Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [119]
All was rushing noise and confusion; the night was full of movement and terror.
“Come!” Elric slapped his sword against his mount’s rump and sent the beast into a jerking gallop, forcing himself and the steed forward into the terrible night.
Then mighty laughter greeted them as they rode between hills into the Vale of Xanyaw. The valley was pitch-black and alive with menace, the very hills seeming sentient. They slowed their pace as they lost their sense of direction, and Elric had to call to his unseen cousin, to make sure he was still close. The echoing laughter sounded again, roaring from out of the dark, so that the earth shook. It was as if the whole planet laughed in ironic mirth at their efforts to control their fears and push on through the valley.
Elric wondered if he had been betrayed and this was a trap set by the Dead Gods. What proof had he that Zarozinia was here? Why had he trusted Sepiriz? Something slithered against his leg as it passed him and he put his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw it.
But then, shooting upwards into the dark sky, there arose, seemingly from the very earth, a huge figure which barred their way. Hands on hips, wreathed in golden light, a face of an ape, somehow blended with another shape to give it dignity and wild grandeur, its body alive and dancing with colour and light, its lips grinning with delight and knowledge—Darnizhaan, the Dead God!
“Elric!”
“Darnizhaan!” cried Elric fiercely, craning his head to stare up at the Dead God’s face. He felt no fear now. “I have come for my wife!”
Around the Dead God’s heels appeared acolytes with wide lips and pale, triangular faces, conical caps on their heads and madness in their eyes. They giggled and shrilled and shivered in the light of Darnizhaan’s grotesque and beautiful body. They gibbered at the two riders and mocked them, but they did not move away from the Dead God’s heels.
Elric sneered. “Degenerate and pitiful minions,” he said.
“Not so pitiful as you, Elric of Melniboné,” laughed the Dead God. “Have you come to bargain, or to give your wife’s soul into my custody, so that she may spend eternity dying?”
Elric did not let his hate show on his face.
“I would destroy you; it is instinctive for me to do so. But—”
The Dead God smiled, almost with pity. “You must be destroyed, Elric. You are an anachronism. Your time is gone.”
“Speak for yourself, Darnizhaan!”
“I could destroy you.”
“But you will not.” Though passionately hating the being, Elric also felt a disturbing sense of comradeship for the Dead God. Both of them represented an age that was gone; neither was really part of the new Earth.
“Then I will destroy her,” the Dead God said. “That I could do with impunity.”
“Zarozinia! Where is she?”
Once again Darnizhaan’s mighty laughter shook the Vale of Xanyaw. “Oh, what have the old folk come to? There was a time when no man of Melniboné, particularly of the royal line, would admit to caring for another mortal soul, especially if they belonged to the beast-race, the new race of the age you call that of the Young Kingdoms. What? Are you mating with animals, King of Melniboné? Where is your blood, your cruel and brilliant blood? Where the glorious malice? Where the evil, Elric?”
Peculiar emotions stirred in Elric as he remembered his ancestors, the Sorcerer Emperors of the Dragon Isle. He realized that the Dead God was deliberately awakening these emotions and, with an effort, he refused to let them dominate him.
“That is past,” he shouted, “a new time has come upon the Earth. Our time will soon be gone—and yours is over!”
“No, Elric. Mark my words, whatever happens. The dawn is over and will soon be swept away like dead leaves before the wind of morning. The Earth’s history has not even begun. You, your ancestors, these men of the new races even, you are nothing but a prelude to history. You will all be forgotten if the real history of the world begins. But we can avert that—we can survive, conquer the Earth and hold it against