And Tanelorn is mirrored elsewhere—but with one difference, it does not change. It does not decay as the other worlds decay. Tanelorn, like you, Sir Hero, is eternal.”
“And how may I find Tanelorn and the powers who rule there?”
“I know not. You must seek that information elsewhere.”
“I may never find it.”
The conversation had exhausted her and I, too, was seriously feeling the effects of the poison radiation. I was bitterly disappointed for, though I had discovered something more, I still had not all the information I had hoped for.
“Tell me what the chalice is,” I said weakly. But she had fainted. Unless we reached the Scarlet Fjord soon, there would be little point in seeking more information.
Then, at last, I saw the mountains ahead and I pulled back the lever to increase the aircraft’s height for I intended to fly all the way to the Scarlet Fjord and that was still a good distance away on the other side of the range.
We passed into a bank of thick, brown cloud and I felt salty moisture on my face. I could see only a short distance ahead and I prayed I had taken the vessel up high enough to avoid the highest crags. If not, then we should crash and be killed instantly.
I fought to keep my vision clear and rid my head of dizziness, my body of its ache. If I lost control of the craft we were bound to go into the side of a mountain.
Then came a break in the cloud.
I saw the dark, brooding sea below me.
We had overshot the fjord.
Quickly I turned the craft and decreased height.
Within moments I saw the bishop’s great fleet below.
I fought against the nausea and the dizziness engulfing me. I circled down and saw that Belphig stood on the top deck of the largest ship. He was talking to two tall Silver Warriors but looked up in astonishment when he saw my craft.
“Urlik!” he screamed. Then he laughed. “Do you think you can save your friends with that little flying boat? A third of them are dead of starvation already. The rest are too weak to resist us. We are just about to sail into the fjord. Bladrak was the last to resist. Now the world is mine.”
I turned and tried to revive the Silver Queen. She moaned and stirred but I could not arouse her. I lifted her upright as best I could in my own weakened condition and I showed her to Belphig.
Then the air-chariot began to lose height as I could control it no longer.
In a moment, I knew, I would be swallowed by that salt-thick sea.
* * *
But now a new sound came to my ears and I forced my head around to see Bladrak’s boats emerging from the gap between the cliffs.
Despairing of my help, Bladrak had decided to die fighting.
I tried to call out, to tell him there was no need, but the boat had hit the water and was skidding over the surface towards the looming shape of one of the ships of Belphig’s fleet.
I managed to turn the craft a little, but we smashed into a paddle with a mighty crash, the air-chariot overturned and the Silver Queen and myself were plunged into the thick water.
There were other sounds of confusion. I heard a shout and saw something drop from the side of the ship. Then the water entered my mouth and I knew I was drowning.
* * *
A moment later something seized me and dragged me from the ocean. I gasped. I was in the hands of one of the Silver Warriors. But he was smiling at me—he was virtually grinning. He pointed. Nearby the Silver Queen was reviving. He knew I had rescued her.
We were on a raft that must have been flung overboard the moment we were struck. And now they were hauling the raft up the side of the ship. From high above a querulous voice was screaming.
We had crashed into Belphig’s flagship.
I let the Silver Warriors help me to my feet when we reached the deck.
I looked up.
Belphig looked down.
He knew he was beaten, that the men from Moon would no longer follow him.
And he laughed.
I found myself laughing back.
I drew my Black Sword, still laughing. He drew his own sword and chuckled. I ducked my head and entered the door and began to climb the staircase that wound through the levels of the deck until I emerged on the top one and faced him.
He knew he was going to die. The thought had turned him quite mad.
I could not kill him then. I had killed too much. He was harmless now. I would spare him.
But the Black Sword thought otherwise. As I made to sheathe the blade it turned in my hand, flung my arm back.
Belphig screamed and raised his sword to defend himself from the imminent blow. I tried to stop the Black Sword from falling.
But fall it did.
It was inevitable.
It sheared through Belphig’s sword, then it paused as the bishop wept and stared at it. Then, my hands still round its hilt, it drew itself back and plunged itself deep into his fat, painted body.
Belphig shivered and his carmined lips fluttered. A strange intelligence entered his eyes. He screwed up his decorated eyes and tears fell down his rouged cheeks.
I think he died then. I hoped that he had.
* * *
Aboard the big ships the Silver Warriors were handing out food to the men who had sailed from the Scarlet Fjord expecting to be killed.
From below the Silver Queen called to me and I saw that she had Bladrak aboard. He was thin, but he still had his swagger as he hailed me.
