It was the laughter of a freed spirit. It was Varadia's.
"It is dissolving at last. It is all dissolving! Oh, my friends, I am a slave no longer!"
Through all the falling filthy stuff, through all the decay and dissolution which tumbled upon them, through the destroyed carcass of the Fortress of the Pearl, Oone came towards them. She was hasty but she was careful. She held one of Varadia's hands.
"Not yet! Too soon! We could all dissolve in this!"
She made Elric take the child's other hand and they led her through the crashing, shrieking darkness, out of the chamber, down through the swaying corridors, out past the courtyards where fountains now gushed detritus and where the very walls were constructed of putrefying flesh which began to rot to nothing even as they went by. Then Oone made them run, until the final gateway lay ahead of them.
They reached the causeway and the marble road. There was a bridge ahead of them. Oone almost dragged the other two towards it, running as fast as she could possibly run, with the Fortress of the Pearl tumbling into nothing, roaring like a dying beast as it did so.
The bridge seemed infinite. Elric could not see to the further side. But at length Oone stopped running and allowed them to walk, for they had reached a gateway.
The gateway was carved of red sandstone. It was decorated with geometrical tiles and pictures of gazelles, leopards and wild camels. It had an almost prosaic appearance after so many monumental doorways, yet Elric felt some trepidation hi passing through it.
"I am afraid, Oone," he said.
"You fear mortality, I think." She pressed on. "You have great courage, Prince Elric. Make use of it now, I beg you."
He quelled his terrors. His grip on the child's hand was firm and reassuring.
"We go home, do we not?" said the Holy Girl. "What is it you do not want to find there, Prince Elric?"
He smiled down at her, grateful for her question. "Nothing much, Lady Varadia. Perhaps nothing more than myself."
They stepped together into the gateway.
3 Celebrations at the Silver Flower Oasis
Waking beside the still sleeping child, Elric was surprised to feel so refreshed. The dreamwand, which had helped them attain substance in the Dream Realm, was still hooked over their clasped hands and, looking across the child, he saw Oone beginning to stir.
"You have failed, then?"
It was Raik Na Seem's voice, full of resigned sadness.
"What?" Oone glanced at Varadia. Even as they watched, her skin began to shine with ordinary health and her eyes opened to see her anxious father staring down at her. She smiled. It was the easy, unaffected smile with which Oone and Elric were already familiar.
The First Elder of the Bauradim Clan began to weep. He wept as the seneschal of the Court of the Pearl had wept; he wept in relief and he wept in joy. He took up his daughter in his arms and he could not speak for the gladness in his heart. All he could do was reach one hand out towards his friends, the man and woman who had entered the Dream Realm to free his child's spirit, where it had fled to escape the evil of Lord Gho's hirelings.
They touched his hand and they left the Bronze Tent. They walked together into the desert and then they stood face to face, staring into one another's eyes.
"We have a dream in common now," said Elric. His voice was gentle, full of affection. "I think the memory will be a good one, Lady Gone."
She reached to hold his face hi her hands. "You are wise, Prince Elric, and you are courageous, but there is a certain kind of ordinary experience you lack. I hope that you are successful in finding it."
"That is why I wander this world, my lady, and leave my cousin Yyrkoon as Regent on the Ruby Throne. I am aware of more than one deficiency."
"I am glad we dreamed together," she said.
"You lost your true love, I think," Elric told her. "I am glad if I helped you ease the pain of that parting."
She was baffled for a moment, then her brow cleared. "You speak of Alnac Kreb? I was fond of him, my lord, but he was more a brother to me than a lover."
Elric became embarrassed. "Forgive my presumption, Lady Gone."
She looked up into the sky. The Blood Moon had not yet waned. It cast its red rays onto the sand, onto the gleaming bronze of the tent where Raik Na Seem welcomed his daughter back to him. "I do not love easily in the way you mean." Her voice was significant. She sighed. "Do you still plan to return to Melniboné and your betrothed?"
