Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [13]
“And occupied!”
It was a beautiful room. Through crystal windows came pale light which sparkled and fell on hangings of many-coloured silk, on embroidered carpets and tapestries of hues so fresh they might have been made only a moment before.
In the centre of this room was a bed, draped in ermine, with a canopy of white silk.
And on the bed lay a young woman.
Her hair was black and it shone. Her gown was of the deepest scarlet. Her limbs were like rose-tinted ivory and her face was very fair, the lips slightly parted as she breathed.
She was asleep.
Elric took two steps towards the woman on the bed and then he stopped suddenly. He was shuddering. He turned away.
Moonglum was alarmed. He saw bright tears in Elric’s crimson eyes.
“What is it, friend Elric?”
Elric moved his white lips but was incapable of speech. Something like a groan came from his throat.
“Elric . . .”
Moonglum placed a hand on his friend’s arm. Elric shook it off.
Slowly the albino turned again towards the bed, as if forcing himself to behold an impossibly horrifying sight. He breathed deeply, straightening his back and resting his left hand on the pommel of his sorcerous blade.
“Moonglum . . .”
He was forcing himself to speak. Moonglum glanced at the woman on the bed, glanced at Elric. Did he recognize her?
“Moonglum—this is a sorcerous sleep . . .”
“How know you that?”
“It—it is a similar slumber to that in which my cousin Yyrkoon put my Cymoril . . .”
“Gods! Think you that . . . ?”
“I think nothing!”
“But it is not—”
“—it is not Cymoril. I know. I—she is like her—so like her. But unlike her, too . . . It is only that I could not have expected . . .”
Elric bowed his head.
He spoke in a low voice. “Come, let’s be gone from here.”
“But she must be the owner of this castle. If we awakened her we could—”
“She cannot be awakened by such as we. I told you, Moonglum . . .” Elric drew another deep breath. “It is an enchanted sleep she is in. I could not wake Cymoril from it, with all my powers of sorcery. Unless one has certain magical aids, some knowledge of the exact spell used, there is nothing that can be done. Quickly, Moonglum, let us depart.”
There was an edge to Elric’s voice which made Moonglum shiver.
“But . . .”
“Then I will go!”
Elric almost ran from the room. Moonglum heard his footsteps echoing rapidly down the long staircase.
He went up to the sleeping woman and stared down at her beauty.
He touched the skin. It was unnaturally cold. He shrugged and made to leave the chamber, pausing for a moment only to notice that a number of ancient battle-shields and weapons hung on one wall of the room, behind the bed. Strange trophies with which a beautiful woman should wish to decorate her bedroom, he thought. He saw the carved wooden table below the trophies. Something lay upon it. He stepped back into the room. A peculiar sensation filled him as he saw that it was a map. The castle was marked and so was the Zaphra-Trepek river.
Holding the map down to the table was a lodestone, set in silver on a long silver chain.
He grabbed the map in one hand and the lodestone in the other and ran from the room.
“Elric! Elric!”
He raced down the stairs and reached the hall. Elric had gone. The door of the hall was open.
He followed the albino out of the mysterious castle and into the snow.
“Elric!”
Elric turned, his face set and his eyes tormented.
Moonglum showed him the map and the lodestone.
“We are saved, after all, Elric!”
Elric looked down at the snow. “Aye. So we are.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Doomed Lord Dreaming
And two days later they reached the upper reaches of the Zaphra-Trepek and the trading town of Alorasaz with its towers of finely carved wood and its beautifully made timber houses.
To Alorasaz came the fur trappers and the miners, the merchants from Iosaz, down-river, or from afar as Trepesaz on the coast. A cheerful, bustling town with its streets lit and heated by great, red braziers at every corner. These were tended by citizens specially commissioned to keep them burning hot and bright. Wrapped