Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [78]
“It is a treasure in a sense, sir!” Esbern Snare uttered a humourless laugh. “For I must value it as I value nothing else. As I value, if you like, my very life. My soul, I fear, has modest worth now, or I would name that, also.”
“So it is precious to you, indeed,” said Elric. He talked chiefly to rid himself of the grief he felt for losing Wheldrake’s company, as if part of him—that part which relished life and human love—was forbidden to him, banished. He felt as frozen as the glacier below, with a torrent bursting within him, unable to find expression in the ways he most valued—the ordinary ways of loving the world and the friends it offered. Perhaps he lacked the refinements of language required to adapt and modify his sentiments and yet he understood, better than anyone, how language itself was the perfect and perhaps the only honourable way of earning his right to respect among those denizens of the natural world whom he, in turn, respected. Yet still it was through action, rather than words, that he tried to accomplish his unvoiced ambitions. Thoughtless action, blind romance, had led him to destroy everything he cherished and he had sought understanding in taking only the action suggested by others, by following the trade of other impoverished Melnibonéan nobles, of mercenary—and a mercenary of exceptional accomplishments and gifts. Even now his quest was not of his own devising. In his heart of hearts he knew he must soon begin to look for some more positive means of achieving what he had hoped to achieve with the sack of the Dreaming City and the destruction of the Bright Empire of Melniboné. Thus far he had looked chiefly at the past. But there were no answers there. Only examples which scarcely suited his present condition.
There was a long silence as the two men stood together on the narrow ridge, staring across the gorge at the far banks, at the lifeless landscape, where not a bird or a rabbit could be seen, as if time, already slowing in the Heavy Sea, had come almost to a stop, and the crashing of the water underneath the ice seemed to fade away to leave only the steady sound of their breathing.
“I loved her,” said the grey man suddenly, his breast convulsing, almost as if struck by something heavy. Another pause, as if he drowned, and then his manner was steady again. “Her name was Helva of Nesvek, daughter of the Lord of Nesvek, and the finest and most womanly of mortals, in all her wit and art, her grace and her charity; there was none saintlier, nor more natural (in natural matters), than my Helva. Well, I was of good family but not wealthy in the way that Lord Nesvek was wealthy and it had been pronounced by the great lord himself that his daughter’s hand should go to the man worthiest of God. I understood that in Lord Nesvek’s judgment God was inclined to bless those worthiest of Him with worldly riches and this, to Nesvek’s lord, was the true and proper order of things. So I knew I could not win my Helva’s hand, though she had already chosen me. I conceived the notion of seeking supernatural aid and, in short, made a bargain with a troll, by which the troll should build me a fine cathedral church—the finest in the Northlands—whereupon, when the building was completed, I was to have discovered the name of the architect or forfeit my eyes and heart to him. Well, by happy chance, I overheard the troll’s wife singing to her infant child, telling him that he should not cry, for soon Fine, his father, would be home with a human’s eyes and heart for him to feast upon.
“Thus did I achieve my end and Lord Nesvek found it impossible, of course, to refuse a suitor who could build such a magnificent monument to God, and at monumental cost, quite evidently.
“Meanwhile, of course, the poor troll-wife, the source of my salvation, was beaten regularly by her infuriated spouse and I began the building of our estate, about a mile from Kallundborg, where I had built the church and would be able to see the spire from my new house’s tower. The building went well, even without trollish labour,