Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [16]
At least, that was one of his people’s legends, said to be drawn from the Dead Gods’ Book.
Elric understood that Scarsnout had brought him to the remote past. But how had the dragon found the means of traveling so easily between the Spheres? And, again he wondered, why had he been transported here?
Hoping Scarsnout might choose some further action, Elric sat upon the monster’s back for a while until it became obvious that the dragon had no intention of moving, so with some reluctance he dismounted, murmured the song of “I-would-appreciate-your-continuing-concern-in-this-matter” and, there being nothing else for it, began to stride towards the desolate ruins of his people’s earliest glories.
“Oh, H’hui’shan, City of the Island, if only I were here a week earlier, to warn thee of thy bond’s consequences. But doubtless it would not suit my patron Arioch to let me thwart him so.” And he smiled sardonically at this; smiled at his own aching need to make the past produce a finer present: one in which he did not bear such a burden of guilt.
“Perhaps our entire history is of Arioch’s writing!” His bargain with the Duke of Hell was a pact of blood and human souls for aid—whatever the runesword did not feast upon belonged to Duke Arioch (though some old tales would have it that sword and patron demon were one and the same). And Elric rarely disguised his distaste for this tradition, which even he lacked the courage to break. It was immaterial to his patron what he thought so long as he continued to honour their bond. And this Elric understood profoundly.
The turf was still crossed by the trails he had known as a boy. He trod them as surely as he had done when, he recollected, his father—distant upon a charger—called to some servitor to take care with the child but to let him walk. He must grow up to remember every pathway that existed in Melniboné; for in those trails and tracks, those roads and highs, lay the configuration of their history, the geometry of their wisdom, the very key to their most secret understandings.
All these pathways, as well as the pathways to the otherworlds, Elric had memorized, together, where necessary, with their accompanying songs and gestures. He was a master-sorcerer, of a line of master-sorcerers, and he was proud of his calling, though disturbed by the uses to which he, as well as others, had put their powers. He could read a thousand meanings in a certain tree and its branches, but he still failed to understand his own torments of conscience, his moral crises, and that was why he wandered the world.
Dark sorceries and spells, images of horrific consequence, filled his head and threatened sometimes, when he dreamed, to seize control of him and plunge him into eternal madness. Dark memories. Dark cruelties. Elric shuddered as he drew close to the ruins, whose towers of wood and brick had collapsed and yet attained a picturesque and almost welcoming aspect, even in the moonlight.
He clambered over the burned rubble of a wall and entered a street which, at ground level, still bore some resemblance to the thing it had been. He sniffed sooty air and felt the ground still warm beneath his feet. Here and there, towards the centre of the city, a few fires still flickered like old rags in a wind and ash covered everything. Elric felt it clinging to his flesh.