THE BLACK BLADE’S SONG

(The White Wolf’s Song)

(1994)

Come, Mephistophilis, let us dispute again,

And argue of divine Astrology.

Tell me, are there many Heavens above the moon?

Are all celestial bodies but one globe,

As is the substance of this centric earth?

Christopher Marlowe,

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

CHAPTER ONE

An Unusual Occurrence on the Xanardwys Road

THE RIDER WAS lean, almost etiolated, but subtly muscled. His ascetic features were sensitive, his skin milk-white. From deep cavities within that half-starved face moody crimson eyes burned like the flowers of Hell. Once or twice he turned in his saddle to look back.

A tribe of Alofian hermaphrodites at his heels, the man rode eastward across the Dakwinsi Steppe, hoping to reach fabled Xanardwys before the snows blocked the pass.

His pale silver mare, hardiest of all Bastans, was bred to this terrain and had as determined a hold on life as the sickly albino who had to sustain himself by drugs or the stolen life-stuff of his fellows.

Drawing the black sealskin snow-cloak about him, the man set his face against the weather. His name was Elric and he was a prince in his own country, the last of his long line and without legitimate issue, an outcast almost everywhere in a world coming to hate and resent this alien kind as the power of Melniboné faded and the strength of the Young Kingdoms grew. He did not much care for his own safety but he was determined to live, to return to his island kingdom and be reunited with his sweet cousin Cymoril, whom he would one day marry. It was this ambition alone which drove him on through the blizzard.

Clinging to his horse’s mane as the sturdy beast pressed against the deepening drifts which threatened to bury the world, Elric’s senses grew as numb as his flesh. The mare moved slowly across the ridges, keeping to the high ground, heading always away from the afternoon sun. At night Elric dug them both a snow-hole and wrapped them in his lined canvasses. He carried the equipment of the Kardik, whose hunting grounds these were.

Elric no longer dreamed. He was almost entirely without conscious thought. Yet still his horse moved steadily towards Xanardwys, where hot springs brought eternal summer and where scarlet roses bloomed against the snow.

Towards evening on the fifth day of his journey, Elric became aware of an extra edge of coldness in the air. Though the great crimson disc of the setting sun threw long shadows over the white landscape, its light did not penetrate far. It now appeared to Elric that a vast wall of ice loomed up ahead, like the sides of a gigantic, supernatural fortress. There was something insubstantial about it. Perhaps Elric had discovered one of those monumental mirages which, according to the Kardik, heralded the inevitable doom of any witness.

Elric had faced more than one inevitable doom and felt no terror for this one, but his curiosity aroused him from the semi-stupor into which he had fallen. As they approached the towering ice he saw himself and his horse in perfect reflection. He smiled a grim smile, shocked by his own gauntness. He looked twice his real age and felt a hundred times older. Encounters with the supernatural had a habit of draining the spirit, as others whom he had met could readily testify…

Steadily his reflection grew larger until without warning he was swallowed by it—suddenly united with his own image! Then he was riding through a quiet, green dale which, he sincerely hoped, was the Valley of Xanardwys. He looked over his shoulder and saw a blue cloud billowing down a hillside and disappearing. Perhaps the mirror effect had something to do with the freakish weather of this region? He was profoundly relieved that Xanardwys—or at least its valley—was proving a somewhat substantial legend. He dismissed all questions concerning the phenomenon which had brought him here and pressed on in good spirits. All around were the signs of spring—the warm, scented air, the bright wild-flowers, the budding trees and shrubs, the lush grass—and he marveled at a wonderful paradox of geography which, according to the tales he’d heard, had saved many fugitives and travelers. Soon he must come to the ivory spires and ebony roofs of the city herself where he would rest, buy provisions, shelter and then continue his journey to Elwher, which lay beyond all the maps of his world.

The valley was narrow with steeply rising sides, like a tunnel, roots and branches of dark green trees tangling overhead in the soft earth. Elric felt a welcome sense of security and he drew deep breaths, relishing the sweet fecundity all around. This luxury of nature after the punishing ice brought him fresh vitality and new hope. Even his mare had developed a livelier gait.

However, when after an hour or two the sides grew yet steeper and narrower, the albino prince began to puzzle. He had never encountered such a natural phenomenon and indeed was beginning to believe that this gorgeous wealth of spring might be, after all, supernatural in origin. But then, even as he considered turning back and taking heed of a prudence he usually ignored, the sides of the valley began to sink to gentler rolling hills, widening to reveal in the distance a misty outline which must surely be that of Xanardwys.

After pausing to drink at a sparkling stream, Elric and his mare continued on. Now they crossed a vast stretch of greensward flanked by distant mountains, punctuated by stands of trees, flowery meadows, ponds and rivers. Slowly they came closer to the domestic reassurance of Xanardwys’s rural rooftops.

Elric drew in a deep, contented sigh.

A great roaring erupted suddenly in Elric’s ears and he was blinded as a new sun rose rapidly into the western sky, shrieking and wailing like a soul escaped from hell, multicoloured flames forming a pulsing aura. Then the sound became a single, deep, sonorous chord, slowly fading.

Elric’s horse stood mesmerized, as if turned to ice. The albino dismounted, cursing and throwing up his arm to protect his eyes. The broad rays stretched for miles across the landscape, bursting from the pulsing globe and carrying with them huge shapes, dark and writhing, seeming to struggle and fight even as they fell. And now the air was filled with an utterly horrifying noise, like the beating of a million pairs of monstrous wings. Trumpets bellowed, the brazen voices of an army, heralding an even more horrible sound—the despairing moan of a whole world’s souls voicing their agony, the fading shouts and dying cries of warriors in the last, weary stages of a battle.

Peering into the troubled vivacity of that mighty light, Elric felt heavy, muscular, gigantic forms, stinking with a sweet, bestial, almost overpowering odour, landing with massive thuds, shaking the ground with such force that the entire terrain threatened to collapse. This rain of monsters did not cease. It was only the purest of luck which saved Elric from being crushed under one of the falling bodies. He had the impression of metal ringing and clashing, of voices screaming and calling, of wings beating, beating, beating, like the wings of moths against a window, in a kind of frantic hopelessness. And still the monsters continued to fall out of a sky whose light changed subtly now, growing deeper and more stable until the entire world was illuminated by a steady, scarlet glare against which flying, falling shapes moved in black silhouette—wings, helmets, armour, swords—twisted in the postures of defeat. Now the predominant smell reminded Elric of the Fall and the sweet odour of rot, of the summer’s riches returning to their origins, and still mingled with this was the foetid stink of angry brutes.

