Sailor on the Seas of Fate - Michael Moorcock [19]
He could find neither thoughts nor emotions in him which would relate to what had happened. There were no words he could use. He stood looking dumbly at Ashnar the Lynx and he wondered why Ashnar giggled and chewed at his beard and scraped at the flesh of his own face with his fingernails, his sword forgotten upon the floor of the gray chamber.
"Now I have flesh again. Now I have flesh," Ashnar kept saying.
Elric wondered why Hown Serpent-tamer lay curled in a ball at Ashnar's feet, and why when Brut of Lashmar emerged from the passage he fell down and lay stretched upon the floor, stirring a little and moaning as if in disturbed slumber. Otto Blendker came into the chamber. His sword was in its scabbard. His eyes were tight shut and he hugged at himself, shivering.
Elric thought to himself: I must forget all this or sanity will disappear forever.
He went to Brut and helped the blond warrior to his feet. "What did you see?"
"More than I deserved, for all my sins. We were trapped—trapped in that skull. . . ." Then Brut began to weep as a small child might weep and Elric took the tall warrior in his own arms and stroked his head and could not find words or sounds with which to comfort him.
"We must go," said Erekosë. His eyes were glazed. He staggered as he walked.
Thus, dragging those who had fainted, leading those who had gone mad, leaving those who had died behind, they fled through the dead passages of Gagak's body, no longer plagued by the things she had created in her attempt to rid that body of those she had experienced as an invading disease. The passages and chambers were cold and brittle and the men were glad when they stood outside and saw the ruins, the sourceless shadows, the red, static sun.
Otto Blendker was the only one of the warriors who seemed to retain his sanity through the ordeal, when they had been absorbed, unknowingly, into the body of the Four Who Were One. He dragged his brand from his belt and he took out his tinder and ignited it. Soon the brand was flaming and the others lighted theirs from his. Elric trudged to where Agak's remains still lay and he shuddered as he recognized in a monstrous stone face part of his own features. He felt that the stuff could not possibly burn, but it did. Behind him Gagak's body blazed, too. They were swiftly consumed and pillars of growling fire jutted into the sky, sending up a smoke of white and crimson which for a little while obscured the red disk of the sun.
The men watched the corpses burn.
"I wonder," said Corum, "if the captain knew why he sent us here?"
"Or if he suspected what would happen?" said Hawkmoon. Hawkmoon's tone was near to resentful.
"Only we—only that being—could battle Agak and Gagak in anything resembling their own terms," said Erekosë. "Other means would not have been successful, no other creature could have the particular qualities, the enormous power needed to slay such strange sorcerers."
"So it seems," said Elric, and he would talk no more of it.
"Hopefully," said Corum, "you will forget this experience as you forgot—or will forget—the other."
Elric offered him a hard stare. "Hopefully, brother," he said.
Erekosë's chuckle was ironic. "Who could recall that?" And he, too, said no more.
Ashnar the Lynx, who had ceased his gigglings as he watched the fire, shrieked suddenly and broke away from the main party. He ran toward the flickering column and then veered away, disappearing among the ruins and the shadows.
Otto Blendker gave Elric a questioning stare, but Elric shook his head. "Why follow him? What can we do for him?" He looked down at Hown Serpent-tamer. He had particularly liked the man in the sea-green armor. He shrugged.
When they moved on, they left the curled body of Hown Serpent-tamer where it lay, helping only Brut of Lashmar across the rubble and down to the shore.
Soon they saw the white mist ahead and knew they neared the sea, though the ship was not in sight.
At the edge of the mist both Hawkmoon and Erekosë paused.