Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [136]
“Another one has been destroyed by me, Moonglum. Am I forever to be tied to this cursed sword? I must discover a way to rid myself of it or my heavy conscience will bear me down so that I cannot rise at all.”
Moonglum nodded, but was silent.
“I will lay Duke Avan to rest,” Elric said. “You go back to where we left the ship and tell the men that we come.”
Moonglum began to stride across the square towards the east.
Elric tenderly picked up the body of Duke Avan and went towards the opposite side of the square, to the underground room where the Creature Doomed to Live had lived out his life for ten thousand years.
It seemed so unreal to Elric now, but he knew that it had not been a dream, for the Jade Man had gone. His tracks could be seen through the jungle. Whole clumps of trees had been flattened.
He reached the place and descended the stairs and laid Duke Avan down on the bed of dried grasses. Then he took the duke’s dagger and, for want of anything else, dipped it in the duke’s blood and wrote on the wall above the corpse:
This was Duke Avan Astran of Old Hrolmar. He explored the world and brought much knowledge and treasure back to Vilmir, his land. He dreamed and became lost in the dream of another and so died. He enriched the Young Kingdoms—and thus encouraged another dream. He died so that the Creature Doomed to Live might die, as he desired…
Elric paused. Then he threw down the dagger. He could not justify his own feelings of guilt by composing a high-sounding epitaph for the man he had slain.
He stood there, breathing heavily, then once again picked up the dagger.
He died because Elric of Melniboné desired a peace and a knowledge he could never find. He died by the Black Sword.
Outside in the middle of the square, at noon, still lay the lonely body of the last Vilmirian crewman. Nobody had known his name. Nobody felt grief for him or tried to compose an epitaph for him. The dead Vilmirian had died for no high purpose, followed no fabulous dream. Even in death his body would fulfill no function. On this island there was no carrion-eater to feed. In the dust of the city there was no earth to fertilize.
Elric came back into the square and saw the body and for him, for a moment, it symbolized everything that had transpired here and would transpire later.
“There is no purpose,” he murmured.
Perhaps his remote ancestors had, after all, realized that, but had not cared. It had taken the Jade Man to make them care and then go mad in their anguish. The knowledge had caused them to close their minds to much.
“Elric!”
It was Moonglum returning. Elric looked up.
“I met the only survivor on the trail. Before he died he told me the Olab had dealt with the crew and the ship before they came after us. They’re all slain. The boat is destroyed.”
Elric remembered something the Creature Doomed to Live had told him. “There is another boat,” he said. “It lies at the west end of the island.”
It took them the rest of the day and all of that night to discover where J’osui C’reln Reyr had hidden his boat. They pulled it down to the water and inspected it. It was a sturdy boat, made of the same strange material they had seen in the library of R’lin K’ren A’a. Moonglum peered into the lockers and grinned at what he saw there. “Treasure! So we have benefited from this venture, after all!”
“The jewels will not feed us,” Elric said. “It is a long journey home.”
“Home?”
“Back to the Young Kingdoms.”
Moonglum winked at him. “I saw some cases of provisions amongst the wreckage of Avan’s schooner. We’ll sail round the island and pick them up.”
Elric looked back at the silent forest and a shiver passed through him. He thought of all the hopes he had had on the journey upriver and he cursed himself for a fool.
There was something of a smile on his face as they cast off, raised the sail and began to move with the current.
Moonglum displayed a handful of emeralds. “We are poor no longer, friend Elric!”
“Aye,” said Elric. “Are we not lucky, you and I, Moonglum?”
And this time it