"The Fortress of the Pearl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

1 At the Court of the Pearl

Again Elric experienced that strange frisson of recognition at the landscape before bun, though he could not remember ever seeing anything like it. Pale blue mist rose around cypresses, date palms, orange trees and poplars whose shades of green were equally pale; flowing meadows occasionally revealed the rounded white of boulders and in the far distance were snow-peaked mountains. It was as if an artist had painted the scenery with the most delicate of washes, the finest of brushstrokes. It was a vision of Paradise and completely unexpected after the insanity of Falador.

Queen Sough had remained silent since she had answered Elric's question and a peculiar atmosphere had developed among the three of them. Yet all the uneasiness failed to affect Elric's delight at the world they had entered. The skies (if skies they were) were full of pearly cloud, tinged by pink and the faintest yellow, and a little white smoke rose up from a flat-roofed house some distance away. The barge had come to rest in a pool of still, sparkling water and Queen Sough gestured for them to disembark.

"You will come with us to the Fortress?" asked Gone.

"She does not know. I do not know if it is permitted," said the Queen, her eyes hooded above her veil.

"Then I shall say farewell now," and Elric bowed and kissed the woman's soft hand. "I thank you for your assistance, madam, and trust you will forgive me for the crudeness of my manners."

"Forgiven, yes." Elric, looking up, thought Queen Sough smiled.

"I thank you also, my lady." Done spoke almost intimately, as to one with whom she might share a secret. "Know you how we shall find the Fortress of the Pearl?"

"That one will know." The Queen pointed towards the distant cottage. "Farewell, as you say. You can save her. Only you."

"I am grateful for your confidence also," said Elric. He stepped almost jauntily onto the turf and followed Gone as they made their way across the fields to the little house. "This is a great relief, my lady. A contrast, indeed, to the Land of Madness!"

"Aye." She responded a trifle cautiously, and her hand went to the hilt of her sword. "But remember, Prince Elric, that madness takes many forms in all worlds."

He did not allow her wariness to let him lose his enjoyment. He was determined to restore himself to the peak of his energies, in preparation for whatever might lie ahead.

Gone was first to reach the door of the white house. Outside were two chickens scratching in the gravel, an old dog, tethered to a barrel, who looked up at them over a grey muzzle and grinned, a pair of short-coated cats cleaning their silvery fur on the roof over the lintel. Gone knocked and the door was opened almost immediately. A tall, handsome young man stood there, his head covered by an old bur-noose, his body clad in a light brown robe with long sleeves. He seemed pleased to see visitors.

"Greetings to you," he said. "I am Chamog Borm, currently in exile. Have you come with good news from the Court?"

"We have no news at all, I fear," said Gone. "We are travellers and we seek the Fortress of the Pearl. Is it close by here?"

"At the heart and the centre of those mountains." He waved with his hand towards the peaks. "Will you join me for some refreshment?"

The name the young man had given, together with his extraordinary looks, caused Elric again to rack his brains, trying to recall why all this was so familiar to him. He knew that he had only recently heard the name.

Within the cool house, Chamog Borm brewed them a herbal drink. He seemed proud of his domestic skills and it was clear he was no simple farmer. In one corner of the room was heaped a pile of rich armour, steel chased with silver and gold, a helm decorated with a tall spike, that spike decorated with ornamental snakes and falcons locked hi conflict. There were spears, a long, curved sword, daggers -weapons and accoutrements of every description.

"You are a warrior by trade?" said Elric as he sipped the hot liquid. "Your armour is very handsome."

"I was once a hero," said Chamog Borm sadly, "until I was dismissed from the Court of the Pearl."

"Dismissed?" Gone was thoughtful. "On what charge?"

Chamog Borm lowered his eyes. "I was charged with cowardice. Yet I believe that I was not guilty, that I was subject to an enchantment."

And now Elric recalled where he had heard the name. When he had arrived in Quarzhasaat he had in his fever wandered hi the market places and listened to the story-tellers. At least three of the stories he had heard had concerned Chamog Borm, hero of legend, the last brave knight of the Empire. His name was venerated everywhere, even hi the camps of the nomads. Yet Elric was sure Chamog Borm had existed-if he had ever existed-at least a thousand years earlier!

