The Stealer of Souls (42 page)

The sea of swords rustled and a dreadful moaning emanated from them. The dukes flung themselves upwards towards the albino and he recoiled before the evil hatred that poured from the twisting shapes.

Glancing down, he saw Moonglum slumped in his saddle and did not know if he had perished or fainted.

Then the swords rushed upon the reaching dukes and Elric’s head swam with the sight of a million blades plunging into the stuff of their beings.

The ululating noise of the battle filled his ears, the dreadful sight of the toiling conflict clouded his vision. Without Stormbringer’s vitality, he felt weak and limp. He felt his knees shake and crumple and he could do nothing to aid the Black Sword’s brothers as they clashed with the Dukes of Hell.

He collapsed, aware that if he witnessed further horror he would become totally insane. Thankfully, he felt his mind go blank and then, at last, he was unconscious, unable to know which would win.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

His body itched. His arms and back ached. His wrists pounded with agony. Elric opened his eyes.

Immediately opposite him, spreadeagled in chains against the wall he saw Moonglum. Dull flame flickered in the centre of the place and he felt pain on his naked knee, looked down and saw Jagreen Lern.

The Theocrat spat at him.

“So,” Elric said thickly, “I failed. You triumph after all.”

Jagreen Lern did not look triumphant. Rage still burned in his eyes.

“Oh, how shall I punish you?” he whispered.

“Punish me? Then—?” Elric’s heartbeat increased.

“Your final spell succeeded,” the Theocrat said flatly, turning away to contemplate the brazier. “Both your allies and mine vanished and all my attempts to contact the dukes have proved fruitless. You achieved your threat—or your minions did—you sent them back to Chaos for ever!”

“My sword—what of that?”

The Theocrat smiled bitterly. “That’s my only pleasure. Your sword vanished with the others. You are weak and helpless now, Elric. You are mine to maim and torture until the end of my life.”

Elric was dumbfounded. Part of him rejoiced that the dukes had been beaten. Part of him lamented the loss of his sword. As Jagreen Lern had emphasized, without the blade, he was less than half a man, for his albinism weakened him. Already, his eyesight was dimmer and he felt no response in his limbs.

Jagreen Lern looked up at him.

“Enjoy the comparatively painless days left you, Elric. I leave you to anticipate what I have in store for you. I must away and instruct my men in the final preparations for the war-fleet soon to sail against the South. I won’t waste time with crude torture now, for all the while I shall be scheming the most exquisite tortures conceivable. You shall take long years to die, I swear.”

He left the cell and, as the door slammed, Elric heard Jagreen Lern instructing the guard.

“Keep the brazier at full blast. Let them sweat like damned souls. Feed them enough to keep them alive, once every three days. They will soon be crying for water. Give them only sufficient to sustain their lives. They deserve far worse than this and they’ll get their deserts when my mind has had time to work on the problem.”

A day later, the real agony began. Their bodies gave out the last of their sweat. Their tongues were swollen in their heads and all the time as they groaned in their torment they were aware that this terrible torture would be nothing to what they might expect. Elric’s weakened body would not respond to his desperate struggling and at length his mind dulled, the agony became constant and familiar, and time was non-existent.

Finally, through a pain-thick daze, he recognized a voice. It was the hate-filled voice of Jagreen Lern.

Others were in the chamber. He felt their hands seize him and his body was suddenly light as he was borne, moaning, from the cell.

Though he heard disjointed phrases, he could make no sense of Jagreen Lern’s words. He was taken to a dark place that rolled about, hurting his scorched chest.

Later, he heard Moonglum’s voice and strained to hear the words.

“Elric! What’s happening? We’re aboard a ship at sea, I’d swear!”

But Elric mumbled without interest. His deficient body was weakening faster than would a normal man’s. He thought of Zarozinia, whom he would never see again. He knew he would not live to know whether Law or Chaos finally won, or even if the Southlands would stand against the Theocrat.

