Elric of Melniboné Page 11

  Yyrkoon scowled, thinking at first that he had been careless and some spell of his had turned against him, but then he looked over the burning houses at the river and he saw a strange ship sailing there, a ship of great grace and beauty, that somehow seemed more a creation of nature than of man—and he knew they were under attack. But who would attack Dhoz-Kam? There was no loot worth the effort. It could not be Imrryrians...

  It could not be Elric.

  “It must not be Elric,” he growled. “The Mirror. It must be turned upon the invaders.”

  “And upon yourself, brother?” Cymoril had risen unsteadily and leaned against a table. She was smiling. “You were too confident, Yyrkoon. Elric comes.”

  “Elric! Nonsense! Merely a few barbarian raiders from the interior. Once they are in the centre of the city, we shall be able to use the Mirror of Memory upon them.” He ran to the trapdoor which led down into his house. “Captain Valharik! Valharik where are you?”

  Valharik appeared in the room below. He was sweating. There was a blade in his gloved hand, though he did not seem to have been in any fighting as yet.

  “Make the mirror ready, Valharik. Turn it upon the attackers.”

  “But, my lord, we might...”

  “Hurry! Do as I say. We'll soon have these barbarians added to our own strength—along with their ships.”

  “Barbarians, my lord? Can barbarians command the fire elementals? These things we fight are flame spirits. They cannot be slain any more than fire itself can be slain.”

  “Fire can be slain by water,” Prince Yyrkoon reminded his lieutenant. “By water, Captain Valharik. Have you forgotten?”

  “But, Prince Yyrkoon, we have tried to quench the spirits with water—and the water will not move from our buckets. Some powerful sorcerer commands the invaders. He has the aid of the spirits of fire and water.”

  “You are mad, Captain Valharik,” said Yyrkoon firmly. “Mad. Prepare the mirror and let us have no more of these stupidities.”

  Valharik wetted his dry lips. “Aye, my lord.” He bowed his head and went to do his master's bidding.

  Again Yyrkoon went to the fence and looked through. There were men in the streets now, fighting his own warriors, but smoke obscured his view, he could not make out the identities of any of the invaders. “Enjoy your petty victory,” Yyrkoon chuckled, “for soon the mirror will take away your minds and you will become my slaves.”

  “It is Elric,” said Cymoril quietly. She smiled. “Elric comes to take vengeance on you, brother.”

  Yyrkoon sniggered. “Think you? Think you? Well, should that be the case, he'll find me gone, for I still have a means of evading him—and he'll find you in a condition which will not please him (though it will cause him considerable anguish). But it is not Elric. It is some crude shaman from the steppes to the east of here. He will soon be in my power.”

  Cymoril, too, was peering through the fence.

  “Elric,” she said. “I can see his helm.”

  “What?” Yyrkoon pushed her aside. There, in the streets, Imrryrian fought Imrryrian, there was no longer any doubt of that. Yyrkoon's men—Imrryrian, Oinish and Yurit—were being pushed back. And at the head of the attacking Imrryrians could be seen a black dragon helm such as only one Melnibonean wore. It was Elric's helm. And Elric's sword, that had once belonged to Earl Aubec of Malador, rose and fell and was bright with blood which glistened in the morning sunshine.

  For a moment Yyrkoon was overwhelmed with despair. He groaned. “Elric. Elric. Elric. Ah, how we continue to underestimate each other. What curse is on us?”

  Cymoril had flung back her head and her face had come to life again. “I said he would come, brother!”

  Yyrkoon whirled on her. “Aye—he has come—and the mirror will rob him of his brain and he will turn into my slave, believing anything I care to put in his skull. This is even sweeter than I planned, sister. Ha!” He looked up and then flung his arms across his eyes as he realised what he had done. “Quickly—below—into the house—the mirror begins to turn.” There came a great creaking of gears and pulleys and chains as the terrible Mirror of Memory began to focus on the streets below. “It will be only a little while before Elric has added himself and his men to my strength. What a splendid irony!” Yyrkoon hurried his sister down the steps leading from the roof and he closed the trapdoor behind him. “Elric himself will help in the attack on Imrryr. He will destroy his own kind. He will oust himself from the Ruby Throne!”