"What was the action of which you were accused?" he asked.

"I failed to save the Pearl, which now lies under an enchantment, imprisoning us all in perpetual suffering."

"What was that enchantment?" Oone asked quickly.

"It became impossible for our monarch and many of the retainers to leave the Fortress. It was for me to free them. Instead I brought a worse enchantment upon us. And my punishment is contrary to theirs. They may not leave, and I may not return." As he spoke he became increasingly melancholy.

Elric, still astonished at this conversation with a hero who should have been dead centuries before, could say little, but Oone seemed to understand completely. She made a sympathetic gesture.

"Can the Pearl be found there?" Elric asked, conscious of the bargain he had made with Lord Gho, of Anigh's impending torture and death, of Oone's predictions.

"Of course." Chamog Bonn was surprised. "Some believe it rules the whole Court, perhaps the world."

"Was this always so?" Oone asked softly.

"I have told you that it was not." He looked at them both as if they were simpletons. Then he lowered his eyes, lost in his own dishonour and humiliation.

"We hope to free her," said Oone. "Would you come with us, to help us?"

"I cannot help. She no longer trusts me. I am banished," he said. "But I can let you have my armour and my weapons so that part of me, at least, can fight for her."

"Thank you," said Oone. "You are generous."

Chamog Borm grew more animated as he helped them choose from his store. Elric found that the breastplate and greaves fitted him perfectly, as did the helmet. Similar equipment was found for Oone and the straps tightened to adjust to her slightly smaller body. They looked almost identical in then- new armour and something in Elric was again struck, some deep sense of satisfaction that he could hardly understand but which he welcomed. The armour gave him not only a greater sense of security but a sense of deep recognition of his own inner strength, a strength which he knew he must call upon to the utmost in the encounter to come. Oone had warned him of subtler dangers at the Fortress of the Pearl.

Chamog Borm's gifts continued, in the shape of two grey horses which he led from their stable at the back of the house. "These are Taron and Tadia. Brother and sister, they were twin foals. They have never been separated. Once I rode them into battle. Once I took up arms against the Bright Empire. Now the last Emperor of Melniboné will ride in my place to fulfill my destiny and end the siege of the Fortress of the Pearl."

"You know me?" Elric looked hard at the handsome youth, seeking deception or even irony, but there was none in those steady eyes.

"A hero knows another, Prince Elric." And Chamog Borm reached out to grip Elric's forearm in the gesture of friendship of the desert peoples. "May you gain all you wish to gain and may you do so with honour. You, too, Lady Oone. Your courage is the greatest of all. Farewell."

The exile watched them from the roof of his little house until they were out of sight. Now the great mountains were close, almost embracing them, and they could see a wide, white road stretching through them. The light was like that of a late summer afternoon, though Elric could still not be sure if it was sky above them or the distant roof of a vast cavern, for the sun was still not in evidence. Was the Dream Realm a limitless series of such caverns or had the dreamthief mapped the entire world? Could they cross the mountains, or the Nameless Land beyond and begin again to travel through the seven gates, ultimately arriving back at the Land of Dreams-in-Common? And would they find Jaspar Colinadous waiting for them where they had left him?

The road, when they reached it, proved to be of pure marble, but the horses' hooves were so well shod they did not slip once. The noise of their galloping began to echo through the wide pass and herds of gazelles and wild sheep looked up from their grazing to watch them pass, two silver riders on silver horses on their way to do battle with the forces who had seized power at the Fortress of the Pearl.

"You have understood these people better than I," he said to Oone, as the road began to twist upward towards the centre of the range and the light had grown colder, the sky a bright, hard grey. "Do you know what we might expect to find at the Fortress of the Pearl?"

She shook her head in regret. "It is like understanding a code without knowing what the words actually relate to," she told him. "The force is powerful enough to banish a hero as potent as Chamog Borm."

