Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [183]
“What the hell is that?” Patrick valiantly demands, trying to guess where the money’s hidden.
The albino seems amused. For a moment, he has a panting, wolfish air to him as he reaches both hands towards the case.
Somehow the black sword, almost as tall as he is, settles into Zenith’s grasp, its voice changing to one of profound satisfaction as it unites with its master. It shudders as if with eager anticipation. Now, with a new calmness, Monsieur Zenith turns towards the seated man, and there is still an element of compassion in his flaming red eyes.
The whole world fills with the sword’s rising song. The runes race and whirl, forming and re-forming to create whole new languages of power as they writhe up and down its black length. The universe trembles. The room fills with darkness. That same darkness floods out of the window and silences the Quai D’Hiver.
As Patrick begins to vomit uncontrollably, the albino smiles.
“It is your release,” he says.
THE ROAMING FOREST
THE ROAMING FOREST
A Tale of the Red Archer
(2006)
CHAPTER ONE
The Rider in Red
THE NIGHT WAS a shrieking chaos of ragged cloud racing across a sky of bruised red, green and gold. All about the scarlet clad rider the earth seemed to move like the ocean, wind whipping grass and trees into a madman’s dance. Bolts of lightning, slashing down from every point of the compass, made the man’s horse snort and flatten its ears, white-eyed, nostrils flaring, as it bore its bowman master on at a killing gallop.
Some old terror buried within the archer warned him that this was no normal tempest. It was not the first he had ever encountered, engendered by sorcery. He had not known such a storm on this island, but it spoke of a powerful evil at play. He was anxious to ride out of it as swiftly as he could.
At last he mounted a hill. The sky was still in turmoil but, as the first fingers of dawn came creeping under the night, the main storm was now behind him, hanging above the valley where the dark mass of a forest somehow seemed to absorb the disturbance as he watched. The red-clad archer frowned. He could have sworn that the forest had been further away the last time he looked back.
On this island, the archer was known as Red Ronan, but his given name was Rackhir. He had lived here for over a year. He wiped a mixture of water and sweat from his face and neck, throwing back his hood to catch the cool following breeze. The stallion, a big, healthy roan, was exhausted. His coat steaming, he bent to crop the lush grass. Rackhir dismounted. Grey light spread through the beginning morning and the storm subsided, falling into the forest like smoke sucked through a window. Sunrise, and the sky became its normal pale cloudy canopy. In the distance, in the next valley, Rackhir heard pipes and drums. He wondered if they were celebrating the end of the storm or hoping to drive something off. As he led his horse down a well-marked sheep-track he murmured the words of a tune which had become familiar to him since he had found himself living amongst these people.
They called him Ronan because his given name defeated their familiar tongue. They had misheard him when he first introduced himself and “Ronan” was what they thought he had said. “Ronan” resembled r’nan, his people’s word for archer. In his own land of Phum, Rackhir ranked high amongst the Warrior Priests who served Phum’s patriarch. Though by training more warrior than priest he was, by disposition, more priest than warrior. A curiosity about the world and a quest for a mysterious city had brought him accidentally to this island nation where he originally understood no language. Their culture was alien to a well-educated