Sailor on the Seas of Fate - Michael Moorcock [22]
A noise from below. The captain, his long red-gold hair drifting in a breeze which Elric could not feel, emerged from his cabin. The captain's circlet of blue jade, worn like a diadem, had turned to something of a violet shade in the pink light, and even his buff-colored hose and tunic reflected the hue—even the silver sandals with their silver lacing glittered with the rosy tint.
Again Elric looked upon that mysterious blind face, as unhuman, in the accepted sense, as his own, and puzzled upon the origin of the one who would allow himself to be called nothing but "Captain."
As if at the captain's summons, the mist drew itself about the ship again, as a woman might draw a froth of furs about her body. The red star's light faded, but the distant screams continued.
Did the captain notice the screams now for the first time, or was this a pantomime of surprise? His blind head tilted, a hand went to his ear. He murmured in a tone of satisfaction, "Aha!" The head lifted. "Elric?"
"Here," said the albino. "Above you."
"We are almost there, Elric."
The apparently fragile hand found the rail of the companionway. The captain began to climb.
Elric faced him at the top of the ladder. "If it's a battle..."
The captain's smile was enigmatic, bitter. "It was a fight—or shall be one."
". . . we'll have no part of it," concluded the albino firmly.
"It is not one of the battles in which my ship is directly involved," the blind man reassured him. "Those whom you can hear are the vanquished—lost in some future which, I think, you will experience close to the end of your present incarnation."
Elric waved a dismissive hand. "I'll be glad, Captain, if you would cease such vapid mystification. I'm weary of it."
"I'm sorry it offends you. I answer literally, according to my instincts."
The captain, going past Elric and Otto Blendker so that he could stand at the rail, seemed to be apologizing. He said nothing for a while, but listened to the disturbing and confused babble from the mist. Then he nodded, apparently satisfied.
"We'll sight land shortly. If you would disembark and seek your own world, I should advise you to do so now. This is the closest we shall ever come again to your plane."
Elric let his anger show. He cursed, invoking Arioch's name, and put a hand upon the blind man's shoulder. "What? You cannot return me directly to my own plane?"
"It is too late." The captain's dismay was apparently genuine. "The ship sails on. We near the end of our long voyage."
"But how shall I find my world? I have no sorcery great enough to move me between the spheres! And demonic assistance is denied me here."
"There is one gateway to your world," the captain told him. "That is why I suggest you disembark. Elsewhere there are none at all. Your sphere and this one intersect directly."
"But you say this lies in my future."
"Be sure—you will return to your own time. Here you are timeless. It is why your memory is so poor. It is why you remember so little of what befalls you. Seek for the gateway—it is crimson and it emerges from the sea off the coast of the island."
"Which island?"
"The one we approach."
Elric hesitated. "And where shall you go, when I have landed?"
"To Tanelorn," said the captain. "There is something I must do there. My brother and I must complete our destiny. We carry cargo as well as men. Many will try to stop us now, for they fear our cargo. We might perish, but yet we must do all we can to reach Tanelorn."
"Was that not, then, Tanelorn, where we fought Agak and Gagak?"
"That was nothing more than a broken dream of Tanelorn, Elric."
The Melnibonéan knew that he would receive no more information from the captain.
"You offer me a poor choice—to sail with you into danger and never see my own world again, or to risk landing on yonder island inhabited, by the sound of it, by the damned and those which prey upon the damned!"
The captain's blind eyes moved in Elric's direction. "I know," he said softly. "But it is the best I can offer