Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [75]
The grey man cocked his head, as if hearing a distant but familiar whistle. Then his pale green-grey eyes stared down into the albino’s crimson orbs and a great gust of air escaped him, and a tear appeared upon his cheek.
“Nowhere, now,” said Esbern Snare. “Nowhere, now, sir.”
“Would you continue in Gaynor’s service?” Elric asked. “Even when land is sighted?”
“Until I choose to do otherwise, sir. As you shall yourself observe. There is land ahead, no more than a mile before us.”
“You can see it?” Elric asked in surprise, attempting to peer into the swirling vapours of the Heavy Sea.
“No, sir,” said Esbern Snare. “But I can smell it.”
And land it soon was. Land rising up from the slow, awful waters of the Heavy Sea; land like a wakened monster, an angry shadow, all sharp ridges and jagged points; cliffs of black marble; beaches of carbon, and black breakers which poured like the smoke of hell upon that squealing shore …
Land so inhospitable the voyagers who looked at it now were all pretty much of the same accord, that the Heavy Sea was less daunting; and it was Wheldrake who suggested they sail on until they found a more accessible island.
But Gaynor shook his flickering helm and lifted up his glowing fist and put his steel palm upon the slender shoulders of Charion Phatt. “You told me, child, that the other Phatts are here. Have they found the sisters?”
The young woman shook her head slowly. Her face was grave and her eyes seemed to look into some different reality. “They have not found the sisters.”
“Yet they—and the sisters—are here?”
“Beyond this—aye—in there …” Her mouth grew a little slack now as she lifted her head and pointed towards the massive cliffs dashed by that black foam. “Aye—there—and there, they go—yet—oh, Uncle! I see why! The sisters ride on. But Uncle? Where is grandma? The sisters go towards the East. It is in their nature to bear always eastward, now. They are going home.”
“Good,” says Gaynor with deep satisfaction. “We must find a place to land.”
And Wheldrake confided to Elric that he had the feeling Gaynor was prepared to wreck them all now, in order to make landfall and continue his pursuit.
And yet the ship was beached at last upon that black, salty shingle up which the gougy tide lazily rolled and as lazily retreated.
“It is like,” said Wheldrake in distaste as, the skirts of his frock-coat wrapped around his narrow chest, he stepped gingerly through the shallows, “a form of molasses. What causes this, Master Snare?”
His bundle under his arm, Esbern Snare lifted his long legs through the liquid. “Nothing,” he said, “save a minor distortion in the fabric of time. Such places are not uncommon in this particular Sphere. In my own they were rare. I came across a small one—a matter of a few feet—near the North Pole. That would have been around the turn of your century, Master Wheldrake, I think.”
“Which one, sir? I am a native of several. I am, as it were, timeless. Perhaps I have been granted my own particular ironic doom, ha, ha!”
Now Esbern Snare loped ahead, up the beach to where a great crack had opened in the wall of marble and through the jagged opening poured a shaft of watery golden light. “I think we have our pathway to the cliff-top,” he said.
His bundle between his teeth, he was already climbing—his long limbs perfect for the route he chose from jutting crag to jutting crag—a great, grey spider scuttling up the rock, finding first one ledge and then another, until he had marked a path for the others, an easy means of climbing from the beach to the surface of the cliff. They mounted this, one at a time, with Elric bringing up the rear. On Gaynor’s orders the sailors were already letting down their sail and moving the ship back into the water while from the forecastle came the wailing and groanings of a recently awakened toad who only now realized that its beloved was departing, perhaps for ever.
Soon they all stood upon the cliff and tried to look back at the ocean, but already billowing black cloud buried the Heavy Sea from view, and all they could hear was the sinister