Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [93]
They found the forest easier going than they had imagined, for the fleshy branches parted easily and only occasionally did a pod cling sensually to an arm or part of a face, while a glossy green tentacle embraced the body like the arms of a lover. Yet the things were not greatly animated by Chaos-energy and Fallogard Phatt’s progress was scarcely ever blocked for long.
Until, without warning, the jungle was no longer organic.
It became crystalline.
Pale light of a thousand shades fell through the prisms of the forest roof, flashed and skipped from branch to crystal leaf, flooded down trunks and across canopies—and still Fallogard Phatt continued his relentless advance through the jungle, for the crystals yielded as easily as had the branches.
“And this is Law’s work, surely?” said Charion Phatt to Elric. “This sterile beauty?”
“I would admit—” said Elric studying the way the light fell in multicoloured slabs one upon the other until the forest floor ran with flooding light, like rubies and emeralds and dark amethysts, until they were knee-deep in it, wading on through this wealth of pigment which was also reflected in their skins so that Elric himself was at last one with his friends, for all looked in wondering pleasure at their swirling motley flesh which seemed to glint and dance with the crystals all around them. Then they had reached and entered a mighty cavern of cool, silver radiance—where distant water lapped gentle banks and they knew an intense peace, such as Elric had only known before in Tanelorn.
And it was here that Fallogard Phatt stopped and signed for his niece to lower the litter to the sweet-smelling moss of the cavern floor. “We have entered a zone where neither Law nor Chaos rules—where the Rule of the Balance is undertaken, perhaps. Here we shall find Koropith. Here we shall seek the three sisters.”
Then, from somewhere above them, where the cavern roof caught the light of a setting sun and reflected it down to them, they heard a thin, angry shout and a voice calling from a distant gallery:
“Hurry, you idiots! Come up! Come up! Gaynor is here! He has captured the sisters!”
CHAPTER TWO
A Rose Rejoined; Further Familial Joy; Gaynor’s Rape Thwarted and the Sisters Found at Last—Still Another Strange Turn of Fate’s Wheel.
“Koropith, my heartsease! Oh, my beauty! Oh, my fruit!” Fallogard Phatt peered up through the shafts of intersecting light, through the galleries of green foliage and dark rock, through the richly scented blooms, and stretched slender fingers out for his son.
“Quick, Pa! All of you! Up here! We must not let him succeed!” The boy’s voice was clear as a mountain spring. His tone was desperate.
Elric had found steps cut into the cave wall, winding up towards the roof. Without further thought he began to climb these, followed by Fallogard and Charion Phatt who left Wheldrake to protect Mother Phatt.
Through the cool tranquility of that tall cave they climbed and Fallogard Phatt, panting, observed that the place was like a natural cathedral, “as if God had placed it here as an example to us” (by disposition and background he was a monotheist) and had it not been for his son’s urgent cries from above he would have paused to observe the beauty and the wonder of it.
“There he is! There’s two of ’em, now!” cries Wheldrake cryptically from below. “You’re almost there! Carefully, my delicacy! Look out for her, Pa!”
Charion needed help from no-one. Sure-footed, her sword already in her hand, she followed quickly behind Elric and would have passed him had there been room on the narrow steps.
They came to a gallery whose wall was made of a kind of hedge, growing thickly from the side of the cliff and clearly designed to protect anyone who used the path. Elric wondered at the artistry of the people who had lived here and if any of them had survived the coming of Chaos to their world. If so, where were they?
The gallery widened and became the entrance to a large tunnel.
And there stood Koropith Phatt, gasping with the burning immediacy of his predicament