Elric realizes that these are the ideas which brought his father to his present dilemma and, with a sardonic smile, he settles back behind his bench to enjoy his interrupted breakfast.
He will decide nothing until this evening, when he dines aboard Gaynor’s ship.
Wheldrake looks once more after the departing beauty, takes parchment from one pocket, pen from another, a traveling inkwell from his top left waistcoat pocket, and begins first a sestina, next a roundelay, then a villanelle, until settling again upon the sestina …
This was the measure of my soul’s delight;
It had no power of joy to fly by day,
Nor part in the large lordship of the light;
But in a secret moon-beholden way
Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night,
And all the love and life that sleepers may.
Whereupon the Prince of Ruins slips away, back to his maps and his particular problems, as Wheldrake pauses, sighs, and makes a stab this time at a sonnet …
“Or I had thought, perhaps, after all, an Ode. Along the lines, perhaps, of something I wrote in Putney.
“Golden eastern waters rocked the cradle where she slept
Songless, crowned with bays to be of sovereign song,
Breathed upon with balm and calm of bounteous seas that kept
Secret all the blessing of her birthright, strong,
Soft, severe, and sweet as dawn when first it laughed and leapt
Forth of heaven, and clove the clouds that wrought it wrong!
“Good evening, Prince Gaynor. I trust you have an explanation for your destruction of a nation? Your sophistries should, at least, be entertaining.” The little poet looked up at the mysterious helm, his knuckles upon his hips, his beak flaring with disdain, unmoved by fear of Gaynor’s power, nor of any social stricture to hold his tongue on the subject of his host’s genocide as he stepped aboard the ship.
Elric, for his part, said little, keeping a distance between himself and the others, which he had once been taught to do as a matter of course, as a Melnibonéan princeling. This coolness was new to Wheldrake but would have been very familiar to Moonglum, were he here and not, perhaps, still in Tanelorn. Elric adopted the manner when circumstances led him once more towards a kind of cynicism, that cynicism oddly tinged with other qualities, harder to judge or to define. The long-fingered bone-white hand hung upon the pommel of the massive runesword and the head was set at a certain angle, as if further withdrawn, while the brooding crimson eyes held a humour which, on occasions, even the Lords of the Higher Worlds had considered dangerous. Yet he bowed. He made a movement with his free hand. He looked steadily into the eyes behind the helm, the eyes that smoked and glittered and writhed with the fires of hell.
“Good evening, Prince Gaynor.” There was at once a softness and a steely sharpness to Elric’s voice which reminded Wheldrake of a cat’s claws sheathed in downy fur.
The ex-Prince of the Balance cocked his head a little to one side, perhaps in irony, and spoke with that musical voice which had served Chaos as a lure for so many centuries. “I am glad to see you, Master Wheldrake. I have only recently learned we should experience the privilege of your company. Though I was told by mutual friends that you, Elric, could be found in Ulshinir.” He shrugged away the question. “We have, whatever you may call it, some kind of fresh luck forming, it seems. Or are we mere ingredients? Eggs in some mad god’s omelette? My chef is excellent, by the way. Or so I’m told.”
Then here came Mistress Charion Phatt, in black and white velvet and lace, her youthful beauty shining like a jewel from its box.
Half-swooning, Master Wheldrake made his elaborate courtesies, which she received with amused good will and drew him to her as they strolled towards the forward cabin where the looming shadow of that peculiar cargo rocked and shifted on the roof above and which Prince Gaynor and Charion Phatt both ignored as if they heard or saw nothing out of place.
Then came the dining. Elric, who frequently cared nothing for the refinements of appetite, found the food as delicious as Gaynor had promised. The damned prince told a tale of a voyage to Aramandy and the Mallow Country there to find Xermenif Blüche, the Master Chef of Volofar. And they might have been dining again amongst the wealthy intelligentsia of Trollon, heedless of any unusual circumstances—of warring gods, of stolen souls and lost clairvoyants and so on—and commenting on the delicacy of the mousse.
