I wondered if I tied a piece of gauze about my face it would be easier to make out whatever fundamental shape lay at the core of the Ten Sons. But perhaps I was deceiving myself. Perhaps there was no fundamental shape.
Elric murmured, “First the Ten, then my lady M.”
He was speaking in rhyme. Indeed, even his breathing had a rhythmic quality I had not previously noticed. His movements took on a balletic air. He was scarcely aware of either Oona or myself. His eyes had a distant glaze.
I frowned and moved forward to touch him on the shoulder and ask him if he was all right, but Oona lifted a finger to her lips and motioned me away. She gave her father an expectant look, then, when she glanced back at me, she seemed to have a proud, proprietorial gleam in her eyes, as if to say “Wait. My father is a genius. Watch.”
I had known him as intimately as it is possible to know another human being, from deep within, soul sharing soul. I had considerable respect and great sympathy for him. But only now did it occur to me that he might be a genius.
Elric warned us to speak softly, if we spoke at all. The Ten Sons had acute hearing.
All at once Elric was moving, climbing down the rocks nearby and, perhaps in answer to my unspoken question, muttering, “Oldfather. Oldfather needs a little fresh blood.”
He disappeared for a moment. I heard a musical sound. Soft, menacing. I saw him below, walking cautiously towards Gaynor’s camp. Ravenbrand was unscabbarded in his right hand.
Time passed. The camp slept. I continued to watch. Waiting for Elric to return. Oona, however, curled up and told me to wake her if I became sleepy.
Eventually I heard a noise below and saw the familiar outline. Elric was dragging something behind him. Something which grunted and groaned as it bumped over the rocky floor.
Next I saw him on the other side, still below me. Here the rocks formed a small natural amphitheater at the center of which Elric dumped his prize. It wriggled for a moment until he kicked it. I saw his face then. His eyes were glassy, blazing rubies. They looked into a world I could not begin to imagine. They looked into Hell itself. And his mouth was moving, his sword describing complicated geometries in the air, his whole body beginning to turn in ritual movements, a ghostly dance.
Oona awakened and lay beside me, watching Elric as he cut through the material binding his victim. I recognized the terrified human being. One of the Nazis who had originally come here with Gaynor. He was snarling like a trapped dog, but there was stark horror in his eyes and he could not control his trembling. He tried to strike out at Elric. Ravenbrand licked him. He pulled back his bleeding hand. Ravenbrand licked him again. His face carried a thin line of blood. And again. The ragged shirt covering his chest fell away to reveal another line from neck to navel.
The Nazi was whimpering, trying to find escape, allies, God, anything. The sword tasted him. Savored him. Relished his blood drop by drop. And while he played with the sniveling wretch, Elric crooned a haunting wordless song. The cadences rose and fell. I was astonished that they issued from a mortal throat. All the time they grew in intensity and bit by bit the Nazi died, pieces of his flesh falling away as he watched. The sword continued its delicate, terrible work.
Oona craned to see, fascinated. In this she was her father’s child. She had the look of a cat. I, however, was forced to turn away more than once. Forced by the sound of that voice, rising and falling, growing stronger and stronger, by the sight of Elric himself, his wild, crimson eyes raised towards the upper darkness, his mouth open in something between a melody and a scream, his white flesh glinting and his great black runesword turning a human being to slivers before his own eyes.
The Nazi was still fully conscious, such was Elric’s appalling artistry. The man still wore his black SS boots. He knelt before my doppelgänger and tears mingled with the blood from his eyes as Elric’s blade teased them out until they hung by a few strands of muscle on his own cheeks.
Most of the time Elric’s voice drowned the hideous screaming of the Nazi, his pleadings to spare him or kill him, and I was thankful for that.
Sword and man acted in unison—two intelligences in an unholy pact. I had never felt this of Ravenbrand before. Elric’s use of the blade seemed to have awakened an evil in the very iron. Red runes slithered up and down its length, pulsing like veins. The sword seemed to relish the subtle, disgusting wounds which it now inflicted upon the Nazi’s bloody flesh. It was without doubt the most loathsome sight I had ever seen.
