The Dreamthief's Daughter: A Tale of the Albino

by Michael Moorcock

  No creature, human or Melnibonéan, could ever command or contain the kind of power the gods commanded. To become involved in their struggles in this way was certain destruction. Part of me cared little if these inferior beings lived or died, but another part of me understood that there was a common bond, a common threat, and that my fate was closely bound up with the fate of the race which had founded the Young Kingdoms. I also understood that commonality was not a matter of race, but of intellect and disposition, that while my own culture was so alien to these humans, yet as an individual I made more friendships with them than I did with my own kind.

  Melniboné’s isolation and arrogance created within me a perpetual conflict. Like the multiverse itself, my mind was rarely at rest. I felt torn constantly between the opposing forces which bound reality, the eternal paradoxes of life and death, of war and peace. Yet if peace was all I sought, then why had I never settled in beguiling Tanelorn, where I had friends, books, music and memories? Why did I lust sometimes for the next conflict and the next? For the dreaming violence, the bitter oblivion of the battlefield?

  We were greeted by Brut, ill-at-ease but glad to see us. “How long must we suffer this damned enchantment?”

  “Miggea’s power’s defeated. Or at least contained. It should not be long before you see your familiar surroundings once more.” Brut’s question seemed a minor problem, given Gaynor’s growing power.

  We stayed long enough at Brut’s to refresh ourselves, then Oona came back, hard-faced and speaking little. “We must begin this at once,” was all she would say. We went with somewhat mixed feelings to the Tower of the Hand, that queer red building whose battlements resembled a palm held outward in a gesture of peace. Where my body still lay in conjured slumber.

  Acknowledged by the guard, we entered the low doorway and began to climb a steep staircase which let onto a warren of corridors. Oona led the way, her step light and sure. I came behind, a little less speedily, and Moonglum brought up the rear. He had the air of a man who had seen far too much sorcery and was not looking forward to witnessing any more. He was babbling about our need to leave Tanelorn as soon as possible, to get back on our original course, to put all this behind us and return to the solid realities of the Young Kingdoms, whose sorcery, by and large, was of human proportions.

  Oona was grim. “There will be precious few solid realities if Gaynor brings Arioch to the Stones of Morn.” Again she fell into an unresponsive silence. I had heard her and Fromental refer earlier to the Stones of Morn but had no clear idea what they were.

  At the end of a narrow passage we found another guarded door. I stopped to draw breath while Moonglum exchanged a conventional word or two with the man on duty.

  Pretending to have trouble with the door lock, I continued to hesitate. I felt Moonglum’s hand on my arm. Oona smiled at me with diffident encouragement.

  I pushed open the door.

  The long body of a Melnibonéan noble lay before me. Aside from its colorless skin, it could have been one of a hundred ancestors. The refined features were in contrast to the vulgarity of the costume. The hands were longer and more slender than von Bek’s, the bones of the face more sharply defined, the ears tapering slightly, the mouth sensitive, sardonic. The clothing was that of a barbarian from the South; that alone identified it as mine. For some time I had chosen not to wear my traditional costume. Even the milky hair, pinned at the nape of the neck, was a barbarian fashion. The figure lay dressed just as it had fallen. Nobody had wished, Oona said, to disturb anything, in case I should awaken suddenly. The knee-length boots of doeskin, the baroque silver breastplate, the checkered jerkin of blue and white, scarlet leggings, heavy green cloak. Even the empty scabbard lay beside him. A far better scabbard than the rough-and-ready thing I had made for Ravenbrand.

  Though the figure was mine and familiar to the half of me which was Elric, I observed it with a certain detachment, until suddenly I was filled with a surge of emotion and, darting forward, kneeled beside the bed, mutely grasping the limp, corpselike hand, unable to express the feeling of intense sympathy which consumed me. I was weeping for my own tormented soul.

