Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [61]
“Cotys. Cotys. Cotys.”
The candles spurted seething light and sent shadows leaping around the walls of the caverns. Then a peculiar golden orange brightness appeared at the top of the column to which Camilla was tied and seemed to twine and coil down the pillar.
Other shapes joined the dancing humans. Twisted shapes with great horns on their heads and the faces of beasts, the hoofs of goats.
Simon moved forward, his sword held before him in instinctive protection against the evil in the cavern.
“Cease!” A name came to his lips and he shouted it out: “In the name of Ormuzd—cease!”
A huge swelling of unhuman laughter came from the boiling brightness on the pillar and Simon saw figures form in it. Figures that were man-shaped and seemed to be at the same time part of the structure of a huge face, lined and pouched with a toothless, gaping mouth and closed eyes.
Then the eyes opened and seemed to fix themselves on Simon. The smaller figures writhed about it and it laughed again. Bile was in his throat, his head throbbed, but he gripped the sword and pushed his way through the sweating bodies of the worshippers. They grinned at him maliciously but did not attempt to stop him.
He was lost in the pull of those malicious eyes.
“Ormuzd is too weak to protect thee, mortal,” the mouth said. “Ahriman rules here—and will soon rule the world through his vessel, Alexander.”
Still Simon pushed his way towards the pillar, towards Camilla and the leering face above her.
“Ormuzd will not aid thee, mortal. We are many and stronger. Behold me! What do you see?”
Simon made no reply. He gripped the steel blade tighter and advanced closer.
“Do you see us all? Do you see the one these revelers call Cotys? Do you see the Evil One?”
Simon staggered forwards, the last few paces between him and the entity coiling about the pillar. Olympias now pushed her face forward, the snakes hissing, their forked tongues flickering.
“Go to her, Thracian—my son knows thee—go to her and we’ll have a double sacrifice this night.”
With his free hand, Simon pushed against the scaly bodies of the snakes and sent the woman staggering back.
With trancelike deliberation he cut the bonds that held Camilla to the pillar. But many hands, orange-gold hands, shot out from the column and gripped him in a shuddering, yet ecstatic embrace. He howled and smote at the hands and, at the touch of steel they flickered back again into their scintillating parent body.
Then he felt the clammy hands of the acolytes upon his body. Sensing that he had some advantage, Simon dragged a bunch of herbs from his shirt—herbs which Massiva had given him—and plunged them into the candle flames. A pungent aroma began to come from the flaring herbs and the naked worshippers dropped back. The apparition itself seemed to fade slightly, its light less bright.
Simon sprang at the shape, his sword flashing like silver and passing through the hazy face which snarled and laughed alternately. The sword clanged on the stone of the column. Desperately, he drew back his arm to strike another blow, his whole body weakened. He felt like an old, worn man.
“Ormuzd!” he shouted as he struck again.
Again the face snarled at him; again the golden hands shot out to embrace him so that his body thrilled with terrible weakening joy.
Then Simon felt that he was all his ancestors and a knowledge came to him, the knowledge of darkness and chaos which his forebears had possessed.
And this knowledge, though terrifying, contained within it a further knowledge—the awareness that the Forces of Darkness