The Stealer of Souls (30 page)

BOOK ONE

DEAD GOD’S HOMECOMING

In which, at long last, Elric’s fate begins to be revealed to him as the forces of Law and Chaos gather strength for the final battle which will decide the future of Elric’s world…

C
HAPTER
O
NE

A
BOVE THE ROLLING
Earth great clouds tumbled down and bolts of lightning charged groundwards to slash the midnight black, split trees in twain and sear through roofs that cracked and broke.

The dark mass of forest trembled with the shock and out of it crept six hunched, unhuman figures who paused to stare beyond the low hills towards the outline of a city. It was a city of squat walls and slender spires, of graceful towers and domes; and it had a name which the leader of the creatures knew. Karlaak by the Weeping Waste it was called.

Not of natural origin, the storm was ominous. It groaned around the city of Karlaak as the creatures skulked past the open gates and made their way through shadows towards the elegant palace where Elric slept. The leader raised an axe of black iron in its clawed hand. The group came to a stealthy halt and regarded the sprawling palace which lay on a hill surrounded by languorously scented gardens. The earth shook as lightning lashed it and thunder prowled across the turbulent sky.

“Chaos has aided us in this matter,” the leader grunted. “See—already the guards fall in magic slumber and our entrance is thus made simple. The Lords of Chaos are good to their servants.”

He spoke the truth. Some supernatural force had been at work and the warriors guarding Elric’s palace had dropped to the ground, their snores echoing the thunder. The servants of Chaos crept past the prone guards, into the main courtyard and from there into the darkened palace. Unerringly they climbed twisting staircases, moved softly along gloomy corridors, to arrive at length outside the room where Elric and his wife lay in uneasy sleep.

As the leader laid a hand upon the door, a voice cried out from within the room: “
What’s this? What things of hell disrupt my rest?
”

“He sees us!” sharply whispered one of the creatures.

“No,” the leader said, “he sleeps—but such a sorcerer as this Elric is not so easily lulled into a stupor. We had best make speed and do our work, for if he wakes it will be the harder!”

He twisted the handle and eased the door open, his axe half raised. Beyond the bed, heaped with tumbled furs and silks, lightning gashed the night again, showing the white face of the albino close to that of his dark-haired wife.

Even as they entered, he rose stiffly in the bed and his crimson eyes opened, staring out at them. For a moment the eyes were glazed and then the albino forced himself awake, shouting: “Begone, you creatures of my dreams!”

The leader cursed and leapt forward, but he had been instructed not to slay this man. He raised the axe threateningly.

“Silence—your guards cannot aid you!”

Elric jumped from the bed and grasped the thing’s wrist, his face close to the fanged muzzle. Because of his albinism he was physically weak and required magic to give him strength. But so quickly did he move, that he had wrested the axe from the creature’s hand and smashed the shaft between its eyes. Snarling, it fell back, but its comrades jumped forward. There were five of them, huge muscles moving beneath their furred skins.

Elric clove the skull of the first as others grappled with him. His body was spattered with the thing’s blood and brains and he gasped in disgust at the foetid stuff. He managed to wrench his arm away and bring the axe up and down into the collarbone of another. But then he felt his legs gripped and he fell, confused but still battling. Then there came a great blow on his head and pain blazed through him. He made an effort to rise, failed and fell back insensible.

Thunder and lightning still disturbed the night when, with throbbing head, he awoke and got slowly to his feet using a bedpost as support. He stared dazedly around him.

Zarozinia was gone. The only other figure in the room was the stiff corpse of the beast he had killed. His black-haired girl-wife had been abducted.

Shaking, he went to the door and flung it open, calling for his guards, but none answered him.

His runesword Stormbringer hung in the city’s armoury and would take time to get. His throat tight with pain and anger, he ran down the corridors and stairways, dazed with anxiety, trying to grasp the implications of his wife’s disappearance.

Above the palace, thunder still crashed, eddying about in the noisy night. The palace seemed deserted and he had the sudden feeling that he was completely alone, that he had been abandoned. But as he ran out into the main courtyard and saw the insensible guards he realized at once that their slumber could not be natural. Realization was coming even as he ran through the gardens, through the gates and down to the city, but there was no sign of his wife’s abductors.

Where had they gone?

He raised his eyes to the shouting sky, his white face stark and twisted with frustrated anger. There was no sense to it. Why had they taken her? He had enemies, he knew, but none who could summon such supernatural help. Who, apart from himself, could work this mighty sorcery that made the skies themselves shake and a city sleep?

To the house of Lord Voashoon, Chief Senator of Karlaak and father of Zarozinia, Elric ran panting like a wolf. He banged with his fists upon the door, yelling at the astonished servants within.

“Open! It is Elric. Hurry!”

The doors gaped back and he was through them. Lord Voashoon came stumbling down the stairs into the chamber, his face heavy with sleep.

“What is it, Elric?”

“Summon your warriors. Zarozinia has been abducted. Those who took her were demons and may be far from here by now—but we must search in case they escaped by land.”

Lord Voashoon’s face became instantly alert and he shouted terse orders to his servants between listening to Elric’s explanation of what had happened.

“And I must have entrance into the armoury,” Elric concluded. “I must have Stormbringer!”

“But you renounced the blade for fear of its evil power over you!” Lord Voashoon reminded him quietly.

