Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [168]
“Elric! Take the buds!” Moonglum helped his friend to his feet. “The attempted Summoning weakened you too much.” Yet still he refused to untangle the wire binding his sword.
The long stem of the Black Anemonë stretched high towards the night sky and then curled downwards. It was only as it reached out towards the wounded Hored Mevza that Elric realized the thing seemed to be questing for something. Questing for fresh blood.
Moonglum cried “No!” and leapt forward, twin sabres whirling, slashing at the plant, which reared back, hissing.
Blood had stimulated the plant’s growth. “It needs more blood! It’s feeding.” Moonglum’s shout stimulated the albino, who cursed himself. That was why they had been tricked into entering the compound. They were food for the black flower.
This knowledge seemed to stimulate the albino. Shouting an oath, his voice quavering, Elric shook his fist up at the window—to be answered by a haphazard rain of missiles. “Those savages want us wounded but not dead. That’s why they took so many prisoners. To feed the plant!” A plant which drank blood and souls as thirstily as his runesword.
Above him scarred, wicked little faces glared down at them. Out in the night the other savages prowled, their only intent being to keep the party inside the compound.
As it had dawned on Dyvim Mar that they were the intended food of the black plant, he began to whistle an old, complicated Melnibonéan melody: “The Drowned Boy.”
“What do you say, cousin?” Elric asked. “Would you wait like a pig in the slaughterhouse? Or would you die fighting these filthy little devils?”
His kinsman darted him a look of approval and began to move towards the ragged gap in the wall.
Before he could reach his object, he drew a startled breath and stepped backwards, staring. Turning sideways on to the plant, Moonglum peered into the gloom.
There was something else out there now. A much larger, heavier shadow. Some kind of beast?
And then Elric collapsed and Duke Orogino came blundering past them, screaming, to flee into the night. They looked back. “Gods! It’s so fast!” Moonglum gasped. He tried to help, but he was already carrying Elric. The plant writhed and shifted on the ground. It had seized poor young Hored Mevza who now struggled in its coils. It was squeezing him so that his blood streamed from his orifices to be sucked up by the plant’s tapering bud. “Ugh. The poor bastard’s dead already!” What had been a thin stem was now a fair-sized trunk and as they watched, horrified, it thickened visibly, sucking the flesh and blood from the youth’s now limp body. Then it dropped back to the ground, slithering into the spread-out skin of the flayed man, filling it.
A travesty of a human creature now swayed before them, its tendrils occupying the skin like legs and arms. And from each branch now, more tendrils sprang, like fingers and toes, reaching towards the five who remained in the compound. The plant, distinctly manlike in form, continued to grow.
And still, as Elric knew, it was not yet moonrise. Still the plant sought more sustenance.
With a yell, Dyvim Mar now flung himself forward and began to hack at the disgusting limbs. The sisters imitated him, their scimitars flashing in the growing light from the sky. Moonglum tried hard to hold his friend upright. Elric did his best to summon the last of his strength. He fell forward, stabbing at the monstrous thing. Anger and disappointed rage empowered him. He had wanted no more than a normal life of the kind enjoyed by others. Again and again he thrust the sword, but he made no impression upon the thing.
A noise behind them. Duke Orogino came shrieking back into the compound. His armour was pierced in a dozen places by arrows. His helmet had been knocked from his head which streamed with blood. He gibbered and pointed behind him and then fell to the ground.
They tried to pull him free of the