Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [19]
“The sun will not rise here, Elric. Not here. Not until the moment of our release or our destruction. That is why we are here.”
“But does Arioch not object to this? He is my patron, still!” Elric looked for a new madness in his father’s face but could find none.
“He is otherwise engaged and could not come to thee now, whether to aid or to punish. His dispute with Count Mashabak absorbs him. That is why thou canst serve me, to perform the task I did not know to perform when alive. Wouldst thou do this thing for me, my son? For a father who always hated thee but did his duty by thee?”
“If I performed this task for you, Father, would I be free of you?”
His father lowered his head in assent.
Elric put a trembling hand upon the pommel of his sword and flung back his head so that the long white hair filled the air like a halo in the moonlight and his uneasy eyes rose to stare into the face of the dead king.
He let out a sigh. In spite of all his horrors, there was some part of him which would be fulfilled if he achieved his father’s desire. He wished, however, that he had been permitted the choice. But it was not the Melnibonéan way to permit choice. Even relatives had to be bonded by more than blood.
“Explain my task, Father.”
“Thou must find my soul, Elric.”
“Your soul—?”
“My soul is not with me.” The shade itself seemed to make an effort to remain standing. “What animates me now is my will and old sorcery. My soul was hidden so that it might rejoin thy mother, but in avoiding Mashabak’s and Arioch’s wrath, I lost that which contained it. Find it for me, Elric.”
“How shall I recognize it?”
“It resides in a box. No ordinary box, but a box of black rosewood carved all with roses and smelling always of roses. It was your mother’s.”
“How came you to lose such a valuable box, Father?”
“When Mashabak appeared to claim my soul, then Arioch, I drew up a false soul, which is the spell I taught thee in Incantations After Death, to deceive them. This quasi-soul became the object of their feuding for a while and my true soul fled to safety in the box which Diavon Slar, my old body-servant, was to keep safely for me on strictest instructions of secrecy.”
“He maintained your secrecy, Father.”
“Aye—and fled, believing he had a treasure, believing he could control me through his possession of that box! He fled to Pan Tang with what he understood to be my trapped spirit—some children’s tale he had heard—and was disappointed to find no spirit obeyed him at his command. So he planned, instead, to sell his booty to the Theocrat. As it happened, he never reached Pan Tang but was seized by sea-raiders from the Purple Towns. They included the box in their casual booty. My soul was truly lost.” And with this came a flicker of a former irony, the faintest of smiles.
“The pirates?”
“Of them, I know only what Diavon Slar told me as I was extracting the vengeance I had warned him I would take. The raiders probably returned to Menii, where they auctioned their booty. My soulbox left our world entirely.” Sadric moved suddenly and it was as if an insubstantial shadow shifted in the moonlight. “I can still sense it. I know it traveled between the worlds and went where now only the jill-dragon can follow. That is what has thwarted me. For, until I called thee, I had no means of pursuit. I am bound to this place and now to thee. Thou must fetch back my soulbox, Elric, so that I can rejoin thy mother and rid myself of unjust hate. As thou wilt rid thyself of me.”
Trembling with conflicting passions, Elric spoke at last:
“Father, I believe this to be an impossible quest. I cannot but suspect you send me upon it out of hatred alone.”
“Hatred, aye, but more besides. I must rejoin your mother, Elric! I must. I must.”
Knowing his father’s abiding obsession, that convinced Elric of the ghost’s veracity.
“Do not fail me, my son.”
“And should I succeed? What will happen