"I am ever that, madam."
"Forever," she said.
"Forever?"
"You must promise never to tell another soul what I tell you today, nor recount any event which results from the telling. You must agree to be bound by a dreamthief s code even though you are not of our kind."
Elric was baffled. "For what reason?"
"Would you save their Holy Girl? Avenge Alnac? Free yourself from the drug's slavery? Adjust certain wrongs in Quarzhasaat?"
"You know I would."
"Then we may reach an agreement, for it is certain that, unless we help each other, you and the girl and perhaps myself, too, will all be dead before the Blood Moon fades."
"Certain?" Elric was grimly amused. "Are you an oracle, too, then, madam?"
"All dreamthieves are that, to some degree." She was almost impatient, as if she spoke to a slow child. She caught herself. "Forgive me. I forget that our craft is unknown in the Young Kingdoms. Indeed, it's rarely that we travel to this plane at all."
"I have met many supernatural in my life, my lady, but few who seem so human as yourself."
"Human? Of course I am human!" She seemed puzzled. Then her brow cleared. "Ah. I forget that you are at once more sophisticated and less learned than those of my own persuasion." She smiled at him. "I am still not recovered from Alnac's unnecessary dissolution."
"He need not have died." Elric's tone was flat, unquestioning. He had known Alnac long enough to care for him as a Mend. He understood something of Oone's loss. "And there is no way to revive him?"
"He lost all essence," said Gone. "Instead of stealing a dream, he was robbed of his own." She paused, then spoke quickly, as if she feared she would regret her words. "Will you help me, Prince Elric?"
"Yes." He spoke without hesitation. "If it is to avenge Alnac and save the child."
"Even if you risk Alnac's fate? The fate which you witnessed?"
"Even that. Can it be worse than dying in Lord Gho's power?"
"Yes," she said simply.
Elric laughed aloud at her frankness. "Ah, well. Just so, madam! Just so! What's your bargain?"
She moved her hand again towards the silver petals, balancing her wand between her fingers. She was frowning, still not wholly certain of the rightness of her decision. "I think that you are one of the few mortals on this earth who could understand the nature of my profession, who'll know what I mean when I speak of the nature of dreams and reality and how they intersect. I think, too, that you have habits of mind which would make you, if not a perfect ally, then an ally on whom I could to some extent depend. We dreamthieves have made something of a science of a trade which logically can tolerate no consistent laws. It has enabled us to pursue our craft with some success, largely, I suspect, because we are able, to a degree, to impose our wills upon the chaos we encounter. Does this make sense to you, Prince?"
"I think so. There are philosophers of my own people who claim that much of our magic is actually the imposition of powerful will upon the fundamental stuff of reality, an ability, if you like, to make dreams come true. Some claim our whole world was created thus."
Gone seemed pleased. "Good. I knew there were certain ideas I would not have to explain."
"But what would you have me do, lady?"
"I want you to help me. Together we can find a way to what the Sorcerer Adventurers call the Fortress of the Pearl and by so doing one or both of us might steal the dream which binds the child to perpetual sleep and free her to wakefulness, return her to her people to be their seeress and their pride."
"The two are linked, then?" Elric began to rise to his feet, ignoring the call of his ever-present craving. "The child and the Pearl?"
"I think so."
"What is the link?"
"In discovering that, we shall doubtless discover how to free her."
"Forgive me Lady Oone," said Elric gently, "but you sound almost as ignorant as I!"
"In some ways it is true that I am. Before I go further, I must ask you to swear to abide by the Dreamthief's Code."
"I swear," said Elric, and he held up the hand on which his Actorios glowed to show that he swore by one of his people's most revered artefacts. "I swear by the Rings of Kings."
"Then I will tell you what I know and what I desire of you," said Oone. She linked her free hand in his arm and led him further into the groves of palms and cypress. Sensing the shuddering hunger in him which yearned for Lord Gho's terrible drug, she seemed to show some sympathy.