As the light became gentler and the great disc began to fade, Elric grew aware of other colours and more details. The stink alone threatened to steal his senses—the snorting, acrid breath of titanic beasts, threatening sudden death and alarming every revitalized fibre of his being. Elric glimpsed brazen scales, huge silvery feathers, hideously beautiful insect eyes and mouths, wondrously distorted, half-crystalline bodies and faces, like Leviathan and all his kin, emerging after millions of years from beneath a sea which had encrusted them with myriad colours and asymmetrical forms, made them moving monuments in coral, with faceted eyes which stared up in blind anguish at a sky through which still plunged, wings flapping, fluttering, folded or too damaged to bear their weight, the godlike forms of their supernatural kind. Clashing rows of massive fangs and uttering sounds whose depth and force alone was sufficient to shake the whole valley, to topple Xanardwys’s towers, crack her walls and send her townsfolk fleeing with black blood boiling from every orifice, the monsters continued to fall.

image

Only Elric, inured to the supernatural, his senses and his body tuned to alien orchestrations, did not suffer the fate of those poor, unlucky creatures.

For mile upon mile in all directions, through light now turning to a bloody pink flecked with brass and copper, the landscape was crowded with the fallen titans: some on their knees; some supporting themselves upon swords, spears or shields; some stumbling blindly before collapsing over the bodies of their comrades; some lying still and breathing slowly, resting with wary relief as their eyes scanned the heavens. And still the mighty angels fell.

Elric, with all his experience, all the years of mystic study, could not imagine the immensity of the battle from which they fled. He, whose own patron Chaos Duke had the power to destroy all mortal enemies, attempted to imagine the collective power of this myriad army, each common soldier of which might belong to Hell’s aristocracy. For these were the very Lords of Chaos, each one of whom had a vast and complex constituency. Of that, Elric was certain.

He realized that his heart was beating rapidly and he was breathing in brief, painful gasps. Deliberately he took control of himself, convinced that the mere presence of that battered host must ultimately kill him. Determined, at least, to experience all he could before he was consumed by the casual power of the monsters, Elric was about to step forward when he heard a voice behind him. It was human, it was sardonic, and its accent was subtly queer, but it used the High Speech of Old Melniboné.

“I’ve seen a few miracles in my travels, sir, but by heavens, it must be the first time I’ve witnessed a shower of angels. Can you explain it, sir? Or are you as mystified as me?”

CHAPTER TWO

A Dilemma Discovered in Xanardwys

The stranger was roughly the same height and build as Elric, with delicate, tanned features and pale blue eyes, sharp as steel. He wore the loose, baggy, cream-coloured clothing of some outland barbarian, belted with brown leather and a pouch which doubtless holstered some weapon or charm. He wore a broad-brimmed hat the colour of his shirt and breeches and he carried over his right shoulder another strange-looking weapon, or perhaps a musical instrument, all walnut, brass and steel. “Are you a denizen of these parts, sir, or have you been dragged, like me, through some damnable Chaos vortex against your will? I am Count Renark von Bek, late of the Rim. And you, sir?”

“Prince Elric of Melniboné. I believed myself in Xanardwys, but now I doubt it. I am lost, sir. What do you make of this?”

“If I were to call upon the mythology and religion of my ancestors, I would say we looked at the defeated Host of Chaos, the very archangels who banded with Lucifer to challenge the power of God. All peoples tell their own stories of such a war amongst the angels, doubtless echoes of some true event. So they say, sir. Do you travel the moonbeams, as I do?”

“The question’s meaningless to me.” Elric’s attention was focused upon just one of the thousands of Chaos Lords. They lay everywhere now, darkening the hills and plains as far as the horizon. He had recognized certain aspects of the creature well enough to identify him as Arioch, his own patron Duke of Hell.

Count von Bek became curious. “What do you see, Prince Elric?”

The albino paused, his mind troubled. There was a mystery to all this which he could not understand and which he was too terrified to want to understand. He yearned with all his being to be elsewhere, anywhere but here; yet his feet were already moving, taking him through the groaning ranks whose huge bodies towered above him, seeking out his patron. “Lord Arioch? Lord Arioch?”

A frail, distant voice. “Ah, sweetest of my slaves. I thought thee dead. Has thou brought me sustenance, darling heart? Sweetmeats for thy lord?”

There was no mistaking Lord Arioch’s tone, but the voice had never been weaker. Was Lord Arioch already considering his own paradoxical death?

“I have no blood, no souls for thee today, great duke.” Elric made his way towards a massive figure lying panting across a hillside. “I am as weak as thee.”

“Then I love thee not. Begone…” The voice became nothing but fading echoes, even as Elric approached its source. “Go back, Elric. Go back whence ye came…It is not thy time…Thou shouldst not be here…Beware…Obey me or I shall…” But the threat was empty and both knew it. Arioch had used all his strength.

“I would gladly obey thee, Duke Arioch.” Elric spoke feelingly. “For I have a notion that even an adept in sorcery could not survive long in a world where so much Chaos dwells. But I know not how. I came here by an accident. I thought myself in Xanardwys.”

There was a pause, then a painful gasp of words. “This…is…Xanardwys…but not that of thy realm. There is no…hope…here. Go…go…back. There…is…no hope…This is the very end of time…It is cold…so…cold…Thy destiny…does…not…lie…here…”

“Lord Arioch?” Elric’s voice was urgent. “I told thee…I know not how to return.”

