The Stealer of Souls (41 page)

“Evidently, Jagreen Lern’s powers of sorcery have been exhausted for the meantime and the Dukes of Hell disdain to join him in a fight against a pair of mere mortals!” Elric said, reaching for the hilt of the black runesword.

Moonglum was beyond speech. Wordlessly, he drew both his own charmed blades, knowing he must fight and vanquish his own fears before he could encounter the men who ran at him.

With a wild howl that drowned out the screams from the statues, Stormbringer climbed from the scabbard and stood in Elric’s hand, waiting in anticipation for the new souls it might drink, for the lifestuff which it could pass on to Elric and fill him with dark and stolen vitality.

Elric half-cringed at the feel of his blade in his damp hand. But he shouted to the advancing soldiers: “See, jackals! See the sword! Forged by Chaos to vanquish Chaos! Come, let it drink your souls and spill your blood! We are ready for you!”

He did not wait but, with Moonglum behind him, spurred the Nihrain horse into their ranks, hewing about him with something of the old delight.

Now, so symbiotically linked with the hellblade was he, that a hungry joy of killing swept through him, the joy of soul-stealing which drew a surging, unholy vitality into his deficient veins.

Though there were over a hundred warriors blocking his path, he smashed a bloody trail through them and Moonglum, seized by something akin to his friend’s mood, was equally successful in dispatching all who came against him. Familiar with horror as they were, the soldiers soon became loath to approach the screaming runesword as it shone with a peculiarly brilliant light—a black light that pierced the blackness itself.

Laughing in his half-insane triumph, Elric felt the callous joy that his ancestors must have felt long ago, when they conquered the world and made it kneel to the Bright Empire. Chaos was, indeed, fighting Chaos—but Chaos of an older, cleaner sort, come to destroy the perverted upstarts who thought themselves as mighty as the wild Dragon Lords of Melniboné! Through the red ruin they had made of the enemy’s ranks the pair plunged until the gateway gaped like a monster’s maw before them. Without pausing, Elric rode laughing through it and people scuttled to hiding as he entered, in bizarre triumph, the City of Screaming Statues.

“Where now?” gasped Moonglum, all fear driven from him.

“To the Theocrat’s Temple-Palace, of course. There Arioch and his fellow dukes no doubt await us!”

Through the echoing streets of the city they rode, proud and terrible, as if with an army at their backs. Dark buildings towered above them, but not a face dared peep from a window. Pan Tang had planned to rule the world—and it might yet—but, for the moment, its denizens were fully demoralized by the sight of two men taking their huge city by storm.

As they reached the wide plaza, Elric and Moonglum pulled their horses to a halt and observed the huge bronze shrine swinging on its chains in the centre. Beyond it rose Jagreen Lern’s palace, all columns and towers, ominously quiet. Even the statues had ceased to scream, and the horses’ hoofs made no sound as Elric and Moonglum approached the shrine. The blood-reddened runesword was still in Elric’s two hands and he raised it upwards and to one side as he reached the brazen shrine. Then he took a mighty sweep at the chains supporting it. The supernatural blade bit into the metal and severed the links. The crash as the shrine dropped and smashed, scattering the bones of Jagreen Lern’s ancestors, was magnified a thousand times by the silence. The noise echoed throughout Hwamgaarl and every inhabitant left alive knew what it signified.

“Thus I challenge thee, Jagreen Lern!” Elric shouted, aware that these words would also be heard by everyone. “I have come to pay the debt I promised! Come, puppet!” He paused, even his triumph not sufficient fully to quench his hesitation at what he must do now. “Come! Bring Hell’s Dukes with you—”

Moonglum swallowed, his eyes rolling as he studied Elric’s twisted face, but the albino continued:

“Bring Arioch. Bring Balan. Bring Maluk! Bring the proud princes of Chaos with you, for I have come to send them back to their own realm for ever!”

The silence again enfolded his high challenge, and he heard its echoes die away in the far places of the city.

Then, from somewhere inside the palace, he heard a movement. His heart pounded against his rib-cage, threatening to break through the bones and hang throbbing on his chest as proof of his mortality. He heard a sound like the clopping of monstrous hoofs and, ahead of this noise, the measured steps that must be those of a man.

