The Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online

breaking away as I tested it for a foothold. But by using the gargoyles as steps, I slowly managed to clamber to the top of the pit, haul myself over the edge and peer cautiously around me.
    There was no sign of Sharan Kang or his men. Indeed, there was no sign of life at all. Everywhere I looked I saw ruins. Not a single building in Teku Benga had escaped the earthquake. Many of the temples seemed to have disappeared altogether.
    I stood up and began to walk over the cracked remains of the pavements.
    And then I stopped suddenly and, for the first time since I had awakened, I realized that there was something I could not rationalize.
    There were no corpses—which might have been expected if the earthquake had occurred the previous night, as I thought. But perhaps the people had managed to escape the city. I could accept that.
    What brought me up short was not that the pavements were cracked —but that weeds grew in profusion between the cracks!
    And now that I looked, there were creepers, tiny mountain flowers, patches of heather growing everywhere on the ruins. These ruins were old. It had been years since anyone had occupied them!
    I licked my lips and tried to pull myself together. Perhaps I was not in Teku Benga at all? Perhaps I had been carried from Sharan Kang’s city and left to die among the ruins of another city?
    But this was plainly Teku Benga. I recognized the ruins of several buildings. And there was hardly another city like Teku Benga, even in the mysterious Himalayas.
    Besides, I recognized the surrounding mountains, the distant pass which led up to what had been the city wall. And it was obvious that I stood in the ruins of the central square in which the Temple of the Future Buddha had been erected.
    Again I experienced a dreadful shiver of fear. Again I glanced down at my dust-caked body, at my rotting clothes, at the weeds beneath my split boots, at all the evidence—evidence which mocked my sanity—evidence to show that not hours but years had passed since I had sought to escape the trap which Sharan Kang had set for me!
    Could I still be dreaming? I asked myself. But if this were a dream, it was unlike anything I had ever dreamed before. And one can always tell a dream from reality, no matter how sharp and coherent a dream it is. (That is what I felt then, but now I wonder, I wonder...)
    I seated myself on a slab of broken masonry and tried to think. How was it possible that I could still be alive? At least two years must have passed since the earthquake—if earthquake it were— and while my clothes had been subjected to the normal processes of Time, my flesh was unaffected. Could the gas I suspected as having caused the rot have actually preserved me? It was the only explanation—and a wild enough one, at that. It would take a clever scientist to investigate the matter. I wasn’t up to it. Now my job was to get back to civilization, contact my regiment and find out what had been going on since I had lost consciousness.
    As I clambered over the ruins I tried to force the astounding thoughts from my brain and concentrate on my immediate problem. But it was difficult and I still could not rid myself entirely of the idea that I had gone quite mad.
    Eventually I reached the crumbling walls and hauled my aching body over them. Reaching the top I looked down the other side, seeking the road which had been there. But it was gone. In its place was a yawning chasm, as if the rock had cracked wide open and the part of the mountain on which the city had stood had moved at least a hundred feet away from the rest. There was absolutely no way of crossing to the other side. I began to laugh—a harsh, exhausted cackle—and then was seized by a series of dry, racking sobs. Somehow Fate had spared my life, only to present me with the prospect of a lingering death as I slowly starved on this lifeless mountain.
    Wearily, I lay down my head and must have slept a natural sleep for an hour or two, for when I awoke