Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [81]
“Oh, well, sir, the story’s the usual miserable tale of folly and expediency you know so well. Trapped by the winter of the Eastern wastes, I resorted to using the skin myself. By the time I returned to Kallundborg I was wedded to it more powerfully than I was wedded to my sweetheart and my wife, Helva of Nesvek. I sought religious help and found only horror at my tale. Thus I left to wander the world, seeking some salvation, some means of returning to the past I had known, of being reunited with my darling. More unearthly adventures befell me, sir, from Sphere to Sphere, and then I learned that the troll itself sought vengeance and tricked some cleric, some visiting bishop, into a bargain that brought down the whole cathedral while the larger part of the population, my wife among them, prayed for my lost soul …
“That is what Gaynor promised to tell me—the fate of my wife. And that is why I weep now, sir, so long after the event.”
Elric could find no words of reply and none of consolation for this good man cursed to rely for his only existence upon that horrible skin, forced to perform the most inhuman acts of evil savagery or go forever into nothingness, never to be united with his lost love, even in death.
Perhaps it was not therefore surprising that Elric fingered the pommel of his hellsword and thought deeply upon his own relationship with the blade and saw in poor Esbern Snare a fate more terrible than his own.
The next time he extended a generous hand to the grey man as he stumbled through the twilight, there was a peculiar sense of kinship in the gesture. Slowly, the two whose stories were so different, and whose fates were so similar, continued their progress along that narrow ridge of rock above the sinister whisper of water as it cut its way through the snows of the ravine.
CHAPTER FIVE
Detecting Certain Hints of the Higher Worlds; A Convention of the Patrons and the Patronized; Sacrifice of the Sane and Good.
Prince Gaynor the Damned paused upon the rocky slopes of the last mountain and peered across a waste of scrub grass towards a far distant range. “This land seems all mountains,” he said. “Perhaps, however, that is the rim of the far shore? The sisters must be close. We could scarcely miss them on this barren plain.”
They had eaten the last of their food and still had seen no signs of animals on earth or in the sky.
“It’s as if it never had inhabitants,” said Esbern Snare. “As if life has been exiled from this plain completely.”
“I’ve seen such sights before,” Elric told him. “They make me uncomfortable—for it can be a sign that Law has conquered everything or that Chaos rules, as yet unmanifested …”
They agreed that they had all shared such experiences, but now Gaynor grew even more impatient, exhorting them to make better speed towards the mountains, “lest the sisters take ship from the farther shore,” but Esbern Snare, sustained neither by whatever hellish force fed Gaynor nor by the dragon venom which Elric used, grew hungry and began to fall back, fingering the bundle he carried, and sometimes Elric thought he heard him slavering and growling to himself and when he turned once to enquire, he looked into eyes of purest suffering.
When they broke camp next morning, Esbern Snare, the Northern Werewolf, was gone, succumbing to the temptation which had already destroyed any hope that was ever in him. Twice, Elric thought he heard a mournful howling which was echoed by the mountains and so impossible to trace. Then, once more, there was nothing but silence.
For a day and a night, Elric and Gaynor exchanged not one word but marched in a kind of dogged trance towards the mountains. With the following dawn, however, they found that the plain was rising slightly, in a gentle hill, beyond which they thought they could detect the faintest sounds of a settlement, perhaps even a large town.
Gaynor, in good spirits, clapped Elric upon the back and said, almost jauntily, “Soon, friend Elric, we shall both have what we seek!”
And Elric said nothing, wondering what Gaynor would do if, by some strange