Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [54]
With a wrench he was free of the king’s grasp and backed panting away from him.
“They said you were Ahriman’s spawn—and I did not believe them,” he gasped.
Alexander grimaced, flung back the bed-clothes and leapt to the ground, advancing towards Simon, with hands outstretched.
“I am Zeus’s son—born of god and mortal to rule the world. Abase yourself, heretic, for I have the power to send you to Hades!”
“All men have that power,” Simon said, turned and ran for the great doors, tugged them open and, before he could be stopped, fled down the shouting corridors, blind to everything but the need to escape from the screaming madman behind him.
He remembered little of the flight, of the two fights, in the first of which he somehow gained a weapon, of his breathless running through the streets of Babylon with hordes of soldiers seeking him out.
He ran.
He had run himself virtually to death when several warriors pinned him in a blind alley and he turned, snarling like an animal to defend himself. Crouching, sword raised, he waited for them as they cautiously advanced.
They had not expected such ferocity. He had cut the first soldier down in a trice and sliced the flesh from another’s arm.
In front of him, as if superimposed on the real scene before him, was the great, sensuous head of Alexander still roaring with crazy laughter.
Simon had seen madmen many times. But Alexander had more than madness. He slashed with his sword and missed his target, fell forward, rolled on his back, brought his sword across his face to deflect a blade which had hurtled down through the confused night. He edged back, flung himself sideways, slashing, scrambled up and brought the edge of his sword up to chop a man’s jugular.
Then he was running again, every limb aching, but a terrible fear, a fear of more than death or torture, driving, driving him onward to escape.
When the silent, dark-robed men appeared out of the night and surrounded him he cut at one but his sword seemed to meet metal, his hand went numb and the blade fell to the stones of the streets.
Alexander’s face rose before him, laughing, laughing. The roaring, evil merriment filled his head, then his whole body until it seemed that he, Simon, was Alexander, that he was enjoying the bloody joke, the evil, malignant glee pouring wildly from his shaking body.
Then peace of a kind, and hazy, mysterious dreams where he saw strange shapes moving through the smoke from a million red and glowing braziers.
Simon felt a hard, smooth surface beneath his back.
He opened his eyes warily.
A lean, white, thin-lipped face looked kindly down at him.
“I am Abaris,” he said.
“Simon of Byzantium,” said the Thracian.
“You have witnessed darkness?” It was only half a question.
“Yes,” Simon replied, bemused.
“We are men of light. The Magi welcome you. You are safe here.”
“Magi? They are priests in Persia—but you’re not Persian.”
“That is so.”
“Abaris? There is an Abaris of legend—a wizard, was he not—a priest of Apollo who rode on an arrow?”
The Magi made no reply to this, simply smiled.
“You have incurred the wrath of Alexander. How long would you say you had to live?”
“A strange question. I’d say as long as my wits were sharp enough to evade the searchings of his soldiers.”
“You would be wrong.”
Simon pushed himself upright on the wide bench and looked around him. Two other priests sat regarding him from across the bare room. Daylight filtered in from a hole in the ceiling.
“Do I really owe you my life?”
“We think you do—but you are in no debt. We wish we could give such concrete aid to all enemies of Alexander.”
“I am not his enemy—he is mine.”
“You have witnessed what he is—can you still say that?”
Simon nodded. “I am his enemy,” he agreed and then amended this with: “Or at least the enemy of what he represents.”
“You are exact—we also are the enemies of what Alexander represents.”
Simon put his head on one side and smiled slightly. “Ah—let us be careful. He is insane, that is all.