The wind blew harder and the flags of the Gypsy Nation cracked and snapped in the force of it.
“It will be dawn, soon,” said Wheldrake. He turned to look back at the Family Phatt: three faces bearing the same stamp, of a fear so all-consuming it made them almost entirely blind to their surroundings. Imploring, wailing, shouting warnings, sobbing and shrieking, Mother Phatt led them in a hymn of unspeakable despair and pain. From which the free walkers discreetly removed themselves, casting the occasional disapproving glance.
Calmly onward moves the Gypsy Nation, wheels turning with steady slowness, propelled by her marching millions, making her perpetual progress around the world …
Yet there is something wrong—something profoundly alarming ahead—something which Mother Phatt can already see, which Charion can already hear and which Fallogard Phatt yearns with all his soul to avert!
It is only as the dawn comes up behind them, soaring pinks, blues and faint golds, washing the road ahead with pale, watery light, that Elric understands why Mother Phatt screams and Charion holds her hands over her ears, and why Fallogard Phatt’s face is a tormented mask!
The light races forward over the great span of the causeway, revealing the lumbering settlements, the tramping thousands, the smoke and the dimming lamps, the ordinary domestic details of the day—but ahead—ahead is what the clairvoyants have foreseen …
The mile-wide span across the bay, that astonishing creation of an obsessively nomadic people, has been cut as if by a gigantic sword—sheared in a single blow!
Now the two halves rise and fall slowly with the shock of this catastrophe. That massive bridge of human bones and animal skins, of every kind of compacted ordure, trembles like a cut branch, lifting and dropping almost imperceptibly, with steady beats, while on the landside the boiling waters release all their fury and the white spray makes rainbows high overhead.
One by one, with appalling deliberation, the villages of the Gypsy Nation crawl to the edge and plunge into the abyss.
To stop is obscene. They do not know how to stop. They can only die.
Elric, too, is screaming now, as he forces his horse forward. But he screams, he knows, at the apparent inevitability of human folly, of people who can destroy themselves to honour a principle and a habit that has long since ceased to have any practical function. They are dying because they would rather follow habit than alter their course.
As the villages crawl to the broken edge of the causeway and drop into oblivion, Elric thinks of Melniboné and his own race’s refusals in the face of change. And he weeps for the Gypsy Nation, for Melniboné, and for himself.
They will not stop.
They cannot stop.
There is confusion. There is consternation. There is growing panic in the villages. But still they will not stop.
Through the falling mist rides Elric now, crying out for them to turn back. He rides almost to the edge of the causeway and his horse stamps and snorts in terror. The Gypsy Nation is dropping not into the distant ocean but into a great blossoming mass of reds and yellows, whose sides open like exotic petals and whose hot centre pulses as it swallows village after village. And it is then that Elric knows this is Chaos work!
He turns the black stallion away from the edge and gallops back through that doomed press to where Mother Phatt in her chair shrieks: “No! No! The Rose! Where is the Rose?”
Elric dismounts and seizes Fallogard Phatt by his lean, trembling shoulders. “Where is she? Do you know? Which village is Duntrollin?” But Fallogard Phatt shakes his head, his mouth moving dumbly, until at last all he can do is repeat her name. “The Rose!”
“She should not have done this,” cries Charion. “It is wrong to do this!”
Even Elric could not condone what was happening, careless as he often was of human life, and he longed to call upon Chaos to bring a halt to the dreadful destruction. But Chaos had been summoned to perform this deed and he knew he would not be heeded. He had not believed the Rose capable of raising such formidable allies; he could scarcely accept that she would willingly permit such horror as thousands upon thousands of living creatures plunged into the abyss, their cries of terror now unified in the air, while overhead the white spray spumed and the rainbows glittered.
Then he had turned, hearing a familiar voice, and it was young Koropith Phatt, running towards them, his clothes in shreds and blood pouring from a score of minor cuts.
“Oh, what has she done!” cried Wheldrake. “The woman is a monster!”
