Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [78]
Now desperation brought back his memory. His voice was an agonized wail to the brooding sky and the pulsing earth.
“Arioch! Destroy the stones. Save your servant! Arioch—master—aid me!”
It was not enough. The ghouls gathered together and began to scuttle, gibbering up the barrow towards the helpless albino.
“Arioch! These are the things that would forsake your memory! Aid me to destroy them!”
The earth trembled and the sky became overcast, hiding the moon but not the white-faced, bloodless ghouls who were now almost upon him.
And then a ball of fire formed in the sky above him and the very sky seemed to shake and sway around it. Then, with a roaring crash two bolts of lightning slashed down, pulverizing the stones and releasing Elric.
He got to his feet, knowing that Arioch would demand his price, as the first ghouls reached him.
He did not retreat, but in his rage and desperation leapt among them, smashing and flailing with the lengths of chain. The ghouls fell back and fled, gibbering in fear and anger, down the Hill and into the barrow.
Elric could now see that there was a gaping entrance to the barrow below him, black against the blackness. Breathing heavily, he found that his belt pouch had been left him. From it he took a length of slim, gold wire and began frantically to pick at the locks of the manacles.
Veerkad chuckled to himself and Zarozinia hearing him was almost mad with terror. He kept drooling the words into her ear: “When shall the third arise? Only when another dies. When that other’s blood flows red—we’ll hear the footfalls of the dead. You and I, we shall resurrect him and such vengeance will he wreak upon my cursed brother. Your blood, my dear, it will be that released him.” He felt that the ghouls were gone and judged them placated by their feast. “Your lover has been useful to me,” he laughed as he began to enter the barrow. The smell of death almost overpowered the girl as the blind madman bore her downwards into the heart of the Hill.
Hurd, sobered after his walk in the colder air, was horrified when he saw where Veerkad was going; the barrow, the Hill of the King, was the most feared spot in the land of Org. Hurd paused before the black entrance and turned to run. Then, suddenly, he saw the form of Elric, looming huge and bloody, descending the barrow slope, cutting off his escape.
With a wild yell he fled into the Hill passage.
Elric had not previously noticed the prince, but the yell startled him and he tried to see who had given it but was too late. He began to run down the steep incline towards the entrance of the barrow. Another figure came scampering out of the darkness.
“Elric! Thank the stars and all the gods of Earth! You live!”
“Thank Arioch, Moonglum. Where’s Zarozinia?”
“In there—the mad minstrel took her with him and Hurd followed. They are all insane, these kings and princes, I see no sense to their actions.”
“I have an idea that the minstrel means Zarozinia no good. Quickly, we must follow.”
“By the stars, the stench of death! I have breathed nothing like it—not even at the great battle of the Eshmir Valley where the armies of Elwher met those of Kaleg Vogun, usurper prince of the Tanghensi, and half a million corpses strewed the valley from end to end.”
“If you’ve no stomach…”
“I wish I had none. It would not be so bad. Come…”
They rushed into the passage, led by the far-away sounds of Veerkad’s maniacal laughter and the somewhat nearer movements of a fear-maddened Hurd who was now trapped between two enemies and yet more afraid of a third.
Hurd blundered along in the blackness, sobbing to himself in his terror.
In the phosphorescent Central Tomb, surrounded by the mummified corpses of his ancestors, Veerkad chanted the resurrection ritual before the great coffin of the Hill-King—a giant