The Sleeping Sorceress (7 page)

Moonglum looked embarrassed. “I fear those girls were not all they seemed.”

Elric remembered the woman tugging at his left hand and he stretched out his fingers. “Moonglum! The Ring of Kings is gone from my hand! The Actorios has been stolen!”

The Ring of Kings had been worn by Elric’s forefathers for centuries. It had been the symbol of their power, the source of much of their supernatural strength.

Moonglum’s face clouded. “I thought I stole the girls. But they were thieves. They planned to rob us. An old trick.”

“There’s more to it, Moonglum. They stole nothing else. Just the Ring of Kings. There’s still a little gold left in my purse.” He jingled his belt pouch, climbing to his feet.

Moonglum jerked his thumb at the street’s far wall. There lay one of the girls, her finery all smeared with mud and blood.

“She got in the way of one of the assassins as we fought. She’s been dying all night—mumbling your name. I had not told it to her. Therefore I fear you’re right. They were sent to steal that ring from you. I was duped by them.”

Elric walked rapidly to where the girl lay and he kneeled down beside her. Gently he touched her cheek. She opened her lids and stared at him from glazed eyes. Her lips formed his name.

“Why did you plan to rob me?” Elric asked. “Who is your master?”

“Urish . . .” she said in a voice that was a breeze passing through the grass. “Steal ring . . . take it to Nadsokor . . .”

Moonglum now stood on the other side of the dying girl. He had found one of the wine flasks and he bent to give her a drink. She tried to sip the wine but failed. It ran down her little chin, down her slim neck and onto her wounded breast.

“You are one of the beggars of Nadsokor?” Moonglum said.

Faintly, she nodded.

“Urish has always been my enemy,” Elric told him. “I once recovered some property from him and he has never forgiven me. Perhaps he sought the Actorios ring in payment.” He looked down at the girl. “Your companion—has she returned to Nadsokor?”

Again the girl seemed to nod. Then all intelligence left the eyes, the lids closed and she ceased to breathe.

Elric got up. He was frowning, rubbing at the hand on which the Ring of Kings had been.

“Let him keep the ring, then,” said Moonglum hopefully. “He will be satisfied.”

Elric shook his head.

Moonglum cleared his throat. “A caravan is leaving Jadmar in a week. It is commanded by Rackhir of Tanelorn and has been purchasing provisions for the city. If we took a ship round the coast we could soon be in Jadmar, join Rackhir’s caravan and be on our way to Tanelorn in good company. As you know, it’s rare for anyone of Tanelorn to make such a journey. We are lucky, for . . .”

“No,” said Elric in a low voice. “We must forget Tanelorn for the moment, Moonglum. The Ring of Kings is my link with my fathers. More—it aids my conjurings and has saved our lives more than once. We ride for Nadsokor now. I must try to reach the girl before she gets to the City of Beggars. Failing that, I must enter the city and recover my ring.”

Moonglum shuddered. “It would be more foolish than any plan of mine, Elric. Urish would destroy us.”

“Nonetheless, to Nadsokor I must go.”

Moonglum bent and began systematically to strip the girl’s corpse of its jewelry. “We’ll need every penny we can raise if we’re to buy decent horses for our journey,” he explained.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

The Cold Ghouls

Framed against the scarlet sunset, Nadsokor looked from this distance more like a badly kept graveyard than a city. Towers tottered, houses were half-collapsed, the walls were broken.

Elric and Moonglum came up the peak of the hill on their fast Shazaarian horses (which had cost them all they had) and saw it. Worse—they smelled it. A thousand stinks issued from the festering city and both men gagged, turning their horses back down the hill to the valley.

“We’ll camp here for a short while—until nightfall,” Elric said. “Then we’ll enter Nadsokor.”

“Elric, I am not sure I could bear the stench. Whatever our disguise, our disgust would reveal us for strangers.”

Elric smiled and reached into his pouch. He took out two small tablets and handed one to Moonglum.

The Eastlander regarded the thing suspiciously. “What’s this?”

“A potion. I used it once before when I came to Nadsokor. It will kill your sense of smell completely—unfortunately your sense of taste as well . . .”

Moonglum laughed. “I did not plan to eat a gourmet meal while in the City of Beggars!” He swallowed the pill and Elric did likewise.

Almost instantly Moonglum remarked that the stink of the city was subsiding. Later, as they chewed the stale bread which was all that was left of their provisions, he said:

“I can taste nothing. The potion works.”

Elric nodded. He was frowning, looking up the hill in the direction of the city as the night fell.

Moonglum took out his swords and began to hone them with the small stone he carried for the purpose. As he honed, he watched Elric’s face, trying to see if he could guess Elric’s thoughts.

At last the albino spoke. “We’ll need to leave the horses here, of course, for most beggars disdain their use.”

“They are proud in their perversity,” Moonglum murmured.

“Aye. We’ll need those rags we brought.”

“Our swords will be noticed . . .”