And these problems were fading in his mind again.

Then the food started to come and the water and it revived him somewhat. At one stage, he opened his eyes and stared upwards into the thinly smiling face of Jagreen Lern.

“Thank the gods,” said the Theocrat. “I feared we’d lost you. You’re a delicate case to be sure, my friend. You must stay alive longer than this. To begin my entertainment, I have arranged for you to sail on my own flagship. We are now crossing the Dragon Sea, our fleet well-protected by charms against the monsters roaming these parts.” He frowned. “Thanks to you, we haven’t the same call for the charms which would have borne us safely through the Chaos-torn waters. The seas are almost normal for the moment. But that will soon be changed.”

Elric’s old spirit returned for a moment and he glared at his enemy, too weak to voice the loathing he felt.

Jagreen Lern laughed softly and stirred Elric’s gaunt white head with the toe of his boot. “I think I can brew a drug which will give you a little more vitality.”

The food, when it came, was foul-tasting, and had to be forced between Elric’s mumbling lips, but after a while he was able to sit up and observe the huddled body of Moonglum. Evidently, the little man had totally succumbed to his torture. To his surprise, Elric discovered he was unfettered and he crawled the agonizing distance between himself and the Eastlander, shaking Moonglum’s shoulder. He groaned, but did not otherwise respond.

A shaft of light suddenly struck through the darkness of the hold and Elric blinked, looking up to see that the hatch-cover had been prised aside and Jagreen Lern’s bearded face stared down at him.

“Good, good. I see the brew had its effect. Come, Elric, smell the invigorating sea and feel the warm sun on your body. We are not many miles from the coasts of Argimiliar and our scout ships report quite a sizable fleet sailing hence.”

Elric cursed. “By Arioch, I hope they send you all to the bottom!”

Jagreen Lern pursed his lips, mockingly. “By whom? Arioch? Do you not remember what ensued in my own palace? Arioch cannot be invoked. Not by you—not by me. Your stinking spells saw to that.”

He turned to an unseen lieutenant. “Bind him and bring him on deck. You know what to do with him.”

Two warriors dropped into the hold and grasped the still-weak Elric, tying his arms and legs and manhandling him onto the deck. He gasped as the sun’s glare struck his eyes.

“Prop him up so he may see all,” Jagreen Lern ordered.

The warriors obeyed, and Elric was lifted to a standing position, seeing Jagreen Lern’s huge, black flagship with its silken deck canopies flapping in a steady westerly breeze, its three banks of straining oarsmen and its tall ebony mast, bearing a sail of dark red.

Beyond the ship’s rails, Elric saw a massive fleet surging in the flagship’s wake. As well as the vessels of Pan Tang and Dharijor, there were many from Jharkor, Shazaar and Tarkesh, but on every scarlet sail the Merman blazon of Pan Tang was painted.

Despair filled Elric, for he knew that the Southlands, however strong, could not match a fleet like this.

“We have been at sea for only three days,” said Jagreen Lern, “but thanks to a witch-wind, we’re almost at our destination. A scout ship has recently reported that the Lormyrian navy, hearing rumours of our superior seapower, is sailing to join with us. A wise move of King Montan—for the moment, at any rate. I’ll make use of him for the time being and, when his usefulness is over, I’ll kill him for a treacherous turncoat.”

“Why do you tell me all this?” Elric whispered, his teeth gritted against the pain that came with any slight movement of his face or body.

“Because I want you to witness for yourself the defeat of the South. The merchant princes sail against us—and we shall easily crush them. I want you to know that what you sought to avert will come to pass. After we have subdued the South and sucked her of her treasures, we’ll vanquish the Isle of the Purple Towns and press forward to sack Vilmir and Ilmiora. That will be an easy matter, don’t you agree? We have allies other than those you defeated.”

When Elric did not reply, Jagreen Lern gestured impatiently to his men.