His eyes fixed themselves on the great, golden doors of the palace, half-hidden in the shadows that the columns threw. The doors silently began to open. Then a high-shouldered figure, dwarfed by the size of the doors, stepped forth and stood there, regarding Elric with a horrible anger smouldering in its face.

On his body, scarlet armour glowed as if red-hot. On his left arm was a shield of the same stuff and in his hand a steel sword. He had a narrow, aquiline head with a closely trimmed black beard and moustache. On his elaborate helm was the Merman Crest of Pan Tang. Jagreen Lern said, in a voice that trembled with rage: “So, Elric, you have kept part of your word, after all. How I wish I’d been able to kill you at Sequa when I had the chance, but then I had a bargain with Darnizhaan…”

“Step forward, Theocrat,” Elric said with sudden calm. “I’ll give you the chance again and meet you fairly in single combat.”

Jagreen Lern sneered. “Fairly? With that blade in your hands? Once I met it and did not perish, but now it burns with the souls of my best warrior-priests. I know its power. I would not be so foolish as to stand against it. No—let those you have challenged meet you.”

He stepped to one side. The doors gaped wider and, if Elric expected to see giant figures to emerge, he was disappointed. The dukes had assumed human proportions and the forms of men. But there was a power about them that filled the air as they moved to stand, disdainful of Jagreen Lern, upon the topmost step of the palace.

Elric looked upon their beautiful, smiling faces and shuddered again, for there was a kind of love on their faces, love mingled with pride and confidence, so that, for a moment, he was filled with the wish to jump from his horse and fling himself at their feet to plead forgiveness for what he had become. All the longing and the loneliness within him seemed to well up and he knew that these lovely beings would claim him, protect him, care for him…

“Well, Elric,” said Arioch, the leader, softly. “Would you repent and return to us?”

The voice was silvery in its beauty, and Elric half-made to dismount, but then he clapped his hands to his ears, the runesword hanging by its wrist-throng, and cried: “
No! No! I must do what I must! Your time, like mine, is over!
”

“Do not speak thus, Elric,” Balan said persuasively, “our rule has hardly begun. Soon the Earth and all its creatures will be part of the Realm of Chaos and a wild and splendid era will begin!” His words passed Elric’s hands and whispered in his skull. “Chaos has never been so powerful on Earth—not even in earliest days. We shall make you great. We shall make you a Lord of Chaos, equal to ourselves! We give you immortality, Elric. If you behave so foolishly, you will bring yourself only death, and none shall remember you.”

“I know that! I would not wish to be remembered in a world ruled by Law!”

Maluk laughed softly. “That will never come to pass. We block every move that Law makes to try to bring help to Earth.”

“And this is why you must be destroyed!” Elric cried.

“We are immortal—we can never be slain!” Arioch said, and there was a tinge of impatience in his voice.

“Then I shall send you back to Chaos in such a way that you shall never have power on the Earth again!”

Elric swung his runeblade into his hand and it trembled there, moaning quietly, as if unsure of itself, just as he was.

“See!” Balan walked partway down the steps. “See—even your trusted sword knows that we speak truth!”

“You speak a sort of truth,” Moonglum said in a quavering tone, astonished at his own bravery. “But I remember something of a greater truth—a law that should bind both Chaos and Law—the Law of the Balance. That balance is held over the Earth and it has been ordained that Chaos and Law must keep it straight. Sometimes the Balance tips one way, sometimes another—and thus are the ages of the Earth created. But an unequal balance of this magnitude is
wrong
. In your struggling, you of Chaos may have forgotten this!”

“We have forgotten it for good reason, mortal. The Balance has tipped to such an extent in our favour that it is no longer adjustable. We triumph!”

Elric used this pause to collect himself. Sensing his renewed strength, Stormbringer responded with a confident purr.

The dukes also sensed it and glanced at one another.

Arioch’s beautiful face seemed to flare with anger and his pseudo-body glided down the steps towards Elric, his fellow dukes following.

Elric’s steed backed away a few paces.

A blot of living fire appeared in Arioch’s hand and it shot towards the albino. He felt cold pain in his chest and he staggered in the saddle.

“Your body is unimportant, Elric. But think of a similar blow to your soul!” The façade of patience was dropping from Arioch.

Elric flung back his head and laughed. Arioch had betrayed himself. If he had remained calm, he would have had a greater advantage, but now he showed himself perturbed, whatever he had said to the contrary.