"I know only the legend, and that from a little I heard in the Slave Market at Quarzhasaat."

"He was summoned by the Holy Girl as soon as she realised that she was under further attack. That is what I believe, at any rate. She did not expect him to fail her. Somehow, indeed, he made matters worse. She felt betrayed by him and banished him to the edge of the Nameless Land, there perhaps to greet and assist others who might come to help her. That is no doubt why we are given all the appurtenances of the hero, so that we may be as much like heroes as he."

"Yet we know this world less well. How may we succeed where he failed?"

"Perhaps because of our ignorance," she said. "Perhaps not. I cannot answer you, Elric." She rode close to him, leaning from her saddle to kiss that part of his cheek exposed by the helmet. "Only know this. I will betray neither her nor, if I can help it, you. Yet if I must betray one of you, I suppose it will be you."

Elric looked at her in bafflement. "Is that likely to be an issue?"

She shrugged and then she sighed. "I do not know, Elric. Look. I think we have come to the Fortress of the Pearl!"

It was like a palace carved from the most delicate ivory. White against the silver sky, it rose above the snows of the mountain, a great multitude of slender spires and turretted towers, of cupolas, of mysterious structures which seemed almost as if they had been arrested in mid-Sight. There were bridges and stairways, curving walls and galleries, balconies and roof-gardens whose colours were a spectrum of pastel shades, a myriad of different plants, flowers, shrubs and trees. In all his travels Elric had only seen one place that was the equal to the Fortress of the Pearl and that was his own city, Imrryr. Yet the Dreaming City was exotic, rich, even vulgar-a romantic fancy compared to the complicated austerity of this palace.

As they approached on the marble road, Elric realised that the Fortress was not pure white, but contained shades of blue, silver, grey and pink, sometimes a little yellow or green, and he had the notion that the entire thing had been carved from a single gigantic pearl. Soon they had reached the Fortress's only gate, a great circular opening protected by spiked grilles which came from above and below and both sides to meet at the centre. The Fortress was vast but even its gate dwarfed them.

Elric could think of nothing to do but cry out. "Open in the name of the Holy Girl! We come to do battle with those who imprison her spirit here!"

His words echoed through the towers of the Fortress and through the jagged peaks of the mountains beyond and seemed to lose themselves in the heights of a cavern's roof. In the shadows beyond the gateway he saw something scarlet move and then vanish again. There came the smell of delicious perfume, mixed with the same strange ocean scent they had noticed when they first reached the Nameless Land.

Then the gates had parted, so swiftly that they seemed to melt into the air, and a rider confronted them, his humourless chuckling by now all too familiar.

"This is what should be, I think," said the Pearl Warrior.

"League yourself with us again, Pearl Warrior," said Oone, with all her considerable authority. "It is what she desires!"

"No. It is so that she shall not be betrayed. You must dissolve. Now! Now! Now!" His head was flung back as he screamed these last words, for all the world like a dog gone rabid.

Elric drew a sword from its scabbard. It shone with the same silver light that poured from the Pearl Warrior's blade. Gone followed his example, though more reluctantly.

"We shall pass now, Pearl Warrior."

"Nothing will here! I want your freedom."

"She shall have it!" said Oone. "It is not yours, not unless she bestows it upon you herself."

"She says it is mine. I will be that. I will be that!"

Elric could not follow this strange conversation and he chose not to waste time with it. He urged his silver horse forward, the blade glaring in his hand. So balanced was this sword, so familiar to his grip, that he felt for a moment that it was somehow the natural contrast to his runesword. Was this a sword forged by Law to serve its purposes, just as Stormbringer had, by all accounts, been forged by Chaos?

The Pearl Warrior guffawed and widened his awful eyes. Death was in them. The death of the world. He lowered the same misshapen lance he had brandished at them before and Elric saw it was encrusted with old blood. The warrior held his ground and the lance was suddenly threatening Elric's eyes so that the albino had to throw himself to one side to avoid its points, striking upward as he did so and feeling a greater resistance to his blow than anything he had felt before. The Pearl Warrior seemed to have gained strength since their last encounter.