"A dreamthief," she began, "does exactly what the title implies. We steal dreams. Originally our guild were true thieves. We learned the trick of entering the worlds of other peoples' dreams and stealing those which were most magnificent or exotic. Gradually, however, people began to call upon us to steal unwanted dreams-or rather the dreams which entrapped or plagued friends or relatives. So we stole those. Frequently the dreams themselves were in no way harmful to another, only to the one who was in their power..."
Elric interrupted. "Are you saying that a dream has some material reality? That it can be seized, like a volume of verse, say, or money purse, and slipped free of its owner?"
"Essentially, yes. Or, I should say, our guild learned the trick of making a dream sufficiently real for it to be handled thus!" She now laughed openly at his confusion and some of the care went away from her for a moment. "There is a certain talent needed and a great deal of training."
"But what do you do with these stolen dreams?"
"Why, Prince Elric, we sell them ft the Dream Market, twice a year. There's a fine trade in almost any sort of dream, no matter how bizarre or terrifying. There are merchants who purchase them and customers who would buy them. We distill them, of course, into a form which can be transported and later translated. And because we make the dreams take substance, we are threatened by them. That substance can destroy us. You see what happened to Alnac. It takes a certain character, a certain cast of mind, a certain attitude of spirit, all combining, to protect oneself in the Dream Realms. But because we have codified these realms we have also to a degree made them our own to manipulate."
"You must explain more to me," said Elric, "if I am to follow you at all, madam!"
"Very well." She paused at the edge of the grove, where the earth grew dustier and formed a territory between oasis and desert that was a little of both and was neither. She studied the cracked earth as if the cracks were the outlines of a singularly complicated map, a geometry which only she could understand.
"We have made rules," she said. Her voice was distant, almost as if she spoke to herself. "And codified what we have discovered over the centuries. And yet we are still subject to the most unimaginable hazards..."
"Wait, madam. Are you suggesting that Alnac Kreb, by some wizardry known only to your guild, entered the world of the Holy Girl's dreams and there suffered adventures such as you or I might suffer in this material world?"
"Well put." She turned with a strange smile on her lips. "Aye. And his substance went into that world and was absorbed by it, strengthening the substance of her dreams..."
"The dreams he hoped to steal."
"He hoped to steal only one. The one which imprisons her in that perpetual slumber."
"And then he would sell it, you say, at your Dream Market?"
"Perhaps." She was clearly unwilling to discuss this aspect of the matter.
"Where is that market held?"
"In a realm beyond this one, in a place where only those of our profession, or those who attend upon us, may travel."
"You'd take me there?" Elric spoke from curiosity.
Her glance was a mixture of amusement and caution. "Possibly. But first we must be successful. We must steal a dream so that we may trade it there. Know you, Elric, I have every desire to inform you of all you wish to learn, but there are many things hard to explain to one who has not studied with our guild. They can only be demonstrated or experienced. I am not a native of your world, nor are most dreamthieves from thi
s sphere. We are wanderers-nomads, you might say-between many times and many places. We have learned that a dream in one realm can be an undeniable reality hi another, while what is utterly prosaic in that realm can elsewhere be the stuff of the most fantastic nightmare."
"Is all creation so malleable?" Elric asked with a shudder.
"What we create must ever be, lest it die," she said, her tone one of ironical finality.
"The struggle between Law and Chaos echoes that struggle within ourselves between unbridled emotion and too much caution, I suppose," Elric mused, aware that she did not wish to pursue this particular conversation.
With her foot Gone traced the cracks in the red earth. 'To learn more you must become an apprentice dreamthief..."
"Willingly," said Elric. "I'm sufficiently curious now, madam. You spoke of your laws. What are they?"
