by Paula Guran
Elric nodded. He was interested, despite the need he felt to disassociate himself as much as possible from his fellows. The mythical book was believed to contain knowledge which could solve many problems that had plagued men for centuries—it held a holy and mighty wisdom which every sorcerer desired to sample. But it was believed destroyed, hurled into the sun when the Old Gods were dying in the cosmic wastes which lay beyond the outer reaches of the solar system. Another: legend, apparently of later origin, spoke vaguely of the dark ones who had interrupted the Book’s sunward coursing and had stolen it before it could be destroyed. Most scholars discounted this legend, arguing that, by this time, the book would have come to light if it did still exist.
Elric made himself speak flatly so that he appeared to be disinterested when he answered Shaarilla. “Why do you mention the Book?”
“I know that it exists,” Shaarilla replied intensely, “and I know where it is. My father acquired the knowledge just before he died. Myself—and the book—you may have if you will help me get it.”
Could the secret of peace be contained in the book? Elric wondered. Would he, if he found it, be able to dispense with Stormbringer?
“If you want it so badly that you seek my help,” he said eventually, “why do you not wish to keep it?”
“Because I would be afraid to have such a thing perpetually in my custody—it is not a book for a woman to own, but you are possibly the last mighty nigromancer left in the world and it is fitting that you should have it. Besides, you might kill me to obtain it—I would never be safe with such a volume in my hands. I need only one small part of its wisdom.”
“What is that?” Elric inquired, studying her patrician beauty with a new pulse stirring within him. Her mouth set and the lids fell over her eyes. “When we have the book in our hands—then you will have your answer. Not before.”
“This answer is good enough,” Elric remarked quickly, seeing that he would gain no more information at that stage. “And the answer appeals to me.” Then, half before he realized it, he seized her shoulders in his slim, pale hands and pressed his colorless lips to her scarlet mouth.
Elric and Shaarilla rode westwards, towards the Silent Land, across the lush plains of Shazaar where their ship had berthed two days earlier. The border country between Shazaar and the Silent Land was a lonely stretch of territory, unoccupied even by peasant dwellings; a no-man’s land, though fertile and rich in natural wealth. The inhabitants of Shazaar had deliberately refrained from extending their borders further, for though the dwellers in the Silent Land rarely ventured beyond the Marshes of the Mist, the natural borderline between the two lands, the inhabitants of Shazaar held their unknown neighbors in almost superstitious fear. The journey had been clean and swift, though ominous, with several persons who should have known nothing of their purpose warning the travelers of nearing danger. Elric brooded, recognizing the signs of doom but choosing to ignore them and communicate nothing to Shaarilla who, for her part, seemed content with Elric’s silence. They spoke little in the day and so saved their breath for the wild love-play of the night.
The thud of the two horses’ hooves on the soft turf, the muted creak and clatter of Elric’s harness and sword, were the only sounds to break the stillness of the clear winter day as the pair rode steadily, nearing the quaking, treacherous trails of the Marshes of the Mist.
One gloomy night, they reached the borders of the Silent Land, marked by the marsh, and they halted and made camp, pitching their silk tent on a hill overlooking the mist-shrouded wastes. Banked like black pillows against the horizon, the clouds were ominous. The moon lurked behind them, sometimes piercing them sufficiently to send a pale tentative beam down on to the glistening marsh or its ragged, grassy frontiers. Once, a moonbeam glanced off silver, illuminating the dark silhouette of Elric, but, as if repelled by the sight of a living creature on that bleak hill, the moon once again slunk behind its cloud-shield, leaving Elric thinking deeply. Leaving Elric in the darkness he desired.
Thunder rumbled over distant mountains, sounding like the laughter of far-off Gods. Elric shivered, pulled his blue cloak more tightly about him, and continued to stare over the misted lowlands. Shaarilla came to him soon, and she stood beside him, swathed in a thick woolen cloak which could not keep out all the damp chill in the air.
“The Silent Land,” she murmured. “Are all the stories true, Elric? Did they teach you of it in old Melniboné?”
