Sailor on the Seas of Fate - Michael Moorcock [49]
"Is this all you found?" he asked.
"The scroll was sealed and this was embedded in the seal," Duke Avan said, handing something to Elric.
Elric held the object in his palm. It was a tiny ruby of a red so deep as to seem black at first, but when he turned it into the light he saw an image at the center of the ruby and he recognized that image. He frowned, then he said, "I will agree to your proposal, Duke Avan. Will you let me keep this?"
"Do you know what it is?"
"No. But I should like to find out. There is a memory somewhere in my head...."
"Very well, take it. I will keep the map."
"When did you have it in mind to set off?"
Duke Avan's smile was sardonic. "We are already sailing around the southern coast to the Boiling Sea."
"There are few who have returned from that ocean," Elric murmured bitterly. He glanced across the table and saw that Smiorgan was imploring with his eyes for Elric not to have any part of Duke Avan's scheme. Elric smiled at his friend. "The adventure is to my taste."
Miserably, Smiorgan shrugged. "It seems it will be a little longer before I return to the Purple Towns."
II
* * *
The coast of Lormyr had disappeared in warm mist and Duke Avan Astran's schooner dipped its graceful prow toward the west and the Boiling Sea.
The Vilmirian crew of the schooner were used to a less demanding climate and more casual work than this and they went about their tasks, it seemed to Elric, with something of an aggrieved air.
Standing beside Elric in the ship's poop, Count Smiorgan Baldhead wiped sweat from his pate and growled: "Vilmirians are a lazy lot, Prince Elric. Duke Avan needs real sailors for a voyage of this kind. I could have picked him a crew, given the chance...."
Elric smiled. "Neither of us was given the chance, Count Smiorgan. It was a fait accompli. He's a clever man, Duke Astran."
"It is not a cleverness I entirely respect, for he offered us no real choice. A free man is a better companion than a slave, says the old aphorism."
"Why did you not disembark when you had the chance, then, Count Smiorgan?"
"Because of the promise of treasure," said the black-bearded man frankly. "I would return with honor to the Purple Towns. Forget you not that I commanded the fleet that was lost...."
Elric understood.
"My motives are straightforward," said Smiorgan. "Yours are much more complicated. You seem to desire danger as other men desire lovemaking or drinking—as if in danger you find forgetfulness."
"Is that not true of many professional soldiers?"
"You are not a mere professional soldier, Elric. That you know as well as I."
"Yet few of the dangers I have faced have helped me forget," Elric pointed out. "Rather they have strengthened the reminder of what I am—of the dilemma I face. My own instincts war against the traditions of my race." Elric drew a deep, melancholy breath. "I go where danger is because I think that an answer might lie there—some reason for all this tragedy and paradox. Yet I know I shall never find it."
"But it is why you sail to R'lin K'ren A'a, eh? You hope that your remote ancestors had the answer you need?"
"R'lin K'ren A'a is a myth. Even should the map prove genuine what shall we find but a few ruins? Imrryr has stood for ten thousand years and she was built at least two centuries after my people settled on Melniboné. Time will have taken R'lin K'ren A'a away."
"And this statue, this Jade Man, Avan spoke of?"
"If the statue ever existed, it could have been looted at any time in the past hundred centuries."
"And the Creature Doomed to Live?"
"A myth."
"But you hope, do you