Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [34]
“I’m sorry, Elric—but for a whole day, just before I found you in that tavern, my memory was gone. Somehow, I lived through a day without knowing it—and when I awoke, the map was missing.”
Elric frowned. “There is some force working against us, I am sure,” he muttered, “but what it is, I do not know.” He raised his voice and said to her: “Let us hope that your memory is not too faulty, now. These marshes are infamous the world over, but by all accounts, only natural hazards wait for us.” He grimaced and put his fingers around the hilt of his runesword. “Best go first, Shaarilla, but stay close. Lead the way.”
She nodded, dumbly, and turned her horse’s head towards the north, galloping along the bank until she came to a place where a great, tapering rock loomed. Here, a grassy path, four feet or so across, led out into the misty marsh. They could only see a little distance ahead, because of the clinging mist, but it seemed that the trail remained firm for some way. Shaarilla walked her horse on to the path and jolted forward at a slow trot, Elric following immediately behind her.
Through the swirling, heavy mist which shone whitely, the horses moved hesitantly and their riders had to keep them on short, tight rein. The mist padded the marsh with silence and the gleaming, watery fens around them stank with foul putrescence. No animal scurried, no bird shrieked above them. Everywhere was a haunting, fear-laden silence which made both horses and riders uneasy.
With panic in their throats, Elric and Shaarilla rode on, deeper and deeper into the unnatural Marshes of the Mist, their eyes wary and even their nostrils quivering for scent of danger in the stinking morass.
Hours later, when the sun was long past its zenith, Shaarilla’s horse reared, screaming and whinnying. She shouted for Elric, her exquisite features twisted in fear as she stared into the mist. He spurred his own bucking horse forwards and joined her.
Something moved, slowly, menacingly in the clinging whiteness. Elric’s right hand whipped over to his left side and grasped the hilt of Stormbringer.
The blade shrieked out of its scabbard, a black fire gleaming along its length and alien power flowing from it into Elric’s arm and through his body. A weird, unholy light leapt into Elric’s crimson eyes and his mouth was wrenched into a hideous grin as he forced the frightened horse further into the skulking mist.
“Arioch, Lord of the Seven Darks, be with me now!” Elric yelled as he made out the shifting shape ahead of him. It was white, like the mist, yet somehow darker. It stretched high above Elric’s head. It was nearly ten feet tall and almost as broad. But it was still only an outline, seeming to have no face or limbs—only movement: darting, malevolent movement! But Arioch, his patron god, chose not to hear.
Elric could feel his horse’s great heart beating between his legs as the beast plunged forward under its rider’s iron control. Shaarilla was screaming something behind him, but he could not hear the words. Elric hacked at the white shape, but his sword met only mist and it howled angrily. The fear-crazed horse would go no further and Elric was forced to dismount.
“Keep hold of the steed,” he shouted behind him to Shaarilla and moved on light feet towards the darting shape which hovered ahead of him, blocking his path.
Now he could make out some of its saliencies. Two eyes, the colour of thin, yellow wine, were set high in the thing’s body, though it had no separate head. A mouthing, obscene slit, filled with fangs, lay just beneath the eyes. It had no nose or ears that Elric could see. Four appendages sprang from its upper parts and its lower body slithered along the ground, unsupported by any limbs. Elric’s eyes ached as he looked at it. It was incredibly disgusting to behold and its amorphous body gave off a stench of death and decay. Fighting down his fear, the albino inched forward warily, his sword held high to parry any thrust the thing might make with its arms. Elric recognized it from a description