"I must," he said. "I love her. And my duty lies in Imrryr."
"Sweet duty!" Her tone was sarcastic and she took a step or two away from him, her head bowed, her hand on her belt. She kicked at the dust the colour of old blood.
Elric had disciplined himself against his heart's pain for too long. He could only stand and wait until she walked back to him. And now she was smiling. "Well, Prince Elric, would you join the dreamthieves and make this your living for a while?"
Elric shook his head. "It is a calling which requires too much of me, my lady. Yet I am grateful for what this adventure has taught me, both about myself and about the world of dreams. I still understand only a little of it I am still not wholly sure where we travelled or what we encountered. I do not know how much in the Dream Realm was the Lady Varadia's creation and how much was yours. It was as if I witnessed a battle of inventors! And did I contribute? I do not know."
"Oh, without you, believe me, Prince Elric, I think I would have failed. You have seen so much of other worlds! And you have read more. It does not do to analyse too closely the creatures and places one encounters in the Dream Realm, but be assured that you made your contribution. More, perhaps, than you'll ever know."
"Can reality ever be made from the fabric of those dreams?" he wondered.
"There was an adventurer of the Young Kingdoms called Earl Aubec," she said. "He knew how potent a creator of reality the human mind can be. Some say he and his kind helped make the world of the Young Kingdoms."
Elric nodded. "I've heard that legend. But I think it is as substantial as the story of Chamog Borm, my lady."
"You must think what you wish." She turned away from him to look at the Bronze Tent. The old man and his daughter were emerging. From somewhere within, the tent drums began to beat. There came a wonderful chanting, a dozen melodies linked together, interwoven. Slowly all the people who had remained at the Bronze Tent keeping vigil over the body of the Holy Girl began to gather around Raik Na Seem and Varadia. Their songs were songs of intense joy. Their voices filled the desert with the most gorgeous life and made even the distant mountains echo.
Oone linked her arm in Elric's, a gesture of comradeship, of reconciliation. "Come," she said, "let us join the celebrations."
They had only walked a few more paces before they were lifted on the shoulders of the crowd and soon they were borne, laughing and infected by the general joyousness, over the desert towards the Silver Flower Oasis.
The celebrations began at once, as if the Bauradim and all the other desert clans had been preparing for this moment. Every kind of delicious food was prepared until the air was rich with an enormous variety of mouth-watering smells and it seemed all the great spice warehouses of the world had been made to release their contents. Cooking fires blazed everywhere, as did great brands and lamps and candles, and from out of the Kashbeh Moulor Ka Riiz, overlooking the great oasis, rode the Aloum'rit guardians in all the glory of their ancient armour, their red-gold helmets and breastplates, their weapons of bronze and brass and steel. They had huge forked beards and massive turbans wound around the spikes of their helms. They wore surcoats of elaborate brocade and cloth-of-silver and their high boots were embroidered with designs almost as intricate as those on their shirts. They were proud, good-humoured men who rode at the sides of their wives, who were also armoured and carried bows and slender spears. All had soon mingled with the enormous crowd who had erected a large platform and placed a carved chair upon it and sat the smiling Varadia in the chair so that all could see the Holy Gir
l of the Bauradim restored to her clan, bringing back their history, their pride and their future.
Raik Na Seem still wept. Whenever he saw Oone and Elric he grasped them and pulled them to him, thanking them, telling them, as best he could, what it meant to him to have such friends, such saviours, such heroes.
"Your names will be remembered by the Bauradim for all time. And whatever favour you shall ask of us, so long as it be honourable, as we know it shall, then we shall grant it to you. If you are in danger ten thousand miles away you will send a message to the Bauradim and they will come to your aid. Meanwhile you must know that you have freed the spirit of a good-hearted child from dark captivity."
"And that is our reward," said Oone, smiling.
"Our wealth is yours," said the old man.
"We have no need of wealth," Oone told him. "We have discovered better resources, I think."
