To Rescue Tanelorn by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online

unhuman beauty, but close enough to my race’s ideal to attract me.
    She had the long pointed Eldren face, slanting eyes that seemed blind in their strange milkiness, slightly pointed ears, high slanting cheekbones and a slender body that was almost boyish. All the Eldren women were slender, like this, small-breasted and narrow-waisted. Her red lips were fairly wide, curving naturally upwards so that she always seemed to be on the point of smiling while her face was in repose.
             
    For the first week out she would not speak. I saw that she had everything for her comfort and she thanked me through her guards, that was all. But one day I stood outside the set of cabins where she, the king and I had our apartments, leaning over the rail looking at a grey sea and an overcast sky.
    She took the initiative.
    “Greetings, Sir Champion,” she said half-mockingly as she came out of her cabin.
    I turned, surprised.
    “Greetings—Lady Ermizhad,” said I. She was dressed in a cloak of midnight blue flung around a simple smock of pale blue wool.
    “A day of omens, I think,” she said looking at the gloomy sky which boiled darkly above us, full of heavy greys and dusty yellows.
    “Why think you?” said I.
    She laughed. It was lovely to hear—crystal and gold-strung harps, the music of heaven, not hell.
    “Forgive me, I sought to trouble you, but I see you are not so prone to suggestion as others of your race. In fact,” she frowned, “there is an air about you which makes me think you are not wholly of that race.”
    “I am of it,” I told her, “but not from this period of time. I have been many heroes—but always human. How I got here, I do not know. I am not sure where I am, in the far future or the far past.”
    “That would depend on what period of time you came from,” she said. “For we believe that time moves in a circle, so that the past is the future and the future is the past.”
    “An interesting theory,” I said.
    “More than a theory, Lord Erekosë.” She came and stood by the ship’s rail, one hand resting upon it.
    At that time, I felt the affection that I supposed a father might have for a daughter—a father who delights in his offspring’s assured innocence. She could not have been, I felt sure, more than nineteen. Yet her voice had a confidence that comes with knowledge of the world, her carriage was proud, also confident. I realized that King Rigenos might well have spoken truly. How, indeed, could you gauge the age of an immortal?
    “I have the feeling,” I said, “that I come from your past—that this, in relation to what I call the twentieth century—is the far future.”
    “This world is very ancient,” she agreed.
    “Is there a record of a time when only human beings occupied the Earth?”
    “No,” she smiled, “there is an echo of a myth, the thread of a legend, which says that there was a time when only the Eldren occupied the Earth. My brother has studied this—I believe he knows more.”
    I shivered. I did not know why, but my vitals seemed to chill within me. I could not, easily, continue the conversation, though I wanted to. She appeared not to have noticed my discomfort.
    At last I said: “A day of omens, madam. I hope to talk with you again some time.” I bowed and returned to my cabin.
C HAPTER F OUR
    I saw her in the same place the next day. The sky had cleared somewhat and sunlight pushed thick beams through the clouds, the rays slanting down on the choppy sea so that the world seemed half dark, half light. A moody day.
    We stood for a while in silence, leaning out over the rail, watching the surf slide by, watching the oars smash into the waters in monotonous rhythm.
    Again, she was the first to speak.
    “What do they plan to do with me?” she asked quietly.
    “You will be a hostage against the eventuality of your brother Prince Arjavh ever attacking Necranal,” I told her. “You will be safe—King Rigenos will not be able to bargain if you