Prince Gaynor, in a carved black chair at the head of his table, which was swathed with a dark scarlet cloth, turned an enigmatic helm towards Elric and said that he had always preserved certain standards, even when in battle or in command of semi-brutes, as one so frequently was, these days. One had after all, he added in some amusement, to control what one could, especially since one’s fate grew so unmalleable as the Conjunction approached.
Elric had heard little of this and he moved impatiently in his seat, pushing away the plates and cutlery. “Will you tell us, Prince Gaynor, why you make us your guests here?”
“If you will tell me, Elric, why you fear me!” said Gaynor in a sudden whisper, the cold of limbo slicing into Elric’s soul.
But Elric held his psychic ground, conscious of Gaynor’s testing him.
“I fear you because you are prepared to go to any ends to achieve your own death. And since life has no value to you, you are to be feared as all such animals are feared. For you desire power only for that most selfish of all ends, and therefore you know no boundaries in the seeking and the gaining of it. That is why I fear you, Gaynor the Damned. And that is why you are damned.”
The faceless creature flung back its steel-shod head, the colours behind the metal quivering and flaring, and laughed at this. “I fear you, Elric, because you are damned yet continue to behave as if you were not …”
“I have made no bargains such as yours, prince.”
“Your whole race has made a bargain! And now it is paying the price—somewhere, not far from here, in a realm you will call home, the last of your people are being marshaled to march in the armies of Chaos. The time for that last great fight is not yet. But we are preparing for it. Would you survive it, Elric? Or would you be blasted to non-existence, not even your memory remaining—less enduring, say, than one of Master Wheldrake’s verses—”
“I say, sir! You have already proved yourself an unmitigated villain! Pray, remember at least that you are a gentleman!” Then Wheldrake’s eye returned to his beloved.
“Can you bear the prospect of everlasting death, Elric? You, who love life as much as I hate it. We could both have our deepest desire …”
“I think you fear me, Prince Gaynor, because I refuse that final compromise,” said Elric. “I fear you because you belong wholly to Chaos. But you fear me because I do not.”
A querulous noise issued from within the helm, almost like the snuffling of some cosmic pig. Then in came three sailors with a tambourine, a pipe and a musical sword, to play some mournful shanty, and who were swiftly dismissed by Gaynor, to the relief of all.
“Very well, sir,” said Gaynor, all his equilibrium recovered, it seemed. “Then can I put a modest suggestion to you?”
“If you wish to join forces to seek the three sisters, I will consider your proposals,” said Elric. “Otherwise I see little left to discuss between us.”
“But that is just what I would discuss, Elric. We all desire something different, I suspect, of those sisters, and the reason why so much upheaval flings us this way and that through the multiverse is because there are several interests and several Lords of the Higher Worlds involved. You accept that, gentlemen?” Now he included Wheldrake. Charion Phatt sat back in her chair, evidently already privy to her ally’s plan.
They nodded their agreement.
“In some ways we are all at odds,” Gaynor continued, “but in others we have no battle between us. And I see you agree. Well, then, so let us search for the sisters, as well as the Family Phatt—or what remains of it—together. At
least until such time as our interests are no longer the same.”
And thus did Elric of Melniboné and Master Ernest Wheldrake accept the logic of the damned prince’s compromise and agreed to sail with him when his ship left harbour the next morning, as soon as they had selected another sailor or two from the braver or more desperate seadogs of Ulshinir.
“But,” said Elric, as they made to return ashore, while a scuffling and shifting went on, together with the occasional light pounding, overhead, “you have not yet discussed your destination, Prince Gaynor. Do we trust you in that or will you tell us the name of the island the three sisters have reached?”
“Island?” Gaynor’s helm grew dark, almost in puzzlement, and blues and blacks swirled across its smooth, sometimes opaque, surface. “Island, sir? We do not go to any island.”
“Then where are the three sisters?”
“Where we journey, sir, though they are lost to any immediate meeting between us, I fear.”
“And where,” said Wheldrake with a certain justified impatience, “do we journey, sir?”