"Some are instructive, some are descriptive. First I'll tell you that we have determined that every Dream Realm shall have seven aspects, which we have named. By naming and describing we hope to shape that which has no shape and control that which few can begin to control. By such impositions we have learned to survive in worlds where others would be destroyed within minutes. Yet even when we perform such impositions, even that which our own wills define can become transmuted beyond our control. If you would accompany me and aid me in this adventure, you must know that I have determined we shall pass through seven lands. The first land we call Sadanor, or the Land of Dreams-in-Common. The second land is Marador, which we call the Land of Old Desires, while the third is Paranor, the Land of Lost Beliefs. The fourth land is known to dreamthieves as Celador, which is the Land of Forgotten Love. The fifth is Imador, the Land of New Ambition, and the sixth is Falador, the Land of Madness..."
"Fanciful names indeed, madam. The Guild of Dreamthieves has a penchant for poetry, I think. And the seventh? What is that named?"
She paused before she replied. Her wonderful eyes peered into his, as if exploring the recesses of his own skull. "That has no name," she said quietly, "save any name the inhabitants shall give it. But there, if anywhere, you will find the Fortress of the Pearl,"
Elric felt himself trapped by that gentle yet determined gaze. "And how may we enter these lands?" The albino forced himself to engage with these questions though by now his whole body was crying out for a draft of Lord Gho's elixir.
She sensed his tension, and her hand on his arm was meant to calm and reassure him. "Through the child," said Oone.
Elric remembered what he had witnessed in the Bronze Tent and he shuddered. "How is such a thing achieved?"
Oone frowned and the pressure of her hand increased. "She is our gateway and the dreamwands are our keys. There is no way hi which I will harm her, Elric. Once we have reached the seventh aspect, the Nameless Land, there we might in turn find the key to her particular prison."
"She is a medium, then? Is that what has happened to her? Did the Sorcerer Adventurers know something of her power and in attempting to use her put her into this trance?"
Again she hesitated, then she nodded. "Close enough, Prince Elric. It is written in our histories, of which we have many, though most are inaccessible to us in the libraries of Tanelorn, 'What lies within always has a form without and that which is without takes a shape within.' Put another way, we sometimes say that what is visible must always have an invisible aspect, just as everything invisible must be represented by the visible."
Elric found this too cryptic for him, though he was familiar enough with such mysterious utterances from his own grimoires. He did not dismiss them, but he knew they frequently required much pondering and certain experience before they made complete sense. "You speak of supernatural realms, madam. The worlds inhabited by the Lords of Chaos and of Law, by the elementals, by immortals and the like. I know something of such realms and have even journeyed in them some little way. But I have never heard of leaving part of one's physical substance behind and travelling into those realms by means of a sleeping child!"
She looked at him for a long moment as if she thought he was deliberately disingenuous, then she shrugged. "You will find the realms of the dreamthief very similar. And you would do well to memorise and obey our code."
"You are a strict order, then, madam..."
"If we are to survive. Alnac had the instincts of a good dreamthief but he had not acquired the full discipline. That was one of the chief reasons for his dissolution. You on the other hand are familiar with the necessary disciplines, for they were how you came by your knowledge of sorcery. Without those disciplines you, too, would have perished."
"I have rejected much of that, Lady Gone."
"Aye. So I believe. But you have not lost the habit, I think. Or so I hope. The first law the dreamthief obeys says, Offers of guidance must always be accepted but never trusted. The second says, Beware the familiar, and the third tells us, What is strange should be cautiously welcomed. There are many others, but it is those three which encompass the fundamentals by which a dreamthief survives." She smiled. Her smile was oddly sweet and vulnerable and Elric realised she was weary. Perhaps her grief had exhausted her.
The Melnibonéan spoke gently, looking back to the great red rocks of the Silver Flower's protection and sanctuary. The voices were stilled now. Thin lines of smoke ascended the rich blue of the sky. "How long does it take to instruct and train one of your calling?"
She recognised his irony now. "Five years or more," she said. "Alnac had been a full member of the guild for perhaps six years."
"And he failed to survive in the realm where the Holy Girl's spirit is held prisoner?"
