Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [73]
His final words were uttered with such chilling ferocity that Elric, completely unprepared for them, felt he had been struck physically, to his vitals, by iron of such infinite coldness it reached to his soul …
“Oh, Elric, I hate thee with such jealous hate! I hate thee for thine insistent relish of life! For what I once was and what I might have become, I hate thee! For what thou aspireth to, I hate thee most of all …”
As he bent to close the door, the albino looked back at the figure of Gaynor and it seemed to him that the armour which enclosed the damned prince had long since ceased to protect him from any of the things he truly feared. Now the armour had become nothing more than a prison.
“And for my part, Gaynor the Damned,” he said with gentle subtlety, “I pity thee with all my soul.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Land at last! A Certain Conflict of Interests. Concerning the Anatomy of Lycanthropy.
“In my own world, sir, sad to say, human prejudice is matched only by human folly. Not a soul claims to be prejudiced, of course, as there are few who would describe themselves as fools …” Ernest Wheldrake addressed the grey navigator as they sat at breakfast on deck the next morning beneath a leaden sky upon the Heavy Sea and watched black waves rise and fall with what seemed unnatural slowness.
Elric, chewing on a piece of barely palatable salt beef, remarked that this seemed a quality of a good deal of society, throughout the multiverse.
The navigator turned his sharp green-grey eyes upon the albino and there was a certain restrained humour in his face when he spoke. “I have known whole Spheres where reason and gentleness, respect for self and for others, have existed together with vigorous intellectual and artistic pursuits—and where the supernatural world was merely a metaphor …”
At which Wheldrake smiled. “Even in my England, sir, such perfection was rarely found.”
“I did not say perfection was common,” murmured the grey man, and he curled his lithe old body off the bench and stood to peer into the green-black sky and stretch his long limbs and lick his thin lips and sniff at the wind and turn towards the prow and the toad, whose sleepy bellows had sounded like rage to the waking passengers. “There is a comet up there!” He pointed one tapering finger. “It means a prince has died.” He listened for a moment until, mysteriously satisfied, he loped on about his duties.
“Where I once lived,” came the sepulchral melody of Gaynor the Damned as he climbed up from his cabin, “they said that when a comet died a poet died.” He clapped a shimmering gauntlet upon Wheldrake’s resisting shoulder. “Do they say that, where you are from, Master Wheldrake?”
“You are in ungentle spirits I see, this morning, sir,” Wheldrake spoke gently, his cool anger overwhelming his fear. “Perhaps you have your toad’s indigestion?”
Gaynor withdrew his hand and acknowledged the little man’s admonishment. “Well, well, sir. Some princes are more eager for death than others. And poets, for life, we know. Lady Charion.” A bow that set his whole helm to flowing with angry fire. “Prince Elric. Aha! And Master Snare—” for back from his post ran the grey navigator.
“I sought you earlier, Prince Gaynor. We had an agreement between us.”
“There is no hope for you,” said Gaynor the Damned, making a movement forward, perhaps of sympathy. “She is dead. She died when the church collapsed. You must seek your bride in limbo now, Esbern Snare.”
“You promised you would tell me—”
“I promised I would tell thee the truth. And the truth is what I have told thee. She is dead. Her soul awaits thee.”
The grey navigator bowed his shaggy head. “You know I cannot join her! I have forfeited my right to life after death! And in return, O, Heaven help me! I have joined with the Undead …” With that sudden statement of feeling, Esbern Snare rushed back to the forecastle