Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [52]
It is an old woman—wise and tactful, full of extraordinary knowledge—who screams as if demented, as if in the grip of the most horrible torture, screams out “NO!”—screams “STOP!”—screams “THEY FALL—OH, DEAR ASTARTE, THEY FALL!”
Mother Phatt is screaming. Mother Phatt has a vision of such unbearable intensity her screaming cannot relieve the pain she experiences. And she becomes silent.
As the world is silent, save for the slow rumbling of the monstrous wheels, the steady, faraway sound of marching feet, never stopping, marching around the world …
“STOP!” cries the albino prince, but does not know what he commands. He has had just the merest glimpse of Mother Phatt’s vision …
Now there are ordinary sounds outside his door. He hears Fallogard Phatt calling to his mother, hears Charion Phatt sobbing and realizes there is uproar close to hand …
With his lamp relit and in his borrowed linen, Elric goes out upon the landing and sees through the open door Mother Phatt, bolt upright in her bed, her old lips flecked with foam, her eyes staring ahead of her, frightened and sightless. “They fall!” she moans. “Oh, how they fall. It should not come to this. Poor souls! Poor souls!”
Charion Phatt holds her grandmother in her arms and rocks her a little, as if she seeks to comfort a child wakened in a nightmare. “No, Granny, no! No, Granny, no!” Yet it is evident from her own expression that she, too, has seen something utterly terrifying. And her uncle, beside himself—sweating, red, flustered, pleading, holding his own poor tangled head as if to shield it from bombardment, cries: “It is not! It cannot! Oh, and she has stolen the boy!”
“No, no,” says Charion, shaking her head. “He went willingly. That was why you did not sense any danger. He did not believe there was any!”
“She plans this?” moans Fallogard Phatt in outraged disbelief. “She plans such death?”
“Bring him back,” says Mother Phatt harshly, her eyes still blind to the world around her. “Get her back quickly. Find her and you shall save him.”
“They went to Duntrollin to seek the sisters,” Charion says. “They found them, but there was another … A battle? I cannot read in such confusion. Oh, Uncle Fallogard, they must be stopped.” She grimaces in agony, clutching at her face. “Uncle! Such psychic disruptions!”
And Fallogard Phatt, too, is shaking with the pain of the experience while Elric, joined by Wheldrake, tries urgently to discover what it is they fear so much. “It is a wind howling through the multiverse,” says Phatt. “A black wind howling through the multiverse! Oh, this is the work of Chaos. Who would have guessed it?”
“No,” says Mother Phatt. “She does not serve Chaos, neither does she call on Chaos! Yet …”
“Stop them!” cries Charion.
And Fallogard Phatt raises long fingers in helpless despair. “It is too late. We are already witnessing the destruction!”
“Not yet,” says Mother Phatt. “Not yet. There could be time … But it is so strong …”
Elric no longer bothered with thought. The Rose was in danger. Hurriedly the albino returned to his room and dressed, buckling on his blade. Wheldrake was with him as they left the house and ran through the wooden streets of Trollon, taking wrong directions in the unfamiliar darkness, until they found a stairway down to the marching boards and Elric, to whom caution was only ever a half-learned lesson, had drawn Stormbringer from its scabbard so that the black blade glowed with a formidable darkness and the runes writhed and twisted along its length, and suddenly was killing anyone with a weapon who sought to stop him.
Wheldrake, seeing the faces of the slain, shuddered and hardly knew whether to stay close to the albino or put a safe distance between them while Fallogard Phatt and what remained of the Family Phatt were themselves attempting to follow, carrying the old woman in her chair.
Elric knew only that the Rose was in certain danger. At last