  “Do you not think that Elric has anticipated the threat of the Mirror of Memory, brother?” Cymoril said with relish.

  “Anticipate it, aye—but resist it he cannot. He must see to fight. He must either be cut down or open his eyes. No man with eyes can be safe from the power of the mirror.” He glanced around the crudely furnished room. “Where is Valharik? Where is the cur?”

  Valharik came running in. “The mirror is being turned, my lord, but it will affect our own men, too. I fear...”

  “Then cease to fear. What if our own men are drawn under its influence? We can soon feed what they need to know back into their brains—at the same time as we feed our defeated foes. You are too nervous, Captain Valharik.”

  “But Elric leads them...”

  “And Elric's eyes are eyes—though they look like crimson stones. He will fare no better than his men.”

  In the streets around Prince Yyrkoon's house Elric, Dyvim Tvar and their Imrryrians pushed on, forcing back their demoralised opponents. The attackers had lost barely a man, whereas many Oinish and Yurits lay dead in the streets, beside a few of their renegade Imrryrian commanders. The flame elementals, whom Elric had summoned with some effort, were beginning to disperse, for it cost them dear to spend so much time entirely within Elric's plane, but the necessary advantage had been gained and there was now little question of who would win as a hundred or more houses blazed throughout the city, igniting others and requiring attention from the defenders lest the whole squalid place burn down about their ears. In the harbour, too, ships were burning.

  Dyvim Tvar was the first to notice the mirror beginning to swing into focus on the streets. He pointed a warning finger, then turned, blowing on his war-horn and ordering forward the troops who, up to now, had played no part in the fighting. “Now you must lead us!” he cried, and he lowered his helm over his face. The eyeholes of the helm had been blocked so that he could not see through.

  Slowly Elric lowered his own helm until he was in darkness. The sound of fighting continued however, as the veterans who had sailed with them from Melnibone, set to work in their place and the other troops fell back. The leading Imrryrians had not blocked their eyeholes.

  Elric prayed that the scheme would work.

  Yyrkoon, peeking cautiously through a chink in a heavy curtain, said querulously: “Valharik? They fight on. Why is that? Is not the mirror focussed?”

  “It should be, my lord.”

  “Then, see for yourself, the Imrryrians continue to forge through our defenders—and our men are beginning to come under the influence of the mirror. What is wrong, Valharik? What is wrong?”

  Valharik drew air between his teeth and there was a certain admiration in his expression as he looked upon the fighting Imrryrians.

  “They are blind,” he said. “They fight by sound and touch and smell. They are blind, my lord emperor—and they lead Elric and his men whose helms are so designed they can see nothing.”

  “Blind?” Yyrkoon spoke almost pathetically, refusing to understand. “Blind?”

  “Aye. Blind warriors—men wounded in earlier wars, but good fighters nonetheless. That is how Elric defeats our mirror, my lord.”

  “Agh! No! No!” Yyrkoon beat heavily on his captain's back and the man shrank away. “Elric is not cunning. He is not cunning. Some powerful demon gives him these ideas.”

  “Perhaps, my lord. But are there demons more powerful than those who have aided you?”

  “No,” said Yyrkoon. “There are none. Oh, that I c
ould summon some of them now. But I have expended my powers in opening the Shade Gate. I should have anticipated... I could not anticipate... Oh Elric! I shall yet destroy you, when the runeblades are mine!” Then Yyrkoon frowned. “But how could he have been prepared? What demon .... ? Unless he summoned Arioch himself? But he has not the power to summon Arioch. I could not summon him...”

  And then, as if in reply, Yyrkoon heard Elric's battle song sounding from the nearby streets. And that song answered the question.

  “Arioch! Arioch! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!”

  “Then I must have the runeblades. I must pass through the Shade Gate. There I still have allies—supernatural allies who shall deal easily with Elric, if need be. But I need time...” Yyrkoon mumbled to himself as he paced about the room. Valharik continued to watch the fighting.

  “They come closer,” said the captain.