The massive head lowered, regarding him with the complex eyes of the fly, but no sound came from his sweet, red lips of youth. Duke Arioch’s skin was like shifting mercury, roiling upon his body, giving off sparks and auras and sudden bursts of brilliant, multicoloured dust, reflecting the invisible fires of hell. And Elric knew that if his patron had manifested himself in all his original glory, not in this sickly form, Elric’s very soul would have been consumed by the demon’s presence. Duke Arioch was even now gathering his strength to speak again. “Thy sword…has…the…power…to carve a gateway…to…the road home…” The vast mouth opened to drag in whatever atmosphere sustained its monstrous body. Silver teeth rattled like a hundred thousand arrows; the red mouth erupted with heat and stink, sufficient to drive the albino back. Oddly coloured wisps of flame poured from the nostrils. The voice was full of weary irony. “Thou art…too…valuable to me, sweet Elric…Now I need all my allies…even mortals. This battle…must be…our last…against…against the power…of…the…Balance…and those who have…allied themselves…with it…those vile servants of Singularity…who would reduce all the substance of…the multiverse…to one, dull, coherent agony of boredom…”

This speech took the last of his energy. One final gasp, a painful gesture. “Sing the song…the sword’s song…sing together…that power will break thee into…the roads…”

“Lord Arioch, I cannot understand thee. I must know more.”

But the huge eyes had grown dull and it seemed some kind of lid had folded over them. Lord Arioch slept, or faded into death. And Elric wondered at the power that could bring low one of the great Chaos Lords. What power could extinguish the life-stuff of invulnerable immortals? Was that the power of the Balance? Or merely the power of Law—which the Lords of Entropy called “The Singularity”? Elric had only a glimmering of the motives and ambitions of those mighty forces.

He turned to find von Bek standing beside him. The man’s face was grim and he held his strange instrument in his two hands, as if to defend himself. “What did the brute tell you, Prince Elric?”

Elric had spoken a form of High Melnibonéan, developed through the millennia as a means of intercourse between mortal and demon. “Little that was concrete. I believe we should head for what remains of the city. These weary lords of hell seem to have no interest in it.”

Count Renark agreed. The landscape still resounded with the titanic clank of sword against shield and the thunderous descent of an armoured body, the smack of great wings and the stink of their breath. The stink was unavoidable, for what they expelled—dust, vapours, showers of fluttering flames and noxious gases of all descriptions—shrouded the whole world. Like mice running amongst the feet of elephants, the two men stumbled through shadows, avoiding the slow, weary movements of the defeated host. All around them the effects of Chaos grew manifest. Ordinary rocks and trees were warping and changing. Overhead the sky was a raging cacophony of lightnings, bellowings, and agitated, brilliantly coloured clouds. Yet somehow they reached the fallen walls of Xanardwys. Here corpses were already transforming, taking on something of the shapes of those who had brought this catastrophe with them when they fell through the multiverse, tearing the very fabric of reality as they descended, ruined and defeated.

Elric knew that soon these corpses would become re-animated with the random Chaos energy which, while insufficient to help the Chaos Lords themselves, was more than enough to give a semblance of life to a thing which had been mortal.

Even as von Bek and Elric watched, they saw the body of a young woman liquefy and then re-form itself so that it still had something human about it but was now predominantly a mixture of bird and ape.

“Everywhere Chaos comes,” said Elric to his companion. “It is always the same. These people died in agony and now they are not even allowed the dignity of death…”

“You’re a sentimentalist, sir,” Count Renark spoke a little ironically.

“I have no feeling for these folk,” Elric assured him with rather too much haste. “I merely mourn the waste of it all.” Stepping over metamorphosing bodies and fallen architecture, which also began to alter its shape, the two men reached a small, domed structure of marble and copper, seemingly untouched by the rest of Chaos.

“Some kind of temple, no doubt,” said von Bek.

“And almost certainly defended by sorcery,” added the albino, “for no other building remains in one piece. We had best approach with a little caution.”

And he placed a hand up on his runesword, which stirred and murmured and seemed to moan for blood. Von Bek glanced towards the sword and a small shudder passed through his body. Then he led the way towards the temple. Elric wondered if this were some kind of entrance back to his own world. Had that been what Arioch meant? “These are singularly unpleasant manifestations of Chaos,” Count von Bek was saying. “This, surely, is Chaos gone sour—all that was virtue turned to vice. I have seen it more than once—in individuals as in civilizations.”

“You have traveled much, Count von Bek?”

“It was for many years my profession to wander, as it were, between worlds. I play the Game of Time, sir. As, I presume, do you.”

“I play no games, sir. Does your experience tell you if this building marks a route away from this realm and back to my own?”

“I could not quite say, sir. Not knowing your realm, for instance.”

“Sorcery protects this place,” said the albino, reaching for the hilt of his runesword. But Stormbringer uttered a small warning sound, as if to tell him that it could not be employed against this odd magic. Count von Bek had stepped closer and was inspecting the walls.

“See here, Prince Elric. There is a science at work. Look. Something alien to Chaos, perhaps?” He indicated seams in the surface of the building and, taking out a small folding knife, he scratched at it, revealing metal. “This place has always had a supernatural purpose.”

As if the traveler had triggered some mechanism, the dome above them began to spin, a pale blue aura spreading from it and encompassing them before they could retreat. They stood unmoving as a door in the base opened and a human figure regarded them. It was a creature almost as bizarre as any Elric had seen before, with the same style of clothing as von Bek, but with a peaked, grubby white cap on its unruly hair, stubble upon its chin, its eyes bloodshot but sardonically intelligent, a piece of charred root (doubtless some tribal talisman) still smouldering in the corner of its mouth. “Greetings, dear sirs. You seem as much in a pickle over this business as I am. Don’t it remind you a bit of Milton, what? ‘Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood, with scattered arms and ensigns?’ Paradise lost, indeed, my dear comrades in adversity. And I would guess that is not all we are about to lose…Will you step inside?”

The eccentric stranger introduced himself as Captain Quelch, a soldier of fortune, who had been in the middle of a successful arms sale when he had found himself falling through space, to arrive within the building. “I have a feeling it’s this old fellow’s fault, gentlemen.”

The interior was simple. It was bathed in a blue light from above and contained no furniture or evidence of ritual. There was a plain geometric design on the floor and coloured windows set high near the roof.

The place was filled with children of all ages, gathered around an old man who lay near the centre of the temple, on the tiles.

He was clearly dying. He beckoned for Elric to approach. It was as if he, like the Lords of Chaos, had been drained of all his life-stuff. Elric knelt down and asked if there were anything he needed, but the old man shook his head. “Only a promise, sir. I am Patrius, High Priest of Donblas the Justice Maker. I was able to save these, of all Xanardwys’s population, because they were attending my class. I drew on the properties of this temple to throw a protection around us. But the effort of making such desperate and powerful magic has killed me, I fear. All I wish now is that you take the children to safety. Find a way out of this world, for soon it must collapse into unformed matter, into the primal stuff of Chaos. It is inevitable. There is no hope for this realm, sir. Chaos devours us.”