Elric replied impatiently. “Aye—but I renounced the blade for Zarozinia’s sake, too. I must have Stormbringer if I am to bring her back. The logic is simple. Quickly, give me the key.”

In silence Lord Voashoon fetched the key and led Elric to the armoury where the weapons and armour of his ancestors were held, unused for centuries. Through the dusty place strode Elric to a dark alcove that seemed to contain something which lived.

He heard a soft moaning from the great black battle-blade as he reached out a slim-fingered white hand to take it. It was heavy, yet perfectly balanced, a two-handed broadsword of prodigious size, with its wide crosspiece and its blade smooth and broad, stretching for over five feet from the hilt. Near the hilt, mystic runes were engraved and even Elric did not know what they fully signified.

“Again I must make use of you, Stormbringer,” he said as he buckled the sheath about his waist, “and I must conclude that we are too closely linked now for less than death to separate us.”

With that he was striding from the armoury and back to the courtyard where mounted guards were already sitting nervous steeds, awaiting his instructions.

Standing before them, he drew Stormbringer so that the sword’s strange, black radiance flickered around him, his white face, as pallid as bleached bone, staring out of it at the horsemen.

“You go to chase demons this night. Search the countryside, scour forest and plain for those who have done this thing to our princess! Though it’s likely that her abductors used supernatural means to make their escape, we cannot be sure. So search—and search well!”

All through the raging night they searched but could find no trace of either the creatures or Elric’s wife. And when dawn came, a smear of blood in the morning sky, his men returned to Karlaak where Elric awaited them, now filled with the nigromantic vitality which his sword supplied.

“Lord Elric—shall we retrace our trail and see if daylight yields a clue?” cried one.

“He does not hear you,” another murmured as Elric gave no sign.

But then Elric turned his pain-racked head and he said bleakly, “Search no more. I have had time to meditate and must seek my wife with the aid of sorcery. Disperse. You can do nothing further.”

Then he left them and went back towards his palace, knowing that there was still one way of learning where Zarozinia had been taken. It was a method which he ill-liked, yet it would have to be employed.

Curtly, upon returning, Elric ordered everyone from his chamber, barred the door and stared down at the dead thing. Its congealed blood was still on him, but the axe with which he had slain it had been taken away by its comrades.

Elric prepared the body, stretching out its limbs on the floor. He drew the shutters of the windows so that no light filtered into the room, and lit a brazier in one corner. It swayed on its chains as the oil-soaked rushes flared. He went to a small chest by the window and took out a pouch. From this he removed a bunch of dried herbs and with a hasty gesture flung them on the brazier so that it gave off a sickly odour and the room began to fill with smoke. Then he stood over the corpse, his body rigid, and began to sing an incantation in the old language of his forefathers, the Sorcerer Emperors of Melniboné. The song seemed scarcely akin to human speech, rising and falling from a deep groan to a high-pitched shriek.

The brazier speared flaring red light over Elric’s face and grotesque shadows skipped about the room. On the floor the dead corpse began to stir, its ruined head moving from side to side. Elric drew his runesword and placed it before him, his two hands on the hilt. “Arise, soulless one!” he commanded.

Slowly, with jerky movements, the creature raised itself stiffly upright and pointed a clawed finger at Elric, its glazed eyes staring as if beyond him.

“All this,” it whispered, “was pre-ordained. Think not that you can escape your fate, Elric of Melniboné. You have tampered with my corpse and I am a creature of Chaos. My masters will avenge me.”

“How?”

“Your destiny is already laid down. You will know soon enough.”

“Tell me, dead one, why did you come to abduct my wife? Who sent you hither? Where has my wife been taken?”

“Three questions, Lord Elric. Requiring three answers. You know that the dead who have been raised by sorcery can answer nothing directly.”

“Aye—that I know. So answer as you can.”

“Then listen well for I may recite only once my rede and then must return to the nether regions where my being may peacefully rot to nothing. Listen:

“Beyond the ocean brews a battle;

Beyond the battle blood shall fall.

If Elric’s kinsman ventures with him

(Bearing a twin of that he bears)

To a place where, man-forsaken,

Dwells the one who should not live,

Then a bargain shall be entered.

Elric’s wife shall be restored.”

With this the thing fell to the floor and did not stir thereafter.

Elric went to the window and opened the shutters. Used as he was to enigmatic verse-omens, this one was difficult to unravel. As daylight entered the room, the rushes sputtered and the smoke faded.
Beyond the ocean
…There were many oceans.

He resheathed his runesword and climbed onto the disordered bed to lie down and contemplate the rede. At last, after long minutes of this contemplation, he remembered something he had heard from a traveler who had come to Karlaak, from Tarkesh, a nation of the Western Continent, beyond the Pale Sea.

The traveler had told him how there was trouble brewing between the land of Dharijor and the other nations of the West. Dharijor had contravened treaties she had signed with her neighbouring kingdoms and had signed a new one with the Theocrat of Pan Tang. Pan Tang was an unholy island dominated by its dark aristocracy of warrior-wizards. It was from here that Elric’s old enemy, Theleb K’aarna, had come. Its capital of Hwamgaarl was called the City of Screaming Statues and until recently its residents had had little contact with the folk of the outside world. Jagreen Lern was the new Theocrat and an ambitious man. His alliance with Dharijor could only mean that he sought more power over the nations of the Young Kingdoms. The traveler had said that strife was sure to break out at any moment since there was ample evidence that Dharijor and Pan Tang had entered a war alliance.