Revenge of the Rose by Michael Moorcock Page B

below,” whispered
Wheldrake. “I shall be glad to leave this place, Prince Elric.”
                 “We
might find ourselves in difficulties when we decide to end our stay.” The Rose
was careful not to be overheard. “Do they plan to make slaves of us, like those
poor wretches down there?”
                 “I
would guess they have no immediate intention of sending us to their marching
boards,” said Elric, “but I have no doubt they want us for our muscles and our
horses as much as for our company. I do not intend to remain long in this place
if I cannot quickly discover some clue to what I seek. I have little time.” His
old arrogance was returning. His old impatience.
                 He
tried to quell them, as signs of the disease which had led to his present
dilemma. He hated his own blood, his sorcery, his reliance upon his runesword,
or other extraordinary means of sustenance. And when Amarine Goodool brought
them into the village square (complete with shops and public buildings and
houses of evident age) to meet a committee of welcome, Elric was less than
warm, though he knew that lies, hypocrisy and deception were the order of the
moment. His attempt to smile did not bring any answering gaiety.
                 “Gweetings,
gweetings,” cried an apparition in green, with a little pointed beard and a hat
threatening to engulf his entire head and half his body. “On behalf of the
Twollon weins-men and -morts, may we vawda yoah eeks with joy. Or, in the
common speech, you must considah us all, now, your bwothahs and sistahs. My
name is Filigwip Nant and I wun the theatwicals …” Whereupon he proceeded
to introduce a miscellaneous group of people with odd-sounding names, peculiar
accents and unnatural complexions whose appearance seemed to fill Wheldrake
with horrified recognition. “It could be the Putney Fine Arts Society,” he
murmured, “or worse, the Surbiton Poetasters—I have been a reluctant guest of
them both, and many more. Ilkley, as I recall, was the worst …” and he
lapsed into his own gloomy contemplations as, with a smile no more convincing
than the albino’s, he suffered the roll-call of parochial fame, until he opened
his little beak to a sky still filled with cloud and spray and began a kind of
protective declamation which had him surrounded at once by green, black and
purple velvet, by rustling brocade and romantic lace, by the scent of a hundred
garden flowers and herbs, by the gypsy literati. And borne away.
                 The
Rose and Elric also had their share of temporary acolytes. This was clearly a
village of some wealth, which yearned for novelty.
                 “We’re
very cosmopolitan, you know, in Trollon. Like most of the ‘diddicoyim’ (ha, ha)
villages, we are now almost wholly made up from outsiders. I, myself, am an
outsider. From another realm, you know. From Heeshigrowinaaz, actually. Are you
familiar—?” A middle-aged woman with an elaborate wig and considerable paint
linked her bangled arm in Elric’s. “I’m Parapha Foz. My husband’s Barraban Foz,
of course. Isn’t it boring?”
                 “I
have the feeling,” said the Rose in an undertone as she went by with her own
burden of enthusiasts, “that this is to be the greatest ordeal of them
all …”
                 But
it seemed to Elric that she was also amused, especially by his own expression.
                 And
he bowed, with graceful irony, to the inevitable.
                 There
followed a number of initiating rituals with which Elric was unfamiliar, but
which Wheldrake dreaded as being all too familiar, and the Rose accepted, as if
she, too, had once known such experiences better.
                 There
were meals and speeches and performances, tours of the oldest and quaintest
parts of the village, small lectures on its history and its architecture and
how wonderfully it