A dark-skinned girl began to weep at this and the old man reached out his hand to comfort her.

“She weeps for her parents,” said the old man. “She weeps for what became of them and what they will become. All these children have second sight. I have tutored them in the ways of the multiverse. Take them to the roads, sir. They will survive, I am sure. It is all you need do. Lead them to the roads!”

A silence fell. The old man died.

Elric murmured to von Bek—“Roads? He entrusts me with a task that’s meaningless to me.”

“Not to me, Prince Elric.” Von Bek was looking warily in Captain Quelch’s direction. The man had climbed a stone stair and stood peering out of the windows in the direction of the defeated legions of hell. He seemed to be talking to himself in a foreign language.

“You understood the elder? You know a way out of this doomed place?”

“Aye, Prince Elric. I told you. I am an adept. A jugador. I play the Game of Time and roam the roads between the worlds. I sense that you are a comrade—perhaps even more than that—and that you are unconscious of your destiny. It is not my place to reveal anything to you more than is necessary—but if you would join with me in the Game of Time, become a mukhamir, then you have only to say.”

“My interest is in returning to my own sphere and to the woman I love,” said Elric simply. He reached out a long-fingered, bone-white hand, on which throbbed a single Actorios, and touched the hair of the sobbing child. It was a gesture which gave the watching von Bek much insight into the character of this moody lord. The girl looked up, her eyes desperate for reassurance, but she found little hope in the ruby orbs of the alien creature who stared down at her, his expression full of loss, of yearning for some impossible ambition. Yet she spoke: “Will you save us, sir?”

“Madam,” said the prince of ruins, with a small smile and a bow, “I regret that I am in a poor position to save myself, let alone an entire college of tyro seers, but it is in my self-interest that we should all be free of this. That you can be sure of…”

Captain Quelch came down the steps with an awkward swagger and a hearty, if unconvincing, chuckle. “We’ll be out of this in no time, little lady, be certain of that.”

But it was Elric to whom the young woman still looked and it was to Elric she spoke. “I am called Far-Seeing and First-of-Her-Kind. The former name explains my skills. The latter explains my future and is mysterious to me. You have the means of saving us, sir. That I can see.”

“A young witch!” Captain Quelch chuckled again, this time with an odd note, almost of self-reference. “Well, my dear. We are certainly saved, with so much sorcery at our disposal!”

Elric met the eyes of Far-Seeing and was almost shocked by the beauty he saw there. She was, he knew, part of his destiny. But perhaps not yet. Perhaps not ever, if he failed to escape the doom which came relentlessly to Xanardwys. They were in no immediate danger from the Chaos Lords; only from the demons’ unconscious influence, which gave foul vitality to the very folk they had killed, transforming them into travesties. Casually, unknowingly, the aristocracy of hell was destroying its own sanctuary, as mortals, equally unknowingly, poison their own wells with their waste. Such brute behaviour horrified Elric and made him despair. Perhaps after all, we were mere toys in the hands of mad, immortal beasts? Beasts without conscience or motive.

This was no time for abstract introspection! Even as he looked behind him, Elric saw the walls of the temple begin to shudder, lose substance, and then re-form. But those within had nowhere to flee. They heard grunts and howls from outside.

Shambling Chaos creatures pawed at the building, their sensibilities too crude to be challenged by argument, science or sorcery. The revived citizens of Xanardwys now only knew blind need, a horrible hunger to devour any form of flesh. By that means alone could they keep even this faint grip on life and what they had once been. They were driven by the knowledge of utter and everlasting extermination; their souls unjustly damned, mere fodder for the Lords of Hell.

Once, Elric’s folk had made a pact with Chaos in all her vital glory, in all her power and magnificent creativity. They had seen only the golden promise of Chaos, not the vile decadence which greed and blind ambition could make of it. Yet, when they had discovered Evil and married that to Chaos, then the true immorality of their actions had become plain to all save themselves. They had lost the will to see beyond their own culture and convictions, their own needs and brute survival. Their decadence was all too evident to the Young Kingdoms and to one sickly inheritor of the Ruby Throne, Elric; who, yearning to know how his great people had turned to cruel and melancholy incest, had left his inheritance in the keeping of his cousin; had left the woman he loved beyond life to seek an answer to his questions…But, he reflected, instead he had come to Xanardwys to die.

Renark von Bek was running for the steps, his weapon in his hands. Even as he reached the top a creature, flapping on leathery wings in parody of the Chaos Lords, burst through the window. Von Bek threw his weapon to his shoulder. There was a sharp report and the creature screamed, falling backwards with a great, ragged wound in its head. “Angel shot,” called von Bek. “I carry nothing else, these days.” Quelch seemed to understand him and approve.

While he could not grasp the nature of the weapon, Elric was grateful for it, for now the door of the temple bulged inward.

He felt a soft hand on his wrist. He looked down to see the girl staring up at him. “Your sword must sing its song,” she said. “This I know. Your sword must sing its song—and you must sing with it. You must sing together. It will give us our road.” Her eyes were unfocused. She saw into the future, as Arioch had done, or was it the past? She spoke distantly. Elric knew he was in the presence of a great natural psychic—but still her words hardly made sense to him.

“Aye—the sword will be singing, my lady, soon enough,” he said as he caressed her hair, longing for his youth, his happiness and his Cymoril. “But I fear you’ll not favour the tune Stormbringer plays.” Gently he pushed her to go with the children and comfort them. Then his right arm swung like a heavy pendulum and his right gauntlet settled upon the black hilt of his runesword until, with a single, sudden movement, he drew the blade from its scabbard and Stormbringer gave a yelp of glee, like a thirsty hound craving blood.

“These souls are mine, Lord Arioch!”

