Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [195]
Jagreen Lern heaved his body round so that he looked up at Elric. He was suddenly pale and his eyes were fixed on the black hellblade when he spoke hoarsely to Elric. “Finish me now. There’s no place for my soul in all eternity—not any more. I must go to limbo—so finish me!”
Elric was about to allow Stormbringer to plunge itself into the defeated Theocrat when he stayed the weapon, holding it back from its prey with difficulty. The runesword murmured in frustration and tugged in his hand.
“No,” he said slowly, “I want nothing of yours, Jagreen Lern. I would not pollute my being by feeding off your soul. Moonglum!” His friend ran up. “Moonglum, hand me your blade.”
Silently, the little Eastlander obeyed. Elric sheathed the resisting Stormbringer, saying to it: “There—that’s the first time I’ve stopped you from feeding. What will you do now, I wonder?” Then he took Moonglum’s blade and slashed it across Jagreen Lern’s cheek, opening it up in a long, deep cut which began slowly to fill with blood.
The Theocrat screamed.
“No, Elric—kill me!”
With an absent smile, Elric slashed the other cheek. His bloody face contorted, Jagreen Lern shouted for death, but Elric continued to smile his vague, half-aware smile, and said softly: “You sought to imitate the Emperors of Melniboné, did you not? You mocked Elric of that line, you tortured him and you abducted his wife. You moulded her body into a hell-shape as you moulded the rest of the world. You slew Elric’s friends and challenged him in your impertinence. But you are nothing—you are more of a pawn than Elric ever was. Now, little man, know how the folk of Melniboné toyed with such upstarts in the days when they ruled the world!”
Jagreen Lern took an hour to die and only then because Moonglum begged Elric to finish him swiftly.
Elric handed Moonglum’s tainted sword back to him after wiping it on a shred of fabric that had been part of the Theocrat’s robe. He looked down at the mutilated body and stirred it with his foot, then he looked away to where the Lords of the Higher Worlds were embattled.
He was badly weakened from the fight and also from the energy he had been forced to exert to return the resisting Stormbringer to its sheath, but this was forgotten as he stared in wonder at the gigantic battle.
Both the Lords of Law and those of Chaos had become huge and misty as their earthly mass diminished and they continued to fight in human shape. They were like half-real giants, fighting everywhere now—on the land and above it. Far away on the rim of the horizon, he saw Donblas the Justice Maker engaged with Chardros the Reaper, their outlines flickering and spreading, the slim sword darting and the great scythe sweeping.
Unable to participate, unsure which side was winning, Elric and Moonglum watched as the intensity of the battle increased and, with it, the slow dissolution of the gods’ earthly manifestation. The fight was no longer merely on the Earth but seemed to be raging throughout all the planes of the cosmos and, as if in unison with this transformation, the Earth appeared to be losing its form, until Elric and Moonglum drifted in the mingled swirl of air, fire, earth and water.
The Earth dissolved—yet still the Lords of the Higher Worlds battled over it.
The stuff of the Earth alone remained, but unformed. Its components were still in existence, but their new shape was undecided. The fight continued. The victors would have the privilege of re-forming the Earth.
CHAPTER SIX
At last, though