Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [170]
The white road blazed on every side.
Elric felt frail and vulnerable beneath the gaze of that multiplicity of spheres and realms. He could barely keep his sanity in the face of so many sudden changes, so much new knowledge. He thought that Captain Quelch’s features twisted, faded a little and then became of quite a different shape, with eyes that reminded him of Arioch’s. Then, just as von Bek realized the same thing, Elric knew they had been duped. This creature could still change its shape!
A Chaos Lord, no doubt, who had not been as badly wounded as the others, who had scented the life-stuff within the temple and found a way of admittance. Perhaps it was Quelch who had drained the old man of life and had failed to feed on the children only because the girl unconsciously resisted him. The children gathered around her, forming a compact circle. Their eyes glared into those of an insect, into the very face of the Fly. Now Quelch’s body shifted and trembled and quaked and cracked and took its true, bizarrely baroque shape, all asymmetrical carapace and coruscating scales, brass feathery wings, the same obscene stink which had filled the Xanardwys Valley; as if he could keep his human shape no longer, must burst back into his true form, hungering for souls, craving every scrap of mortal essence to feed his depleted veins.
“If you seek to escape your Conqueror’s vengeance, my lord, you are mistaken,” said the girl. “You are already condemned. See what you have become. See what you would feed off to sustain your life. Look upon what you would destroy—upon what you once wished to be. Look upon all this and remember, Lord Demon, that this is what you have turned your back upon. It is not yours. We are not yours. You cannot feed off us. Here we are free and powerful as you. But you never deceived me, for I am called Far-Seeing and First-of-Her-Kind and now I sense my destiny, which is to live my own tale. For it is by our stories that we create the reality of the multiverse and by our faith that we sustain it. Your tale is almost ended, great Lord of Chaos—”
And at this she was surprised by the great beast’s bawling mockery, its only remaining weapon against her. It shook with mephitic mirth, its scales clattering and switching. It clutched at a minor triumph.
“It is you who are mistaken, my Lady Far-Seeing. I am not of Chaos! I am Chaos’s enemy. I fought well but was caught up with them as they fell. Their master is not my master. I serve the great Singularity, the Harbinger of Final Order, the Original Insect. I am Quelch and I am, foolish girl, a Lord of Law! It is my party which would abolish Chaos. We fight for complete control of the Cosmic Balance. Nothing less. Those Chaos Engineers, those adventurers, those rebellious rogues and corsairs who have so plagued the Second Ether, I am their nemesis!” The monstrous head turned, almost craftily. “Can you not see how different I am?”
In truth, Elric and von Bek could see only similarity. This Quelch of Law was identical in appearance to Arioch of Chaos. Even their hatreds and ambitions seemed alike.
“It is sometimes impossible to understand the differences between the parties,” murmured von Bek to Elric. “They have fought so long they have become almost the same thing. This, I think, is decadence. It is time, I suspect, for the Conjunction.” He explained nothing and Elric desired to know no more.
Lord Quelch now towered above them, constantly licking lips glittering with fiery saliva, scratching at his crystalline carapace, his moody, insect eyes searching the reaches of the multiverse, perhaps for allies.
“I can call upon the Authority of the Great Singularity,” Lord Quelch boasted. “You are powerless. I must feed. I must continue my work. Now I will eat you.”
One reptilian foot stepped forward, then another as he bore down upon the gathered children, while Far-Seeing stared back bravely in an attitude of challenge. Then von Bek and Elric had moved between the monster and its intended prey. Stormbringer still shone with the remaining grey-green light of its