But he knew that, ironically, he would be stealing a little of his patron’s own life-stuff; for that was what animated these Chaos creatures, their bizarre deformities creating an obscene forest of flesh as they pressed through the doorway of the temple. That energy which had already destroyed this realm also gave a semblance of life to the creeping half-things which now confronted Elric and von Bek. Captain Quelch, claiming that he had no weapon, had gone to stand with the children, his arms out in a parody of protection. “Good luck with that elephant gun, old man,” he said to Count von Bek, who lifted the weapon to his shoulder, took careful aim, squeezed the trigger and, in his own words, “put a couple of pounds of Purdy’s best into the blighters.” There was a hideous splash of ichor and soft flesh. Elric stepped away fastidiously as his companion again took aim and again pounded the horrible creatures back from the door. “Though I think it fair to warn you, Prince Elric, that I only have a couple more of these left. After that, it’s down to the old Smith and Wesson, I’m afraid.” And he tapped the pouch at his belt.

But the weapon was needed elsewhere as, against all the windows high in the walls, there came a rattling of scales and a scratching of claws and von Bek fell back to cover the centre while Elric stepped forward, his black runesword moaning with anticipation, pulsing with dark fire, its runes writhing and skipping in the unholy metal, the whole terrible weapon independent within the grip of its wielder, possessed of a profound and sinister life of its own, rising and falling now as the white prince moved against the Chaos creatures, drinking their life-stuff. What remained of their souls passed directly into the deficient body of the Melnibonéan, whose own eyes blazed in that unwholesome glory, whose own lips were drawn back in a wolfish snarl, his body splashed from head to foot with the filthy fluids of his post-human antagonists.

The sword began to utter a great, triumphant dirge as its thirst was satisfied, and Elric howled too, the ancient battle shouts of his people, calling upon the aristocracy of hell, upon its patron demons, and upon Lord Arioch, as the malformed corpses piled themselves higher and higher in the doorway, while von Bek’s weapons banged and cracked, defending the windows.

“These things will keep attacking us,” called von Bek. “There’s no end to them. We must escape. It is our only hope, else we shall be overwhelmed soon enough.”

Elric agreed. He leaned, panting, on his blade, regarding his hideous work, his eyes cold with a death-light, his face a martial mask. “I have a distaste for this kind of butchery,” he said. “But I know nothing else to do.”

“You must take the sword to the centre,” said a pure, liquid voice. It was the girl, Far-Seeing.

She left the group, pushing past an uncertain Captain Quelch and reaching fearlessly out to the pulsing sword, its alien metal streaming with corrupted blood. “To the centre.”

Von Bek, Captain Quelch and the other children stared in amazed silence as the girl’s hand settled upon that awful blade, drawing it and its wielder through their parting ranks to where the corpse of the old man lay.

“The centre lies beneath his heart,” said Far-Seeing. “You must pierce his heart and drive the sword beyond his heart. Then the sword will sing and you will sing, too.”

“I know nothing of any sword song,” said Elric again, but his protest was a ritual one. He found himself trusting the tranquil certainty of the girl, her deft movements, the way she guided him until he stood straddling the peaceful body of the master wizard.

“He is rich with the best of Law,” said Far-Seeing. “And it is that stuff which, for a while, will fill your sword and make it work for us, perhaps even against its own interests.”

“You know much of my sword, my lady,” said Elric, puzzled.

The girl closed her eyes. “I am against the sword and I am of the sword and my name is Swift Thorn.” Her voice was a chant, as if another occupied her body. She had no notion of the meaning of the words which issued from her. “I am for the sword and I replace the sword. I am of the sisters. I am of the Just. It is our destiny to turn the ebony to silver, to seek the light, to create justice.”

Von Bek leaned forward. Far-Seeing’s words seemed to have important meaning to him and yet he was clearly astonished at hearing them at all. He passed his hand before her eyes.

All attention was on her. Even Quelch’s face had grown serious, while outside came the sounds of the Chaos creatures preparing for a fresh attack.

Then she was transformed, her face glowing with a pink-gold radiance, bars of silver light streaming from hair that seemed on fire, her rich, dark skin vibrant with supernatural life. “Strike!” she cried. “Strike, Prince Elric. Strike to the heart, to the centre! Strike now or our future is forever forbidden us!”

There came a guttural cough from the doorway. They had an impression of a jeweled eye, a wriggling red mouth, and they knew that some rogue Chaos Lord, scenting blood and souls, had determined to taste them for himself.

CHAPTER THREE

Walking Between the Worlds

“Strike! O, my lord! Strike!”

The girl’s voice rang out, a pure, golden chord against the cacophony of Chaos, and she guided the black sword’s fleshly iron towards the old man’s heart.

“Strike, my lord. And sing your song!”

Then she made a movement with her palms and the runesword plunged downwards, plunged into the heart, plunged through sinew and bone and flesh into the very stone beneath and suddenly, through that white alchemy, a pale blue flame began to burn within the blade, gradually turning to pewter and fiery bronze, then to a brilliant, steady, silver.

Von Bek gasped. “The sword of the archangel himself!”

But Elric had no time to ask what he meant for now the transformed runesword burned brighter still, blinding the children who whimpered and fell back before it, making Captain Quelch curse and grumble that he was endangered, while the girl was suddenly gone, leaving only her voice behind, lifted in a song of extraordinary beauty and spiritual purity; a song which seemed to ring from the steel itself; a song so wonderful, speaking of such joys and fulfillment, that Elric felt his heart lifting, even as the Chaos Lord’s long, grey tongue flicked at his heels. From somewhere within him all the longing he had known, all the sadness and the grief and the loneliness, all his aspirations and dreams, his times of intense happiness, his loves and his hatreds, his affections and his dislikes, all were voiced in the same music which issued from his throat, as if his whole being had been concentrated into this single song. It was a victory and a plea. It was a celebration and an agony. It was nothing more nor less than the Song of Elric, the song of a single, lonely individual in an uncertain world, the song of a troubled intellect and a generous heart, of the last lord of his people, the brooding prince of ruins, the White Wolf of Melniboné.

And most of all, it was a song of love, of yearning idealism and desperate sadness for the fate of the world.

The silver light blazed brighter still and at its centre, where the old man’s body had been and where the blade still stood, there now hovered a chalice of finely wrought gold and silver, its rim and base emblazoned with precious stones which themselves emitted powerful rays. Elric, barely able to cling to the sword as the white energy poured through him, heard Count von Bek cry out in recognition. And then the vision was gone. And blackness, fine and silky as a butcher’s familiar, spread away in all directions, as if they stood at the very beginning of Time, before the coming of the Light.

Then, as they watched, it seemed that spiders spun gleaming web after web upon that black void, filling it with their argent silk.

