Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [167]
All attention was on her. Even Quelch’s face had grown serious, while outside came the sounds of the Chaos creatures preparing for a fresh attack.
Then she was transformed, her face glowing with a pink-gold radiance, bars of silver light streaming from hair that seemed on fire, her rich, dark skin vibrant with supernatural life. “Strike!” she cried. “Strike, Prince Elric. Strike to the heart, to the centre! Strike now or our future is forever forbidden us!”
There came a guttural cough from the doorway. They had an impression of a jeweled eye, a wriggling red mouth, and they knew that some rogue Chaos Lord, scenting blood and souls, had determined to taste them for himself.
CHAPTER THREE
Walking Between the Worlds
“Strike! O, my lord! Strike!”
The girl’s voice rang out, a pure, golden chord against the cacophony of Chaos, and she guided the black sword’s fleshly iron towards the old man’s heart.
“Strike, my lord. And sing your song!”
Then she made a movement with her palms and the runesword plunged downwards, plunged into the heart, plunged through sinew and bone and flesh into the very stone beneath and suddenly, through that white alchemy, a pale blue flame began to burn within the blade, gradually turning to pewter and fiery bronze, then to a brilliant, steady, silver.
Von Bek gasped. “The sword of the archangel himself!”
But Elric had no time to ask what he meant for now the transformed runesword burned brighter still, blinding the children who whimpered and fell back before it, making Captain Quelch curse and grumble that he was endangered, while the girl was suddenly gone, leaving only her voice behind, lifted in a song of extraordinary beauty and spiritual purity; a song which seemed to ring from the steel itself; a song so wonderful, speaking of such joys and fulfillment, that Elric felt his heart lifting, even as the Chaos Lord’s long, grey tongue flicked at his heels. From somewhere within him all the longing he had known, all the sadness and the grief and the loneliness, all his aspirations and dreams, his times of intense happiness, his loves and his hatreds, his affections and his dislikes, all were voiced in the same music which issued from his throat, as if his whole being had been concentrated into this single song. It was a victory and a plea. It was a celebration and an agony. It was nothing more nor less than the Song of Elric, the song of a single, lonely individual in an uncertain world, the song of a troubled intellect and a generous heart, of the last lord of his people, the brooding prince of ruins, the White Wolf of Melniboné.
And most of all, it was a song of love, of yearning idealism and desperate sadness for the fate of the world.
The silver light blazed brighter still and at its centre, where the old man’s body had been and where the blade still stood, there now hovered a chalice of finely wrought gold and silver, its rim and base emblazoned with precious stones which themselves emitted powerful rays. Elric, barely able to cling to the sword as the white energy poured through him, heard Count von Bek cry out in recognition. And then the vision was gone. And blackness, fine and silky as a butcher’s familiar, spread away in all directions, as if they stood at the very beginning of Time, before the coming of the Light.
Then, as they watched, it seemed that spiders spun gleaming web after web upon that black void, filling it with their argent silk.
They saw shapes emerging, connected by the webs, filling the vacuum, crowding it, enriching it with wonder and colour, countless mighty spheres and curving roads and an infinite wealth of experience.
“This,” said Renark von Bek, “is what we can make of Chaos. Here is the multiverse; those webs you see are the wide roads that pass between the realms. We call them ‘moonbeams’ and it is here that creatures trade from world to world and where ships arrive from the Second Ether, bringing