Sailor on the Seas of Fate - Michael Moorcock [15]
Still they climbed and now more of the serpentine things they had seen earlier began to writhe around their feet, hampering them further, for all that Hown sang his sleeping song until he was hoarse.
"We can survive this only a little longer," said Ashnar the Lynx, moving close to Elric. "We shall be in no condition to meet the sorcerer if we ever find him or his sister."
Elric nodded a gloomy head. "My thoughts, too, yet what else may we do, Ashnar?"
"Nothing," said Ashnar in a low voice. "Nothing."
"Where? Where? Where?" The word rustled all about them. Many of the party were becoming openly nervous.
V
* * *
They had reached the top of the passage. The querulous voice was much louder now, but it quavered more. They saw an archway and beyond the archway a lighted chamber.
"Agak's room, without doubt," said Ashnar, taking a better grip on his sword.
"Possibly," said Elric. He felt detached from his body. Perhaps it was the heat and the exhaustion, or his growing sense of disquiet, but something made him withdraw into himself and hesitate before entering the chamber.
The place was octagonal and each of its eight sloping sides was of a different color and each color changed constantly. Occasionally the walls became semitransparent, revealing a complete view of the ruined city (or collection of cities) far below, and also a view of the twin castle to this one, still connected by tubes and wires.
It was the large pool in the center of the chamber which attracted their attention mostly. It seemed deep and was full of evil-smelling, viscous stuff. It bubbled. Shapes formed in it. Grotesque and strange, beautiful and familiar, the shapes seemed always upon the brink of taking permanent form before falling back into the stuff of the pool. And the voice was still louder and there was no question now that it came from the pool.
"What? What? Who invades?"
Elric forced himself closer to the pool and for a moment saw his own face staring out at him before it melted.
"Who invades? Ah! I am too weak!"
Elric spoke to the pool. "We are of those you would destroy," he said. "We are those on whom you would feed."
"Ah! Agak! Agak! I am sick! Where are you?"
Ashnar and Brut joined Elric. The faces of the warriors were filled with disgust.
"Agak," growled Ashnar the Lynx, his eyes narrowing. "At last some sign that the sorcerer is here!"
The others had all crowded in, to stand as far away from the pool as possible, but all stared, fascinated by the variety of the shapes forming and disintegrating in the viscous liquid.
"I weaken. . . . My energy needs to be replenished. . . . We must begin now, Agak. . . . It took us so long to reach this place. I thought I could rest. But there is disease here. It fills my body. Agak. Awaken, Agak. Awaken!"
"Some servant of Agak's, charged with the defense of the chamber?" suggested Hown Serpent-tamer in a small voice.
But Elric continued to stare into the pool as he began, he thought, to realize the truth.
"Will Agak wake?" Brut said. "Will he come?" He glanced nervously around him.
"Agak!" called Ashnar the Lynx. "Coward!"
"Agak!" cried many of the other warriors, brandishing their swords.
But Elric said nothing and he noted, too, that Hawkmoon and Corum and Erekosë all remained silent. He guessed that they must be filled with the same dawning understanding.
He looked at them. In Erekosë's eyes he saw an agony, a pity both for himself and his comrades.
"We are the Four Who Are One," said Erekosë. His voice shook.
Elric was seized by an alien impulse, an impulse which disgusted and terrified him. "No. . . ." He attempted to sheathe Stormbringer,