“You have saved us all, Sir Champion.”
I smiled bitterly. “All but myself,” I said. I climbed back down the staircase until I stood on the lowest deck. The Silver Queen was talking with her men whose faces were full of joy now that she was safe.
She turned to me. “You have earned the undying loyalty of my people,” she said.
I was unimpressed. I was weary. And, oh, how I needed my Ermizhad.
I had thought that if I followed my fate, if I took up the Black Sword, then at least I would have a chance of being reunited with her.
But it seemed this was not to be.
And still I did not understand all of the prophecy concerning the Black Sword.
The Blade of the Sword has the Blood of the Sun…
* * *
Bladrak clapped me on the back. “We are going to feast, Count Urlik. We are going to celebrate. The Silver Warriors and their lovely queen are to be our guests in the Scarlet Fjord!”
* * *
I looked hard at the Silver Queen. “What has the chalice to do with me?” I said firmly, not replying to Bladrak.
“I am not sure…”
“You must tell me what you do know,” I said, “or I will kill you with the Black Sword. You have unleashed forces you do not understand. You have tampered with destinies. You have brought great grief upon me, O Queen in Silver. And still, I think, you do not understand. You sought to save a few lives on a dying planet by scheming to call the Eternal Champion. It suited those forces of destiny which control me to help you in your scheme. But I do not thank you for it—not with this hellsword hanging from me—this thing I thought myself rid of!”
She stepped back, the smile fading, and Bladrak looked grim.
“You have used me,” I said, “and now you celebrate. But what of me? What have I to celebrate? Where am I to go now?”
And then I stopped, angered at my own self-pity. I turned away, for I was weeping.
The Scarlet Fjord rang with merriment. Women danced along the quays, men roared out songs. Even the Silver Warriors seemed lusty in comparison with their former demeanour.
But I stood on the deck of the great sea-chariot and I talked with the Silver Queen.
We were alone. Bladrak and the rest were joining in the merrymaking.
“What is the golden chalice?” I said. “What do you mean by using it to such a petty end?”
“I do not think the end petty.”
“How did you gain the power to use the chalice?”
“
There were dreams,” she said, “and voices in the dreams. Much of what I did was in a trance.”
I looked at her with sympathy then. I had known the kind of dreams she described.
“You were told to call the chalice as you were told to call the Black Sword?”
“Aye.”
“And you do not know what the chalice is or why it makes that sound?”
“The legend said that the chalice is meant to hold the blood of the sun. When that blood is poured into it, the chalice will take it to the sun and the sun will come to life again.”
“Superstition,” I said. “A folktale.”
“Possibly.” She was subdued. I had shamed her. Now I felt sorry for my outburst.
“Why does the chalice scream?”
“It calls for the blood,” she murmured.
“And where is that blood?” Suddenly I looked down at my sword and grasped the hilt. “The Blade of the Sword has the Blood of the Sun!” I frowned. “Can you summon the chalice again?”
“Aye—but not here.”
“Where?”
“Out there,” she said, pointing beyond the mountains.
“On the ice. Will you come with me to the ice—now?”
“I owe you that,” she said.
4
THE KNIFE AND THE CUP
THE SILVER QUEEN and the Eternal Champion were two weeks departed from the Scarlet Fjord. They had gone in a boat which had taken them to deserted Rowernarc. They had sought the chariot in which the Eternal Champion had come to Rowernarc. They found it. They fed the beasts that pulled the chariot and then they climbed into it and were borne through the mountains, out to the plains of the South Ice.
Now the Silver Queen and the Eternal Champion stood surrounded on all sides by ice and a wind came up. It blew our cloaks about our bodies as we stared up at the small red sun.
“You affected many destinies when you chose to summon me,” I said.
She shivered. “I know,” she said.
“And now we must fulfil the whole prophecy,” I said. “The whole of it.”
“If that will free you, Champion.”
“It might bring me an inch nearer to that which I desire,” I told her. “No more. We deal in cosmic matters, Silver Queen.”
“Are we only pawns, Sir Champion? Can we control nothing of that destiny?”
“Precious little, Queen.”
She sighed and spread her arms, turning her face to the brooding sky. “I summon the Screaming Chalice!” she cried.
I unsheathed the Black Sword and I stood with it point first in the ice, my two hands gripping the two halves of the crosspiece.
The Black Sword began to tremble and it began to sing.
“I summon the Screaming Chalice!” the Queen of Moon cried again.