  I tried to pull myself together, embarrassed by my unseemly response. I took Ravenbrand and placed it in the cold hand. I began to rise, to say something to my friends, when suddenly the sleeping man’s other hand closed on my own and kept me firmly where I was. He was still, as far as I could tell, in a deep, enchanted slumber. Yet there was no denying the power of his grip.

  As I struggled to free myself, my eyelids grew heavier and what remained of my energy seeped away. I wanted only to sleep. This feeling was unnatural. I could not afford to sleep. What enchantment had Gaynor left behind for me?

  I could not see that it mattered now whether I continued or whether I rested. It seemed perfectly logical, in the circumstances, to lie down beside the bed and join my other self in a much-needed slumber. I heard Moonglum’s anxious voice in the deep distance. I heard Oona say something about our safety and the Stones of Morn.

  And then I slept.

  I was naked.

  I stood with my feet planted in blackness. Filling the horizon ahead was a tall silver tree, its roots twisting about itself, the tips of its branches lost in the distance. I had never seen anything so delicate, so intricate. I stood outside existence and looked upon all the branches of all the branches of the multiverse, constantly growing, constantly dying. Like a piece of the most intricate filigree, that silver tree, the complexity so great that it was impossible to see and understand the whole. I knew that what I looked upon was immeasurable, infinite. And what if this were only one of many such trees? I began to move towards it until I could no longer see the tree itself, but only the nearest branches, on which figures moved, back and forth, walking between the worlds.

  At last I was standing on a branch, and I felt the comfort of familiarity. I had no memory, either as Elric or Ulric, of these roads. Instead I had a sense of connection with countless other selves with endless pain, with indescribable joy, and I felt that I was walking home.

  One branch met a wider branch and then wider still and I met more and more people walking, like me, on the silver roads between the worlds, seeking, like me, some desperate goal, some lost reality. Our greetings were brief. Few lasting friendships were ever made on the silver roads.

  After walking awhile, I began to notice a certain familiarity about those I passed. In some it was striking, in others subtle. Every one of these solitary men and women was myself. Thousands upon thousands of versions of myself. As if I were drawing in the vast single personality that was the sum of our parts, swiftly losing my own identity to the greater whole, performing some mysterious dance or ritual, making patterns which would ultimately determine the fate of all.

  In this second journey, my dream quest did not take me to Oona’s cottage on the borderland. It took me step by step towards a number of circular branches curving around one upon the other, evidently in an agitated condition.

  Using the disciplines I had learned in the art of sorcery, I made myself advance.

  The silver threads broadened to ribbons and then to wide roads so complicated in their design that it was impossible to guess which direction they would take. All seemed ultimately to return to wherever I happened to pause. I was glad, therefore, to find a fellow traveler, but a little astonished to look on a face that bore no resemblance to my own yet which was familiar.

  As happens in dreams, I felt no special surprise at meeting Prince Lobkowitz here. The distinguished older man, who used the nom de guerre of Herr El, gravely shook hands with me, as if we had met on a country road. He seemed comfortable in his natural environment. I remember the warmth and firmness of his grip, his reassuring presence.

  —My dear Count! Lobkowitz seemed casually delighted—I was told I might run across you out here. Are you familiar with these crossroads?

  —Not at all, Prince Lobkowitz. And I’ll admit I don’t seek to become familiar with them. I am merel
y trying to get home. I have, as I’m sure you’re aware, many reasons for returning to Germany.

  —But you cannot return, can you, without the sword?

  —The sword is in better hands than mine now. I shall not have any particular need of it, I suspect, in my fight against Hitlerism, which is why I wish to return home.

  Lobkowitz’s sad, wise eyes took on an ironic glint. —I think we are all wishing that, my lord. Here, on the moonbeam roads, we occasionally encounter this phenomenon, where branches appear to curve in on themselves, swallow themselves, reproduce themselves in peculiar ways and grow increasingly complex and dysfunctional. The theory goes that such places are a kind of cancer, where Law and Chaos are no longer in equilibrium but maintain form in their mutually destructive conflict. They can be dangerous to us—their paradoxes are perverse, unnatural and have age not wisdom. They only lead towards further confusion.

