Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [129]
The sea was moving like a living entity thrashing in nightmare-filled sleep. Moonglum glanced at Elric from where he lay sprawled in the prow of the boat. Elric returned the gaze, shaking his head and releasing his half-conscious grip of the tiller. It was useless to attempt steering the boat in conditions like these. The boat was being swept about by the wild waves, yet no water seemed to enter it, no spray wet them. Everything had become unreal, dreamlike and for a while Elric felt that even if he had wished to speak, he would not have been able to.
Then, in the distance at first, they heard a low droning which grew to a whining shriek and suddenly the boat was sent half-flying over the rolling waves and driven down into a trench. Above them, the blue and silver water seemed for a moment to be a wall of metal—and then it came crashing down towards them.
His mood broken, Elric clung to the tiller, yelling: “Hang on to the boat, Moonglum! Hang on, or you’re lost!”
Tepid water groaned down and they were flattened beneath it as if swatted by a gigantic palm. The boat dropped deeper and deeper until it seemed they would be crushed on the bottom by the surging blow. Then, they were flung upwards again, and down, and as he glimpsed the boiling surface, Elric saw three mountains pushing themselves upwards, gouting flame and lava. The boat wallowed, half-full of water, and they set to frantically baling it out as the boat was swirled back and forth, being driven nearer and nearer to the new-formed volcanoes.
Elric dropped his baling pan and flung his weight against the tiller, forcing the boat away from the mountains of fire. It responded sluggishly, but began to drift in the opposite direction.
Elric saw Moonglum, pale-faced, attempting to shake out the sodden sail. The heat from the volcanoes was hardly bearable. He glanced upwards to try and get some kind of bearing, but the sun seemed to have swollen and broken so that he saw a million fragments of flame.
“This is the work of Chaos, Moonglum!” he shouted. “And only a taste, I fancy, of what it can become!”
“They must know we are here and seek to destroy us!” Moonglum swept sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Perhaps, but I think not.” Now he looked up again and the sun seemed almost normal. He took a bearing and began to steer the boat away from the mountains of fire, but they were many miles off their original course.
He had planned to sail to the south of Melniboné, Isle of the Dragon, and avoid the Dragon Sea lying to the north, for it was well-known that the last great sea-monsters still roamed this stretch. But now it was obvious that they were, in fact, north of Melniboné and being driven further north all the time—towards Pan Tang!
There was a no chance of heading for Melniboné itself—he wondered if the Isle of the Dragon had even survived the monstrous upheavals. He would have to make straight for Sorcerers’ Isle if he could.
The ocean was calmer now, but the water had almost reached boiling point so that every drop that fell on his skin seemed to scald him. Bubbles formed on the surface and it was as if they sailed in a gigantic witch’s cauldron. Dead fish and half-reptilian forms drifted about, as thick as seaweed, threatening to clog the boat’s passage. But the wind, though strong, had begun to blow in one direction and Moonglum grinned in relief as it filled the sail.
Slowly, through the death-thick waters, they managed to steer a south-westerly course towards Sorcerers’ Isle as clouds of steam formed on the ocean and obscured their view.
Hours later, they had left the heated waters behind and were sailing beneath clear skies on a calm sea. They allowed themselves to doze. In less than a day they would reach Sorcerers’ Isle, but now they were overcome by the reaction to their experience and wondered, dazedly, how they had lived