Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [165]
This was no time for abstract introspection! Even as he looked behind him, Elric saw the walls of the temple begin to shudder, lose substance, and then re-form. But those within had nowhere to flee. They heard grunts and howls from outside.
Shambling Chaos creatures pawed at the building, their sensibilities too crude to be challenged by argument, science or sorcery. The revived citizens of Xanardwys now only knew blind need, a horrible hunger to devour any form of flesh. By that means alone could they keep even this faint grip on life and what they had once been. They were driven by the knowledge of utter and everlasting extermination; their souls unjustly damned, mere fodder for the Lords of Hell.
Once, Elric’s folk had made a pact with Chaos in all her vital glory, in all her power and magnificent creativity. They had seen only the golden promise of Chaos, not the vile decadence which greed and blind ambition could make of it. Yet, when they had discovered Evil and married that to Chaos, then the true immorality of their actions had become plain to all save themselves. They had lost the will to see beyond their own culture and convictions, their own needs and brute survival. Their decadence was all too evident to the Young Kingdoms and to one sickly inheritor of the Ruby Throne, Elric; who, yearning to know how his great people had turned to cruel and melancholy incest, had left his inheritance in the keeping of his cousin; had left the woman he loved beyond life to seek an answer to his questions…But, he reflected, instead he had come to Xanardwys to die.
Renark von Bek was running for the steps, his weapon in his hands. Even as he reached the top a creature, flapping on leathery wings in parody of the Chaos Lords, burst through the window. Von Bek threw his weapon to his shoulder. There was a sharp report and the creature screamed, falling backwards with a great, ragged wound in its head. “Angel shot,” called von Bek. “I carry nothing else, these days.” Quelch seemed to understand him and approve.
While he could not grasp the nature of the weapon, Elric was grateful for it, for now the door of the temple bulged inward.
He felt a soft hand on his wrist. He looked down to see the girl staring up at him. “Your sword must sing its song,” she said. “This I know. Your sword must sing its song—and you must sing with it. You must sing together. It will give us our road.” Her eyes were unfocused. She saw into the future, as Arioch had done, or was it the past? She spoke distantly. Elric knew he was in the presence of a great natural psychic—but still her words hardly made sense to him.
“Aye—the sword will be singing, my lady, soon enough,” he said as he caressed her hair, longing for his youth, his happiness and his Cymoril. “But I fear you’ll not favour the tune Stormbringer plays.” Gently he pushed her to go with the children and comfort them. Then his right arm swung like a heavy pendulum and his right gauntlet settled upon the black hilt of his runesword until, with a single, sudden movement, he drew the blade from its scabbard and Stormbringer gave a yelp of glee, like a thirsty hound craving blood.
“These souls are mine, Lord Arioch!”
But he knew that, ironically, he would be stealing a little of his patron’s own life-stuff; for that was what animated these Chaos creatures, their bizarre deformities creating an obscene forest of flesh as they pressed through