Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [120]
“Arioch!” cried Elric. “Come to me, my patron!” But he could not offer blood and souls today.
“Arioch!”
And there, in one corner of this makeshift hall, a dark, smoky thing curled and shook itself and grumbled and then it had become a handsome youth, wonderful in his grace, but still not quite substantial. And the smile had all the sweetness of the hive. “What is it, my pet, my savoury …?”
The Rose said: “Here is your chance to bargain, now, Elric. What does this demon own that you would have from him?”
Elric, his eyes moving from Gaynor to Arioch, saw his patron peering, almost as if he were purblind, at the leaping ectoplasmic sphere, at the writhing Gaynor.
“Only his lease,” said Elric, “upon my father’s soul.”
“Then ask him for it,” said the Rose. Her voice was vibrant with controlled urgency. “Ask him to give up his claim on that soul!”
“He will not agree,” said Elric. Even with the sword’s mighty energy, he was beginning to tire.
“Ask him for it,” she said.
So Elric called over his shoulder. “My Lord Arioch. My patron Duke of Hell. Will you give up your claim on my father’s soul?”
“I will not,” said Arioch, his voice sly and puzzled. “Why should I? He was mine, as thou art mine.”
“We shall neither be thine, if Mashabak is freed,” said Elric. “And that you know, my patron.”
“Give him to me,” said Arioch thinly, “give me my prisoner, who is mine by right, whom I ensnared with the power of my occult subtleties. Give me Mashabak, and I will give up my claim.”
“Mashabak is not mine to give you, Lord Arioch,” said Elric, understanding at last. “But I will give thee Gaynor to make that exchange!”
“No!” cried the Prince of the Damned. “I could not bear such ignominy!”
Arioch was already smiling. “Oh, indeed, sweet immortal traitor, you shall bear it and much else besides. I know fresh torments that are presently inconceivable to you but which you will look back upon with nostalgia, as a time before your agony really began. I shall bestow upon thee all the tortures I had reserved for Mashabak—”
Then the golden body had streaked towards the bellowing Gaynor, who begged Elric in the name of everything he held holy, not to give him up to the Duke of Hell.
“You cannot be slain, Gaynor the Damned,” said the Rose, her face flushed with triumph, “but you can still be punished! Arioch will punish you and, as he punishes you, you will remember that you were brought to this by the Rose and that this is the revenge of the Rose upon you, for the doom you brought to our paradise!”
Elric began to realize that not all had been coincidence, that much of what had happened was the result of some long-nurtured plan of the Rose to ensure that Gaynor would betray no others as he had betrayed her and her kin. That was why she had come back here. It was why she had loaned the sisters the treasures of her own lost land.
“Go now, Gaynor!” She watched as the golden shadow embraced the writhing prince … seemed to absorb the whole armoured creature into itself, before flowing back again into its corner, and thence down whatever narrow tunnel through the multiverse Elric had created with his Summoning.
“Go now, Prince Gaynor, to your unsleeping eternal consciousness, to all those horrors you had thought familiar …” She spoke with considerable satisfaction, while the face of Count Mashabak pressed for a moment against the membrane and the fangs clashed and drooled as he sought a glimpse of his rival, bearing back, with something close to gratitude, his small prize to his own dimension.
“I have no claim now, Elric, to your father’s soul …”
“But Mashabak?” said Elric as it dawned on him the responsibility they had brought upon themselves. “What shall we do with Mashabak?”
The Rose smiled at him, a gentle smile that was full of wisdom. “There is something yet we have to do,” she said, and she turned to murmur to the three sisters, who took their swords—one of ivory, one of gold and one of granite—and with slow care placed a black briar ring upon the tip of each blade so that suddenly the swords were alive with glowing,