Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [66]
“A pessimistic view, sweet lady.” Wheldrake restrained his own feelings on the matter. “Is it not better to live as if there were some abiding logic to our existence?”
“Make no mistake, Master Wheldrake.” She touched him with a certain affection. “I have accepted the abiding logic—and it is the logic of power and conquest …”
“So decided my own ancestors,” said Elric quietly. “They perceived a multiverse that was all but random, and they conceived a philosophy to formalize what they saw. Since their world was controlled by the random whims of the Lords of the Higher Worlds, they argued, then the only way of ensuring their survival was to gain as much power as they could—power at least as great as that of certain minor deities. Power enough, at least, to make Chaos bargain with them, rather than threaten and destroy. But what did that power gain them in the end? Less, I suspect, than your uncle gained by his decision …”
“My uncle had no sense,” said Charion, bringing an end to the conversation. She turned her attention back to the toad, who had settled again and, while she scratched its vast back with her blade, stared moodily towards the horizon where dark ridges had begun to appear, the first sight of the reefs separating, according to the folk of Ulshinir, the inhabitable world from the uninhabitable.
They could hear surf now, could see it spuming against the volcanic rocks so that they gleamed with an unwelcoming blackness.
“I am discontented, mistress. I am hungry.” The toad turned its eyes upon Charion, and Wheldrake understood that he had a rival. He enjoyed the peculiar experience of being amused, jealous and profoundly terrified all at the same time.
Elric, too, had witnessed the toad’s expression when it looked at Charion and he frowned. Some instinct informed him but was not, as yet, a conscious thought. He was content to wait until the instinct had matured, found words, had confirmation and become an idea. Meanwhile he smiled at Wheldrake’s discomfort. “Fear not, friend Wheldrake! If you lack that fellow’s beauty and perhaps even his specific charm, you almost certainly have the superior wit.”
“Oh, indeed, sir,” said Wheldrake, mocking himself a little, “and I know that wit usually counts for nothing in the game of love! There is no verse form invented that could easily carry such a tale—of a poet whose rival is a reptile! The heartache of it! The uncertainty! The folly!”
And he paused suddenly, eyeing the monstrous toad as it returned his attention, glaring at him as if it had understood every word.
Then it opened its lips and spoke slowly.
“Thou shalt not have mine egg …”
“Exactly, sir. Exactly what I was remarking to my friend here.” With a bow so theatrical and elaborate even Elric was unsure what, at certain times, the poet was performing, Wheldrake went off for a while to concern himself with some business in the stern.
From the crow’s nest came the cry of the lookout and this brought Gaynor round from where he had been staring apparently out to sea, almost as if he slept, or as if his soul had left his body. “What? Ah, yes. The navigator. Fetch up the navigator!”
And now, up from the starboard lower deck, comes a grey man—a man whose skin has been tanned by rain and wind but never by the sun, a man whose eyes are hurt by the light, yet grateful for it, also. He rubs at wrists which, by the chafing on them, have lately been tied. He sniffs at the salty wind and he grins to himself, in memory.
“Navigator. Here’s your means of earning your freedom,” says Gaynor, signaling him up towards the prow which rises and falls with graceful speed as the wind takes the sail and the rocky shores of a dozen islands lie ahead—black, wicked teeth in mouths of roaring foam.
“Or killing us all and taking everyone to hell with me,” says the navigator carelessly. He is a man of about forty-five, his light beard grey-brown as his shaggy hair and with grey-green eyes so piercing and strange that it is clear he has learned to keep them hooded,