They saw shapes emerging, connected by the webs, filling the vacuum, crowding it, enriching it with wonder and colour, countless mighty spheres and curving roads and an infinite wealth of experience.

“This,” said Renark von Bek, “is what we can make of Chaos. Here is the multiverse; those webs you see are the wide roads that pass between the realms. We call them ‘moonbeams’ and it is here that creatures trade from world to world and where ships arrive from the Second Ether, bringing cargoes of terrible, exquisite stuffs not meant for mortal eyes. Here are the infinite realms, all the possibilities, all the best and the worst that can be in God’s creation…”

“You do your deity credit, sir,” said Elric.

Von Bek made a graceful movement of his hand, like an elegant showman.

Forms of every kind blossomed before him, stretching to infinity—nameless colours, flaming and shimmering and glowing, or dull and distant and cold—complex spiderwebs stretching through all dimensions, one connected with another, glinting, quivering and delicate, yet bearing the cargo and traffic of countless millions of realms.

“There are your moonbeams, sir.” Von Bek was grinning like an ape and relishing this vast, varied, yet ultimately ordered multiverse, forever fecund, forever reproducing, forever expanding its materials derived from the raw, unreasoning, unpredictable stuff of Chaos, which mighty alchemy made concrete. This was the ultimate actuality, the fundamental reality on which all other realities were based, which most mortals only glimpsed in visions, in dreams, in an echo from deep within. “The webs between the worlds are the great roads we tread to pass from one realm of the multiverse to another.”

Spheres blossomed and erupted, re-formed and blossomed again. Swirling, half-familiar images reproduced themselves over and over in every possible variety and on every scale. Elric saw worlds in the shape of trees, galaxies like flowers, star systems which had grown together, root and branch, so tangled that they had become one huge, irregular planet; universes which were steely oceans; universes of unstable fire; universes of desolation and cold evil; universes of pulsing colour whose beings passed through flames to take benign and holy shapes; universes of gods and angels and devils; universes of vital tranquility; universes of shame, of outrage, of humiliation and contemplative courtesy; universes of perpetually raging Chaos, of exhausted, sterile Law; all dominated by a sentience which they themselves had spawned. The multiverse had become entirely dependent for its existence on the reasoning powers, the desires and terrors, the courage and moral resolve of its inhabitants. One could no longer exist without the other.

And still a presence could be sensed behind all this: the presence which held in its hand the scales of justice, the Cosmic Balance, forever tilting this way or that, towards Law or towards Chaos, and always stabilized by the struggles of mortal beings and their supernatural counterparts, their unseen, unknown sisters and brothers in all the mysterious realms of the multiverse.

“Have you heard of a Guild of Adepts calling itself ‘the Just’?” asked von Bek, still as stone and drinking in this familiar vision, this infinite constituency, as another might kneel upon his native earth. Since his companions did not reply, he continued, “Well, my friends, I am of that persuasion. I trained in Alexandria and Marrakech. I have learned to walk between the realms. I have learned to play the Zeitjuego, the Game of Time. Grateful as I am for your wizardry, sir, you should know that your skills drew unconsciously upon all this. You are able to perform certain rituals, describe certain openings through which you summon aid from other realms. You define these allies in terms of unsophisticated, even primitive superstition. You, sir, with all your learning and experience, do little else. But if you come with me and play the great Game of Time, I will show you all the wonders of this multiverse. I will teach you how to explore it and manipulate it and remember it—for without training, without the long years in which one learns the craft of the mukhamir, the mortal mind cannot grasp and contain all it witnesses.”

“I have things to do in my own realm,” Elric told him. “I have responsibilities and duties.”

“I respect your decision, sir,” said von Bek with a bow, “though I regret it. You would have made a noble player in the Game. Yet, however unconsciously, I think you have always played and will continue to play.”

“Well, sir,” said Elric, “I believe you intend to honour me and I thank you. Now I would appreciate it if you would put me on the right road to my realm.”

“I’ll take you back there myself, sir. It’s the least I can do.”

Elric would not, as von Bek had predicted, remember the details of his journey between the realms. It would come to seem little more than a vague dream, yet now he had the impression of constant proliferation, of the natural and supernatural worlds blending and becoming a single whole. Monstrous beings prowled empty spaces of their own making. Whole nations and races and worlds experienced their histories in the time it took Elric to put one foot in front of another upon the silver moonbeams, that delicate, complicated lacework of roads. Shapes grew and decayed, translated and transmogrified, becoming at once profoundly familiar and disturbingly strange. He was aware of passing other travelers upon the silver roads; he was aware of complex societies and unlikely creatures, of communicating with some of them. Walking with a steady, determined gait, von Bek led the albino onward. “Time is not measured as you measure it,” the guide senser explained. “Indeed, it is scarcely measured at all. One rarely requires it as one walks between the worlds.”

“But what is this—this multiverse?” Elric shook his head. “It’s too much for me, sir. I doubt my brain is trained enough to accept it at all!”

“I can help you. I can take you to the medersim of Alexandria or of Cairo, of Marrakech and Malador, there to learn the skills of the adept, to learn all the moves in the great Game of Time.”

Again the albino shook his head.

With a shrug von Bek returned his attention to the children. “But what are we to do with these?”

“They’ll be safe enough with me, old boy.” Captain Quelch spoke from behind them. The floor of the temple alone remained, hovering in space, with the children gathered upon it. At their centre now stood Far-Seeing, smiling, her arms extended in a gesture of protection. “We’ll find a safe little harbour, my dears.”

“Have you power over all this, Count Renark?” Elric asked.

“It is within the power of all mortals to manipulate the multiverse, to create reality, to make justice and order out of the raw stuff of Chaos. Yet without Chaos there would be no Creation, and perhaps no Creator. That is the simple truth of all existence, Lord Elric. The promise of immortality. It is possible to affect one’s own destiny. That is the hope Chaos offers us.” Von Bek kept a wary eye upon Quelch, who seemed aggrieved.

“If you’ll forgive me interrupting this philosophical discourse, old sport, I must admit to being concerned for my own safety and future and that of the little children for whom I now have responsibility. You gentlemen have affairs of multiversal magnitude to concern you, but I am the only guardian of these orphans. What are we to do? Where are we to go?” There were tears in Quelch’s eyes. His own plight had moved him to some deep emotion.

The girl called Far-Seeing laughed outright at Captain Quelch’s protestations. “We need no such guardianship as yours, my lord.”

Captain Quelch made a crooked grin and reached towards her.

Whereupon the temple floor vanished and they all stood upon a broad, bright road, stretching through the multicoloured multitude of spheres and planes, that great spectrum of unguessable dimensions, staring at Quelch.

“I’ll take the children, sir,” said Count von Bek. “I have an idea I know where they will be safe and where they can improve their skills without interference.”

“What are you suggesting, sir?” Captain Quelch bridled as if accused. “Do you find me insufficiently responsible…?”

“Your motives are suspect, my lord.” Again Far-Seeing spoke, her pure tones seeming to fill the whole multiverse. “I suspect you want us only that you may eat us.”

Elric, baffled by the girl’s words, glanced at von Bek, who shrugged in helpless uncertainty. There was a confrontation taking place between the child and the man.

“To eat you, my dear? Ha, ha! I’m old Captain Quelch, not some cannibal troll.”

The white road blazed on every side.

Elric felt frail and vulnerable beneath the gaze of that multiplicity of spheres and realms. He could barely keep his sanity in the face of so many sudden changes, so much new knowledge. He thought that Captain Quelch’s features twisted, faded a little and then became of quite a different shape, with eyes that reminded him of Arioch’s. Then, just as von Bek realized the same thing, Elric knew they had been duped. This creature could still change its shape!

A Chaos Lord, no doubt, who had not been as badly wounded as the others, who had scented the life-stuff within the temple and found a way of admittance. Perhaps it was Quelch who had drained the old man of life and had failed to feed on the children only because the girl unconsciously resisted him. The children gathered around her, forming a compact circle. Their eyes glared into those of an insect, into the very face of the Fly. Now Quelch’s body shifted and trembled and quaked and cracked and took its true, bizarrely baroque shape, all asymmetrical carapace and coruscating scales, brass feathery wings, the same obscene stink which had filled the Xanardwys Valley; as if he could keep his human shape no longer, must burst back into his true form, hungering for souls, craving every scrap of mortal essence to feed his depleted veins.

“If you seek to escape your Conqueror’s vengeance, my lord, you are mistaken,” said the girl. “You are already condemned. See what you have become. See what you would feed off to sustain your life. Look upon what you would destroy—upon what you once wished to be. Look upon all this and remember, Lord Demon, that this is what you have turned your back upon. It is not yours. We are not yours. You cannot feed off us. Here we are free and powerful as you. But you never deceived me, for I am called Far-Seeing and First-of-Her-Kind and now I sense my destiny, which is to live my own tale. For it is by our stories that we create the reality of the multiverse and by our faith that we sustain it. Your tale is almost ended, great Lord of Chaos—”

And at this she was surprised by the great beast’s bawling mockery, its only remaining weapon against her. It shook with mephitic mirth, its scales clattering and switching. It clutched at a minor triumph.

“It is you who are mistaken, my Lady Far-Seeing. I am not of Chaos! I am Chaos’s enemy. I fought well but was caught up with them as they fell. Their master is not my master. I serve the great Singularity, the Harbinger of Final Order, the Original Insect. I am Quelch and I am, foolish girl, a Lord of Law! It is my party which would abolish Chaos. We fight for complete control of the Cosmic Balance. Nothing less. Those Chaos Engineers, those adventurers, those rebellious rogues and corsairs who have so plagued the Second Ether, I am their nemesis!” The monstrous head turned, almost craftily. “Can you not see how different I am?”

In truth, Elric and von Bek could see only similarity. This Quelch of Law was identical in appearance to Arioch of Chaos. Even their hatreds and ambitions seemed alike.

“It is sometimes impossible to understand the differences between the parties,” murmured von Bek to Elric. “They have fought so long they have become almost the same thing. This, I think, is decadence. It is time, I suspect, for the Conjunction.” He explained nothing and Elric desired to know no more.

Lord Quelch now towered above them, constantly licking lips glittering with fiery saliva, scratching at his crystalline carapace, his moody, insect eyes searching the reaches of the multiverse, perhaps for allies.

“I can call upon the Authority of the Great Singularity,” Lord Quelch boasted. “You are powerless. I must feed. I must continue my work. Now I will eat you.”

One reptilian foot stepped forward, then another as he bore down upon the gathered children, while Far-Seeing stared back bravely in an attitude of challenge. Then von Bek and Elric had moved between the monster and its intended prey. Stormbringer still shone with the remaining grey-green light of its white sorcery, still murmured and whispered in Elric’s grasp.

Lord Quelch turned his attention upon the albino prince. “You took what was mine. I am a Lord of Law. The old man had what I must have. I must survive. I must continue to exist. The fate of the multiverse depends upon it. What is that to the sacrifice of a few young occultists? Law believes in the power of reason, the measurement and control of all natural forces, the husbandry of our resources. I must continue the fight against Chaos. Once millions gave themselves up in ecstasy to my cause.”

“Once, perhaps, your cause was worthy of their sacrifice,” said von Bek quietly. “But too much blood has been spilt in this terrible war. Those of you who refuse to speak of reconciliation are little more than brutes and deserve nothing of the rest of us, save our pity and our contempt.”

Elric wondered at this exchange. Even when reading the most obscure of his people’s grimoires, he could never have imagined witnessing such a confrontation between a mortal and a demigod.

Lord Quelch snarled again. Again he turned his hungry insect’s eyes upon his intended prey. “Just one or two, perhaps?”

Neither Elric nor von Bek were required to defend the children. Quelch was cowering before the gaze of Far-Seeing, increasingly frightened, as if he only now understood the power he was confronting. “I am hungry,” he said.

“You must look elsewhere for your sustenance, my lord.” Far-Seeing and her children still stared directly up into his face, as if challenging him to attack.

But the Lord of Law crept backwards along the moonbeam road. “I would be mortal again,” he said. “What you saw was my mortal self. He still exists. Do you know him? Las Cascadas?” It seemed as if he made a pathetic attempt at familiarity, to win them to his cause through sympathy, but Quelch knew he had failed. “We shall destroy Chaos and all who serve her.” He glared at Elric and his companion. “The Singularity shall triumph over Entropy. Death will be checked. We shall abolish Death in all his forms. I am Quelch, a great Lord of Law. You must serve me. It is for the Cause…”

Watching him lope away down that long, curving moonbeam road through the multiverse, Elric felt a certain pity for a creature which had abandoned every ideal, every part of its faith, every moral principle, in order to survive for a few more centuries, scavenging off the very souls it claimed to protect.

“What ails that creature, von Bek?”

“They are not immortal but they are almost immortal,” said von Bek. “The multiverse does not exist in infinity but in quasi-infinity. These are not deliberate paradoxes. Our great archangels fight for control of the Balance. They represent two perfectly reasonable schools of thought and, indeed, are almost the same in habit and belief. Yet they fight—Chaos against Law, Entropy against Stasis—and these arguments are mirrored in all our mortal histories, our daily lives, and are connected in profound but complex ways. Over all this hangs the Cosmic Balance, tilting this way and that but always restoring itself. A wasteful means of maintaining the multiverse, you might say. I think our role is to find less wasteful ways of achieving the same end, to create Order without losing the creativity and fecundity of Chaos. Soon, according to other adepts I have met, there will be a great Conjunction of the multiversal realms, a moment of maximum stability, and it is at this time that the very nature of reality can be changed.”

Elric clapped his hands to his head. “Sir, I beg you! Cease! I stand here, in the middle of some astral realm, about to tread a moonbeam into near-infinity, and every part of me, physical and spiritual, tells me that I must be irredeemably insane.”

“No,” said Renark von Bek. “What you behold is the ultimate sanity, the ultimate variety, and perhaps the ultimate order. Come, I will take you home.”

Von Bek turned to the children and addressed Far-Seeing. “Would you care for a military escort, my lady?”

Her smile was quiet. “I think I have no further use for swords. Not for the moment. But I thank you, sir.”

Already she was leading her flock away from them, up the steep curve of the moonbeam and into a haze of blue-flecked light. “I thank you for your song, Prince Elric. For the singing of it you will, in time, be repaid a hundredfold. But I think you will not remember the singing of your song, which brought the Grail to us three, who are, perhaps, its guardians and its beneficiaries. It was the sword which found the Grail and the Grail which led us through. Thank you, sir. You say you are not of the Just, yet I think you are unknowingly of that company. Farewell.”

“Where do you go, Far-Seeing?” asked Melniboné’s lord.

“I seek a galaxy they call The Rose, whose planets form one mighty garden. I have seen it in a vision. We shall be the first human creatures to settle it, if it will accept us.”

“I wish you good fortune, my lady,” said Count Renark with a bow.

“And you, sir, as you play the great Game of Time. Good luck to you, also.” Then the child turned her back on them and led her weary flock towards its destiny.

“Can you not see the possibilities?” Von Bek still sought to tempt Elric to his Cause. “The variety—every curiosity satisfied—and new ones whetted? Friend Elric, I offer you the quasi-infinity of the multiverse, of the First and Second Ethers, and the thrilling life of a trained mukhamir, a player in the great Game.”

“I am a poor gambler, sir.” As if fearing he would not remember them, Elric drank in the wonders all about him: the crowded, constantly swirling, constantly changing multiverse; realm upon realm of reality, most of which knew only the merest hint of the great order in which they played a tiny, but never insignificant, part. He looked down at the misty stuff beneath his feet, which felt as firm as thrice-tempered Imrryrian steel, and he marveled at the paradoxes, the conflicts of logic. It was almost impossible for his mind to grasp anything but a hint of what this meant. He understood even so that every action taken in the mortal realms was repeated and echoed in the supernatural and vice versa. Every action of every creature in existence had meaning, significance and consequence.

“I once witnessed a fight between archangels and dragons,” von Bek was saying, leading the albino gently down the moonbeam to where it crossed another. “We will go this way.”

“How do you know where you are? How are time and distance measured here?” Elric was reduced to almost childlike questions. Now he understood what his grimoires had only ever hinted at, unable or unwilling to describe this super-reality. Yet he could not blame his predecessors for their failures. The multiverse defied description. It could, indeed, only be hinted at. There was no language, no logic, no experience which allowed this terrifying and rapturous reality.

“We travel by other means and other instincts,” von Bek assured him. “If you would join us, you will learn how to navigate not merely the First Ether, but also the Second.”

“You have agreed, Count Renark, to guide me back to my own realm.” Elric was flattered by this strange man’s attempts to recruit him.

Von Bek clapped his companion upon the back. “Fair enough.” They loped down the moonbeams at a soldier’s pace. Elric caught glimpses of worlds, of landscapes, hints of scenes, familiar scents and sounds, completely alien sights, seemingly all at random. For a while he felt his grasp on sanity weakening and, as he walked, the tears streamed down his face. He wept for a loss he could not remember. He wept for the mother he had never known and the father who had refused to know him. He wept for all those who suffered and who would suffer in the useless wars which swept his world and most others. He wept in a mixture of self-pity and a compassion which embraced the multiverse. And then a sense of peace blanketed him.

Stormbringer was still in his hand, unscabbarded. He did not wish to sheathe the blade until the last of that strange Law-light was gone from it. At this moment he understood how the conflict in him between his loyalty to Chaos and his yearning for Law was no simple one and perhaps would never be resolved. Perhaps there was no need to resolve the conflict. Perhaps, however, it could be reconciled.

They walked between the worlds.

They walked for timeless miles, taking this path and then another through the great silver lattice of the moonbeam roads, while everywhere the multiverse blossomed and warped and erupted and glowed, a million worlds in the making, a million realms decaying, and countless billions of mortal souls full of aspiration and despair, and they talked intimately, in low voices, enjoying conversations which only one of them would remember. It seemed sometimes to Elric that he and Count von Bek were the same being, both echoes of some lost original.

And it seemed sometimes that they were free for ever of the common bounds of time or space, of pressing human concerns, free to explore the wonderful abstraction of it all, the incredible physicality of this suprareality which they could experience with senses themselves transformed and attuned to the new stimuli. They became reconciled to the notion that little by little their bodies would fade and their spirits blend with the stuff of the multiverse, to find true immortality as a fragment of legend, a hint of a myth, a mark made upon our everlasting cosmic history, which is perhaps the best that most of us will ever know—to have played a part, no matter how small, in that great game, the glorious Game of Time…