“Tie him to the mast so that he may get a good view of the battle. I’ll put a protective charm around his body, for I do not want him to be killed by a stray arrow and cheat me of my full vengeance.”

Elric was borne up and roped to the mast, but he was scarcely aware of it, for his head lolled on his right shoulder, only semi-conscious.

The massive fleet plunged onwards, certain of victory.

By mid-afternoon, Elric was aroused from his stupor by the shout of the helmsman.

“Sail to the south-east! Lormyrian fleet approaches!”

With impotent anger, Elric saw the fifty two-masted ships, their bright sails contrasting with the sombre scarlet of Jagreen Lern’s vessels, come into line with the others.

Lormyr, though a smaller power than Argimiliar, had a larger navy. Elric judged that King Montan’s treachery had cost the South more than a quarter of its strength.

Now he knew there was absolutely no hope for the South and that Jagreen Lern’s certainty of victory was well-founded.

Night fell and the huge fleet lay at anchor. A guard came to feed Elric a mushy porridge containing another dose of the drug. As he revived, his anger increased, and Jagreen Lern paused by the mast on two occasions, taunting him savagely.

“Soon after dawn we shall meet the Southern fleet,” Jagreen Lern smiled, “and by noon what is left of it will float as bloody driftwood behind us as we press on to establish our reign over those nations who so foolishly relied on their seapower as defense.”

Elric remembered how he had warned the kings of the Southlands that this was likely to happen if they stood alone against the Theocrat. But he wished that he had been wrong. With the defeat of the South, the conquest of the East seemed bound to follow and, when Jagreen Lern ruled the world, Chaos would dominate and the Earth revert to the stuff from which it had been formed millions of years before.

All through that moonless night, he brooded. He pulled his thoughts together, summoning all his strength for a plan that was, as yet, only a shadow in the back of his mind.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

The rattle of anchors woke him.

Blinking in the light of the watery sun, he saw the Southern fleet on the horizon, riding gracefully in hollow pomp towards the ships of Jagreen Lern. Either, he thought, the Southern kings were very brave, or else they did not understand the strength of their enemies.

Beneath him, on Jagreen Lern’s foredeck, a great catapult rested, and slaves had already filled its cup with a large ball of flaming pitch. Normally, Elric knew, such catapults were an encumbrance, since when they reached that size they were difficult to rewind and gave lighter war-engines the advantage. Yet obviously Jagreen Lern’s engineers were not fools. Elric noted extra mechanisms on the big catapult and realized they were equipped to rewind rapidly.

The wind had dropped and five hundred pairs of muscles strove to row Jagreen Lern’s galley along. On the deck, in disciplined order, his warriors took their posts beside the great boarding platforms that would drop down on the opponent’s ships and grapple them at the same time as they formed a bridge between the vessels.

Elric was forced to admit that Jagreen Lern had used foresight. He had not relied wholly on supernatural aid. His ships were the best equipped he had ever seen. The Southern fleet, he decided, was doomed. To fight Jagreen Lern was insanity.

But the Theocrat had made one mistake. He had, in his gnawing desire for vengeance, ensured that Elric’s vitality was restored for a few hours and this vitality extended to his mind as well as his body.

Stormbringer had vanished. With the sword he was, among men, all but invincible. Without it, he was helpless. These were facts. Therefore he must somehow regain the blade. But how? It had returned to the plane of Chaos with its brothers, presumably drawn back there by the overwhelming power of the rest.

He must contact it.

He dare not summon the entire horde of blades with the spell, that would be tempting providence too far.

He heard the sudden
thwack
and roar as the giant catapult discharged its first shot. The flame-shrouded pitch went arching over the ocean and landed short, boiling the sea around it as it guttered and sank. Swiftly the war-engine was rewound, and Elric marveled at the speed as another ball of flaring pitch was forked into its cup. Jagreen Lern looked up at him and laughed.