The Sleeping Sorceress Read Online Free

ground to pour more gore into the greedy earth.
    Bearing the remains of the head in what was first a scaled snout, then a beak, then a sharklike mouth, the Oonai thrashed back into the air.
    Moonglum picked himself up. His eyes contemplated nothing but his own imminent destruction.
    Elric, too, leapt from his horse and slapped its flank so that convulsively it began to gallop away towards the river. Another chimera followed it.
    This time the flying thing seized the horse’s body in claws which suddenly sprouted from its feet. The horse struggled to get free, threatening to break its own backbone in its struggles, but it could not. The chimera flapped towards the clouds with its catch.
    Snow fell thicker now, but Elric and Moonglum were oblivious of it as they stood together and awaited the next attack of the Oonai.
    Moonglum said quietly: “Is there no other spell you know, friend Elric?”
    The albino shook his head. “Nothing specific to deal with these. The Oonai always served the folk of Melniboné. They never threatened us. So we needed no spell against them. I am trying to think . . .”
    The chimerae cackled and yelled in the air above the two men’s heads.
    Then another broke away from the pack and dived to the earth.
    “They attack individually,” Elric said in a somewhat detached tone, as if studying insects in a bottle. “They never attack in a pack. I know not why.”
    The Oonai had settled on the ground and it had now assumed the shape of an elephant with the huge head of a crocodile.
    “Not an aesthetic combination,” said Elric.
    The ground shook as it charged towards them.
    They stood shoulder to shoulder as it approached. It was almost upon them—
    —and at the last moment they divided, Elric throwing himself to one side and Moonglum to the other.
    The chimera passed between them and Elric struck at the thing’s side with his runesword.
    The sword sang out almost lasciviously as it bit deep into the flesh which instantly changed and became a dragon dripping flaming venom from its fangs.
    But it was badly wounded.
    Blood ran from the deep wound and the chimera screamed and changed shape again and again as if seeking some form in which the wound could not exist.
    Black blood now burst from its side as if the strain of the many changes had ruptured its body all the more.
    It fell to its knees and the lustre faded from its feathers, died from its scales, disappeared from its skin. It kicked out once and then was still—a heavy, black, piglike creature whose lumpen body was the ugliest Elric and Moonglum had ever seen.
    Moonglum grunted.
    “It is not hard to understand why such a creature should want to change its form . . .”
    He looked up.
    Another was descending.
    This had the appearance of a whale with wings, but with curved fangs, like those of a stomach fish, and a tail like an enormous corkscrew.
    Even as it landed it changed shape again.
    Now it had assumed human form. It was a huge, beautiful figure, twice as tall as Elric. It was naked and perfectly proportioned, but its stare was vacant and it had the drooling lips of an idiot child. Lithely it ran at them, its huge hands reaching out to grasp them as a child might reach for a toy.
    This time Elric and Moonglum struck together, one at each hand.
    Moonglum’s sharp sword cut the knuckles deeply and Elric’s lopped off two fingers before the Oonai altered its shape again and began first to be an octopus, then a monstrous tiger, then a combination of both, until at last it was a rock in which a fissure grew to reveal white, snapping teeth.
    Gasping, the two men waited for it to resume the attack. At the base of the rock some blood was oozing. This put a thought into Elric’s mind.
    With a sudden yell he leapt forward, raised his sword over his head and brought it down on top of the rock, splitting it in twain.
    Something like a laugh issued from the Black Sword then as the sundered shape flickered and became another of the piglike