Elric frowned, annoyed that she had disturbed his thoughts. He turned abruptly to look at her, staring blankly through his crimson-irised eyes for a moment and then saying flatly: “The inhabitants are unhuman and feared. This I know. Few men ventured into their territory, ever. None have returned, to my knowledge. Even in the days when Melniboné was a powerful empire, this was one nation my ancestors never ruled—nor did they desire to do so. The denizens of the Silent Land are said to be a dying race, far more evil than my ancestors ever were, who enjoyed dominion over the Earth long before men gained any sort of power. They rarely venture beyond the confines of their territory, nowadays, encompassed as it is by marshland and mountains.”
Shaarilla laughed, then, with little humor. “So they are unhuman are they, Elric? Then what of my people, who are related to them? What of me, Elric?”
“You’re unhuman enough for me,” replied Elric insouciantly, looking her in the eyes.
She smiled. “No compliment,” she said, “but I’ll take it for one—until your glib tongue finds a better.”
That night they slept restlessly and, as he had predicted, Elric screamed agonizingly in his turbulent, terror-filled sleep and he called a name which made Shaarilla’s eyes fill with pain and jealousy. That name was Cymoril. Wide-eyed in his grim sleep, Elric seemed to be staring at the one he named, speaking other words in a sibilant language which made Shaarilla block her ears and shudder.
The next morning, as they broke camp, folding the rustling fabric of the yellow silk tent between them, Shaarilla avoided looking at Elric directly but later, since he made no move to speak, she asked him a question in a voice which shook somewhat. It was a question which she needed to ask, but one which came hard to her lips. “Why do you desire the Dead Gods’ Book, Elric? What do you believe you will find in it?”
Elric shrugged, dismissing the question, but she repeated her words less slowly, with more insistence.
“Very well then,” he said eventually. “But it is not easy to answer you in a few sentences. I desire, if you like, to know one of two things.”
“And what is that, Elric?”
The tall albino dropped the folded tent to the grass and sighed. His fingers played nervously with the pommel of his runesword. “Can an ultimate God exist—or not? That is what I need to know, Shaarilla, if my life is to have any direction at all. “The Lords of Law and Chaos now govern our lives. But is there some being greater than them?”
Shaarilla put a hand on Elric’s arm. “Why must you know?” she said.
“Despairingly, sometimes, I seek the comfort of a benign God, Shaarilla. My mind goes out, lying awake at night, searching through black barrenness for something—anything—which will take me to it, warm me, protect me, tell me that there is order in the chaotic tumble of the universe; that it is consistent, this precision of the planets, not simply a brief, bright spark of sanity in an eternity of malevolent anarchy.”
Elric sighed and his quiet tones were tinged with hopelessness. “Without some confirmation of the order of things, my only comfort is to accept the anarchy. This way, I can revel in chaos and know, without fear, that we are all doomed from the start-that our brief existence is both meaningless and damned. I can accept then, that we are more than forsaken, because there was never anything there to forsake us. I have weighed the proof, Shaarilla, and must believe that anarchy prevails, in spite of all the laws which seemingly govern our actions, our sorcery, our logic. I see only chaos in the world. If the Book we seek tells me otherwise, then I shall gladly believe it
. Until then, I will put my trust only in my sword and myself.”
Shaarilla stared at Elric strangely. “Could not this philosophy of yours have been influenced by recent events in your past? Do you fear the consequences of your murder and treachery? Is it not more comforting for you to believe in deserts which are rarely just?”
Elric turned on her, crimson eyes blazing in anger, but even as he made to speak, the anger fled him and he dropped his eyes towards the ground, hooding them from her gaze.
“Perhaps,” he said lamely. “I do not know. That is the only real truth, Shaarilla. I do not know.”
Shaarilla nodded, her face lit by an enigmatic sympathy; but Elric did not see the look she gave him, for his own eyes were full of crystal tears which flowed down his lean, white face and took his strength and will momentarily from him.
I am a man possessed,” he groaned, “and without this devil-blade I carry I would not be a man at all.”
Two
They mounted their swift, black horses and spurred them with abandoned savagery down the hillside towards the Marsh, their cloaks whipping be-hind them as the wind caught them, lashing them high into the air. Both rode with set, hard faces, refusing to acknowledge the aching uncertainty which lurked within them.
