Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [55]
She looked at him in exhausted puzzlement before his words made sense to her. Then she turned her back on him, sheathing her weapons. “You wrong me, sir. This is Chaos work. It could only be Chaos work. Prince Gaynor has an ally. He wreaks great sorcery. Greater than I could have guessed. It seems he does not care who or what or how many he kills in his desperate search for death …”
“Gaynor did this?” Wheldrake reached out to take her arm, but she resisted him. “Where is he now?”
“Where he believes I will not follow,” she said. “But follow I must.” There was an air of weary determination about the woman and Elric saw that Koropith Phatt, far from blaming her for his ordeal, had placed his hand in hers and was comforting her.
“We shall find him again, lady,” said the child. He began to lead her back the way they had come.
But Fallogard Phatt intercepted them. “Is Duntrollin destroyed?”
The Rose shrugged. “No doubt.”
“And the sisters?” Wheldrake wished to know. “Did Gaynor find them?”
“He found them. As did we—thanks to Koropith and his clairvoyance. But Gaynor—Gaynor had possession of them in some way. We fought. He had already summoned aid from Chaos. He had doubtless planned everything in detail. He had waited until the Nation was approaching the bridge …”
“He has escaped? To where?” Elric already guessed some of the answer and she confirmed what he suspected.
She made a motion with her thumb towards the edge. “Down there,” she said.
“He found his death then, after all.” Wheldrake frowned. “But he wished to have as much company as possible, it seems, on his journey to oblivion.”
“Who can say where he journeys?” The Rose had turned and was going slowly back towards the edge where now a village perched, half-toppled, her inhabitants wailing and scrambling, yet making no real attempt to escape. Then the whole thing had gone, tumbling down into that flaring manifestation of Chaos, to be swallowed, to be engulfed. “I would guess that only he knows that.”
Leading his horse, Elric followed her. Her hand was still in Koropith’s. Elric heard the boy say: “They are still there, lady. All of them. I can find them, lady. I can follow. Come.” The boy was leading her now, leading her to the very lip of the broken causeway, to stand staring into the abyss.
“We shall find a way for you, lady,” Fallogard Phatt promised, in sudden fear. “You cannot—”
But he was too late, for without warning both the woman and the boy had flung themselves into space, out over the pulsing, glowing maw that seemed so hungry, so eager for the souls which fell by their hundreds and thousands down. Down into the very stuff of Chaos!
Mother Phatt screamed again. It was one long, agonized scream that no longer mourned the general destruction. This time she voiced a thoroughly personal grief.
Elric ran to the edge, saw the two figures falling, dwindling, to be swiftly absorbed by the foul beauty of that voracious fundament.
Impressed by a courage, a desperation which seemed to him even greater than his own, he stepped backwards, speechless with astonishment—
—and was too late to anticipate Fallogard Phatt’s single bellow of agonized outrage as the man pushed his mother to the lip of the broken causeway, hesitated for only a split second, then, with his niece clinging to his coat-tails, plunged after his disappearing child. Three more figures spun down through those pulsing, hungry colours, into the flames of Chaos.
Sickened, confused and attempting to control a fear he had never known before, Elric drew Stormbringer from its scabbard.
Wheldrake came to stand beside him. “She is gone, Elric. They are all gone. There is nothing you can fight here.”
Elric nodded slowly in agreement. He stretched the blade before him then brought it up flat against his heaving chest, placing his other hand near the tip of the great broadsword on which runes flickered and glowed. “I have no choice,” he said. “I would endure any danger rather than earn the fate my father has promised me …”
And with that he had screamed the name of his own