Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [76]
Elric turned. They were above the cloud-line now and the air was easier to breathe. Stretching away from them was a flat plain of gleaming rock—an immense vista of marble in which, here and there, gleamed little lights, as if there were creatures so densely constituted that they lived in the marble as we might live in oxygen, and were occupied, domestically, below.
Esbern Snare voiced his own provincial fears. “This has the look of troll country,” he said. “Have I traveled so far to endure the hospitality of Trollheim? What an irony that would be.”
Gaynor silenced him. “If we were all left to stand about bemoaning the particulars of our special dooms, gentlemen, we should be here for ever. Given that at least two of our company are immortal, this could prove singularly boring. I would beg of you, Esbern Snare, neither to keen nor to make any other vocal reminder of your soul’s agony.”
And the grey navigator frowned, perhaps a little surprised by an accusation which might have been better applied, he guessed, to the accuser himself. But Gaynor made no such acknowledgment. Of that socially misliked company he seemed the only one unwilling to extend to others the tolerance he longed for, the tolerance exemplified by the sublime justice of the Cosmic Balance which he had forsaken. Increasingly, it seemed, he grew both frightened and impatient, perhaps because he had secrets from them—a prior knowledge of this land and its inhabitants? He fell silent now and spoke no more to them until at last the uncompromising hardness of the marble gave way to earth and then to grass and the land began to slope downwards towards a surprisingly lovely valley through which a stream meandered and whose hills were clad with all kinds of thickly growing winter trees. Yet there was no sign of habitation and the air grew steadily colder as they descended the trackless slopes towards the valley floor until they were glad of the extra garments they had brought in their packs.
Only Esbern Snare refused to put his bundled apparel about his shoulders. Instead he hugged the parcel tighter to his chest, as if threatened. And again Elric felt a frisson of understanding for the grey man who only today had lost the last of his hope.
They camped that night in a pine-spinney, with a big fire roaring against the bitter cold and a moon appearing, almost unexpectedly overhead in the clear winter sky, huge and silver and casting deep shadows amongst the trees—shadows which were calm contrast to the leaping, unsettled shadows made by the great fire.
Soon the fire had grown so hot, fed by a lucky find of dead wood, that Elric, Charion and Wheldrake were forced to move a little further away, lest they be scorched in their sleep. Only Esbern Snare and Gaynor the Damned were left in the blaze of firelight, the grey, sad man, and the supernatural prince in his unstable armour—two doomed immortals attempting to warm their souls against the chill of eternal night; creatures who would have chosen the flames of hell rather than endure their present suffering, who longed for another reality, such as once they had both known, where pain was banished, and men and women were rarely tempted to give up the peace of their souls in return for the gaudy treasures, the greedy pleasures of the occult.
“What a beautiful thing,” said Charion, almost in echo of these thoughts, “is a butterfly’s wing. The bounty of nature bestow’d on a rose. Do you know that one, Master Wheldrake?”
The poet admitted that it was not in his repertoire. He considered the metre. He wondered if it were the best choice for the sentiment.
“I think I am ready for sleep now,” she said, a hint of regret in her tone.
“Sleep is a preferred theme in my own work,” he agreed. “Daniel’s sonnet on the subject is excellent. At least, academically speaking. Do you know it?
“Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish,