Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [152]
“So he has managed to bring more supernatural allies to his standard,” Elric mused. “Those are the Ships of Hell, Sepiriz mentioned…”
“Aye—and even if we beat the natural craft,” the messenger said, hysterically, “we could not beat both the ships of Chaos and the stuff of Chaos which boils around them and did to me what you observe! It boils, it warps, it changes constantly. That is all I know, save that Jagreen Lern and his human allies are unharmed by it as I was harmed. When this change began to take place in my body, I fled to the Dragon Isle of Melniboné, which seems to have withstood the process and is the only safe land in all the waters of the world. My body—healed—swiftly, and I chanced another sailing to bring me here.”
“You were courageous,” Elric said hollowly. “You will be well rewarded, I promise.”
“I want only one reward, my lord.”
“What is that?”
“Death. I can no longer live with the horror of my body mirroring the horror in my brains!”
“I will see to it,” Elric promised. He remained brooding for a few seconds before nodding farewell to the spy and leaving the room.
Moonglum met him outside.
“It looks black for us, Elric,” he said softly.
Elric sighed. “Aye—perhaps I should have gone to seek the Chaos Shield first.”
“What’s that?”
Elric explained all Sepiriz had told him.
“We could do with such a defense,” Moonglum agreed. “But there it is—the priority is tomorrow’s sailing. Your captains await you in the conference chamber.”
“I will see them in a short while,” Elric promised. “First I wish to go to my own room to collect my thoughts. Tell them I’ll join them when that’s done.”
When he reached his room, Elric locked the door behind him, still thinking of the spy’s information. He knew that without supernatural aid no ordinary fleet, no matter how large or how courageously manned, could possibly withstand Jagreen Lern. And the fact was that he had only a comparatively small fleet, no supernatural entities for allies, no means of combating the disrupting chaotic forces. If only he had the Chaos Shield beside him now…But it was useless to regret a decision of the kind he’d made. If he sought the shield now, he couldn’t fight the battle in any case.
For weeks he had consulted the grimoires that, in the form of scrolls, tablets, books and sheets of precious metals engraved with ancient symbols, littered his room. The elementals had helped him in the past, but, so disrupted were they by Chaos, that they were weak for the most part.
He unstrapped his hellsword and flung it on the bed of tumbled silks and furs. Wryly he thought back to earlier times when he had given in to despair and how those incidents which had engendered the mood seemed merely gay escapades in comparison to the task which now weighed on his mind. Though weary, he chose not to draw Stormbringer’s stolen energy into himself, for the feeling that was so close to ecstasy was leavened by the guilt—the guilt which had possessed him since a child when he had first realized that the expression on his remote father’s face had not been one of love, but of disappointment that he should have spawned a deficient weakling—a pale albino, good for nothing without the aid of drugs or sorcery.
Elric sighed and went to the window to stare out over the low hills and beyond them to the sea. He spoke aloud, perhaps subconsciously, hoping that the release of the words would relieve some of the tension within him.
“I do not care for this responsibility,” he said. “When I fought the Dead God he spoke of both gods and men as shadow-things, playing puppet parts before the true history of Earth began and men found their fate in their own hands. Then Sepiriz