Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [46]
By now Elric’s self-control was growing weak and had it not been for the Rose’s steady eyes upon him, for Wheldrake’s grim and furious silence, he would have spoken his mind. As it was, the Rose approved the house, agreed the lease and accepted the keys from the fastidious fingers of that Sultan of Sophistry, dismissed him swiftly and then led them in hurried pursuit of the exiled debtors, sighting them as they made their way slowly towards the nearest downside stairway.
Elric saw her catch up with Fallogard Phatt, place a comforting hand upon the shoulder of an adolescent girl, whisper a word in the ear of the mother, give a friendly tug to the hair of the boy, and bring them, bewildered, back with her. “They are to live with us—or at least upon our credit. That cannot, surely, be against even the Gypsy Nation’s peculiar sense of security.”
Elric regarded the threadbare group with some dismay, having no wish to burden himself with a family, especially one which seemed to him so feckless. He glanced at the girl, dark and petulant in her blossoming beauty, her expression one of almost permanent contempt for everything she looked upon, while the boy, aged about ten, had the black eyes he had noted on the stairs: the weasel’s alert and eager eyes, and a narrow, pointed face to add to the effect, his long, blond hair slicked hard against his skull, his small-fingered hands twitching and eager, the nose questing, as if he already scented vermin. And when he grinned, in grateful understanding of the Rose’s charity, he revealed sharp little teeth, white against the moist redness of his lips. “You shall see an end to your quest, lady,” he said. “Blood and sap shall blend again—lest Chaos decide to challenge this prognosis. There is a road between the worlds that leads to a better place than the one on which we travel. You must take the Infinite Path, lady, and look at the end of it for the resolution to your troubles.”
Instead of responding with puzzlement or fear to his strange words, the Rose smiled and bent to kiss him. “Clairvoyant, all of you?” she asked.
“It is the chief business of the Family Phatt,” said Fallogard Phatt with some dignity. “It has always been our privilege to read the cards, see through the crystal’s mist and know the future such as it ever can be foretold with any certainty. Which is why, of course, we were not unhappy when we found we must join the Gypsy Nation. But, we discovered, these folk have no true clairvoyance, merely a collection of tricks and illusions with which to impress or control others. Once their people had the richest powers of all. They dissipated, little by little, on their pointless march around the world. They gave them up for security you see. And now we, too, have no use for our powers …” He sighed and scratched rapidly at himself in several places, adjusting buttons and loops and ties as he did so, as if he only just realized his disheveled condition. “What are we to do? Should we become walkers, we shall inevitably be doomed to end our days at the marching boards.”
“We would join forces with you,” Elric heard the Rose say, and he looked at her in surprise. “We have the power to help you against the jurisdiction of the Gypsy Nation. And you have the power to help us find what we seek here. There are three sisters we must discover. Perhaps they have another with them now, an armoured man whose face is never revealed.”
“It is my mother you must ask in that respect,” said Fallogard Phatt absently, as he considered her words. “And my niece. Charion has all her grandmother’s skills, I think, though she must learn more wisdom yet …”
The girl glared at him, but she seemed flattered.
“It is my boy Koropith Phatt, who is the greatest of all Phatts,” said his father, laying a proud and perhaps proprietorial hand upon the infant, whose little black eyes regarded his father with