"Ordinary soul!" The lips twisted in this insult, clearly as disgusting as any the Pearl Warrior could conceive. And he began to chuckle again, this time because Oone was riding at him, her sword stretched out full before her, a spear held in her other hand, her reins between her teeth. The sword drove forward, the spear swung back as she poised to throw. Then sword and spear struck the Pearl Warrior at the exact same moment so that his breastplate cracked like the shell of some great crustacean and was pierced by the sword.

Elric marvelled at this strategy which he had never witnessed before. Oone's strength and coordination were almost beyond credibility. It was a feat of arms warriors would speak of for a thousand years to come, which many would try to emulate and would die in the trying.

The spear had done its work in breaking open the Pearl Warrior's armour and the sword had completed the action. But the Pearl Warrior had not been killed.

He groaned. He cackled. He floundered. His sword came up as if to protect his chest from the blow already struck. His great horse reared and its nostrils flared with fury. Oone turned her own mount away. Her sword had left its tip in the Pearl Warrior's body. She was reaching for a second spear, for her dagger.

Elric drove forward again, his own spear aimed at the cracked armour, hoping to follow her example, but the blade struck the ivory and was turned. Elric lost balance long enough for the Pearl Warrior to take the advantage. The sword struck the steel of Elric's armour with a noise that made a cacophony within his helmet and brought bright sparks flashing like a fire. He fell onto his horse's neck, barely able to block the next thrust. Then the Pearl Warrior shrieked, the eyes growing still wider, the mouth gaping red and the foul breath steaming from it, while blood poured from under the gorget between his helmet and his breastplate. He fell towards Elric and the albino realised that the haft of a spear was sticking from his chest in exactly the same place where Oone had broken the creature's armour. , "This will not remain so!" cried the Pearl Warrior. It was a threat. "I cannot do that thing!"

Then he tumbled in a heap from his horse and clattered like old bones onto the flagstones of the courtyard. From behind him an ornamental fountain, representing a fig tree in full fruit, began to spurt water, filling the surrounding trough and overflowing until it touched the body of the Pearl Warrior. The riderless horse began to scream, turning round and round, rearing, foaming, then it galloped out through the gate and back down the marble road.

Elric turned the heavy corpse over to make sure that no life was left in the Pearl Warrior and to inspect the shattered armour. He remained admiring of Oone's manoeuvre. "I have never seen that done before," he said, "and I have fought beside and against famous warriors."

"A dreamthief must know many things," she said, by way of acknowledgement of his praise. "I learned such tactics from my mother, who was a greater battle-woman than I shall ever be."

"Your mother was a dreamthief?"

"No," said Gone absently as she inspected her ruined sword and then picked up the Pearl Warrior's, "she was a queen." She tested the weight of the dead creature's blade and discarded her own, trying it in her scabbard and finding that it was a little too wide. Carelessly she stuck it in her belt and unhooked the scabbard, throwing it upon the ground. The water from the fountain was around their ankles now and was disturbing their horses.

Leading the steeds, they passed under a heart-shaped arch and into another courtyard. Here, too, fountains played, but these were not flooding. They seemed carved out of ivory, like so much of the Fortress, and represented stylised herons, their beaks meeting at a point above then- heads. Elric was reminded vaguely of the architecture of Quarzhasaat, though this had none of the decadence of that place, none of the look of senile old age which characterised the city at its worst. Had the Fortress been built by the ancestors of the present lords of Quarzhasaat, the Council of Six and One Other? Had some great king fled the city millennia before and journeyed here to the Dream Realm? Was that how the legend of the Pearl had come to Quarzhasaat?

Courtyard after courtyard, each in its own way of extraordinary beauty, followed until Elric began to wonder if this path was merely leading them through the Fortress to the other side.

"For such a large building it's somewhat underpopulated," he said to Gone.

"We shall find the inhabitants soon enough, I think," Oone murmured. Now they ascended a spiral causeway which led around a huge central dome. Although the palace had such a mood and look of austerity, Elric did not find its architecture cold and there was something almost organic about it, as if it had been formed from flesh, then petrified.

