Revenge of the Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

for
that I hate thee with an unjust hatred.”
                 “Father?”
Elric lowered his arm and turned his bone-white face behind him to where,
leaning against a ruined pillar, stood the slender, frail presence of Sadric.
Upon his lips was a smile that was terrible in its tranquility.
                  

 
     
                 Elric
looked disbelievingly at the face which was exactly as it had been when he had
last seen it as his father had lain in funeral state.
                 “For
an unjust hatred there is no release, save the peace of death. And here, as you’ll
observe, I am denied the peace of death.”
                 “I
have dreamed of you, Father, and your disappointment with me. I would that I
could have been all you desired in a son …”
                 “There
was never a second, Elric, when you could have been that. The act of thy
creation was the sealing of her doom. We had been warned of it in every omen
but could do nothing to avert that hideous destiny—” and his eyes glared with a
hatred only the unrested dead could know.
                 “How
came you here, Father? I had thought you chosen by Chaos, gone to the service
of our patron duke, Lord Arioch.”
                 “Arioch
could not claim me because of another pact I had made, with Count Mashabak. He
is no longer my patron.” And a kind of laugh escaped him.
                 “Your
soul was claimed by Mashabak of Chaos?”
                 “But
disputed by Arioch. My soul is hostage to their rivalries—or was. By some
sorcery I still command, I betook myself here, to the very beginning of our
true history. And here I have some short sanctuary.”
                 “You
are hiding, Father, from the Lords of Chaos?”
                 “I
have gained some time while they dispute, for I have here a spell, my last great
spell, which will free me to join your mother in the Forest of Souls where she awaits me.”
                 “You
have a passport to the Forest of Souls ? I’d thought such things a myth.” Elric
wiped chilly sweat from his forehead.
                 “I
sent thy mother there to remain until I joined her. I gave her the means, our
Scroll of Dead-Speaking, and she is safe in that sweet eternity, which many
souls seek and which few find. I swore an oath that I would do all I could to
be reunited with her.”
                 The
shade stepped forward, as if entranced, and reached to touch Elric’s face with
something like affection. But when the hand fell away there was only torment in
the old man’s undead eyes.
                 Elric
knew a certain sympathy. “Have you no companions here, Father?”
                 “Only
thou, my son. Thee and I now haunt these ruins together.”
                 An
unwholesome frisson: “Am I, too, a prisoner here?” said the albino.
                 “At
my humour, aye, my son. Now that I have touched thee we are bound together,
whether thou leavest this place or no, for it is the fate of such as I to be
linked always to the first living mortal his hand shall fall upon. We are one,
now, Elric—or shall be.”
                 And
Elric shuddered at the hatred and the relish in his father’s otherwise desolate
voice.
                 “Can
I not release you, Father? I have been to R’lin K’ren A’a, where our race began
in this realm. I sought our past there. I could speak of it …”
                 “Our
past is in our blood. It travels with us. Those degenerates of R’lin K’ren A’a,
they were never our true kin. They bred with humans and vanished. It was not
they who founded or preserved great Melniboné …”
                 “There
are so many stories, Father. So many conflicting legends …” Elric was
eager to continue the conversation with his