Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [55]
“You are right,” Elric said feelingly. “We have much in common, you and I, Corum.”
Corum was about to reply when he saw something on the road ahead. It was a mounted warrior. He sat perfectly still as if he awaited them. “Perhaps this is the Third of whom Bolorhiag spoke.”
Cautiously, they rode forward.
The man they approached stared at them from a brooding face. He was as tall as them, but bulkier. His skin was jet black and he wore upon his head and shoulders the stuffed head and pelt of a snarling bear. His plate armour was also black, without insignia, and at his side was a great black-hilted sword in a black scabbard. He rode a massive roan stallion and there was a heavy round shield attached to the back of his saddle. As Elric and Corum came closer the man’s handsome negroid features assumed an astonished expression and he gasped.
“I know you! I know you both!”
Elric, too, felt he recognized the man, just as he had noticed something familiar in Corum’s features.
“How came you here to Balwyn Moor, friend?” Corum asked him.
The man looked about him as if in a daze. “Balwyn Moor? This is Balwyn Moor? I have been here but a few moments. Before that I was—I was . . . Ah! The memory starts to fade again.” He pressed a large hand to his forehead. “A name—another name! No more! Elric! Corum! But I—I am now . . .”
“How do you know our names?” Elric asked him. A mood of dread had seized the albino. He felt that he should not ask these questions, that he should not know the answers.
“Because—don’t you see?—I am Elric—I am Corum—oh, this is the worst agony . . . Or, at least, I have been or am to be Elric or Corum . . .”
“Your name, sir?” Corum said again.
“A thousand names are mine. A thousand heroes I have been. Ah! I am—I am—John Daker—Erekosë—Urlik—many, many, many more . . . The memories, the dreams, the existences.” He stared at them suddenly through his pain-filled eyes. “Do you not understand? Am I the only one to be doomed to understand? I am he who has been called the Champion Eternal—I am the hero who has existed for ever—and, yes, I am Elric of Melniboné—Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei—I am you, also. We three are the same creature and a myriad other creatures besides. We three are one thing—doomed to struggle for ever and never understand why. Oh! My head pounds. Who tortures me so? Who?”
Elric’s throat was dry. “You say you are another incarnation of myself?”
“If you would phrase it so! You are both other incarnations of myself!”
“So,” said Corum, “that is what Bolorhiag meant by the Three Who Are One. We are all aspects of the same man, yet we have tripled our strength because we have been drawn from three different ages. It is the only power which might successfully go against Voilodion Ghagnasdiak of the Vanishing Tower.”
“Is that the castle wherein your guide is imprisoned?” Elric asked, casting a glance of sympathy at the groaning black man.
“Aye. The Vanishing Tower flickers from one plane to another, from one age to another, and exists in a single location only for a few moments at a time. But because we are three separate incarnations of a single hero it is possible that we form a sorcery of some kind which will enable us to follow the tower and attack it. Then, if we free my guide, we can continue on to Tanelorn . . .”
“Tanelorn?” The black man looked at Corum with hope suddenly flooding into his eyes. “I, too, seek Tanelorn. Only there may I discover some remedy to my dreadful fate—which is to know all previous incarnations and be hurled at random from one existence to another! Tanelorn—I must find her!”
“I, too, must discover Tanelorn,” Elric told him, “for on my own plane her inhabitants are in great danger.”
“So we have a common purpose as well as a common identity,” Corum said. “Therefore we shall fight in concert, I pray. First we must free my guide, then go on to Tanelorn.