The Black Sword shuddered in my grasp.
Now tears fell down the Silver Queen’s silver cheeks and she fell to her knees on the ice.
The wind blew stronger. It came from nowhere. It was not a natural wind.
For the third time she called: “I summon the Screaming Chalice!”
I raised the Black Sword—or it dragged my hands behind it—and almost tenderly I plunged the blade into her back as she lay spreadeagled on the ice. I had slain her in this manner so that I should not see her face.
Her body writhed. She groaned and then she screamed and her voice blended with the moan of the wind, with the howling of the sword, with my cries of anguish and then, at last, with the shrill whine that grew so that it drowned all other sound.
And the Screaming Chalice stood upon the ice, blinding me with its radiance. I flung one hand over my eyes and felt the Black Sword leave my grasp.
When I looked again I saw that the huge sword was hovering over the chalice.
And from it poured blood.
Blood ran down the black blade and flooded into the chalice, and when the chalice was full the Black Sword fell to the ice.
And it seemed to me then—although I could not swear this happened—that a huge hand reached down from the faded sky and picked up the chalice and drew it higher and higher into the air until it vanished.
And then I saw a crimson aura spring around the sun. It flickered and was hardly visible at first, but then it grew brighter and the twilight turned into late afternoon and I knew that soon it would be morning again.
Do not ask me how this came to pass—how Time itself was turned back. I have been many heroes on many worlds, but I do not believe I have ever witnessed another event as strange and terrifying as that which took place on the South Ice after the Black Sword slew the Silver Queen.
The prophecy was complete. It had been my fate to bring death to this dying world—and now life.
I thought of the Black Sword differently then. It had done much that was evil in my eyes, but perhaps the evil had been to accomplish a greater good.
I walked to where it had fallen. I stooped to pick it up.
But the sword had gone. Only its shadow was left on the ice.
I removed the scabbard from my belt and put it near that shadow. I walked back to where I had left my chariot and I climbed into it.
I looked at the corpse of the Silver Queen, stretched where I had slain her. To save her people she had conjured up cosmic forces of indescribable power. And those forces had brought about her death.
“Would that they had brought about mine,” I murmured as the chariot’s wheels began to move forward on its skis.
I did not expect to be much longer on the South Ice. Soon, I knew, I would be called again. And when I was called I would try once more to find my way back to Ermizhad, my Eldren princess. I would look for Tanelorn—eternal Tanelorn—and one day, perhaps, I would know peace again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BORN IN LONDON in 1939, Michael Moorcock now lives in Texas. A prolific and award-winning writer with more than eighty works of fiction and non-fiction to his name, he is the creator of Elric, Jerry Cornelius and Colonel Pyat, amongst many other memorable characters. In 2008, The Times named Moorcock in their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
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The Eternal Champion
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The King of the Swords (July 2015)
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The Oak and the Ram (September 2015)
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PRAISE FOR MICHAEL MOORCOCK
“The most important successor to Mervyn Peake and Wyndham Lewis” — JG Ballard
“Michael Moorcock transcends cool. He is beyond any need for cool.” — Neil Gaiman
“His imagination sweeps the reader along. Amongst the best Moorcock has written.” — Sunday Telegraph
“…a Moorcock novel through and through: exhilarating, funny and deeply peculiar. It’s been years since the Who range put out anything as smart and engaging as this.” — SFX
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The English Assassin (April 2016)
The Condition of Muzak (May 2016)
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PRAISE FOR MICHAEL MOORCOCK
“The most important successor to Mervyn Peake and Wyndham Lewis” — JG Ballard
“Michael Moorcock transcends cool. He is beyond any need for cool.” — Neil Gaiman
“His imagination s
weeps the reader along. Amongst the best Moorcock has written.” — Sunday Telegraph
“…a Moorcock novel through and through: exhilarating, funny and deeply peculiar. It’s been years since the Who range put out anything as smart and engaging as this.” — SFX
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THE ANNO DRACULA SERIES
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PRAISE FOR THE SERIES
“Compulsory reading… Glorious.” Neil Gaiman
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THE MARTIAN WAR
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What if the Martian invasion was not entirely the product of H.G. Wells’s vivid imagination? What if Wells witnessed something that spurred him to write The War of the Worlds as a warning? From draughty London flats to the steamy Sahara, to the surface of the moon and beyond, The Martian War takes the reader on an exhilarating journey with Wells and his companions.
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Phoenix in Obsidian Page 14