But Koropith was panting, pointing backwards to where, as bloody and ragged as himself, her hair slick with sweat, her sword Swift Thorn in her right hand, her dagger Little Thorn in her left, staggered the Rose, with tears like diamonds upon her haggard face.
Wheldrake addressed her first. He, too, was crying. “Why did you do this? Nothing can justify such murder!”
She looked at him in exhausted puzzlement before his words made sense to her. Then she turned her back on him, sheathing her weapons. “You wrong me, sir. This is Chaos work. It could only be Chaos work. Prince Gaynor has an ally. He wreaks great sorcery. Greater than I could have guessed. It seems he does not care who or what or how many he kills in his desperate search for death …”
“Gaynor did this?” Wheldrake reached out to take her arm, but she resisted him. “Where is he now?”
“Where he believes I will not follow,” she said. “But follow I must.” There was an air of weary determination about the woman and Elric saw that Koropith Phatt, far from blaming her for his ordeal, had placed his hand in hers and was comforting her.
“We shall find him again, lady,” said the child. He began to lead her back the way they had come.
But Fallogard Phatt intercepted them. “Is Duntrollin destroyed?”
The Rose shrugged. “No doubt.”
“And the sisters?” Wheldrake wished to know. “Did Gaynor find them?”
“He found them. As did we—thanks to Koropith and his clairvoyance. But Gaynor—Gaynor had possession of them in some way. We fought. He had already summoned aid from Chaos. He had doubtless planned everything in detail. He had waited until the Nation was approaching the bridge …”
“He has escaped? To where?” Elric already guessed some of the answer and she confirmed what he suspected.
She made a motion with her thumb towards the edge. “Down there,” she said.
“He found his death then, after all.” Wheldrake frowned. “But he wished to have as much company as possible, it seems, on his journey to oblivion.”
“Who can say where he journeys?” The Rose had turned and was going slowly back towards the edge where now a village perched, half-toppled, her inhabitants wailing and scrambling, yet making no real attempt to escape. Then the whole thing had gone, tumbling down into that flaring manifestation of Chaos, to be swallowed, to be engulfed. “I would guess that only he knows that.”
Leading his horse, Elric followed her. Her hand was still in Koropith’s. Elric heard the boy say: “They are still there, lady. All of them. I can find them, lady. I can follow. Come.” The boy was leading her now, leading her to the very lip of the broken causeway, to stand staring into the abyss.
“We shall find a way for you, lady,” Fallogard Phatt promised, in sudden fear. “You cannot—”
But he was too late, for without warning both the woman and the boy had flung themselves into space, out over the pulsing, glowing maw that seemed so hungry, so eager for the souls which fell by their hundreds and thousands down. Down into the very stuff of Chaos!
Mother Phatt screamed again. It was one long, agonized scream that no longer mourned the general destruction. This time she voiced a thoroughly personal grief.
Elric ran to the edge, saw the two figures falling, dwindling, to be swiftly absorbed by the foul beauty of that voracious fundament.
Impressed by a courage, a desperation which seemed to him even greater than his own, he stepped backwards, speechless with astonishment—
Sickened, confused and attempting to control a fear he had never known before, Elric drew Stormbringer from its scabbard.
Wheldrake came to stand beside him. “She is gone, Elric. They are all gone. There is nothing you can fight here.”
Elric nodded slowly in agreement. He stretched the blade before him then brought it up flat against his heaving chest, placing his other hand near the tip of the great broadsword on which runes flickered and glowed. “I have no choice,” he said. “I would endure any danger rather than earn the fate my father has promised me …”
And with that he had screamed the name of his own patron Duke of Demons and had hurled his howling battle-blade, and his body with it, out over the Chaos pit, a wild, unlikely song upon his bloodless lips …
The last thing Wheldrake saw of his friend were crimson eyes glaring with a kind of terrible tranquility as the Sorcerer Emperor was pulled remorselessly down into the flaming hub of that hellish abyss …
BOOK TWO
ESBERN SNARE; THE NORTHERN WEREWOLF
Of the Troll of the Church they sing the rune
By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon;
And the fishers of Zealand hear him still
Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.