Their horses still with them, the sound now muffled by luxurious carpet, they moved through halls and corridors whose walls were hung with tapestries and decorated with mosaics, though they saw no pictures of living things, only geometrical designs.

"We near the heart of the Fortress, I think," Oone told him in a whisper. It was as if she feared to be overheard, yet they had seen no one. She looked beyond tall columns, through a series of rooms seemingly lit by sunshine from without. Following her gaze, Elric had the impression of blue fabric wafting through a door and vanishing. "Who was that?"

"All the same," said Oone to herself. "All the same." Her sword was drawn again, however, and she signed to Elric to imitate her. They entered another courtyard. This one seemed to be open to the sky-the same grey sky they had first seen in the mountains. Gallery after gallery rose up all around them, many storeys to the top. Elric thought he saw faces peering back at him, then something liquid struck his face and he almost inhaled the sickly red stuff which covered his body. More of it was pouring down on them from every part of the gallery and already the courtyard was knee deep in what seemed to Elric to be human blood. He heard a muttering overhead, soft laughter, a cry.

"Stop this!" he shouted, wading to the side of the chamber. "We are here to parley. All we want is the Holy Girl! Give her spirit back to us and we shall leave!"

He was answered by a further shower of blood and he hauled his horse towards the next door. There was a gate across it. He tried to lift it. He tried to bounce it free of its mountings. He looked to Oone, who, wiping the red liquid from herself, joined him. She reached out her long fingers and found some kind of button. The gate opened slowly, almost reluctantly, but it opened. She grinned at him. "Like most men, you become a brute when you panic, my lord."

He was hurt by her joke. "I had no idea I should find such a means of opening the gate, my lady."

"Think of such things in future and you will stand a better chance of survival in this Fortress," she said.

"Why will they not parley with us?"

"They probably do not believe that we are ready to bargain," she said. Then she added: "In reality, I can only guess at their logic. Each adventure of a dreamthief is different from the others, Prince Elric. Come." She led them on past a series of pools full of warm water from which a little steam rose. There were no bathers in the pools. Then Elric thought he saw creatures, perhaps fish, swimming in the depths. He leaned forward to look, but Oone pulled him back. "I warned you. Your curiosity could bring your destruction and mine."

Something threshed and bubbled in the pool and then was gone. All at once the rooms began to shake and the water foamed. Cracks appeared hi the marble floors. Their horses snorted with fear and threatened to lose their footing. Elric himself almost toppled down into one of the fissures which had opened. It was as if an earthquake had suddenly struck the mountains. Yet as they dashed hastily for the next gallery, which opened onto a peaceful lawn, all signs of the earthquake had vanished.

A man approached them. In bearing, he resembled Queen Sough, but he was shorter and older. His white beard hung upon a surcoat of gold cloth and in his hand he held a salver on which were placed two leather bags. "Will you accept the authority of the Fortress of the Pearl?" he said. "I am the seneschal of this place."

"Who do you serve?" Elric asked brusquely. His sword was still hi his hand and he made no effort to disguise his readiness to use it.

The seneschal looked bewildered. "I serve the Pearl, of course. This is the Fortress of the Pearl!"

"Who rules here, old man?" Oone asked him pointedly.

"The Pearl. I have said so." .

"Does no one rule the Pearl?" Elric was mystified.

"No longer, sir. Now, will you take this gold and go? We have no wish to expend more of our energies upon you. They flag, but they are not exhausted. I think you will be dissolved soon."

"We have defeated all your defenders," said Gone. "Why should we want gold?"

"Do you not desire the Pearl?"

Before Elric could answer, Oone silenced him with a warning gesture.

"We come only to secure the release of the Holy Girl."

The seneschal smiled. "They have all made that claim, but what they want is the Pearl. I cannot believe you, lady."

"How can we prove our words?"

"You cannot. We already know the truth."

"We have no interest in bargaining with you, Sir Seneschal. If you serve the Pearl, who does the Pearl serve?"

