Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [139]
The silence again enfolded his high challenge, and he heard its echoes die away in the far places of the city.
Then, from somewhere inside the palace, he heard a movement. His heart pounded against his rib-cage, threatening to break through the bones and hang throbbing on his chest as proof of his mortality. He heard a sound like the clopping of monstrous hoofs and, ahead of this noise, the measured steps that must be those of a man.
His eyes fixed themselves on the great, golden doors of the palace, half-hidden in the shadows that the columns threw. The doors silently began to open. Then a high-shouldered figure, dwarfed by the size of the doors, stepped forth and stood there, regarding Elric with a horrible anger smouldering in its face.
On his body, scarlet armour glowed as if red-hot. On his left arm was a shield of the same stuff and in his hand a steel sword. He had a narrow, aquiline head with a closely trimmed black beard and moustache. On his elaborate helm was the Merman Crest of Pan Tang. Jagreen Lern said, in a voice that trembled with rage: “So, Elric, you have kept part of your word, after all. How I wish I’d been able to kill you at Sequa when I had the chance, but then I had a bargain with Darnizhaan…”
“Step forward, Theocrat,” Elric said with sudden calm. “I’ll give you the chance again and meet you fairly in single combat.”
Jagreen Lern sneered. “Fairly? With that blade in your hands? Once I met it and did not perish, but now it burns with the souls of my best warrior-priests. I know its power. I would not be so foolish as to stand against it. No—let those you have challenged meet you.”
He stepped to one side. The doors gaped wider and, if Elric expected to see giant figures to emerge, he was disappointed. The dukes had assumed human proportions and the forms of men. But there was a power about them that filled the air as they moved to stand, disdainful of Jagreen Lern, upon the topmost step of the palace.
Elric looked upon their beautiful, smiling faces and shuddered again, for there was a kind of love on their faces, love mingled with pride and confidence, so that, for a moment, he was filled with the wish to jump from his horse and fling himself at their feet to plead forgiveness for what he had become. All the longing and the loneliness within him seemed to well up and he knew that these lovely beings would claim him, protect him, care for him…
“Well, Elric,” said Arioch, the leader, softly. “Would you repent and return to us?”
The voice was silvery in its beauty, and Elric half-made to dismount, but then he clapped his hands to his ears, the runesword hanging by its wrist-throng, and cried: “No! No! I must do what I must! Your time, like mine, is over!”
“Do not speak thus, Elric,” Balan said persuasively, “our rule has hardly begun. Soon the Earth and all its creatures will be part of the Realm of Chaos and a wild and splendid era will begin!” His words passed Elric’s hands and whispered in his skull. “Chaos has never been so powerful on Earth—not even in earliest days. We shall make you great. We shall make you a Lord of Chaos, equal to ourselves! We give you immortality, Elric. If you behave so foolishly, you will bring yourself only death, and none shall remember you.”
“I know that! I would not wish to be remembered in a world ruled by Law!”
Maluk laughed softly. “That will never come to pass. We block every move that Law makes to try to bring help to Earth.”
“And this is why you must be destroyed!” Elric cried.
“We are immortal—we can never be slain!” Arioch said, and there was a tinge of impatience in his voice.
“Then I shall send you back to Chaos in such a way that you shall never have power on the Earth again!”
Elric swung his runeblade into his hand and it trembled there, moaning quietly, as if unsure of itself, just as he was.
“See!” Balan walked partway down the steps. “See—even your trusted sword knows that we speak truth!”
“You speak a sort of truth,” Moonglum said