  Cymoril smiled. “Closer, Yyrkoon? Who is the fool now? Elric? Or you?”

  “Be still! I think. I think...” Yyrkoon fingered his lips.

  Then a light came into his eye and he looked cunningly at Cymoril for a second before turning his attention to Captain Valharik.

  “Valharik, you must destroy the Mirror of Memory.”

  “Destroy it? But it is our only weapon, my lord?”

  “Exactly—but is it not useless now?”

  “Aye.”

  “Destroy it and it will serve us again.” Yyrkoon flicked a long finger in the direction of the door. “Go. Destroy the mirror.”

  “But, Prince Yyrkoon—emperor, I mean—will that not have the effect of robbing us of our only weapon?”

  “Do as I say, Valharik! Or perish!”

  “But how shall I destroy it, my lord?”

  “Your sword. You must climb the column behind the face of the mirror. Then, without looking into the mirror itself, you must swing your sword against it and smash it. It will break easily. You know the precautions I have had to take to make sure that it was not harmed.”

  “Is that all I must do?”

  “Aye. Then you are free from my service—you may escape or do whatever else you wish to do.”

  “Do we not sail against Melnibone?”

  “Of course not. I have devised another method of taking the Dragon Isle.”

  Valharik shrugged. His expression showed that he had never really believed Yyrkoon's assurances. But what else had he to do but follow Yyrkoon, when fearful torture awaited him at Elric's hands? With shoulders bowed, the captain slunk away to do his prince's work.

  “And now, Cymoril...” Yyrkoon grinned like a ferret as he reached out to grab his sister's soft shoulders. “Now to prepare you for your lover, Elric.”

  One of the blind warriors cried: “They no longer resist us, my lord. They are limp and allow themselves to be cut down where they stand. Why is this?”

  “The mirror has robbed them of their memories,” Elric called, turning his own blind head towards the sound of the warrior's voice. “You can lead us into a building now—where, with luck, we shall not glimpse the mirror.”

  At last they stood within what appeared to Elric, as he lifted his helm, to be a warehouse of some kind. Luckily it was large enough to hold their entire force and when they were all inside Elric had the doors shut while they debated their next action.

  “We should find Yyrkoon,” Dyvim Tvar said. “Let us interrogate one of those warriors...”

  “There'll be little point in that, my friend,” Elric reminded him. “Their minds are gone. They'll remember nothing at all. They do not at present remember even what they are, let alone who. Go to the shutters yonder, where the mirror's influence cannot reach, and see if you can see the building most likely to be occupied by my cousin.”

  Dyvim Tvar crossed swiftly to the shutters and looked cautiously out. “Aye—there's a building larger than the rest and I see some movement within, as if the surviving warriors were regrouping. It's likely that's Yyrkoon's stronghold. It should be easily taken.”

  Elric joined him. “Aye. I agree with you. We'll find Yyrkoon there. But we must hurry, lest he decides to slay Cymoril. We must work out the best means of reaching the place and instruct our blind warriors as to how many streets, how many houses and so forth, we must pass.”

  “What is that strange sound?” One of the blind warriors raised his head. “Like the distant ringing of a gong.”

  “I hear it too,” said another blind man.

  And now Elric heard it. A sinister noise. It came from the air above them. It shivered through the atmosphere.

  “The mirror!” Dyvim Tvar looked up. “Has the mirror some property we did not anticipate?”

  “Possibly...” Elric tried to remember what Arioch had told him. But Arioch had been vague. He had said nothing of this dreadful, mighty sound, this shattering clangour as if... “He is breaking the mirror!” he said. “But why?” There was something more now, something brushing at his brain. As if the sound were, itself, sentient.

  “Perhaps Yyrkoon is dead and his magic dies with him,” Dyvim Tvar began. And then he broke off with a groan.

  The noise was louder, more intense, bringing sharp pain to his ears.