Again I turned away. Then I heard Oona gasp and I looked back.
Another shape formed itself around the Nazi’s tormented body. It twisted in and out, growing like something organic. Gradually, snakelike, it swallowed Elric’s victim, then became increasingly agitated, and gouted up out of what remained of the corpse. Gushing towards the cavern’s roof. Swirling like a cloud overhead. A cloud in which tiny strands of lightning seemed to flash and writhe, taking on the color of the Nazi’s blood as the man squealed like a bled pig, realizing that there were worse fates than the one he had just endured. He finally gave himself up to the cloud.
I heard Elric’s voice above all the other sounds. “Father of Winds. Father of Dust. Father of Air. Father of Thunder. H’Haarshann Oldfather. Oldest of fathers. H’Haarshann Oldfather, father of the first.” I knew the language he spoke, because I knew all such things now, and I knew that he was delivering the wretched mortal up to the one he summoned.
“Oldfather! Oldfather! I bring you what the lord of the h’Haarshann demands. I bring thee the exotic meat thou craveth.”
The cloud grunted. It was satisfied. It uttered a kind of soft whistle.
Now the scarlet lightning began to dance and skip again, forming a shape. I thought I saw the wizened face of a vindictive old man, long strands of lank hair hanging to his shrunken shoulders. A toothless mouth smacking lips as the last of the sacrifice was absorbed. Then the mouth grinned.
“You know how to feed an old friend, Prince Elric.” The voice was a sighing breeze, a gale, a fluttering wind.
“As you have fed before, h’Haarshann Oldfather.” My near-twin had sheathed the bloody black blade and now stood with arms outstretched in an attitude of respect. “As you will feed again, while I live. That is our bargain. Made with my ancestors a million years since.”
“Ahaaaa . . .” A deep sigh. “So few remember. I have a mind to grant you my aid in return for that exquisite moment. What is it that you desire of me?”
“Someone has summoned your sons to this plane. They have misbehaved themselves. They have done great damage.”
“It is in their nature. It is what they must do. They are so young, my ten sons. They are the ten great h’Haarshann that stride the worlds.”
“That is so, Oldfather.” Elric glanced down at the remains of the Nazi. As a hawk takes every part of the bird save the feathers, so Oldfather had taken the mortal, leaving nothing but the blood-soaked remains of his SS uniform. “They have been brought by my enemies from their place amongst the worlds. To threaten the lives of me and mine.”
Oldfather quivered. “But without you I cannot know the exquisite taste of flesh. And my Ten Sons have business about the worlds, to breathe my will upon them.”
“That is so, great Oldfather.”
“None is left save you, sweet mortal. None who knows what Oldfather likes to eat.”
At that moment Elric looked up. His eyes met mine. The sardonic mockery in his expression made me turn my head in disgust. I knew that Elric of Melniboné only resembled a man, that his blood was of an older, crueler kind than mine. In my own world such savage and sadistic sacrifice was only performed by the mentally ill. For Elric and his kind, those practices were a way of life, refined to an art and enjoyed as spectacle. In Melniboné praise was given to the victim who died with style and who best entertained his audience with his dying. What Elric had just done caused him no troubled conscience. The actions had been necessary and were natural to him.
Oldfather seemed to
be debating the value of the sacrifice.
“Would you feast again, noble Oldfather?” Elric’s voice was soft, coaxing. There was no threat in it, but Oldfather was remembering the taste of mortal flesh and was already yearning for more.
“I will see to my sons,” said the apparition. “They, too, have eaten well.”
The whirling scarlet fire swelled until it resembled circling cloud, sweeping up towards the cavern’s faraway roof and then down into the darkness until it had disappeared, leaving the faintest of pink, dissipating light.
I looked towards Gaynor’s camp. They had become aware of something. I saw troogs peering in our direction. One of them ran towards the center of the camp where Gaynor had pitched an ostentatious tent, its guy ropes secured by pegs hammered into the living rock.
I guessed the Nazi’s death to have been pointless after all. Oldfather had gone. The ten whirling inverted cones of phosphorescent light still guarded the camp. Elric’s filthy ritual had done nothing but attract the attention of Gaynor’s horde.
