Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [123]
“A confusing place, as I recall,” says Wheldrake, but he basks in her approval, her celebration of him, her pleasure at his joining her family.
“I told you we did not go far, Father!” declared Koropith Phatt a little too triumphantly, so that Fallogard Phatt caught his eye in a stern glare. “Although you, too, were right, of course, when you recognized this beach.”
The Rose and the three sisters were emerging now, to greet their friends, but they carried only the soulbox. The metaphysically filleted Count of Hell was left within, to think for a little upon the nature of his fate, in which he would be forced to create everything that was anathema to him. In her left hand the Rose carried, so that it hung loose and dragged upon the shingle, the grey wolf pelt which Gaynor had sported, not knowing that it was a sign that, in some manner at least, Esbern Snare had been released from his particular burden.
“What?” said Wheldrake, a trifle surprised. “Do you take that as a trophy, madam?”
But the Rose shook her head gently. “It belonged once,” she said, “to a sister of mine. The only other survivor of Gaynor’s treachery …”
And only then did Elric understand the full import of the Rose’s fate-weaving, of her astonishing manipulation of the fabric of the multiverse.
Ma Phatt was looking at her quizzically. “You have your satisfaction then, my dear?”
“As much as is possible,” agreed the Rose.
“You serve a powerful thing,” added the old woman, clambering down from her rickety litter and hobbling across the shingle, her red face alive with a variety of pleasures. “Do you call that thing the Balance, by any chance?”
But the Rose linked an arm in Ma Phatt’s and helped her to sit upon an upturned bucket and she said: “Let us simply agree that I am opposed to all forms of tyranny, whether of Law or of Chaos or any other power …”
“Then it is Fate itself you serve,” said the old woman firmly. “For this was a powerful weaving, child. It has made fresh reality in the multiverse. It has corrected the disruptions which upset us so badly. Now we can continue on our journey.”
“Where do you go, Mother Phatt?” asked Elric. “Where will you find the security you seek?”
“My niece’s future husband has convinced us that we should discover the kind of domestic peace we value in the place he knows called ‘Putney’,” said Fallogard Phatt with a kind of hesitant heartiness. “And so we shall all seek this place with him. He has, he said, an unfinished epic, in two volumes, concerning some local champion of his people. Which he left in Putney, do you see. So we must begin there, at least. We are all one united family now and do not intend to be further separated.”
“I go with them, lady,” said Koropith Phatt, grasping the Rose’s hand quickly and kissing it, almost as if embarrassed. “We’ll take the ship and the toad and cross the Heavy Sea again. From there we shall follow the pathways through the realms until, no doubt, we shall come inevitably to Putney.”
“I wish you a safe and direct journey,” she said. Then she too kissed his hands. “I will miss you, Master Phatt, and your expert tracking through the multiverse. There was never a better psychic bloodhound!”
“Prince Elric fled from that fateful strand,
Great hope had he in his heart,
From the sweet rose blooming in his hand,
No mortal could dispart …”
intoned the red-headed poet and then shrugged by way of apology. “I was not prepared, today, for epilogues. I had hoped only for a noble end. Come toad! Come Charion! Come family all!