Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [65]
“Waiting for me? How could you have known that I should lose my way and come here?”
“It was ordained by the Fates that you should do so. Do not question that.”
“Where are we?”
“In the ruins of forgotten Nineveh. This was a great city once, larger than Babylon and almost as powerful. The Medes and Babylonians razed it three hundred years ago.”
“Nineveh,” Camilla breathed, “there are legends about it.”
“Forget those you have heard and remember this—you are safe here, but not for long. The remnants of Ormuzd’s supporters fled here and form a strong company—but not so strong that we can last for ever against Ahriman’s dreadful minions.”
“Now I realize what happened,” Simon said. “We followed the Tigris river instead of the Euphrates.”
“That is so.”
Behind them the wild baying came closer. Abaris signed to them to follow him.
Abaris led them into a dark sidestreet and then into a maze of alleys choked with fallen masonry, weed-grown and dank. By a small two-storeyed house which was still virtually intact, he stopped, withdrew a bolt and motioned them inside. They took their horses with them.
The house was much larger inside than it seemed and Simon guessed that it consisted of several houses now. There were about two hundred people in the large room behind the one they had entered. They sat, squatted and stood in positions of acute weariness. Many were priests. Simon recognized several cults.
Here were Chaldaeans, the ruling caste of Babylon, proud and arrogant-seeming still, Egyptian priests of Osiris, a Hebrew rabbi. Others Simon did not recognize and Abaris whispered answers to his questions. There were Brahmin from India, Pythagoreans from Samos and Crotona in Etrusca, Parsees from the deserts of Kerman and Hindustan, Druids from the far North, from the bleak islands on the world’s edge, blind priests of the Cimmerians who, history told, were the ancestors of the Thracians and Macedonians.
Alexander had destroyed their temples, scattered them. Only in the far North and the far East were the priests of Light still organized and they had sent deputations to Nineveh to aid their brothers.
And Alexander’s wrath had been mainly turned on the Zoroastrians, the Persian and Chaldaean Magi, strongest of the sects who worshipped the powers of Law and Light.
Here they all were, weary men, tired by a battle which required no material weapons yet sapped their vitality as they strove to hold Ahriman at bay.
Abaris introduced Simon and Camilla to the gathering, and he appeared to know the best part of their story, how they had been present at the Cottyttia, how they had fled from Pela, hounded by the infernal hordes, crossed the Bosphorus and came, at length, to fallen Nineveh.
Outside, Nineveh’s streets were filled with a hideous throng, weird beasts of all kinds, dead souls and malevolent denizens of Hell. Three-headed, snake-tailed dogs, winged horses, chimerae, basilisks, sphinx, centaurs and griffins, fire-spewing salamanders. All roamed the broken streets hunting for Ahriman’s prey. But there was an area where they could not pass—an area which gave out emanations which meant death for them, so they avoided this area.
For the meantime, Simon and Camilla were safe. But it was stalemate, for while they were in Nineveh, secure against the forces of evil, Alexander strode the golden towers of Babylon and readied the world for the final conquest.
CHAPTER SIX
Abaris told Simon: “Alexander slew your friend Hano the Phoenician a week ago.”
Simon cursed: “May the Harpies pluck his eyes from his skull!”
Camilla said: “Do not evoke the Harpies, also. We have enough to contend with.”
Abaris half smiled, waved his hand towards a small table in a corner of the room. “You had better eat now. You must be very tired.”
Gratefully the pair began to eat, drinking the spiced wine of the Magi—a wine which was unnaturally invigorating. Abaris said, while they ate:
“Ahriman dwells constantly, now, in Alexander’s body. He intends to make a final campaign, north and east, to subdue