"The child, I think." His brow furrowed. Her question had confused him, yet to Elric it had seemed so simple. His admiration for the dreamthief's skill increased.

"You see, we can help you in this," said Oone. "The child's spirit is imprisoned. And while it is imprisoned, so are you held captive."

The old man offered the bags of gold again. "Take this and leave us."

"I do not think we shall," said Oone firmly, and she led her horse forward, past the old man. "Come, Elric."

The albino hesitated. "We should question him more, Oone, surely?"

"He could not answer more."

The seneschal ran at her, swinging the heavy bags, the salver falling to the floor with a clang. "She is not! It will hurt! This is not to be. Pain will come! Pain!"

Elric felt sympathy for the old man. "Oone. We should listen to him."

She would not pause. "Come. You must."

He had learned to trust her judgement. He, too, pushed past the old man, who beat at his body with the bags of gold and wailed, the tears pouring down his cheeks and into his beard. It took a different courage to perform that particular action.

There was another great curving doorway ahead of them, all elaborate lattice-work and mosaic, bordered by bands of jade, blue enamel and silver. Two large doors of dark wood, hinges and studs of brass, blocked their way.

Oone did not knock. She reached gently towards the doors and placed her fingertips against them. Gradually, just as with the other gate, the doors began to part. They heard a faint noise from within, almost a whimper. The doors opened wider and wider until they were completely back on their hinges.

For a moment Elric was overwhelmed by what he saw.

A grey-gold glow filled the great chamber which had been revealed to them. The glow came from a column about the height of a tall man which was topped by a globe. At the centre of the globe shone a pearl of enormous size, almost as big as Elric's fist. Short flights of steps led up to the column from all sides, and around these steps were what at first appeared to be ranks of statues. Then Elric realised that they were men, women and children, dressed in all manner of costumes, though most of them in the styles favoured in Quarzhasaat and by the desert clans.

The old man came stumbling behind them. "Do not hurt this!"

"We defend ourselves, Sir Seneschal," Oone told him without turning to look at him. "That is all you need to know from us."

Slowly, still leading the silver horses, still with their silver swords in their hands, the light from the pearl touching their silver armour and their helmets and making these, too, glow with soft radiance, they made their way into the chamber.

'This is not to destroy. This is not to defeat. This is not to despoil."

Elric shivered when he heard the voice. He looked over towards the distant walls of the room and there was the Pearl Warrior, his armour all cracked and slimed with blood, his face a terrible bruise, the eyes seeming alternately to fade and take fire. And sometimes they were Alnac's eyes.

The warrior's next words were almost pathetic. "I cannot fight you. No more."

"We are not here to hurt," said Gone again. "We are here to free you."

There was a movement amongst the still figures. A blue-gowned veiled woman appeared. Queen Sough's own eyes had a suggestion of tears. "With these you come?" She indicated the swords, the horses, the armour. "But our enemies are not here."

"They will be here soon," said Oone. "Soon, I think, my lady."

Still baffled, Elric looked behind him, as if he would see their enemies. He made a movement towards the Pearl at the Heart of the World, merely to admire a marvel. At once all the figures came to life, blocking his path.

"You will steal!" The old man sounded even more wretched than before, even more impotent.

"No," said Oone. "It is not our purpose. You must understand that." She spoke urgently. "Raik Na Seem sent us to find her."

"She is safe. Tell him she is safe."

"She is not safe. Soon she will dissolve." Oone turned her gaze on the whispering throng. "She is separated, as we are separated. The Pearl is the cause."

"This is a trick," said Queen Sough.

"A trick," echoed the wounded Pearl Warrior, and there was a faint chuckle from his spoiled throat.

"A trick," said the seneschal, and held out the bags of gold.

"We come to steal nothing. We come to defend. Look!" Oone made a circular movement with her sword to show them what they had evidently not yet seen.

Emerging through the walls of the chamber, their hands filled with every imaginable weapon, came the hooded, tattooed soldiers of Quarzhasaat. The Sorcerer Adventurers.

"We cannot fight them," said Elric quietly to his friend. "There are too many of them." And he prepared himself for death.