Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [62]
The tower lurched. All three were flung after Jhary into Voilodion’s vault. Elric fell heavily against a great golden chair of a kind he had once seen used as an elephant saddle. He looked around the vault. It was full of valuables, of clothes, shoes, weapons. He felt nauseated as he realized that these had been the possessions of all those Voilodion had chosen to call his guests.
Jhary pulled a bundle from under a pile of furs. “Look, Prince Elric. These are what you will need where Tanelorn is concerned.” It seemed to be a bunch of long sticks rolled in thin sheets of metal.
Elric accepted the heavy bundle. “What is it?”
“They are the banners of bronze and the arrows of quartz. Useful weapons against the reptilian men of Pio and their mounts.”
“You know of those reptiles? You know of Theleb K’aarna, too?”
“The sorcerer of Pan Tang? Aye.”
Elric stared almost suspiciously at Jhary-a-Conel. “How can you know all this?”
“I have told you. I have lived many lives as a Friend of Heroes. Unwrap this bundle when you return to Tanelorn. Use the arrows of quartz like spears. To use the banners of bronze, merely unfurl them. Aha!” Jhary reached behind a sack of jewels and came up with a somewhat dusty hat. He smacked off the dust and placed it on his head. “Ah!” He bent again and displayed a goblet. He offered this to Prince Corum. “Take it. It will prove useful, I think.”
From another corner Jhary took a small sack and put it on his shoulder. Almost as an afterthought he hunted about in a chest of jewels and found a gleaming ring of unnamable stones and peculiar metal. “This is your reward, Erekosë, in helping to free me from my captor.”
Erekosë smiled. “I have the feeling you needed no help, young man.”
“You are mistaken, friend Erekosë. I doubt if I have ever been in greater peril.” He looked vaguely about the vault, staggering as the floor tilted alarmingly.
Elric said: “We should take steps to leave.”
“Exactly.” Jhary-a-Conel crossed swiftly to the far side of the vault. “The last thing. In his pride Voilodion showed me his possessions, but he did not know the value of all of them.”
“What do you mean?” asked the Prince in the Scarlet Robe.
“He killed the traveler who brought this with him. The traveler was right in assuming he had the means to stop the tower from vanishing, but he did not have time to use it before Voilodion had slain him.” Jhary picked up a small staff coloured a dull ochre. “Here it is. The Runestaff. Hawkmoon had this with him when I traveled with him to the Dark Empire . . .”
Noticing their puzzlement, Jhary-a-Conel, Companion to Champions, apologized. “I am sorry. I sometimes forget that not all of us have memories of other careers . . .”
“What is the Runestaff?” Corum asked.
“I remember one description—but I am poor at naming and explaining things . . .”
“That has not escaped my notice,” Elric said, almost smiling.
“It is an object which can only exist under a certain set of spacial and temporal laws. In order to continue to exist, it must exert a field in which it can contain itself. That field must accord with those laws—the same laws under which we best survive.”
More masonry fell.
“The tower is breaking up!” Erekosë growled.
Jhary stroked the dull ochre staff. “Please gather near me, my friends.”
The three heroes stood around him. And then the roof of the tower fell in. But it did not fall on them for they stood suddenly on firm ground breathing fresh air. But there was blackness all around them. “Do not step outside this small area,” Jhary warned, “or you will be doomed. Let the Runestaff seek what we seek.”
They saw the ground change colour, breathed warmer, then colder, air. It was as if they moved from plane to plane of the multiverse, never seeing more than the few feet of ground upon which they stood.
And then there was harsh desert sand beneath their feet and Jhary shouted. “Now!” The four of them rushed out of the area and into the blackness to find themselves suddenly in sunlight beneath