Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [92]
“They were of Melniboné?”
“No, no, no! The word is meaningless. These were the great Vadhagh people who came before the Mabden. So, we are related, perhaps, you and I, Prince Elric?” Her intelligence was undisguised for a moment and complemented her humour. And Elric, looking into that face, thought that he looked into the face of Time itself.
“Are we,” she asked him, “both of that Heroic blood?”
“It seems likely, madam,” said Elric gently, scarcely aware of what she spoke, but glad to help her ease the burden she carried and which in some ways she appeared to resent.
“And born to bear a greater share of the world’s grief, I fear,” she said.
At which she began to cackle again, and to sing. “Dingly-dongly-bongly! Old Pim’s a-dabbling-o! Ring the rich and lively boy to bleed his heart for May to bloom!” Whereupon she began to beat a kind of savage dirge with her spoon and plate. “Up from the blood and into the brain jumps that memory of pain!”
“O, Ma! O, Loins of my Creation! When Chaos mists so much, your recollection of ancient savageries does further encloud my sight!” Fallogard Phatt spoke with nervous grace and entreating hands.
“They’ll gnaw and pick at poor old Ma’s few remaining bits of brain.” The ancient matron drew upon her store of pathos to charm her son, but he was adamant.
“Ma, we’re almost onto Koropith and the going looks to get hard from now on. We must save our energies, Ma! We must hold our tongues and stop the scattering of random charms and jingles or you’ll leave a witch-trail behind us to march an army up. Which is never prudent, Ma.”
“Prudence never pickled no rats,” said Ma Phatt with a reminiscent chuckle, but she obeyed her son. She accepted his logic.
Elric had begun to notice that the air grew warmer and the ice was melting in the trees, while snow fell heavily to mushy ground and was quickly absorbed. By that afternoon, under an intense sun, they had crossed a line of grotesquely armoured beast-men tortured into even stranger shapes and enshrouded in ice which was burning hot to the touch but through which the travelers saw eyes moving, lips straining to speak, limbs frozen in attitudes of perpetual agony. A small Chaos army, Fallogard Phatt had agreed with Elric, defeated by some unknown sorcery, perhaps an effort of Law? Now they rode across a desert through which ran what was almost certainly an artificial watercourse and from which they could drink.
The desert ended by the next day and they saw ahead of them the immense foliage of a dark, lush forest, whose trees bore leaves as long as a man, with trunks as slender and sinewy as human bodies, whose gorgeous foliage was deep scarlets and deep yellows, dusty browns and clouded blues, while mingling with these rich, threatening colours were strands of pale pink and veins of purple or grey, as if the forest was fed by blood.
“It is there, I think, we shall find our missing prodigal!” announced Fallogard Phatt heartily, though even his mother looked doubtfully at that menacing tangle of massive blooms and sinuous branches. There seemed to be no hint of a pathway through it.
But Fallogard Phatt, now at the head of the litter, trotted forward, causing his shorter niece to take quicker steps to maintain the balance and momentum of their progress, until she cried out for her uncle to stop as he plunged forward into the sticky, almost reptilian forest.
Glad to be in the shade, Elric leaned against a yielding trunk. It was as if he sank into soft flesh. He straightened his back and shifted his weight to his feet. “This is without doubt Chaos work,” he said. “I am familiar with these creations, half-animal, half-vegetable, which are usually the first growths Chaos achieves on any world. They are essentially the detritus of unskilled sorceries and no self-respecting emperor of Melniboné would have wasted time on such stuff. But Chaos, as you no doubt have already learned, has very little taste—whereas Law, of