Elric agreed with her. "Besides, there is a man in Quarzhasaat who has promised me half an empire if I but do him a small service."
Oone understood Elric's reference and laughed.
Raik Na Seem was a little disturbed. "You go to Quarzhasaat? You still have business there?"
"Aye," said Elric. "There is a boy who is anxiously awaiting my return."
"But you have time to celebrate with us, to talk with us, to feast with myself and Varadia? You have scarcely exchanged a word with the child!"
"I think we know her pretty well," said Elric. "Enough to think highly of her. She is indeed the greatest treasure of the Bauradim, my lord."
"You were able to hold conversations in that gloomy realm where she was held prisoner?"
Elric thought to enlighten the First Elder, but Oone was quick to interrupt, so familiar was she with such questions.
"Some, my lord. We were impressed by her intelligence and her courage."
Raik Na Seem's brow furrowed as another thought occurred to him. "My son," he said to Elric, "were you able to sustain yourself in that realm without pain?"
"Without pain, aye," said Elric. Then he realised what had been said. For the first time he understood what good had come about from his adventure. "Aye, sir. There are benefits to assisting a dreamthief. Great benefits which I had not until now appreciated!"
With relish now Elric joined in the feasting, treasuring these hours with Oone, the Bauradim and all the other nomad clans. Again he felt as if he had come home, so welcoming were the people, and he wished that he could spend his life here, learning their ways, their philosophies and enjoying their pastimes.
Later, as he lay beneath a great date palm, rolling one of the silver flowers between his fingers, he looked up at Oone, who sat beside him, and said: "Of all the temptations I faced in the Dream Realm, this temptation is perhaps the greatest, Oone. This is simple reality and I am reluctant to leave it. And you."
"We have no further destiny together, I think." She sighed. "Not in this life, at any rate, or this world, perhaps. You shall be first a legend, then there will be none left to remember you."
"My friends will all die? I shall be alone?"
"I believe so. While you serve Chaos."
"I serve myself and my people."
"If you would believe that, Elric, you must do more to achieve it. You have created a little reality and perhaps will create a little more. But Chaos cannot be a friend without it betraying you. In the end, we have only ourselves to look to. No cause, no force, no challenge, will ever replace that truth..."
"It is to be myself that I travel as I do, Lady Gone," he reminded her. He looked out over the desert, over the tranquil waters of the oasis. He breathed in the cool, scented desert air.
"And you will leave here soon?" she asked.
"Tomorrow," he said. "I must. But I am curious to know what reality I have created."
"Oh, I think a dream or two has come true," she said cryptically, kissing nun on the cheek. "And another will come true soon enough."
He did not pursue the question, for she had taken the great Pearl from the pouch at her belt and held it out to him.
"It exists! It was not the chimera we believed it to be! You still have it!"
"It is for you," she said. "Use it how you will. But that is what brought you here to the Silver Flower Oasis. It is what brought you to me. I think I will not trade it at the Dream Market. I would like you to have it. I think it might be yours by right, Elric. Be that as it may, the Holy Girl gave it to me and now I give it to you. It is what Alnac Kreb died because of, what all those assassins died to possess..."
"I thought you said that the Pearl did not exist before the Sorcerer Assassins sought to find it."
"That is true. But it exists now. Here it is. The Pearl at the Heart of the World. The great Pearl of legend. Have you no use for it?"
"You must explain to me..." he began, but she cut him short.
"Ask me not how dreams take substance, Prince Elric. That is a question that concerns philosophers in all ages and all places. I ask you again-have you no use for it?"
He hesitated, then reached out to take the lovely thing. He held it in his two palms, rolling it back and forth. He wondered at its richness, its pale beauty. "Aye," he said. "I think I have a use for it."
When he had placed the jewel in his own pouch, Oone said very softly: "I think it is an evil thing, that Pearl."
He agreed with her. "I think so, too. But sometimes evil can be used to counter evil."
"I cannot accept that argument" She seemed troubled.
