Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [95]
“Have that one brought closer.” Elric pointed at the captain of the guard. The man was dragged to the foot of the steps leading to the Ruby Throne. He moaned. “What a petty traitor you are,” said Elric. “At least Yyrkoon had the courage to attempt to slay me. And his ambitions were high. Your ambition was merely to become one of his pet curs. So you betrayed your mistress and slew one of your own men. What is your name?”
The man had difficulty speaking, but at last he murmured, “It is Valharik, my name. What could I do? I serve the Ruby Throne, whoever sits upon it.”
“So the traitor claims that loyalty motivated him. I think not.”
“It was, my lord. It was.” The captain began to whine. He fell to his knees. “Slay me swiftly. Do not punish me more.”
Elric’s impulse was to heed the man’s request, but he looked at Yyrkoon and then remembered the expression on Cymoril’s face when she had looked at the guard. He knew that he must make a point now, whilst making an example of Captain Valharik. So he shook his head. “No. I will punish you more. Tonight you will die here according to the traditions of Melniboné, while my nobles feast to celebrate this new era of my rule.”
Valharik began to sob. Then he stopped himself and got slowly to his feet, a Melnibonéan again. He bowed low and stepped backward, giving himself into the grip of his guards.
“I must consider a way in which your fate may be shared with the one you wished to serve,” Elric went on. “How did you slay the young warrior who sought to obey Cymoril?”
“With my sword. I cut him down. It was a clean stroke. But one.”
“And what became of the corpse.”
“Prince Yyrkoon told me to feed it to Princess Cymoril’s slaves.”
“I understand. Very well, Prince Yyrkoon, you may join us at the feast tonight while Captain Valharik entertains us with his dying.”
Yyrkoon’s face was almost as pale as Elric’s. “What do you mean?”
“The little pieces of Captain Valharik’s flesh which our Doctor Jest will carve from his limbs will be the meat on which you feast. You may give instructions as to how you wish the captain’s flesh prepared. We should not expect you to eat it raw, cousin.”
Even Dyvim Tvar looked astonished at Elric’s decision. Certainly it was in the spirit of Melniboné and a clever irony improving on Prince Yyrkoon’s own idea, but it was unlike Elric—or at least, it was unlike the Elric he had known up until a day earlier.
As he heard his fate, Captain Valharik gave a great scream of terror and glared at Prince Yyrkoon as if the would-be usurper were already tasting his flesh. Yyrkoon tried to turn away, his shoulders shaking.
“And that will be the beginning of it,” said Elric. “The feast will start at midnight. Until that time, confine Yyrkoon to his own tower.”
After Prince Yyrkoon and Captain Valharik had been led away, Dyvim Tvar and Princess Cymoril came and stood beside Elric who had sunk back in his great throne and was staring bitterly into the middle-distance.
“That was a clever cruelty,” Dyvim Tvar said.
Cymoril said: “It is what they both deserve.”
“Aye,” murmured Elric. “It is what my father would have done. It is what Yyrkoon would have done had our positions been reversed. I but follow the traditions. I no longer pretend that I am my own man. Here I shall stay until I die, trapped upon the Ruby Throne—serving the Ruby Throne as Valharik claimed to serve it.”
“Could you not kill them both quickly?” Cymoril asked. “You know that I do not plead for my brother because he is my brother. I hate him most of all. But it might destroy you, Elric, to follow through with your plan.”
“What if it does? Let me be destroyed. Let me merely become an unthinking extension of my ancestors. The puppet of ghosts and memories, dancing to strings which extend back through time for ten thousand years.”
“Perhaps if you slept . . .” Dyvim Tvar suggested.
“I shall not sleep, I feel, for many nights after this. But your brother is not going to die, Cymoril. After his