Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [67]
There was a peculiar communication between them. Simon felt as if he were looking into the Abyss of Hell and yet sensed something else lurking in the eyes—something cleaner that had long since been subdued and almost erased.
Then he was in motion, running for the steps that wound upwards around the Temple of Baal.
He bounded up the steps, twenty, fifty, a hundred and he had still not reached Alexander who stood like a statue awaiting him.
The God-Emperor turned as Simon finally reached the upper level. As if Simon were not there he strode back through the shaded pillars and into the building. That was where Simon confronted him.
Sunlight lanced through the pillars and criss-crossed the place in a network of shadow and light. Alexander now sat on a huge golden throne, his chin resting in one hand, his back bent as if in meditation. Steps led up to the dais on which the throne was placed. Simon stopped at the first step and looked up at the conqueror of the world.
Alexander leaned back in his throne and clasped his hands in front of him. He smiled slowly, at first a smile of irony which twisted into a grin of malice and hatred.
“There is a sacred bull in Memphis,” Alexander said slowly, “which is called Apis. It is an oracle. Seven years ago I went to Memphis to hear the sacred bull and to ascertain whether it had, indeed, oracular powers. When it saw me it spoke a rhyme. I have remembered that rhyme for seven years.”
Simon drew the Cloak of the Magi closer about him. “What did it say?” he asked in a strained half-whisper.
Alexander shook his head. “I did not understand it until recently. It went:
The City that thy father lost shall fall to thee,
The City that gives birth to fools shall bear a sword.
The City that thy father lost shall be its home.
The City that thou mak’st thy home shall feel its edge.”
Simon brooded over this for a moment and then he nodded, understanding.
“Byzantium, Abdera, Byzantium—Babylon,” he said.
“How sharp is the sword?” Alexander asked and changed shape.
A dazzling orange-golden haze burst upwards and a black and scarlet figure stood framed in the centre. It vaguely resembled Alexander but was twice as high, twice as broad, and bore a weirdly wrought staff in its hand.
“So!” Simon cried. “At last you show your true shape. You bear the Wand of Ahriman, I see!”
“Aye, mortal—and that only Ahriman may bear.”
From beneath the Cloak of the Magi, Simon produced a short javelin and a small shield of about ten inches in diameter. He held the shield in front of his face and through it could see unnerving and alien shapes where the figure of Ahriman stood. He was seeing the true shape of Ahriman, not the warped and metamorphosed body of Alexander.
He drew back his arm and hurled the javelin at a certain spot in the intricate supernatural pattern.
There came an unearthly groaning and muttering from the figure. It threw up its arms and the wand flickered and sent a bolt of black lightning at Simon who put up his shield again and repelled it, though he was hurled back against a far column. He leaped to his feet, drawing his sword and saw that, as Abaris had told him, Alexander had resumed his usual shape.
The God-King staggered and frowned. He turned and saw Simon standing there, sword in hand.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Prepare to fight me, Alexander!” Simon cried.
“But why?”
“You must never know why.”
And Simon leapt forward.
Alexander drew his own lovely blade, a slim thing of strong tempering, of glowing star-metal with a handle of black onyx.
The iron clashed with a musical note, so fine were both blades and the two men feinted, parried and stabbed, fighting in the Greek manner, using the points of their swords rather than the edges.
Alexander came in swiftly, grasped Simon’s wrist and pushed his sword back, bringing his own sword in, but Simon side-stepped just in time and the blade grazed his thigh. Alexander cursed a very human curse and grinned briefly