"I know," he said, "you have already said as much." And then it was his turn to reach towards her and kiss her tenderly upon the lips. "Fate is cruel, Oone. It would be better if it provided us with one unaltering path. Instead it forces us to make choices and then never to know if those choices were for the best."
"We are mortals," she said with a shrug. "That is our particular doom."
She stroked his forehead. "You have a troubled mind, my lord. I think I will steal a few of the smaller dreams which make you uneasy."
"Can you steal pain, Oone, and turn it into something to sell in your market?"
"Oh, frequently," she said.
She took his head in her lap and began to massage his temples. Her look was tender.
He said sleepily: "I cannot betray Cymoril. I cannot..."
"I ask no more of you but that you sleep," she said. "One day you will have much to regret and you will know real remorse. Until then, I can take away a little of what is unimportant."
"Unimportant?" His voice was slurred as she gradually stroked him into slumber.
"To you, I think, my lord. Though not to me..."
And the dreamthief began to sing. She sang a lullaby. She sang of a sickly child and a grieving father. She sang of happiness found in simple things.
And Elric slept. And as he slept the dreamthief performed her easy magic and took away just a few of the half-forgotten memories which had spoiled his nights in the past and might spoil those yet to come.
And when Elric awoke that next morning, it was with a light heart and an easy conscience, only the faintest memories of his adventures in the Dream Realm, a continuing affection for Oone and a determination to reach Quarzhasaat as soon as possible and take to Lord Gho what Lord Gho most desired in all the world.
His farewells to the people of the Bauradim were sincere and his sadness in parting was reciprocated. They begged him to return, to join them on their travels, to hunt with them as Rackhir, his Mend, had once hunted.
"I will try to return to you one day," he said. "But first I have more than one oath to fulfill."
A nervous boy brought him his great black battle-blade. As he buckled on Stormbringer the sword seemed to moan with considerable satisfaction at being reunited with him.
It was Varadia, clasping his hands and kissing them, who gave him the blessing of her clan. It was Raik Na Seem who told him that he was now Varadia's brother, his own son, and then Oone the Dreamthief stepped forward. She had decided to remain a while as a guest of the
Bauradim.
"Farewell, Elric. I hope that we may meet again. In better circumstances."
He was amused. "Better circumstances?"
"For me, at any rate." She grinned, contemptuously tapping the pommel of his runesword. "And I wish you well with your attempts to become that thing's master."
"I am its master now, I think," he said.
She shrugged. "I'll ride with you a little way up the Red Road."
"I would welcome your company, my lady."
Side by side, as they had done in the Dream Realm, Elric and Gone rode together. And, although he did not remember how he had felt before, Elric knew a certain resonance of recognition, as if he had found his soul's satisfaction, so that it was with sadness that eventually he parted from her to go on alone towards Quarzhasaat.
"Farewell, good friend. I'll remember how you defeated the Pearl Warrior in the Fortress of the Pearl. That is one memory I do not think will ever fade."
"I am flattered." There was a touch of melancholy irony in her voice. "Farewell, Prince Elric. I trust you will find all that you need and that you will know peace when you return to Melniboné."
"It is my firm intention, madam." A wave to her, not wishing to prolong the sadness, and he spurred his horse forward.
With eyes which refused to weep she watched him ride away up the long Red Road to Quarzhasaat.
4 Certain Matters Resolved in Quarzhasaat
When Elric of Melniboné rode into Quarzhasaat he was limp in his saddle, hardly controlling his horse at all, and the people who gathered around him asked him if he was ill, while some feared that he brought plague to their beautiful city and would have driven him out at once.
The albino lifted his strange head long enough to gasp out the name of his patron, Lord Gho Fhaazi, and to say that all he lacked was a certain elixir which that nobleman possessed. "I must have that elixir," he told them, "or I will be dead before I have accomplished my task..."
The old towers and minarets of Quarzhasaat were lovely in the fading rays of a huge red sun and there was a certain peace about the city which comes when the day's business is done and before it begins to take its pleasures.
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