest of the beach, there seemed to be activity—perhaps a figure or two—and now they must allow their horses to pick their way slowly down the narrow track from cliff to beach, threatening to slip on the shiny rock. Then at last the hoofs were grinding down upon the gleaming shingle, making a sound like ice being crushed, and the companions could see that the beach extended beyond the spur and that it was possible to ride along it.
Princess Tayaratuka rode a little ahead; then came her sisters (sharing a horse). Then came the Rose, followed by Elric and Charion Phatt, with Wheldrake’s tiny hands about her waist. A strangely disparate party, but with many shared ambitions …
Then they had rounded the point and they looked upon The Ship That Was.
Before them stood one of the