Again the helm tilted a little as if in amusement and the musical voice sounded the words with considerable relish:
“Why, sir, I thought you’d guessed. Tomorrow we set sail into the Heavy Sea.”
CHAPTER THREE
Unusual Methods of Sea Travel; Disappointments of Piracy. A Hellblade Misplaced.
It was not until Ulshinir was well below the horizon and the reefs still invisible ahead that Gaynor the Damned gave the order to “let some light on the poor toad” and the sailors obeyed with perhaps a touch of reluctance, drawing off and rolling up the black canvas to reveal the iron bars of a large cage from which, blinking, appeared two enormous green-lidded eyes set in a gnarled reptilian head whose nostrils flared and whose long scarlet mouth opened to reveal a pink, flickering tongue, while the extraordinarily dense weight of scaly flesh was supported on massive webbed feet, limbs as thick as elm-trunks, the whole thing shuddering and rippling with the effort of its breathing.
The eyes, like dark, semi-precious stones, sought Gaynor and fixed on him where he stood below, looking up at the cage. The red, spongy lips opened and closed and deep, groaning sounds issued from the monster. It was only after a moment of listening that Elric realized the reptile was speaking.
“I am discontented, master. I am hungry.”
“Soon you will be allowed to feed, my pretty one. Very soon.” Gaynor chuckled as he climbed the companionway and gripped the bars of the cage with his gauntleted hands and peered at the gigantic toad which was five times his size and weight, at least.
Wheldrake had no wish, himself, to get closer. He hung back as Charion Phatt, laughing at his hesitation, went to the toad which responded to her cluckings and cooings with more grumblings and shufflings.
“It’s a self-pitying creature,” said Elric, staring at the thing with a certain sympathy. “Where did you find it? Is it a gift of Count Mashabak’s, something even Chaos will not suffer?”
“Khorghakh is a native of a nearby realm, Prince Elric.” Gaynor was amused. “He will help us to cross the Heavy Sea.”
“And what lies beyond?” Elric asked, watching as Charion Phatt took her sword and scratched the toad’s belly, making him grunt with a certain pleasure and seem to relax a little, though he still insisted he was hungry.
“Khorghakh is a denizen of the Heavy Sea?”
“Not exactly,” said Gaynor, “a denizen. But he is familiar with that singular ocean, or so I have been reassured. After three years of seeking him I acquired Khorghakh from some adventurers we encountered. They were coasting the islands looking for Ulshinir …”
“Looking for you,” said Charion. “I knew you were here. It was only later that I sensed the presence of the three sisters. I had thought they were following you. Yet you sensed them, also. I did not know you were clairvoyant.”
“I am not,” said Elric. “At least, not in the way you imply. I had no choice in my destination. For you, as I can see, some years have passed. For me, very little has occurred since the moment I followed you all into the Chaos pit. Wheldrake has had at least a year of wandering. It suggests that even if we should find the three sisters or, indeed, your family, they could be children or wizened oldsters by the time we reach them.”
“I like not this randomness at all,” says Wheldrake. “Chaos was never to my taste, though my critics did not believe that. I was raised to accept that there were certain universal laws obeyed by all. To discover that this hyper-reality has only a few fundamental rules which, on occasions, may also be changed, is disturbing to me.”
“It disturbed my uncle, also,” said Charion. “It was why he elected to lead a life of quiet domesticity. Of course, he was not allowed that choice, after all. He lost my mother, his brother and his wife to the machinations of Chaos. For my part, I have accepted the inevitable. I am aware that I live in the multiverse which, though it follows certain courses and measures, though, as I have been told, it obeys a great and inviolable logic, is so vast, so variable, so varied, that it appears to be ruled by Chance alone. So I will accept that my life is subject not to the consistency offered by Law but the uncertainty promised by Chaos.”
“A pessimistic view, sweet lady.” Wheldrake restrained his own feelings on the matter. “Is it not better to live as if there were some abiding logic to our existence?”
