Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [132]
They emerged into the ruined square of R’lin K’ren A’a.
Moonglum and one Vilmirian crewman stood there.
“Where are the others?” Avan demanded.
“Ask him,” Moonglum said wearily, gesturing with the sword in his right hand.
They stared at the man who was either an albino or a leper. He was completely naked and he bore a distinct likeness to Elric. At first Elric thought this was another phantom, but then he saw that there were also several differences in their faces. There was something sticking from the man’s side, just above the third rib. With a shock, Elric recognized it as the broken shaft of a Vilmirian arrow.
The naked man nodded. “Aye—the arrow found its mark. But it could not slay me, for I am J’osui C’reln Reyr…”
“You believe yourself to be the Creature Doomed to Live,” Elric murmured.
“I am he.” The man gave a bitter smile. “Do you think I try to deceive you?”
Elric glanced at the arrow shaft and then shook his head.
“You are ten thousand years old?” Avan stared at him.
“What does he say?” asked J’osui C’reln Reyr of Elric. Elric translated.
“Is that all it has been?” The man sighed. Then he looked intently at Elric. “You are of my race?”
“It seems so.”
“Of what family?”
“Of the royal line.”
“Then you have come at last. I, too, am of that line.”
“I believe you.”
“I notice that the Olab seek you.”
“The Olab?”
“Those primitives with the clubs.”
“Aye. We encountered them on our journey upriver.”
“I will lead you to safety. Come.”
Elric allowed J’osui C’reln Reyr to take them across the square to where part of a tottering wall still stood. The man then lifted a flagstone and showed them steps leading down into darkness. They followed him, descending cautiously as he caused the flagstone to lower itself above their heads. And then they found themselves in a room lit by crude oil lamps. Save for a bed of dried grasses the room was empty.
“You live sparely,” Elric said.
“I have need for nothing else. My head is sufficiently furnished…”
“Where do the Olab come from?” Elric asked.
“They are but recently arrived in these parts. Scarcely a thousand years ago—or perhaps half that time—they came from further upriver after some quarrel with another tribe. They do not usually come to the island. You must have killed many of them for them to wish you such harm.”
“We killed many.”
J’osui C’reln Reyr gestured at the others who were staring at him in some discomfort. “And these? Primitives, also, eh? They are not of our folk.”
“There are few of our folk left.”
“What does he say?” Duke Avan asked.
“He says that those reptile warriors are called the Olab,” Elric told him.
“And was it these Olab who stole the Jade Man’s eyes?”
When Elric translated the question the Creature Doomed to Live was astonished. “Did you not know, then?”
“Know what?”
“Why, you have been in the Jade Man’s eyes! Those great crystals in which you wandered—that is what they are!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Elric offered this information to Duke Avan, the Vilmirian burst into laughter. He flung his head back and roared with mirth while the others looked gloomily on. The cloud that had fallen across his features of late suddenly cleared and he became again the man whom Elric had first met in Chalal.
Moonglum was the next to smile and even Elric acknowledged the irony of what had happened to them.
“Those crystals fell from his face like tears soon after the High Ones departed,” continued J’osui C’reln Reyr.
“So the High Ones did come here.”
“Aye—the Jade Man brought the message and all the folk departed, having made their bargain with him.”
“The Jade Man was not built by your people?”
“The Jade Man is Duke Arioch of Hell. He strode from the forest one day and stood in the square and told the people what was to come about—that our city lay at the centre of some particular configuration and that it was only there that the Lords of the Higher Worlds could meet.”
“And the bargain?”
“In return for their city, our royal line might in future increase their power with Arioch as their patron. He would give them great knowledge