Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [164]
The interior was simple. It was bathed in a blue light from above and contained no furniture or evidence of ritual. There was a plain geometric design on the floor and coloured windows set high near the roof.
The place was filled with children of all ages, gathered around an old man who lay near the centre of the temple, on the tiles.
He was clearly dying. He beckoned for Elric to approach. It was as if he, like the Lords of Chaos, had been drained of all his life-stuff. Elric knelt down and asked if there were anything he needed, but the old man shook his head. “Only a promise, sir. I am Patrius, High Priest of Donblas the Justice Maker. I was able to save these, of all Xanardwys’s population, because they were attending my class. I drew on the properties of this temple to throw a protection around us. But the effort of making such desperate and powerful magic has killed me, I fear. All I wish now is that you take the children to safety. Find a way out of this world, for soon it must collapse into unformed matter, into the primal stuff of Chaos. It is inevitable. There is no hope for this realm, sir. Chaos devours us.”
A dark-skinned girl began to weep at this and the old man reached out his hand to comfort her.
“She weeps for her parents,” said the old man. “She weeps for what became of them and what they will become. All these children have second sight. I have tutored them in the ways of the multiverse. Take them to the roads, sir. They will survive, I am sure. It is all you need do. Lead them to the roads!”
A silence fell. The old man died.
Elric murmured to von Bek—“Roads? He entrusts me with a task that’s meaningless to me.”
“Not to me, Prince Elric.” Von Bek was looking warily in Captain Quelch’s direction. The man had climbed a stone stair and stood peering out of the windows in the direction of the defeated legions of hell. He seemed to be talking to himself in a foreign language.
“You understood the elder? You know a way out of this doomed place?”
“Aye, Prince Elric. I told you. I am an adept. A jugador. I play the Game of Time and roam the roads between the worlds. I sense that you are a comrade—perhaps even more than that—and that you are unconscious of your destiny. It is not my place to reveal anything to you more than is necessary—but if you would join with me in the Game of Time, become a mukhamir, then you have only to say.”
“My interest is in returning to my own sphere and to the woman I love,” said Elric simply. He reached out a long-fingered, bone-white hand, on which throbbed a single Actorios, and touched the hair of the sobbing child. It was a gesture which gave the watching von Bek much insight into the character of this moody lord. The girl looked up, her eyes desperate for reassurance, but she found little hope in the ruby orbs of the alien creature who stared down at her, his expression full of loss, of yearning for some impossible ambition. Yet she spoke: “Will you save us, sir?”
“Madam,” said the prince of ruins, with a small smile and a bow, “I regret that I am in a poor position to save myself, let alone an entire college of tyro seers, but it is in my self-interest that we should all be free of this. That you can be sure of…”
Captain Quelch came down the steps with an awkward swagger and a hearty, if unconvincing, chuckle. “We’ll be out of this in no time, little lady, be certain of that.”
But it was Elric to whom the young woman still looked and it was to Elric she spoke. “I am called Far-Seeing and First-of-Her-Kind. The former name explains my skills. The latter explains my future and is mysterious to me. You have the means of saving us, sir. That I can see.”
“A young witch!” Captain Quelch chuckled again, this time with an odd note, almost of self-reference. “Well, my dear. We are certainly saved, with so much sorcery at our disposal!”
Elric met the eyes of Far-Seeing and was almost shocked by the beauty he saw there. She