And the horses’ hooves had splashed into quaking bogland before they could halt.
Cursing, Elric tugged hard on his reins, pulling his horse back on to firm ground. Shaarilla, too, fought her own panicky stallion and guided the beast to the safety of the turf.
“How do we cross?” Elric asked her impatiently.
“There was a map—” Shaarilla began hesitantly.
“Where is it?”
“It—it was lost. I lost it. But I tried hard to memorize it. I think I’ll be able to get us safely across.”
“How did you lose it—and why didn’t you tell me of this before?” Elric stormed.
“I’m sorry, Elric—but for a whole day, just before I found you in that tavern, my memory was gone. Somehow, I lived through a day without knowing it—and when I awoke, the map was missing.”
Elric frowned. “There is some force working against us, I am Sure,” he muttered, “but what it is, I do not know.” He raised his voice and said to her. “Let us hope that your memory is not too faulty, now. These marshes are infamous the world over, but by all accounts, only natural hazards wait for us.” He grimaced and put his fingers around the hilt of his runesword. “Best go first, Shaarilla, but stay dose. Lead the way.”
She nodded, dumbly, and turned her horse’s head towards the north, galloping along the bank until she came to a place where a great, tapering rock loomed. Here, a grassy path, four feet or so across, led out into the misty marsh. They could only see a little distance ahead, because of the dinging mist, but it seemed that the trail remained firm for some way. Shaarilla walked her horse on to the path and jolted forward at a slow trot, Elric following immediately behind her.
Through the swirling, heavy mist which shone whitely, the horses moved hesitantly and their riders had to keep them on short, tight rein. The mist padded the marsh with silence and the gleaming, watery fens around them stank with foul putrescence. No animal scurried, no bird shrieked above them. Everywhere was a haunting, fear-laden silence which made both horses and riders uneasy.
With panic in their throats, Elric and Shaarilla rode on, deeper and deeper into the unnatural Marshes of the Mist, their eyes wary and even their nostrils quivering for scent of danger in the stinking morass.
Hours later, when the sun was long past its zenith, Shaarilla’s horse reared, screaming and whinnying. She shouted for Elric, her exquisite features twisted in fear as she stared into the mist. He spurred his own bucking horse forwards and joined her. Something moved, slowly, menacingly in the dinging whiteness. Elric’s right hand whipped over to his left side and grasped the hilt of Stormbringer. The blade shrieked out of its scabbard, a black fire gleaming along its length and alien power flowing from it into Elric’s arm and through his body. A weird, unholy light leapt into Elric’s crimson eyes and his mouth was wrenched into a hideous grin as he forced the frightened horse further into the skulking mist.
“Arioch, Lord of the Seven Darks, be with me now!” Elric yelled as he made out the shifting shape ahead of him. It was white, like the mist, yet somehow darker. It stretched high above Elric’s head. It was nearly eight feet tall and almost as broad. But it was still only an outline, Seeming to have no face or limbs—only movement: darting, malevolent movement! But Arioch, his patron god, chose not to hear.
Elric could feel his horse’s great heart beating between his legs as the beast plunged forward under its rider’s iron control. Shaarilla was screaming something behind him, but he could not hear the words. Elric hacked at the white shape, but his sword met only mist and it howled angrily. The fear-crazed horse would go no further and Elric was forced to dismount.
“Keep hold of the steed,” he shouted behind him to Shaarilla and moved on light feet towards the darting shape which hovered ahead of him, blocking his path.
Now he could make out some of its saliencies. Two eyes, the color of thin, yellow wine, were set high in the thing’s body, though it had no separate head. A mouthing, obscene slit, filled with fangs, lay just beneath the eyes. It had no nose or ears that Elric could see. Four appendages sprang from its upper parts and its lower body slithered along the ground, unsupported by any limbs. Elric’s eyes ached as he looked at it. It was incredibly disgusting to behold and its amorphous body gave off a stench of death and decay. Fighting down his fear, the albino inched forward warily, his sword held high to parry any thrust the thing might make with its arms. Elric recognized it from a description in one of his grimoires. It was a Mist Giant—possibly the only Mist Giant, Bellbane. Even the wisest wizards were uncertain how many existed—one or many. It was a ghoul of the swamp-lands which fed off the souls and the blood of men and beasts. But the Marshes of this Mist were far to the east of Bellbane’s reputed haunts.
