Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [138]
The door opened and a woman stood there. Her hair was the silver of a spiderweb in the moonlight, her eyes were the deep gold found at the centre of a beehive, her skin had the pale, blushing beauty of the tea-rose. “Welcome, stranger,” she said. “Welcome to all that is left of the home of Lanoli, whose father was once the mightiest in these parts.”
And, upon beholding her, Catharz forgot Cyphila the Fair, forgot that he had slain his brother, his niece, and betrayed his cousin, Wertigo the Unbalanced.
“You are very beautiful, Lanoli,” he said.
“Ah,” said she, “that is what I have learned. But beauty such as mine can only thrive if it is seen and it has been so long since anyone came to these lands.”
“Let me help your beauty thrive,” he said.
Food was forgotten, guilt was forgotten, fear was forgotten as Catharz divested himself of his sword, his spear, his bow and his arrows and walked slowly into the cottage. His gait was a rolling one, for he still bore the burden that was the foot of the Last of the Last Ones, and it took him some time to pull it through the door, but at length he stood inside and had closed the door behind him and had taken her in his arms and had pressed his lips to hers.
“Oh, Catharz,” she breathed. “Catharz!”
It was not long until they stood naked before one another. Her eyes traveled over his body and it was plain that the eyes of scarlet and crystal were lovely to her, that she admired his silver hand and his nine-fingered hand, that even the great foot of Cwlwwymwn was beautiful in her sight. But then her eyes, shy until now, fell upon that which lay between his legs, and those eyes widened a little, and she blushed. Her lovely lips framed a question, but he moved forward as swiftly as he could and embraced her again.
“How?” she murmured. “How, Catharz?”
“It is a long tale and a bloody one,” he whispered, “of rivalry and revenge, but suffice to say that it ended in my father, Xympwll the Cruel, taking a terrible vengeance upon me. I fled from his court into the wastes of Grxiwynn, raving mad, and it was there that the tribesmen of Velox found me and took me to the Wise Man of Oorps in the mountains beyond Katatonia. He nursed me and carved that for me. It took him two years, and all through those two years I remained raving, living off dust and dew and roots, as he lived. The engravings had mystical significance, the runes contain the sum of his great wisdom, the tiny pictures show all that there is to show of physical love. Is it not beautiful? More beautiful than that which it has replaced?”
Her glance was modest; she nodded slowly.
“It is indeed, very beautiful,” she agreed. And then she looked up at him and he saw that tears glistened in her eyes. “But did it have to be made of Sandstone?”
“There is little else,” he explained sadly, “in the mountains beyond Katatonia.”
(From The Outcast of Kitzoprenia,
Volume 67 in The History of the Purple Poignard)
ELRIC AT THE END OF TIME
ELRIC AT THE END OF TIME
(1981)
CHAPTER ONE
In Which Mrs. Persson Detects an Above Average
Degree of Chaos in the Megaflow
RETURNING FROM CHINA to London and the Spring of 1936, Una Persson found an unfamiliar quality of pathos in most of the friends she had last seen, as far as she recalled, during the Blitz on her way back from 1970. Then they had been desperately hearty: it was a comfort to understand that the condition was not permanent. Here, at present, Pierrot ruled and she felt she possessed a better grip on her power. This was, she admitted with shame, her favourite moral climate for it encouraged in her an enormously gratifying sense of spiritual superiority: the advantage