  —But my path takes me this way. How can I avoid it?

  —You can’t—but I can help you, if you wish.

  Quite naturally, I accepted his offer and he fell in beside me, staring up at the lattice of silvery roads all around us and remarking on their beauty. I asked him if these were the Grey Fees. He shook his head.

  —These are roads we ourselves make between the realms. Just as generations tread footpaths across familiar countryside until those footpaths turn to highways, so do our desires and inventions create familiar paths through the multiverse. You could say we create a linear way of traveling through nonlinearity, that our roads are entirely imaginary, that any form we believe we see is simply an illusion or a partial vision of the whole. The human psyche organizes Time, for instance, to make it navigably linear. They say human intelligence and human dreams are the true creators of what we see. I have great faith in the benign power of dreams and am myself partial to that notion—that in effect we create ourselves and our surroundings. Another of the paradoxes which bring us closer to an understanding of our condition.

  The maze of roads had tangled all around us now and I knew a slight sense of alarm.

  —Then what does this nest of silver threads represent?

  —Linearity turned in on itself? Law gone mad? Chaos unchecked? At this stage it scarcely matters. Or perhaps these shapes are like blossoms on a tree, creating in turn whole new dimensions? I believe some call this junction The Chrysanthemum and avoid it.

  —Why so?

  —Because you become truly lost, truly cut off from any familiar reality. Or perhaps if they are cancers . . . ?

  —Does no one know their true origin or function?

  —Who can? They could be all of those things or none of those things.

  —So we could be trapped. Is that what you’re saying?

  —I did not insist on it as a certainty. Here the philosophical idea can turn out to be a concrete reality. And vice versa . . .

  Lobkowitz smiled a thin smile.

  —Here it is best to have only informed theories—realities and certainties are unreliable at best. It is harder to be betrayed by a theory. They say that if you would understand the multiverse, you must change from the conceptual state to the perceptual—from manipulation to understanding, and from understanding to action.

  I was taught something similar as a young student of sorcery. Yet I feared to let this silvery tangle of roads absorb me. The Austrian seemed almost amused.

  —What were you hoping to find here?

  I laughed. —Myself, I said.

  —Look. Lobkowitz pointed. A small straight branch led out of the tangle into glinting blackness. —Would you go this way?

  —Where does it lead?

  —Where you have the will and the courage to go. Whatever you have the will and the courage to make.

  I had hoped for rather more specific advice, but understood why it was not possible in a multiverse so malleable, so susceptible to mortal demands and so treacherously unstable. Nonetheless I had an uneasy feeling I had become trapped in some peculiar parable.

  These dreams I dreamed as both von Bek and Elric. They were profound dreams, hard to recollect. Elric’s dreams were the deepest and he would come to remember them only as nightmares amongst other, equally disturbing, nightmares. The kind that made him wake screaming in the night. That drove him to more and more desperate adventuring as he sought to escape the faintest memory of them.

  Now, however, links with von Bek seemed increasingly tenuous as I stepped onto the new straight road. “You ultimately need to reach the Isle of Morn.” Prince Lobkowitz wished me good-bye and turned back towards the dense tangle of paths.

  I drew further away and looked over my shoulder. “Morn?” I could no longer see the mysterious Prince Lobkowitz, Herr El. The great complex now resembled an impeccably carved ivory chrysanthemum, so perfect it was possible to imagine it made by a mortal craftsman. I understood why it had acquired the name. Were there people who actually mapped these routes? Who could make identical journeys over and over again?

  Why had Lobkowitz set me on this path to risk the danger he had described? Why had he, too, mentioned Morn? For a moment it occurred to me to wonder if he had deceived me, but I put the thought aside. I must trust the few I had learned to trust or I would be truly lost.

  My road joined with another and another until I was again on a main branch of the multiverse, approaching a place where a silvery bough had turned upwards and then down to form a rough arch.

