Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [176]
They stumbled together down the ruins and walked the shattered canyons that had once been the lovely streets of Imrryr, out of the city and along a grassy track that wound through the gorse, disturbing a flock of large ravens that fled into the air, cawing, all save one, the king, who balanced himself on a bush, his cloak of ruffled feathers drawn up in dignity, his black eyes regarding them with wary contempt.
Down through sharp rocks to the gaping entrance of the Dragon Caves, down the steep steps into torch-lit darkness with its damp warmth and smell of scaly reptilian bodies. Into the first cave where the great recumbent forms of the sleeping dragons lay, their folded leathery wings rising into the shadows, their green and black scales glowing faintly, their clawed feet folded and their slender snouts curled back, even in sleep, to display the long, ivory teeth that seemed like so many white stalactites. Their dilating red nostrils groaned in torpid slumber. The smell of their hides and their breath was unmistakable, rousing in Moonglum some memory inherited from his ancestors, some shadowy impression of a time when these dragons and their masters swept across a world they ruled, their inflammable venom dripping from their fangs and heedlessly setting fire to the countryside across which they flew. Elric, used to it, hardly noticed the smell, but passed on through the first cave and the second until he found Dyvim Slorm, striding about with a torch in one hand and a scroll in the other, swearing to himself.
He looked up as he heard their booted feet approach. He spread out his arms and shouted, his voice echoing through the caverns, “Nothing! Not a stir, not an eyelid flickering! There is no way of rousing them. They’ll not wake until they have slept their necessary number of years. Oh, that we had not used them on the last two occasions, for we have greater need of them today!”
“Neither you nor I had the knowledge we have now. Regret is useless since it can achieve nothing.” Elric stared around him at the huge, shadowy forms. Here, slightly apart from the rest, lay the leader-dragon, one he recognized and felt affection for: Flamefang, the eldest, who was five thousand years old and still young for a dragon. But Flamefang, like the rest, slept on.
He went up to the beast and stroked its metal-like scales, ran his hand down the ivory smoothness of its great front fangs, felt its warm breath on his body and smiled. Beside him, on his hip, he heard Stormbringer murmur. He patted the blade. “Here’s one soul you cannot have. The dragons are indestructible. They will survive, even though all the world collapses into nothing.”
Dyvim Slorm said from another part of the cavern: “I can’t think of further action to take for the meantime, Elric. Let’s go back to the Tower of D’a’rputna and refresh ourselves.”
Elric nodded assent and, together, the three men returned through the caverns and ascended the steps into the sunlight.
“So,” Dyvim Slorm remarked, “still no nightfall. The sun has remained in that position for thirteen days, ever since we left the Camp of Chaos and made our perilous way to Melniboné. How much power must Chaos wield if it can stop the sun in its course?”
“Chaos might not have done this for all we know,” Moonglum pointed out. “Though it’s likely, of course, that it did. Time has stopped. Time waits. But waits for what? More confusion, further disorder? Or the influence of the great Balance which will restore order and take vengeance against those forces who have gone against its will? Or does time wait for us—three mortal men adrift, cut off from what is happening to all other men, waiting on time as it waits on us?”
“Perhaps the sun waits on us,” Elric agreed. “For is it not our destiny to prepare the world for its fresh course? It makes me feel a little more than a mere pawn if that’s the case. What if we do nothing? Will the sun remain where it is for ever?”
They paused in their progress for a moment and stood