And seaward over its groves of birch
Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church,
Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair,
Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare!
—Wheldrake,
Norwegian Songs
CHAPTER ONE
Consequences of Ill-Considered Dealings with the Supernatural; Something of the Discomforts of Unholy Compacts.
ELRIC FELL THROUGH centuries of anguish, millennia of mortal misery and folly; he roared his defiance as he fell, his sword like a beacon and a challenge in his grip, down towards the luscious heart of Chaos while everywhere around him was confusion and cacophony, swift images of faces, cities, whole worlds, transmogrified and insane, warping and reshaping; for in unchecked Chaos everything was in perpetual change.
He was alone.
Very suddenly everything was still. His feet touched stable ground, though it was little more than a slab of rock floating in the flaming light of the quasi-infinite—universe upon universe blending one into the other, each ripple a different colour in a different spectrum, each facet a separate reality. It was as if he stood at the centre of a crystal of unimaginable complexity and his eyes, refusing the sights they were offered, somehow became blind to everything but the intense, shifting light, whose colours he could not identify, whose odours were full of hints of the familiar, whose voices offered every terror, every consolation and yet were not mortal. Which set the albino prince to sobbing, conquered and helpless as his strength drained from him, and his sword grew heavy in his hand, an ordinary piece of iron, and a soft, humorous song sounded from somewhere beyond the fires, becoming words:
“Thou hast such courage, sweetest of my slaves! Impetuous Champion of the Ever-Changing, where is thy father’s soul?”
“I know not, Lord Arioch.” Elric felt his own soul freeze on the very point of extermination, the imminent obliteration of everything he had ever been or would be—less than a memory. And Arioch knew he did not lie. He took away the chill. And Elric was soothed again …
He had never before experienced such a sense of impatience in his patron Lord of Hell. What emergency alarmed the gods?, he wondered.
“Mortal morsel, thou art my darling and my dear one, pretty little sweetmeat …”
Elric, familiar with the cadences of his patron’s moods, was both fascinated and afraid. Much that was in him wished for the approval of his patron at all costs. Much wished only to give itself up forever to the mercies of Duke Arioch, whatever they might be, to suffer whatever agonies his lord decided, such was the power of that godling’s presence, embracing him and coaxing him and praising him and blessed always with the absolute power of life or death over his eternal soul. Yet still, in the most profoundly secret part of his mind Elric kept a resolution to himself, that one day he would rid his world of gods entirely—should his life not be snuffed away the next second (such was his patron’s present mood). Here, in his own true element, Arioch had his full power and any pact he had ever made with a mortal was meaningless; this was his own Dukedom and here he required no allies, honoured no bargains and demanded instant compliance of all his slaves, mortal and supernatural, on pain of instant extinction.
“Speak, sweetmeat. What brought thee to my domain?”
“Mere chance, I think, Lord Arioch. I fell …”
“Ah, fell!” The word held considerable meaning, considerable understanding. “You fell.”
“Into an abyss which only a Lord of the Higher Worlds could sink between the realms.”
“Yes. You fell. IT WAS MASHABAK!”
Elric knew mindless relief that the rage was directed away from him. And he, too, understood what had occurred—that Gaynor the Damned had served Arioch’s arch rival, Count Mashabak of Chaos …
“You had servants in the Gypsy Nation, lord?”
“It was mine, that near-limbo. A useful device that many sought to control. And because he could not possess it for himself, Mashabak destroyed it …”
“Upon a whim, lord?”
“Oh, he served some creature’s petty ends, I believe …”
“It was Gaynor, lord.”
“Ah, Gaynor. He has become a politician, eh?”