A party of troogs lumbered in our direction. They had not seen us, but it would not take them long to find where we were. I looked around for some way of escape. Only Oona had a weapon. My sword was in the hands of my doppelgänger. I was not sure I would feel quite the same emotions towards the blade in the future. If I had a future to contemplate.
The troogs were beginning to climb the rocks towards us. They could smell us.
I looked around for something to throw. The rocks were the only weapons available to me.
Glancing back, I saw that Elric had sunk to his knees totally exhausted. I wondered if I could get to the sword before the troogs reached us. If I could ever handle that blade again.
Oona nocked an arrow to her bow and took aim.
She looked once or twice over her shoulder, unable to believe that Elric had failed, that Oldfather had taken his offering and left without giving us any of the help he had seemed to promise.
I caught a glimpse of something not far from the grey horizon. A scarlet flash which began to speed towards us, coming faster and faster and making a mighty thrum, as if someone plucked the strings of an enormous guitar whose sound was amplified through all creation.
Elric scrambled up to join us. He was grinning. He panted like a wolf. He had a look of wild lust in his eyes. A look of triumph, of hunger.
He said nothing to us but looked to where the scarlet cloud was approaching. To where the Ten Sons danced at the edges of Gaynor’s camp.
Then he lifted his head, raised the black runesword in a victorious gesture and began to sing.
I knew the song. I knew Elric. I had been Elric. I knew what it meant. I knew what it said. But I could not know its effect. I do not believe I ever, in all my life of concert-going, heard such extraordinary beauty. If there was menace in it, if there was triumph in it, if there was cruel exultation in it, still, it was beautiful. I felt I heard an angel sing. More than one tune, many harmonies, were all carried on that strange voice. It brought tears to my eyes. It brought grief and mourning. I was mourning the death of the man I had seen killed. I was hearing the voice of a grief which had never filled the world before.
For a moment Elric’s song stopped the troogs in their tracks.
I looked at Oona. She was weeping. She understood something in her father which mystified me and perhaps, therefore, him as well.
The song swelled and I realized Ravenbrand had joined with Elric. An almost tangible sound. I felt it embracing me. I felt the complexity of it, a thousand different sensations passing through my blood and nerves all at the same time. Something in me was strengthened by that song, but physically it weakened me, and I could barely stand.
Then another song joined in, from far away, near the grey horizon. I saw shreds of scarlet light radiating from a hidden source. Fingers of scarlet, like ropes, twisting around the rocky columns, reaching across the ranks of that vast army. A gigantic hand was stretching through the cavern. The hand of God. Or the hand of Satan. The flaming hand made a fist and that fist drew in each of the Ten Sons, who whirled and buzzed in sudden fury, resisting Oldfather’s discipline. The white fire scattered and raced, but the hand extended to enfold it.
All the while Gaynor’s camp was in uproar. I saw a figure emerge from his tent and mount one of the blind horses. I heard bugles sounding, drums beating. Confusion reigned as partially clothed men tried to control their mounts. The blind cannibals milled around gathering their weapons. Only the troogs were wide awake. Many of them were running back into the darkness, away from the Grey Fees, while the red hand of Oldfather gathered in his wild, squealing sons. The destruction they caused as they sought to avoid him brought more rocks crashing to the cavern floor, more stones whirling into the air.
A sea of brands moved chaotically in all directions as Gaynor demanded more light.
We could see him now, on his great albino horse, its blind red eyes rolling as it snorted and scented, its ears frantic as it tried to catch the source of the sounds. Yet Gaynor controlled the stallion with one hand and his knees. The other hand held the ivory sword—the sword Miggea’s magic had made. He spurred in our direction, though I doubted he had any clear idea of what was happening. His main object was to turn the fleeing troogs and savages back to the camp. His men followed on their own horses, lashing out at the foot soldiers, yelling at them and causing further panic. Two of the Nazis rode up behind the troogs who were preparing to attack us.
They had no common language. The Nazis bellowed. The troogs bellowed back.