“Arioch, you aided me in the past, aided me to live. You will regret that!”

“There’s still time to undo my folly, upstart man!” Another bolt came streaking towards him, but he passed Stormbringer before it and, in relief, saw that it deflected the unholy weapon.

But against such might they were surely doomed, unless they could invoke some supernatural aid. But Elric dared not risk summoning his runesword’s brothers. Not yet. He must think of some other means. As he retreated before the searing bolts, Moonglum behind him whispering almost impotent charms, he thought of the vulture-lions he had sent back to Chaos. Perhaps he could recall them—for a different purpose.

The spell was fresh in his mind, requiring a slightly changed mental state and scarcely changed wording. Calmly, mechanically deflecting the bolts of the dukes, whose features had changed hideously to retain their previous beauty but take on an increasingly malevolent look, he uttered the spell.

“Creatures! Matik of Melniboné made thee,

From stuff of unformed madness!

If thou wouldst live, then aid me now.

Come hither, or Matik’s brew again shall be!”

From out of the rolling darks of the plaza, the beaked beasts prowled. Elric yelled at the dukes. “Mortal weapons cannot harm you! But these are beasts of your own plane! Sample their ferocity!” In the bizarre tongue of Melniboné, he ordered the vulture-lions upon the dukes.

Apprehensively, Arioch and his fellows backed towards the steps again, calling their own commands to the giant animals, but the things advanced, gathering speed.

Elric saw Arioch shout, rave, and then his body seemed to split asunder and rise in a new, less recognizable shape as the beasts attacked. All was suddenly ragged colour, shrill sound and disordered matter. Behind the embattled demons, Elric saw Jagreen Lern running back into his palace. Hoping that the creatures he had summoned would hold the dukes, Elric rode his horse around the boiling mass and galloped up the steps.

Through the doors, the two men rode, catching a glimpse of the terrified Theocrat running before them.

“Your allies were not so strong as you believed, Jagreen Lern!” Elric yelled as he bore down upon his enemy. “Why, you foolish latecomer, did you think your knowledge matched that of a Melnibonéan!”

Jagreen Lern began to climb a winding staircase, labouring up the steps, too afraid to look back. Elric laughed again and pulled his horse to a stop, watching the running man.

“Dukes! Dukes!” sobbed Jagreen Lern as he climbed. “Do not desert me now!”

Moonglum whispered. “Surely those creatures will not defeat the aristocracy of hell?”

Elric shook his head. “I do not expect them to, but if I finish Jagreen Lern, at least it could put an end to his conquests and demon-summoning.” He spurred the Nihrain steed up the steps after the Theocrat who heard him coming and flung himself into a room. Elric heard a bar fall and bolts squeal.

When he reached the door, it fell in at a blow of his sword and he was in a small chamber. Jagreen Lern had disappeared.

Dismounting, Elric went to a small door in the farthest corner of the room and again demolished it. A narrow stair led upwards, obviously into a tower. Now he could take his vengeance, he thought, as he reached yet another door at the top of the stair and drew back his sword to smite it. The blow fell, but the door held.

“Curse the thing, it is protected by charms!”

He was about to aim another blow, when he heard Moonglum’s urgent calling from below.

“Elric! Elric—they’ve defeated the creatures. They are returning to the palace!”

He would have to leave Jagreen Lern for the meantime. He sprang down the steps, into the chamber and out onto the stair. In the hall he saw the flowing shapes of the unholy trinity. Halfway up the stair, Moonglum was quaking.

“Stormbringer,” said Elric, “it is time to summon your brothers.”

The sword moved in his hand, as if in assent. He began to chant the difficult rune that Sepiriz had taught him. Stormbringer moaned a counterpoint to the dirge as the battle-worn dukes assumed different shapes and began to rise menacingly towards Elric.

Then, in the air all about him, he saw shapes appear, shadowy shapes half on his own plane, half on the plane of Chaos. He saw them stir and suddenly it seemed as if the air was filled with a million swords, each a twin to Stormbringer!

Acting on instinct, Elric released his grip on his blade and flung it towards the rest. It hung in the air before them and they seemed to acknowledge it. “Lead them, Stormbringer! Lead them against the dukes—or your master perishes and you’ll not drink another human soul again!”