Elric ceased to wonder why so few animals inhabited that stretch of the swamp. Overhead the sky was beginning to darken.
Stormbringer throbbed in Elric’s grasp as he called the names of the ancient Demon-Gods of his people. The nauseous ghoul obviously recognized the names. For an instant, it wavered backwards. Elric made his legs move towards the thing. Now he saw that the ghoul was not white at all. But it had no color to it that Elric could recognize. There was a suggestion of orangeness dashed with sickening greenish yellow, but he did not see the colors with his eyes—he only sensed the alien, unholy tinctures. Then Elric rushed towards the thing, shouting the names which now had no meaning to his surface consciousness.
“Balaan—Marthim! Aesma! Alastor! Saebos! Verdelet! Nizilfkm! Haborym! Haborym of the Fires Which Destroy!” His whole mind was torn in two. Part of him wanted to run, to hide, but he had no control over the power which now gripped him and pushed him to meet the horror.
His sword blade hacked and slashed at the shape. It was like trying to cut through water—sentient, pulsating water. But Stormbringer had effect. The whole shape of the ghoul quivered as if in dreadful pain. Elric felt himself plucked into the air and his vision went. He could see nothing—do nothing but hack and cut at the thing which now held him.
Sweat poured from him as, blindly, he fought on.
Pain which was hardly physical—a deeper, horrifying pain, filled his being as he howled now in agony and struck continually at the yielding bulk which embraced him and was pulling him slowly towards its gaping maw. He struggled and writhed in the obscene grasp of the thing. With powerful arms, it was holding him, almost lasciviously, drawing him closer as a rough lover would draw a girl. Even the mighty power intrinsic in the runesword did not seem enough to kill the monster. Though its efforts were somewhat weaker than earlier, it still drew Elric nearer to the gnashing, slavering mouth-slit.
Elric cried the names again, while Stormbringer danced and sang an evil song in his right hand.
In agony, Elric writhed, praying, begging and promising, but still he was drawn inch by inch towards the grinning maw.
Savagely, grimly, he fought and again he screamed for Arioch. A mind touched his—sardonic, powerful, evil—and he knew Arioch responded at last! Almost imperceptibly, the Mist Giant weakened. Elric pressed his advantage and the knowledge that the ghoul was losing its strength gave him more power. Blindly, agony piercing every nerve of his body, he struck and struck.
Then, quite suddenly, he was falling.
He seemed to fall for hours, slowly, weightlessly until he landed upon a surface which yielded beneath him. He began to sink.
Far off, beyond time and space, he heard a distant voice calling to him. He did not want to hear it; he was content to lie where he was as the cold, comforting stuff in which he lay dragged him slowly into itself.
Then some sixth sense made him realize that it was Shaarilla’s voice calling him and he forced himself to make sense out of her words.
“Elric—the marsh! You’re in the marsh. Don’t move!”
He smiled to himself. Why should he move? Down he was sinking, slowly, calmly—down into the welcoming marsh . . . Had there been another time like this; another marsh?
With a mental jolt, full awareness of the situation came back to him and he jerked his eyes open. Above him was mist. To one side a pool of unnameable coloring was slowly evaporating, giving off a foul odor. On the other side he could just make out a human form, gesticulating wildly. Beyond the human form were the barely discernible shapes of two horses. Shaarilla was there. Beneath him—
Beneath him was the marsh.
Thick, stinking slime was sucking him downwards as he lay spread-eagled upon it, half-submerged already. Stormbringer was still in his right hand. He could just see it if he turned his head. Carefully, he tried to lift the top half of his body from the sucking morass. He succeeded, only to feel his legs sink deeper. Sitting upright, he shouted to the girl.
“Shaarilla! Quickly—a rope!”
