Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [33]
Sensing something ominous in what he saw, Rackhir asked the question directly: “Where is the next Gate?”
Yerleroo hesitated, his mouth worked and then he smiled. “Where the winds meet,” he said.
Rackhir declared angrily: “That’s no answer.”
“Yes it is,” said Lamsar softly behind him. “A fair answer.”
“Now we shall dance,” Yerleroo said. “First you shall watch our dance and then you shall join in.”
“Dance?” said Rackhir, wishing he had brought a sword, or at least a dagger.
“Yes—you will like it. Everyone likes it. You will find it will do you good.”
“What if we do not wish to dance?”
“You must—it is for your own good, be assured.”
“And he—” Rackhir pointed at one of the sullen men. “Does he enjoy it?”
“It is for his own good.”
Yerleroo clapped his hands and at once the fair-haired people leapt into a frenetic, senseless dance. Some of them sang. The sullen people did not sing. After a little hesitation, they began to prance dully about, their frowning features contrasting with their jerking bodies. Soon the whole village was dancing, whirling, singing a monotonous song.
Yerleroo flashed by, whirling. “Come, join in now.”
“We had better leave,” Lamsar said with a faint smile. They backed away.
Yerleroo saw them. “No—you must not leave—you must dance.”
They turned and ran as fast as the old man could go. The dancing villagers changed the direction of their dance and began to whirl menacingly towards them in a horrible semblance of gaiety.
“There’s nothing for it,” Lamsar said and stood his ground, observing them through ironic eyes. “The mountain gods must be invoked. A pity, for sorcery wearies me. Let us hope their magic extends to this plane. Gordar!”
Words in an unusually harsh language issued from Lamsar’s old mouth. The whirling villagers came on.
Lamsar pointed at them.
The villagers became suddenly petrified and slowly, disturbingly, their bodies caught in a hundred positions, turned to smooth, black basalt.
“It was for their own good,” Lamsar smiled grimly. “Come, to the place where the winds meet,” and he took Rackhir there quite swiftly.
At the place where the winds met they found the second gateway, a column of amber-coloured flame, shot through with streaks of green. They entered it and, instantly, were in a world of dark seething colour. Above them was a sky of murky red in which other colours shifted, agitated, changing. Ahead of them lay a forest, dark, blue, black, heavy, mottled green, the tops of its trees moving like a wild tide. It was a howling land of unnatural phenomena.
Lamsar pursed his lips. “On this plane Chaos rules. We must get to the next gate swiftly for obviously the Lords of Chaos will seek to stop us.”
“Is it always like this?” Rackhir gasped.
“It is always boiling midnight—but the rest, it changes with the moods of the lords. There are no rules at all.”
They pressed on through the bounding, blossoming scenery as it erupted and changed around them. Once they saw a huge winged figure in the sky, smoky yellow and roughly man-shaped.
“Vezhan,” Lamsar said. “Let’s hope he did not see us.”
“Vezhan!” Rackhir whispered the name—for it was to Vezhan that he had once been loyal.
They crept on, uncertain of their direction or even of their speed in that disturbing land.
At length, they came to the shores of a peculiar ocean.
It was a grey, heaving, timeless sea, a mysterious sea which stretched into infinity. There could be no other shores beyond this rolling plain of water. No other lands or rivers or dark, cool woods, no other men or women or ships. It was a sea which led to nowhere. It was complete to itself—a sea.
Over this timeless ocean hovered a brooding ochre sun which cast moody shadows of black and green across the water, giving the whole scene something of the look of being enclosed in a vast cavern, for the sky above was gnarled and black with ancient clouds. And all the while the doom-carried crash of breakers, the lonely, fated monotony of the ever-rearing