Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [84]
There came a kind of thin screech from the ectoplasmic prison and Count Mashabak seemed to take some small pleasure in his rival’s discomfort.
“Thou art my slave, Elric, make no mistake,” purred the Chaos Lord. “And will ever remain so, as all your ancestors were mine …”
“Save one before me,” Elric said firmly. “The bargain was broken by another, Lord Arioch. I have inherited no such thing. I told thee, my lord—when thou aidest me, I giveth thee the immortal plundering to thyself—souls like these, who worketh thine clock. These, great Duke of Hell, I do not begrudge thee, neither am I sparing in the numbers I allot thee. Without my summoning, as thou knowest, it is all but impossible for any Lord of the Higher Worlds to get to my world and upon that world I am the most powerful of all mortal sorcerers. Only I have the native powers to call to thee across the dimensions of the multiverse and provide a psychic path which thou canst follow. That thou knowest. That is why I live. That is why thou aideth me. I am the key which one day Chaos hopes to turn and open wide all the doors throughout the unconquered multiverse. That is my greatest power. And, Lord Arioch, it is mine to use as I desire, to bargain with as I choose and with whom I choose. It is my strength and my shield against all supernatural fierceness and threatening demands. I accept thee as my patron, Noble Demon, but not as my master.”
“These are just silly words, little Elric. Wisps of dandelion on the summer breeze. Yet here you are, through no decision of your own. And here I am, by determined effort, exactly where I wish to be. Which freedom seems the best to you, my poorly pigmented pet?”
“If you are saying, Lord Arioch, would I rather be myself or thyself, I must still say that I would be myself; for perpetual Chaos must be as tedious as perpetual Law, or any other constant. A kind of death. I believe I still have more to relish of the multiverse than hast thou, Sir Demon. I still live. I am still of the living.”
And from within the helm of Prince Gaynor the Damned came a great groan of anguish, for he, like Esbern Snare, was neither of the living nor the dead.
Then, sitting astride the ectoplasmic ball in which Count Mashabak squatted and glared, there appeared the naked, golden image of a handsome youth, a dream of fair Arcadia, whose goodness was sweeter than honey, whose beauty was richer than cream, and whose wicked eyes, delirious with cruelty, flashed the appalling lie for everything unholy and perverse that it was.
It giggled.
Arioch giggled. Then grinned. Then made water over the bulging membrane, as his helpless rival, engorged with the psychic energies of a hundred suns, raged and shouted from within, as helpless as a weasel in a snare.
“Mad Jack Porker ran the cripple down again; seized him by the brain, they said; didn’t stop till he was dead … Greedy Porker, Greedy Porker, hung him by his humpo-storker … Sit still, my dear count, while I take my comforts, sir, I pray you. You are an ill-mannered demon, sir. I always said so … Hee, hee, hee … Do you smell cheese, sir? Would you have a piece of ice about you, Jim? Hee, hee, hee …”
“As I believe I observed earlier,” said the albino prince to the still-cowed Gaynor, “the most powerful of beings are not necessarily the most intelligent, nor, indeed, sane, nor well-mannered. The more one knows of the gods, the more one learns this fundamental lesson …” He turned his back upon Arioch and his clock, trusting that his patron demon did not decide, upon a whim, to extinguish him. He knew that while he protected that tiny spark of self-respect within him, nothing could destroy him in spirit. It was his own thing; what some would have called his immortal soul.
Yet with every movement and every word he trembled and weakened, wanting to cry out that he was no more than Arioch’s creature, to do his master’s every bidding and be rewarded by his master’s every bounty: and, even so, be struck down, as he might be struck now, on