Stormbringer - Michael Moorcock [51]
Zarozinia was already dressed in a skirt and bodice of cloth-of-gold with a long, black-trimmed cloak of silver spreading to the floor.
She handed him a dish of herb-flavoured fruit and he pushed back the wings of his helmet and began to eat.
"You are clad as if for a great battle, my lord."
"Aye." He tried to smile. "If you spoke truth last night, then we'd both best be dressed in the funeral red, eh?" He put down the dish and gripped her tightly, desperately, as a man might cling to the memory of happiness. "Come, I must make haste. To the stables."
Below in the courtyard, his three companions were already mounted. He swung himself into the high saddle of his own Nihrain steed and blew a kiss to his wife. "I'll seek you out in the Weeping Waste—and prove my optimism founded! Farewell!"
They rode away from Karlaak's walls.
In a short while they had entered the Weeping Waste, for this was the quickest route to the Sighing Desert. Rackhir alone knew this country well, and he guided them. On his back were his bow and quiver of Arrows of Law, given him some years previously by the sorcerer Lamsar at the time of the Siege of Tanelorn.
The Nihrain steeds, treading the ground of their own strange plane, moved at incredible speed. In this place of eternal rain the land was difficult to see far ahead but at last, after two days, they could observe tall crags and knew they were near the borders of the desert. Soon they were riding through the deep gorges and the rain ceased until, in the third day, the breeze became warm and then harsh and hot as they left the mountains and entered the desert. The sun blazed down and the wind soughed constantly over the barren land and rocks. Resting for only a few hours at a time, Rackhir directing them, they sped further and further into the depths of the vast desert, speaking little, for it was difficult to be heard over the wind.
Elric was finding it hard to retain any objective impression of his predicament. He felt hollow and had long since ceased his attempt to understand his own ambivalent nature. He had always been a slave to his melancholic emotions, his physical failings and to the very blood flowing in his veins. Unlike others, he saw life not as a consistent pattern, but as a series of random events. He found it hard to sympathise with the forces of Law and he wondered if control of himself was worth permanent achievement. Better to live by instinct than to theorise and be wrong; better to remain a puppet, letting the gods move him at their pleasure, than to seek control of his own fate, clash with the will of the Higher Worlds and perish for his pains. He was the last of an inbred line who had, without effort, used Chaos-given sorcery for convenience and for no other purpose. They had had no need for self-control or the self-restrictions of the newer races. But self-control was now forced upon him as his sorcery weakened. Yet why bother to sharpen his wits or put his mind in order? He was little more than a sacrifice on the altar of destiny. He breathed deeply of the hot, dry air and expelled it from his stinging lungs, spitting out the clogging sand which had entered his mouth and nostrils.
Peering through the sand-filled air, he saw something looming ahead—a single mountain rising from the wastes of the desert as if placed there by unnatural means. He roused himself then.
"We are there," he called, pointing. "Let us rest here before we ride the final distance!"
Three
The steps wound up the mountain. High