“Not if we wear the loose robes over all. It will mean we’ll walk stiff-legged, but that’s not so strange in a beggar.”

Reluctantly Moonglum got the bundles of rags from the saddle-panniers.

So it was that a filthy pair, one stooped and limping, one short but with a twisted arm, crept through the debris which was ankle deep around the whole city of Nadsokor. They made for one of the many gaps in the wall.

Nadsokor had been abandoned some centuries before by a people fleeing from the ravages of a particularly virulent pox which had struck down most of their number. Not long afterwards the first of the beggars had occupied it. Nothing had been done to preserve the city’s defenses and now the muck around the perimeters was as effective a protection as any wall.

No-one saw the two figures as they climbed over the messy rubble and entered the dark, festering streets of the City of Beggars. Huge rats raised themselves on their hind legs and watched them as they made their way to what had once been Nadsokor’s senate building and which was now Urish’s palace. Scrawny dogs with garbage dangling in their jaws warily slunk back into the shadows. Once a little column of blind men, each man with his right hand on the shoulder of the man in front, tapped their way through the night, passing directly across the street Elric and Moonglum were in. From some of the tumble-down buildings came cacklings and titterings as the maimed caroused with the crippled and the degenerate and corrupted coupled with their crones. As the disguised pair neared what had been Nadsokor’s forum there came a scream from one shattered doorway and a young girl, barely over puberty, dashed out pursued by a monstrously fat beggar who propelled himself with astounding speed on his crutches, the livid stumps of his legs, which terminated at the knee, making the motions of running. Moonglum tensed, but Elric held him back as the fat cripple bore down on his prey, abandoned his crutches which rattled on the broken pavement, and flung himself on the child.

Moonglum tried to free himself from Elric’s grasp but the albino whispered: “Let it happen. Those who are whole either in mind, body or spirit cannot be tolerated in Nadsokor.”

There were tears in Moonglum’s eyes as he looked at his friend.

“Your cynicism is as disgusting as anything they do!”

“I do not doubt it. But we are here for one purpose—to recover the stolen Ring of Kings. That, and nought else, is what we shall do.”

“What matters that when . . .?”

But Elric was continuing on his way to the forum and after hesitating for a moment Moonglum followed him.

Now they stood on the far side of the square looking at Urish’s palace. Some of its columns had fallen, but on this building alone had there been some attempt at restoration and decoration. The archway of the main entrance was painted with crude representations of the Arts of Begging and Extortion. An example of the coinage of all the nations of the Young Kingdoms had been imbedded in the wooden door and above it had been nailed, perhaps ironically, a pair of wooden crutches, crossed as swords might be crossed, indicating that the weapons of the beggar were his power to horrify and disgust those luckier or better endowed than himself.

Elric stared through the murk at the building and he had a calculating frown on his face.

“There are no guards,” he said to Moonglum.

“Why should there be? What have they to guard?”

“There were guards last time I came to Nadsokor. Urish protects his Hoard most assiduously. It is not outsiders he fears but his own despicable rabble.”

“Perhaps he no longer fears them.”

Elric smiled. “A creature like King Urish fears everything. We had best be wary when we enter the hall. Have your swords ready to draw at any hint that we have been lured into a trap.”

“Surely Urish would not suspect we’d know where the girl came from?”

“Aye, it seemed good chance that one of them told us, but nonetheless we must make allowances for Urish’s cunning.”

“He would not willingly bring you here—not with the Black Sword at your side.”

“Perhaps . . .”

They began to walk across the forum. It was very still, very dark. From far away came the occasional shout, a laugh or an obscene, indefinable sound.

Now they were at the door, standing beneath the crossed crutches.

Elric felt beneath his ragged robes for the hilt of his sword and with his left hand pushed at the door. It squeaked open a fraction. They looked about them to see if anyone had heard the sound, but the square was as still as it had been.

More pressure. Another squeak. And now they could squeeze their bodies through the aperture.

They stood in Urish’s hall. Braziers of garbage gave off faint light. Oily smoke curled towards the rafters. They saw the dim outlines of the dais at the far end and on the dais stood Urish’s huge, crude throne. The hall seemed deserted, but Elric’s hand did not leave the hilt of the Black Sword.

He stopped as he heard a sound, but it was a great, black rat scuttling across the floor.

Silence again.

Elric moved forward, step by cautious step, along the length of the slimy hall, Moonglum behind him.

Elric’s spirits began to rise, as they neared the throne. Perhaps Urish had, after all, grown complacent of his strength. He would open the trunk beneath the throne, remove his ring and then they would leave the city and be away before dawn, riding across country to join the caravan of Rackhir the Red Archer on its way to Tanelorn.

He began to relax but his step was just as cautious. Moonglum had paused, cocking his head to one side as if hearing something.

Elric turned. “What is it you hear?”

“Possibly nothing. Or maybe one of those great rats we saw earlier. It is just that—”

A silver-blue radiance burst out from behind the grotesque throne and Elric flung up his left hand to protect his eyes, trying to disentangle his sword from his rags.

