Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [79]
The spilling of Zarozinia’s blood would be the culmination of the ritual and then—
Then Hell would, quite literally, be let loose. Or so Veerkad planned. He finished his chanting and raised the knife just as Hurd came screeching into the Central Tomb with his own sword drawn. Veerkad swung round, his blind face working in thwarted rage.
Savagely, without stopping for a moment, Hurd ran his sword into Veerkad’s body, plunging the blade in up to the hilt so that its bloody point appeared sticking from his back. But the other, in his groaning death spasms, locked his hands about the prince’s throat. Locked them immovably.
Somehow, the two men retained a semblance of life and, struggling with each other in a macabre death-dance, swayed about the glowing chamber. The coffin of the Hill-King began to tremble and shake slightly, the movement hardly perceptible.
So Elric and Moonglum found Veerkad and Hurd. Seeing that both were near dead, Elric raced across the Central Tomb to where Zarozinia lay, unconscious, mercifully, from her ordeal. Elric picked her up and made to return.
He glanced at the throbbing coffin.
“Quickly, Moonglum. That blind fool has invoked the dead, I can tell. Hurry, my friend, before the hosts of hell are upon us.”
Moonglum gasped and followed Elric as he ran back towards the cleaner air of night.
“Where to now, Elric?”
“We’ll have to risk going back to the citadel. Our horses are there and our goods. We need the horses to take us quickly away, for I fear there’s going to be a terrible blood-letting soon if my instinct is right.”
“There should not be too much opposition, Elric. They were all drunk when I left. That was how I managed to evade them so easily. By now, if they continued drinking as heavily as when last I saw them, they’ll be unable to move at all.”
“Then let’s make haste.”
They left the Hill behind them and began to run towards the citadel.
CHAPTER FOUR
Moonglum had spoken truth. Everyone was lying about the Great Hall in drunken sleep. Open fires had been lit in the hearths and they blazed, sending shadows skipping around the hall. Elric said softly: “Moonglum, go with Zarozinia to the stables and prepare our horses. I will settle our debt with Gutheran first.” He pointed. “See, they have heaped their booty upon the table, gloating in their apparent victory.”
Stormbringer lay upon a pile of burst sacks and saddle-bags which contained the loot stolen from Zarozinia’s uncle and cousins and from Elric and Moonglum.
Zarozinia, now conscious but confused, left with Moonglum to locate the stables and Elric picked his way towards the table, across the sprawled shapes of drunken men of Org, around the blazing fires and caught up, thankfully, his hell-forged runeblade.
Then he leapt over the table and was about to grasp Gutheran, who still had his fabulously gemmed chain of kingship around his neck, when the great doors of the hall crashed open and a howling blast of icy air sent the torches dancing and leaping. Elric turned, Gutheran forgotten, and his eyes widened.
Framed in the doorway stood the King from Beneath the Hill.
The long-dead monarch had been raised by Veerkad whose own blood had completed the work of resurrection. He stood in rotting robes, his fleshless bones covered by tight, tattered skin. His heart did not beat, for he had none; he drew no breath, for his lungs had been eaten by the creatures which feasted on such things. But, horribly, he lived…
The King from the Hill. He had been the last great ruler of the Doomed Folk who had, in their fury, destroyed half the Earth and created the Forest of Troos. Behind the dead king crowded the ghastly hosts who had been buried with him in a legendary past.
The massacre began!
What secret vengeance was being reaped, Elric could only guess at—but whatever the reason, the