"He was, for all his skills, only an ordinary mortal, Prince Elric."
"And you think I'm more than that?"
She laughed openly. "You are the last Emperor of Melniboné. You are the most powerful of your race, which is a race whose familiarity with sorcery is legendary. True, you have left your bride to be waiting for you while you place your cousin Yyrkoon on the Ruby Throne to reign as Regent until you return-a decision only an idealist would make-but nonetheless, my lord, you cannot pretend to me that you are in any way ordinary!"
In spite of his craving for the poisonous elixir, Elric found himself laughing back at her. "If I am such a man of qualities, madam, how is it that I find myself in this position, contemplating death from the tricks of a second-rate provincial politician?"
"I did not say you admired yourself, my lord. But it would be foolish to deny what you have been and what you could become."
"I prefer to consider the latter, my lady."
"Consider, if you will, the fate of Raik Na Seem's daughter. Consider the fate of his people deprived of then: history and their oracle. Consider your own doom, to perish for no good reason in a distant land, your destiny unfulfilled."
Elric accepted this.
She continued. "It is probable, too, that you have no rival as a sorcerer in your world. While your specific skills might be of little use to you in the adventure I propose, your experience, knowledge and understanding might make the difference between success and failure."
Elric had become impatient as his body's demand for the drug grew unbearable. "Very well, Lady Gone. Whatever you decide, I shall agree to."
She took a step back from him and looked at him coolly. "You had best return to your tent and find your elixir," she said softly.
Familiar desperation filled the albino's mind. "I shall, madam. I shall." And turning he strode swiftly back towards the gathered tents of the Bauradim.
He scarcely spoke to any of those who greeted him as he passed. Raik Na Seem had moved nothing from the tent Elric had last shared with Alnac Kreb, and the albino hastily drew the flask from his saddle-bag, taking a deep draft and feeling, for a short while at least, the relief, the resurgence of energy, the illusion of health which the Quarzhasaati's drug gave him. He sighed and turned towards the entrance of the tent as Raik Na Seem came up, his brow furrowed, his eyes full of pain which he tried to disguise. "Have
you agreed to help the dreamthief, Elric? Will you attempt to achieve what the prophecy predicted? Bring our Holy Girl back to us? There is now less time than there ever was. Soon the Blood Moon will be gone."
Elric dropped the flask onto the carpet which covered the ground. He bent and picked up the Black Sword, which he had unbuckled while he walked with Oone. The thing thrilled in his fingers and he felt vaguely nauseated. "I will do whatever is required of me," the albino said.
"Good." The older man gripped Elric by the shoulders. "Oone has told me that you are a great man with a great destiny and that this time is one of considerable moment in your life. We are honoured to be part of that destiny and grateful for your concern..."
Elric accepted Raik Na Seem's words with all his old grace. He bowed. "I believe that the health of your Holy Girl is more important than any fate of mine. I will do whatever is possible to bring her back to you."
Oone had entered behind the Bauradim's First Elder. She smiled at the albino. "You are ready now?"
Elric nodded and began to buckle on the Black Sword, but Oone stopped him with a gesture. "You'll find the weapons you need where we travel."
"But the sword is more than a weapon, Lady Oone!" The albino knew a kind of panic.
She held out Alnac's dreamwand to him. "This is all you need for our venture, my lord Emperor."
Stormbringer murmured violently as Elric let the sword fall back to the cushions of the tent. It seemed almost to threaten him.
"I am dependent..." he began.
She shook her head gently. "You are not. You believe that sword to be part of your identity but it is not. It is your nemesis. It is the part of you which represents your weakness, not your strength."
Elric sighed. "I do not understand you, my lady, but if you do not wish me to bring the sword, I'll leave it."
Another sound, a peculiar growl, from the blade, but Elric ignored it. He left both flask and sword in the tent and strode to where horses awaited them to carry them from the Silver Flower Oasis back to the Bronze Tent.
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