  And now Elric knew. He blocked his ears with his gauntleted hands. The memories in the mirror. They were flooding into his mind. The mirror had been smashed and was releasing all the memories it had stolen over the centuries—the aeons, perhaps. Many of those memories were not mortal. Many were the memories of beasts and intelligent creatures which had existed even before Melnibone. And the memories warred for a place in Elric's skull—in the skulls of all the Imrryrians—in the poor, tortured skulls of the men outside whose pitiful screams could be heard rising from the streets—and in the skull of Captain Valharik, the turncoat, as he lost his footing on the great column and fell with the shards from the mirror to the ground far below.

  But Elric did not hear Captain Valharik scream and he did not hear Valharik's body crash first to a roof-top and then into the street where it lay all broken beneath the broken mirror.

  Elric lay upon the stone floor of the warehouse and he writhed, as his comrades writhed, trying to clear his head of a million memories that were not his own—of loves, of hatreds, of strange experiences and ordinary experiences, of wars and journeys, of the faces of relatives who were not his relatives, of men and women and children, of animals, of ships and cities; of fights, of lovemaking, of fears and desires—and the memories fought each other for possession of his crowded skull, threatening to drive his own memories (and thus his own character) from his head. And as Elric writhed upon the ground, clutching at his ears, he spoke a word over and over again in an effort to cling to his own identity.

  “Elric. Elric. Elric.”

  And gradually, by an effort which he had experienced only once before when he had summoned Arioch to the plane of the Earth, he managed to extinguish all those alien memories and assert his own until, shaken and feeble, he lowered his hands from his ears and no longer shouted his own name. And then he stood up and looked about him.

  More than two thirds of his men were dead, blind or otherwise. The big bosun was dead, his eyes wide and staring, his lips frozen in a scream, his right eye-socket raw and bleeding from where he had tried to drag his eye from it. All the corpses lay in unnatural positions, all had their eyes open (if they had eyes) and many bore the marks of self-mutilation, while others had vomited and others had dashed their brains against the wall. Dyvim Tvar was alive, but curled up in a corner, mumbling to himself and Elric thought he might be mad. Some of the other survivors were, indeed, mad, but they were quiet, they afforded no danger. Only five, including Elric, seemed to have resisted the alien memories and retained their own sanity. It seemed to Elric, as he stumbled from corpse to corpse, that most of the men had had their hearts fail.

  “Dyvim Tvar?” Elric put his hand on his friend's shoulder. “Dyvim Tvar?”

  Dyvim Tvar took his head from his arm and looked into Elric's eyes. In Dyvim Tvar's own
eyes was the experience of a score of millennia and there was irony there, too. “I live, Elric.”

  “Few of us live now.”

  A little later they left the warehouse, no longer needing to fear the mirror, and found that all the streets were full of the dead who had received the mirror's memories. Stiff bodies reached out hands to them. Dead lips formed silent pleas for help. Elric tried not to look at them as he pressed through them, but his desire for vengeance upon his cousin was even stronger now.

  They reached the house. The door was open and the ground floor was crammed with corpses. There was no sign of Prince Yyrkoon.

  Elric and Dyvim Tvar led the few Imrryrians who were still sane up the steps, past more imploring corpses, until they reached the top floor of the house.

  And here they found Cymoril.

  She was lying upon a couch and she was naked. There were runes painted on her flesh and the runes were, in themselves, obscene. Her eyelids were heavy and she did not at first recognise them. Elric rushed to her side and cradled her body in his arms. The body was oddly cold.

  “He—he makes me—sleep...” said Cymoril. “A sorcerous sleep—from which—only he can wake me...” She gave a great yawn. “I have stayed awake—this long—by an effort of—will—for Elric comes...”

  “Elric is here,” said her lover, softly. “I am Elric, Cymoril.”

  “Elric?” She relaxed in his arms. “You—you must find Yyrkoon—for only he can wake me...”

  “Where has he gone?” Elric's face had hardened. His crimson eyes were fierce. “Where?”

  “To find the two black swords—the runeswords—of—our ancestors—Mournblade...”

  “And Stormbringer,” said Elric grimly. “Those swords are cursed. But where has he gone, Cymoril? How has he escaped us?”

  “Through—through—through the—Shade Gate—he conjured it—he made the most fearful pacts with demons to go through... The—other—room . . .”