Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [153]
Relaxed and wearing the loose silks of Aflitainian gentleman captains, Elric and Moonglum completed their supper. Then, with his friend at his side, Moonglum at the bar enquired of his friendly, corpulent host if he knew the whereabouts of a certain apothecary with the unlikely name of Nashatak Skwett, said to reside in the older part of the port. This brought a broad smile to the landlord’s face. “So old Nashatak’s found another customer, eh?” Even here, so far from the Dragon Isle, they spoke a form of Low Melnibonéan.
Elric raised a white, enquiring eyebrow.
“Nashatak has a bit of a reputation as a quack in these parts,” explained the innkeeper, “though I’ll admit I’ve met a few wise medical men and women from abroad who seem to respect him. And you, no doubt, are one of them, sir. He wrote a much-copied book, I hear. It’s often said that local wisdom gets no respect until it’s traveled a ways. He’s eccentric, I will tell you. He comes and goes a bit, but when he’s here he’s generally to be found at his shop in the Moldigore. That’s the area sometimes called the old fortress. A fortress no longer, but it’s where the robber-captains who founded Nassea-Tiki built a great stone keep and what became a self-sufficient village, for when the lords of Soom came a-visiting, impatient with their thieving. Long ago, when Soom was still powerful, the lords brought an army downriver. They razed the keep but, having no quarrel with ordinary folk, left the outer walls and the village standing. Anyway, it’s in the Moldigore you’ll find him.”
To Moonglum’s further disapproval, Elric put down generous silver. “But Soom, I gather, is itself a ruin. What became of her folk?”
“Nothing pleasant, sir, that’s for sure. A few of her lords settled here and rebuilt the harbour. Some members of our present ruling council claim them as ancestors, for they were a learned and brave people according to legend. Others, however, say their blood turned bad with arrogant pride and they took to perverse teachings and strange practices. All we do know is that Soom is shunned by wise folk, not so much because of any supernatural curse upon the place, but because it is periodically occupied by a nomad tribe of cannibals during certain seasons of the year. I heard that the King of the Uyt was the last to go there, seeking some fabled treasure. Neither he nor his men are yet returned …”
Fearing that his loquacious landlord was about to launch into a series of local stories, Moonglum interrupted gently to ask the way to the apothecary’s. The man raised a finger then led the pair back to his nook behind the bar, reached under a cupboard and unrolled a local map. “There it is—just off Horse Street.” He waited patiently while Elric took a piece of charcoal and, borrowing Moonglum’s scrap of vellum, made a quick copy of the map. Then, with a word of thanks, the exiled prince of Melniboné and his friend left the inn, pushing through still-celebrating crowds packing streets of multicoloured stone and brightly painted wood whose ornate frontages rose eight or ten storeys into the glaring, blue-gold sky. They followed the harbour wall until they found the turning into Moldigore’s alleys and were soon at Horse Street.
The apothecary’s sign was prominent at the far end of the narrow cobbled way, painted on the fading white wall of a tall old house whose black timber beams looked hard as iron. Now that they had at last found the apothecary’s, the pair found themselves approaching with a certain reluctant caution. For too long Elric’s quest for his ailment’s remedy had ended in failure. Moonglum knew his friend had gambled everything, this time, on what he had read in Nashatak Skwett’s Herbal and Magical Remedies for Rare Diseases and