Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [61]
Gaynor returned to his cabin and next a plank was lowered from the moored galley and laid onto the mole. The ship’s hands moved with lithe speed, almost like monkeys, to secure the gangplank as there stepped onto it a lad of no more than fifteen, clad in all the vivid, pretty finery of a pirate lord, a cutlass in one side of his sash, a sabre in the other, to stride up towards the town with the confident swagger of a conqueror.
It was only as the figure drew close to the inn that Elric recognized who it was—and he wondered again at the turning Spheres of the multiverse, marveled at the extraordinary combinations of events and worlds, both in and out of the dimensions of time, that were possible within the undiscoverable parameters of the quasi-infinite.
While, at the same moment something within him warned him that what he saw might be an illusion or worse: it could be someone whom illusion had consumed, who had given themselves up wholly to Chaos and was nothing more than Gaynor’s marionette.
Yet, by her walk and the way she had of looking about her, alert and cheerful as she seemed, Elric could hardly believe she was unwillingly in Gaynor’s service.
He left the window and went to greet her as the door was opened by Ernest Wheldrake, whose bright blue eyes went wide as he piped, with joyful surprise:
“Why, Charion Phatt, disguised as a boy! I am in love! You have grown up!”
CHAPTER TWO
In Which Old Acquaintanceships Are Resumed and New Agreements Reached.
Charion Phatt had reached womanhood since their last meeting and there was something about her which suggested her air of confidence was founded on faith in herself, rather than any artificial bravado. She was only a little surprised to see Wheldrake and even as she grinned a greeting at him her eyes searched inside the inn and found Elric.
“I bring an invitation from the ship’s master for you—for you gentlemen—to join him this evening,” she murmured.
“How long have you been in Prince Gaynor’s service, Mistress Phatt?” asked Elric, with proper care to keep his tone neutral.
“Long enough, Prince Elric—more or less since I last saw you—that dawn on the gypsy bridge …”
“And your family?”
She smoothed chestnut hair against the lace and silk of her shirt. Her lids for a second hid her eyes. “They, sir? Why, I’m in alliance with Prince Gaynor on account of them. We are seeking them and have been seeking them since that great destruction.”
And briefly she explained how Gaynor had found her imprisoned as a witch in a distant realm and had told her that he, too, sought her uncle and grandmother, since they alone, he believed, could tread with any certainty the pathways between the dimensions and lead him to the three sisters.
“You are certain they survived?” asked Wheldrake gently.
“Uncle and Grandmama, at least,” she said, “of those I’m certain. And I think little Koropith is further off—or veiled from me, perhaps. I’d guess something of him continues to exist—somewhere …” Then she took her leave of them and walked on into the town to buy, she said, a few luxuries.
“I am truly, truly in love,” Wheldrake confided to his friend, who refrained from suggesting that there was a certain unsuitability in their ages. Wheldrake was approaching fifty, he would guess, and the young woman was not much more than eighteen.
“Such differences as exist between us mean nothing when two hearts beat in harmony,” said Wheldrake rapturously, and it was not certain if he quoted himself or some admired peer.
Elric fell silent, ignoring his friend’s effusions,