Stormbringer - Michael Moorcock [61]
He looked up as he heard their booted feet approach. He spread out his arms and shouted, his voice echoing through the caverns, "Nothing! Not a stir, not an eyelid flickering! There is no way of rousing them. They'll not wake until they have slept their necessary number of years. Oh, that we had not used them on the last two occasions, for we have greater need of them today!"
"Neither you nor I had the knowledge we have now. Regret is useless since it can achieve nothing." Elric stared around him at the huge, shadowy forms. Here, slightly apart from the rest, lay the leader-dragon, one he recognised and felt affection for: Flamefang, the eldest, who was five thousand years old and still young for a dragon. But Flamefang, like the rest, slept on.
He went up to the beast and stroked its metal-like scales, ran his hand down the ivory smoothness of its great front fangs, felt its warm breath on his body and smiled. Beside him, on his hip, he heard Stormbringer murmur. He patted the blade. "Here's one soul you cannot have. The dragons are indestructible. They will survive, even though all the world collapses into nothing."
Dyvim Slorm said from another part of the cavern: "I can't think of further action to take for the meantime, Elric. Let's go back to the tower of D'a'rputna and refresh ourselves."
Elric nodded assent and, together, the three men returned through the caverns and ascended the steps into the sunlight.
"So," Dyvim Slorm remarked, "still no nightfall. The sun has remained in that position for thirteen days, ever since we left the Camp of Chaos and made our perilous way to Melniboné. How much power must Chaos wield if it can stop the sun in its course?"
"Chaos might not have done this for all we know," Moonglum pointed out. "Though it's likely, of course, that it did. Time has stopped. Time waits. But waits for what? More confusion, further disorder? Or the influence of the great balance which will restore order and take vengeance against those forces who have gone against its will? Or does Time wait for us—three mortal men adrift, cut off from what is happening to all other men, waiting on Time as it waits on us?"
"Perhaps the sun waits on us," Elric agreed. "For is it not our destiny to prepare the world for its fresh course? It makes me feel a little more than a mere pawn if that's the case. What if we do nothing? Will the sun remain where it is for ever?"
They paused in their progress for a moment and stood staring up at the pulsating red disc which flooded the streets with scarlet light, at the black clouds which fled across the sky before it. Where were the clouds going? Where did they come from? They seemed instilled with purpose. It was possible that they were not even clouds at all, but spirits of Chaos bent on dark errands.
Elric grunted to himself, aware of the uselessness of such speculation. He led the way back to the tower of D'a'rputna where years before he had sought his love, his cousin Cymoril, and later lost her to the ravening thirst of the blade by his side.
The tower had survived the flames, though the colours that had once adorned it were blackened by fire. Here he left his friends and went to his own room to fling himself, fully clad, upon the soft Melnibonéan bed and, almost immediately, fall asleep.
Two
Elric slept and Elric dreamed and, though he was aware of the unreality of his visions, his attempts to rouse himself to wakefulness were entirely futile. Soon he ceased trying and merely let his dream form itself and draw him into its bright landscapes...
He saw Imrryr as it had been many centuries