The Sleeping Sorceress by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online Page B

runesword. The claws lashed out at him, but the creature was weakening.
    Then the life-force pulsed up the blade and reached Elric who gasped and screamed in dark ecstasy as the demon’s energy poured into him. He withdrew the blade and hacked and hacked at the body and still the life-force flowed into him and gave greater power to his blows. The demon groaned and dropped to the flagstones.
    And it was done.
    And a white-faced demon stood over the dead thing of hell and its crimson eyes blazed and its pale mouth opened and it roared with wild laughter, flinging its arms upward, the runesword flaming with a black and horrid flame, and it howled a wordless, exultant song to the Lords of Chaos.
    There was silence suddenly.
    And then it bowed its head and it wept.

    Now Elric opened the door to the eastern tower and stumbled through absolute blackness until he came to the lowest room. The door to the room was locked and barred, but Stormbringer smashed through it and the Last Lord of Melniboné entered a lighted room in which squatted a chest of iron.
    His sword sundered the bands securing the chest and he flung open the lid and saw that there were many wonders in the chest, as well as the pouch made from cloth-of-gold, but he picked out only the pouch and tucked it into his belt as he raced from the room, back to the battlements where the bird of silver and gold stood pecking with its steel beak at the remnants of Theleb K’aarna’s servant.
    It looked up as Elric returned. In its eyes was an expression almost of humour.
    “Well, master, we must make haste to Kaneloon.”
    “Aye.”
    Nausea had begun to fill Elric. His eyes were gloomy as he contemplated the corpse and that which he had stolen from it. Such life-force, whatever else it was, must surely be tainted. Did not he drink something of the demon’s evil when his sword drank its soul?
    He was about to climb back into the onyx saddle when he saw something gleaming amongst the black and yellow entrails he had spilled. It was the demon’s heart—an irregularly shaped stone of deep blue and purple and green. It still pulsed, though its owner was dead.
    Elric stooped and picked it up. It was wet and so hot that it almost burned his hand, but he tucked it into his pouch, then mounted the bird of silver and gold.
    His bone-white face flickered with a dozen strange emotions as he let the bird bear him back over the Boiling Sea. His milk-white hair flew wildly behind him and he was oblivious of the wounds on his arm and chest.
    He was thinking of other things. Some of his thoughts lay in the past and others were in the future. And he laughed bitterly twice and his eyes shed tears and he spoke once.
    “Ah, what agony is this Life!”

C HAPTER S EVEN
    Black Wizard Laughing
    To Kaneloon they came in the early dawn and in the distance Elric saw a massive army darkening the snow and he knew it must be the Kelmain Host, led by Theleb K’aarna and Prince Umbda, marching against the lonely castle.
    The bird of gold and silver flapped down in the snow outside the castle’s entrance and Elric dismounted. Then the bird had risen into the air again and was gone.
    The great gate of Castle Kaneloon was closed this time and he gathered his tattered cloak about his naked torso and he hammered on the gate with his fists and he forced a cry from his dry lips.
    “Myshella! Myshella!”
    There was no answer.
    “Myshella! I have returned with that which you need!”
    He feared she must have fallen into her enchanted slumber again. He looked towards the south and the dark tide had rolled a little closer to the castle.
    “Myshella!”
    Then he heard a bar being drawn and the gates groaned open and there stood Moonglum, his face strained and his eyes full of something of which he could not speak.
    “Moonglum! How came you here?”
    “I know not how, Elric.” Moonglum stepped aside so that Elric could enter. He replaced the bar. “I lay in my bed last night when a woman came to me—the