“Make no mistake, Master Wheldrake.” She touched him with a certain affection. “I have accepted the abiding logic—and it is the logic of power and conquest …”
“So decided my own ancestors,” said Elric quietly. “They perceived a multiverse that was all but random, and they conceived a philosophy to formalize what they saw. Since their world was controlled by the random whims of the Lords of the Higher Worlds, they argued, then the only way of ensuring their survival was to gain as much power as they could—power at least as great as that of certain minor deities. Power enough, at least, to make Chaos bargain with them, rather than threaten and destroy. But what did that power gain them in the end? Less, I suspect, than your uncle gained by his decision …”
“My uncle had no sense,” said Charion, bringing an end to the conversation. She turned her attention back to the toad, who had settled again and, while she scratched its vast back with her blade, stared moodily towards the horizon where dark ridges had begun to appear, the first sight of the reefs separating, according to the folk of Ulshinir, the inhabitable world from the uninhabitable.
They could hear surf now, could see it spuming against the volcanic rocks so that they gleamed with an unwelcoming blackness.
“I am discontented, mistress. I am hungry.” The toad turned its eyes upon Charion, and Wheldrake understood that he had a rival. He enjoyed the peculiar experience of being amused, jealous and profoundly terrified all at the same time.
Elric, too, had witnessed the toad’s expression when it looked at Charion and he frowned. Some instinct informed him but was not, as yet, a conscious thought. He was content to wait until the instinct had matured, found words, had confirmation and become an idea. Meanwhile he smiled at Wheldrake’s discomfort. “Fear not, friend Wheldrake! If you lack that fellow’s beauty and perhaps even his specific charm, you almost certainly have the superior wit.”
“Oh, indeed, sir,” said Wheldrake, mocking himself a little, “and I know that wit usually counts for nothing in the game of love! There is no verse form invented that could easily carry such a tale—of a poet whose rival is a reptile! The heartache of it! The uncertainty! The folly!”
And he paused suddenly, eyeing the monstrous toad as it returned his attention, glaring at him as if it had understood every word.
Then it opened its lips and spoke slowly.
“Thou shalt not have mine egg …”
“Exactly, sir. Exactly what I was remarking to my friend here.” With a bow so theatrical and elaborate even Elric was unsure what, at certain times, the poet was performing, Wheldrake went off for
a while to concern himself with some business in the stern.
From the crow’s nest came the cry of the lookout and this brought Gaynor round from where he had been staring apparently out to sea, almost as if he slept, or as if his soul had left his body. “What? Ah, yes. The navigator. Fetch up the navigator!”
And now, up from the starboard lower deck, comes a grey man—a man whose skin has been tanned by rain and wind but never by the sun, a man whose eyes are hurt by the light, yet grateful for it, also. He rubs at wrists which, by the chafing on them, have lately been tied. He sniffs at the salty wind and he grins to himself, in memory.
“Navigator. Here’s your means of earning your freedom,” says Gaynor, signaling him up towards the prow which rises and falls with graceful speed as the wind takes the sail and the rocky shores of a dozen islands lie ahead—black, wicked teeth in mouths of roaring foam.
“Or killing us all and taking everyone to hell with me,” says the navigator carelessly. He is a man of about forty-five, his light beard grey-brown as his shaggy hair and with grey-green eyes so piercing and strange that it is clear he has learned to keep them hooded, for now he squints as if against strong sun, though the sun lies behind him, and, with lithe movements of a man glad to be active again, he springs to the foredeck, squeezes around the toad’s cage as though he encounters such beasts every day, and joins Gaynor in the prow. “You’d better haul in that sail as soon as you can,” says the navigator, raising his voice above the gaining wind, “or turn about completely and take another approach. A couple of minutes and nothing will save us from those rocks!”
Gaynor turned shouting to his crew and Elric admired the skill with which the sailors went to their work, turning the ship just enough so that the sail hung limp on the mast, then hauling it in before the wind could find it again. The navigator shouted out encouragement, sending the men to their oars, for this was the only way to navigate the reefs at the edge of the world.
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