  I had no choice but to go under this and find myself staring upwards into a glowing cauldron of white fire, which turned suddenly to shower me with flames the color of bone and pewter, absorbing me even as they fell and I fell with them—down for a thousand years, falling, falling for a thousand years. When I looked down I saw a vast field of ivory and silver flowers—of roses and chrysanthemums, marigolds and magnolias—each one representing a different universe.

  I feared that I would be drawn into one of the densely woven universes, but gradually they began to form a simple field of white in which two spots of ruby red glowed, until I realized I was staring into my own gigantic image and then instantly I was staring up at the anxious faces of Moonglum and my daughter, Oona. I turned my head. On the floor beside me was the sleeping body of Ulric von Bek. But there had been a fundamental change. Everything was most definitely not what it had been . . .

  As von Bek, however isolated I was from Elric and while he would scarcely remember me once this dream was ended, I could not rid myself of him. I remain both men. His story continues within me. I shall never be free of him. I have no reason to believe I was singled out for this fate and every reason to think it a mere accident, for if I’ve learned nothing else from my experiences, it is that luck has far more to do with one’s fortune than any kind of judgment and that to believe oneself in control of the multiverse is to suffer the greatest delusion of all.

  Since then I have heard of others who carry the identities of a thousand souls within them, but at that moment I was horrified by the notion. A simple Saxon landowner, I was bound by supernatural ties to the soul of a nonhuman creature separated from me by untold distances of time and space. Even as I looked on his face, I saw my own face looking back at me. It felt for a moment as if I stared down an endless corridor of mirrors—thousands upon thousands of selves reflected back at me. I rose with some difficulty from where I had fallen. I had the impression everything had happened simultaneously. Moonglum was overjoyed by his friend’s restoration, and Oona took her father’s hand as he stared with disbelieving eyes at the scene before him.

  Only I retained a conscious memory of the journey through the moonbeam roads.

  Elric looked at me. “I believe I have you to thank, sir, for waking me from that enchanted slumber?”

  “I think the Lady Oona is to be thanked by both of us,” I said. “She has her mother’s skills if not her inclinations.”

  He frowned. “Ah, yes. I remember something.” Then a shudder ran through him. “My sword—?”

  “Gaynor has Stormbri
nger, still,” said Moonglum quickly. “But your—this gentleman—has brought you another.”

  “I remember.” Elric frowned. He looked down at Ravenbrand, which I had placed in his grasp. “Fragments. Gaynor won my sword, then I fell asleep, then I dreamed I found Gaynor and lost him again.” He became agitated. “And he threatens—he threatens . . . No, Tanelorn is safe. Miggea’s imprisoned. The Stones of Morn! Other friends are in danger. Arioch—my Lord Arioch—where is he?”

  “Your Duke of Hell was here,” said Moonglum. “In this realm. But we did not know it. Perhaps Gaynor went with him.”

  Elric clutched his head, groaning. “The sorcery is too much, even for me. No mortal can sustain sanity or life if exposed to it for long. Oh! I remember! The dream! The cottage! Those white faces. Caverns. The young woman . . .”

  “You remember enough, Father,” she said quietly. He looked up at her again. Startled. Baffled. Alarmed.

  “Probably more than enough,” I suggested. I was beginning to yearn for some natural, dreamless sleep.

  Oona said quietly, “All is not over. Nor will it be until we have succeeded in getting rid of Gaynor. His strategy isn’t clear. He still attacks on two fronts and becomes increasingly reckless—careless of all life, including his own.”

  “Where shall we seek him?” Elric made a careful inspection of the runesword. He seemed suspicious of it, yet the blade itself was clearly the one he was familiar with.

  “Oh, there’s no doubt,” she said, “about where to find him. This Gaynor? He’ll choose one of two places of power—Bek or Morn. How to fight him is the problem. If you are ready, Father, we should return as soon as we can to Mu Ooria, where there’s still a great deal of work for us.”