Elric suddenly rose from cover and began running at tremendous speed down the slope towards the Nazis.
Ravenbrand was still in his right hand. The sword howled with triumphant glee as it sliced into the neck of the first SS man. Elric dragged the corpse from its saddle and took the Nazi’s place, spurring the blind horse directly at the other Nazi, who was already trying to flee the way he had come. Too late.
Elric swung Ravenbrand sideways, using the sword’s wonderful balance to carry the weight of a blow which neatly took the Nazi’s head from its shoulders as if it had been a cabbage on a stalk. He reached down to gather up the horse’s reins and then rode back, scattering troogs as he came towards us.
“Here’s a mount for one of you,” he said. “The other must get their own.”
I held the horse for Oona. She shook her head, grinning. “I can’t ride,” she said. “I’ve never had to learn.” She replaced the arrow in her quiver. The troogs had given up any idea of attacking us.
I got into the saddle. It was a good, responsive horse. I told her to climb behind me, but she laughed. “I have my own ways of traveling,” she said. “Though I thank you for the courtesy.”
Gaynor had seen something and was charging towards us, his men at his back, Klosterheim by his side.
I looked forward at last to confronting him man-to-man.
Elric turned his horse, signaling that we should ride back the way we had come. He leaned down in his saddle and picked up one of the guttering brands. He handed it to me, then sought another for himself. The horses were excited. They wanted to gallop. I knew it would be dangerous in this darkness, but my cousin was gaining on us. He had become a far more expert rider in this bizarre landscape than I could hope to be.
I looked around for Oona. She had vanished.
Elric yelled for me to follow. I had no choice.
I cried out for him to stop, to wait for his daughter, but he laughed when he heard me and signaled me on.
He did not fear for her. I could only trust him.
We plunged into the booming darkness as the Ten Sons whirled their last ahead of us. All had been taken up in that one great red fist and were buzzing and whirring like wasps as the fingers molded and molded, turning the powerful, white light into something resembling a ball and hurling it upwards, higher and higher, until a moon hung overhead. Then it became a star. A point of light. And then it was gone.
A grumbling growl from
the red cloud and Oldfather, too, vanished. Only Elric and myself remained, urging our horses into the blackness towards Mu Ooria, while Gaynor and his men, howling for our blood, came thundering behind us.
We followed the rough road the Ten Sons had carved, leaping broken columns, weaving between piles of rubble. Had I not known otherwise, I would have sworn the horses were sighted, they were so surefooted. Perhaps they had developed some of the qualities of bats. In a moment of humor I wished they had developed bat wings.
I was distracted by something white moving ahead of me along the broad road. The white hare raced as fast as it was possible to go. Towards the distant towers of Mu Ooria. I refused to let myself believe the obvious. I told myself that the white hare had found us again, that it had followed us from Tanelorn, when Miggea’s hunt had chased it into our territory.
But Elric was grinning as he pursued it. For a moment I thought he was hunting it, but he kept behind it. He was following the beast.
Behind us came Gaynor, shouting like an angry ape, his own voice echoing in that mysterious helm, his cloak swirling about him like an agitated ocean, his horse’s red eyes glaring sightlessly forward. He held up the ivory sword like a flag. The ragged remains of his SS guard were close behind him. Only Klosterheim, gaunt and hollow-eyed as ever, showed no emotion. At one moment, even that far away, I caught his grim, sardonic eye. In his own dark way, he was enjoying his master’s discomfort.
“There’s more to do yet,” said Elric.
He looked back at the furious Gaynor and laughed.
For the first time I began to believe that perhaps he was not mad. At least, not in the way I had thought. His daughter thought him a genius. Presumably she believed him greater than most other sorcerers. His reckless courage might have been madness in another, but not in him. He could command power as no other mortal being could. And what was more, as I had witnessed, his alliances went back through generations upon generations, blood upon blood, when his own ancient people had been young and the world was not entirely formed.
For all his predatory skills, Elric was not by nature a predator. That differentiated him from his own people. Perhaps this was the bond all three of us shared.
The Dreamthief's Daughter: A Tale of the Albino Page 27