Vanishing Tower - Michael Moorcock [25]
Chapter Two
The Stolen Ring
On the other side of the tavern the young dandy pretended to order another skin of wine while actually taking a sly look towards the corner where Elric sat.
Then the dandy leaned towards his compatriots—merchants and young nobles of several nations—and continued his murmured discourse.
The subject of that discourse, Elric knew, was Elric. Normally he was disdainful of such behaviour, but he was weary and he was impatient for Moonglum to return. He was almost tempted to order the young dandy to desist, if only to pass the time.
Elric was beginning to regret his decision to visit Old Hrolmar.
This rich city was a great meeting place for all the imaginative people of the Young Kingdoms. To it came explorers, adventurers, mercenaries, craftsmen, merchants, painters and poets for, under the rule of the famous Duke Avan Astran, this Vilmirian city state was undergoing a transformation in its character.
Duke Avan was himself a man who had explored most of the world and had brought back great wealth and knowledge to Old Hrolmar. Its riches and its intellectual life attracted more riches, more intellectuals and so Old Hrolmar flourished.
But where riches are and where intellectuals are, then gossip also flourishes, for if there is any breed of man who gossips more than the merchant or the sailor then it is the poet and the painter. And, naturally enough, there was much gossip concerning the doom-driven albino, Elric, already a hero of several ballads by poets not over-talented.
Elric had allowed himself to be brought to the city because Moonglum had said it was the best place to find an income. Elric's carelessness with their wealth had made near-paupers of them, not for the first time, and they were in need of provisions and fresh steeds.
Elric had been for skirting Old Hrolmar and riding on towards Tanelorn, where they had decided to go, but Moonglum had argued reasonably that they would need better horses and more food and equipment for the long ride across the Vilmirian and Ilmioran plains to the edge of the Sighing Desert, where mysterious Tanelorn was situated. So Elric had at last agreed, though, after his encounter with Myshella and his witnessing of the destruction of the Noose of Flesh, he had become weary and craved for the peace which Tanelorn offered.
What made things worse was that this tavern was rather too well-lit and catering too much to the better end of the trade for Elric's taste. He would have preferred a lowlier sort of inn which would have been cheaper and where men were used to holding back their questions and their gossip. But Moonglum had thought it wise to spend the last of their wealth on a good inn, in case they should need to entertain someone. . . .
Elric left the business of raising treasure to Moonglum. Doubtless he intended to get it by thievery or trickery, but Elric did not care.
He sighed and suffered the sidelong looks of the other guests and tried not to overhear the young dandy. He sipped his cup of wine and picked at the flesh of the cold fowl Moonglum had ordered before he went off. He drew his head into the high collar of his black cloak, but succeeded only in emphasising the bone-white pallor of his face and the milky whiteness of his long hair. He looked around him at the silks and furs and tapestries swirling about the tavern as their owners moved from table to table and he longed with all his heart to be on his way to Tanelorn, where men spoke little because they had experienced so much.
". . . killed mother and father, too—and the mother's lover, it is said. . . ."
". . . and they say he lies with corpses for preference. . . ."
". . . and because of that the Lords of the Higher Worlds cursed him with the face of a corpse. . . ."
"Incest, was it not? I got it from one who sailed with him that . . ."
". . . and his mother had congress with Arioch himself, thus producing . . ."
". . . shortly before he betrayed his own people to Smiorgan and the rest!"
"He looks a gloomy fellow, right enough. Not one to enjoy a jest.