Moonglum yelled and began to run for the door, but even when Elric put his back to the light he could not see. Stormbringer moaned in its scabbard as if in rage. Elric tugged at it, but felt his limbs grow weaker and weaker. From behind him came a laugh which he recognized. A second laugh—almost a throaty cough—joined it.

His sight came back but now he was held by clammy hands and when he saw his captors he shuddered. Shadowy creatures of limbo held him—ghouls summoned by sorcery. Their dead faces smiled but their dead eyes remained dead. Elric felt the heat and the strength leaving his body and it was as if the ghouls sucked it from him. He could almost feel his vitality traveling from his own body to theirs.

Again the laugh. He looked up at the throne and saw emerging from behind it the tall, saturnine figure of Theleb K’aarna, whom he had left for dead near the castle of Kaneloon a few months since.

Theleb K’aarna smiled in his curling beard as Elric struggled in the grasp of the ghouls. Now from the other side of the throne came the filthy carcass of Urish the Seven-fingered, the cleaver Hackmeat cradled in his left arm.

Elric could barely hold his head up as the ghouls’ cold flesh absorbed his strength, but he smiled at his own foolishness. He had been right in suspecting a trap, but wrong in entering it so poorly prepared.

And where was Moonglum? Had he deserted him? The little Eastlander was nowhere to be seen.

Urish swaggered round the throne and sprawled his begrimed person in it, placing Hackmeat so that it lay across the arms. His pale, beady eyes stared hard at Elric.

Theleb K’aarna remained standing by the side of the throne, but triumph flamed in his eyes like Imrryr’s own funeral fires.

“Welcome back to Nadsokor,” wheezed Urish, scratching himself between the legs. “You have returned to make amends, I take it.”

Elric shivered as the cold in his bones increased. Stormbringer stirred at his side but it could only help him if he drew it with his own hands. He knew he was dying.

“I have come to regain my property,” he said through chattering teeth. “My ring.”

“Ah! The Ring of Kings. It was yours, was it? My girl mentioned something of that.”

“You sent her to steal it!”

Urish sniggered. “I’ll not deny it. But I did not expect the White Wolf of Imrryr to step so easily into my trap.”

“He would have stepped out again if you had not that amateur magic-maker’s spells to help you!”

Theleb K’aarna glowered but then his face relaxed. “Are you not discomforted, then, by my ghouls?”

Elric was gasping as the last of the heat fled his bones. He now could not stand, but hung in the hands of the dead creatures. Theleb K’aarna must have planned this for weeks, for it took many spells and pacts with the guardians of limbo to bring such ghouls to Earth.

“And so I die,” Elric murmured. “Well, I suppose I do not care . . .”

Urish raised his ruined features in what was a parody of pride. “You do not die yet, Elric of Melniboné. The sentence has yet to be passed! The formalities must be suffered! By my cleaver Hackmeat I must sentence you for your crimes against Nadsokor and against the Sacred Hoard of King Urish!”

Elric hardly heard him as his legs collapsed altogether and the ghouls tightened their grip on him.

Dimly he was aware of the beggar rabble shuffling into the hall.

Doubtless they had all been waiting for this. Had Moonglum died at their hands when he fled the hall?

“Put his head up!” Theleb K’aarna instructed his dead servants. “Let him see Urish, King of All Beggars, make his just decree!”

Elric felt a cold hand beneath his chin and his head was raised so he could watch, through misting eyes, as Urish stood up and grasped the cleaver Hackmeat in his four-fingered hand, stretching it towards the smoky ceiling.

“Elric of Melniboné, thou art convicted of many crimes against the Ignoblest of the Ignoble—myself, King Urish of Nadsokor. Thou has offended King Urish’s friend, that most pleasingly degenerate villain Theleb K’aarna—”

At this Theleb K’aarna pursed his lips, but did not interrupt.

“—and, moreover, did come a second time to the City of Beggars to repeat thy crimes. By my great cleaver Hackmeat, the symbol of my dignity and power, I condemnest thee to the Punishment of the Burning God!”

From all sides of the hall came the foul applause of the Beggar Court. Elric remembered a legend of Nadsokor—that when the original population were first struck by the disease they summoned aid from Chaos—begging Chaos to cleanse the disease from the city—with fire if necessary. Chaos had played a joke upon these folk—sent their Burning God who had burned what was left of their possessions. A further summons to Law to help them had resulted in the Burning God’s being imprisoned by Lord Donblas in the city. Having had enough of the Lords of the Higher Worlds the remnants of the citizens had abandoned their city. But was the Burning God still here in Nadsokor?

Faintly he still heard Urish’s voice. “Take him to the labyrinth and give him to the Burning God!”

Theleb K’aarna spoke but Elric did not hear what he said, though he heard Urish’s reply.

“His sword? How will that avail him against a Lord of Chaos? Besides, if the sword is released from the scabbard, who knows what will happen?”