Elric grew aware of his patron’s brooding silence. After what might have been a year, the Duke of Hell murmured, with better humour, “Very well, sweetmeat, go upon thy way. But recollect that thou art mine and thy father’s soul is mine. Both are mine. Both must be delivered up to me, for that is our ancient compact.”
“Go where, patron?”
“Why, to Ulshinir, of course, where the three sisters have escaped their captor. And could be returning home.”
“To Ulshinir, my lord?”
“Fear not, thou shalt travel like a gentleman. I shall send thy slave after thee.” The Lord of the Higher Worlds had his attention upon other affairs now. It was not in the nature of a Duke of Chaos to dwell too long upon one matter, unless it was of monumental importance.
The fires went out.
Elric still stood upon that spur of rock, but now it was attached to a substantial hill, from which he could look down into a rugged valley, full of sparse grass and limestone crags across which a thin powder of snow blew. The air was cold and sharp and good to his senses and, though he was cold, he brushed vigorously at his naked arms and face as if to rid them of the grime of hell. At his feet something murmured. He looked down to see the runesword where he had dropped it during his audience with Arioch. He wondered at the power of his patron, that even Stormbringer felt compelled to acknowledge. He raised the blade almost lovingly, cradling it like a child. “We have need of each other still, thee and I.”
The blade was sheathed, the terrain inspected again, and he thought he saw a thread of smoke rising over the next hill. From there he might begin his search for Ulshinir.
He thanked chance that he had drawn on his boots before rushing in pursuit of the Rose, for he needed them now, against the jagged stones and treacherous turf down which he made his way. The cold was resisted with the expediency of dragon venom, again painfully absorbed, and in less than an hour he was striding down a narrow path to a stone cottage, thatched with peat and straw, which gave off the smell of earth, warmth and a wholesome fecundity, and was the first of several such dwellings, all as comfortably settled into the landscape as if they had grown naturally from it.
In answ
er to Elric’s polite knock upon the gnarled oak door, a fair-skinned young woman opened it and smiled at him uncertainly, eyeing his appearance with a curiosity she attempted to disguise. She blushed as she pointed along the road to Ulshinir and told him it was less than three hours’ easy walking from there, to the sea.
Gentle hills and shallow dales, a white limestone road through the mellow greens, coppers and purples of the grasses and heathers; Elric was glad to be walking. He wished to clear his head, to consider Arioch’s demands, to wonder how Gaynor had come to lose the mysterious three sisters. And he wondered what he must find in Ulshinir.
And he wondered if the Rose still lived.
Indeed, he thought with some surprise, he cared if the Rose still lived. He was curious, he assured himself, to hear more of her story.
Ulshinir was a harbour town of steep-roofed houses and narrow spires, all with a scattering of early snow. The smell of woodsmoke, drifting through the autumnal air, somehow consoled him a little.
Within his belt he still had tucked a few gold coins which Moonglum had long ago insisted he carry and he hoped that gold was acceptable currency in Ulshinir. The town certainly seemed of familiar appearance, very much like any town of the Northern Young Kingdoms, and he guessed this plane was close to his own part of the Sphere, at least, and possibly the realm. And this, too, gave him a little comfort. The few citizens he encountered upon the cobbled streets found his appearance strange, but they were friendly enough and were happy to point the way to the inn. The inn was spare, in the manner of such places in his own world, but warm and clean. He was glad of the nutty, full-bodied ale they brought him, of the broth and the pie. He paid for his bed in advance and, while his landlady was counting out considerable change in silver, he asked if she had heard of other visitors to the town—three sisters, in fact.
“Dark haired, pale beauties, with such wonderful eyes—not unlike your own in shape, sir, though theirs were of such a dense blue as to be almost black. And exquisite clothes and traps! There’s not a woman in Ulshinir who did not turn out to get a glimpse of them. They took ship yesterday and their destination is the subject of considerable dispute amongst us, as you can imagine.” She smiled tolerantly at her own weakness. “Legend says they’re people from beyond our Heavy Sea. Were you a friend, perhaps? Or a relative?”
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