Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [166]
A distant voice replied. “Fools! Now we are all doomed. Get out of here while you can. You men have brought my daughters into danger!”
“He lives!” Princess Semleedaor hardly listened to her father’s words. “Oh, thank Yenob! He lives!” She and her sister stared upward with radiant faces.
“Great king!” cried Duke Orogino. “If they speak a civilized tongue tell them we’ll pay any ransom they demand.”
“Get out of that cursed compound if you can. Now! Get into the jungle. They do not want our gold. They want our flesh—ah!”
“Father!” Princess Nahuaduar was beside herself with emotion. “He’s gone. They took him back!”
“He’s right. We can’t stay here.” Dyvim Mar feared more for his men than for the king. “We must help them, Elric. Draw the sword! You are the greatest sorcerer in our history. You can help them! You owe them that!”
Moonglum said quietly. “Elric. Friend. You must.”
“I am losing strength. It’s almost gone. If …” But he realized he could not continue as he had. Every instinct was against it. Cruel his people might be, but they had loyalty one to the other. The last of his herbs were gone. His only hope now was that he could live until the noibuluscus bloomed. Even then, there was no certainty. A spell of the kind they wished him to cast would drain any vitality left him. If the spell failed, would he be too weak, then, to help his countrymen? Could he do nothing while another victim was flayed alive? Yet he had vowed never to draw the Black Sword again …
His cousin was yelling something at him. Beyond the tall, red walls of the ruin the blood-red sun was beginning to sink behind the dark jungle foliage. Twilight was coming. In a short while the full moon would rise and, if Elric’s understanding was right, the black flower’s petals would open and begin almost instantly to fall. At that point, they must be gathered. He must collect the seeds so he could grow fresh plants somewhere. Or was this red mud the only kind in which the plant would grow …?
Still he hesitated. It would be worse than ironic if, only an hour or so before those petals opened, he lacked the energy to pick them.
“Elric! Do you not owe us something?” Dyvim Mar’s bared sword almost threatened his cousin. “Do you want to see your remaining kin slain as—as that poor wretch—” and he pointed at the skin laid out on the wet ground—“was slain?”
Moonglum was silent, but it was clear he shared the Dragon Master’s opinion.
Elric lowered his eyes.
“No,” he said.
From somewhere above came another prolonged and terrible scream.
The albino drew a deep breath. His eyes stared as if into a vision. His lips began to move, silently forming the words of a tongue more ancient than that of Soom, more ancient than Melniboné’s. Words he had learned in a dream quest, long ago, sleeping upon the dream couches of Imrryr, when he had forged a certain alliance. His mind began to travel out along the strange network of roads that had once taken him through the many dimensions of the multiverse.
He lifted his head, his eyes now shining with an alien brightness. And he shouted a word which burst like a blaze of voices upon the agonized ears of all near him. Yet the others could not make sense of the word they heard. They did not recognize the name. Only Elric heard and recognized it. And it drained his life-force from him even as it left his lips.
“Saaasuurrasssh!” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kalakak
Somewhere under the river, in a dimension of waters and dank foliage, Elric’s voice found a supernatural resonance, stirring the memory of a creature which opened its jaws a fraction and passed a long, leathery tongue between pointed teeth. Its eyes were shut in the sleep of centuries and would not open. The creature’s curiosity was not yet aroused. Indeed, it still dreamed dark, sluggish dreams of death, of things devoured and things to be devoured. It was some time before it recognized the word which had awakened it and some further time before it recalled that Sasuras