“How do you propose to get there?” I asked her. “I doubt if King Straasha can be prevailed upon to help me twice.”
She smiled. “There are less dramatic means of travel. Besides, I think Miggea’s spell has lifted. Now only she is trapped in the barren world she created for herself. Without human aid, there she stays. But while we can journey fairly easily between the worlds, Master Moonglum cannot. You must wait here, Moonglum, in Tanelorn, until Elric returns.”
Moonglum seemed partially relieved at this news but he grumbled. “I’ve chosen to travel with you, Elric—to Hell, if necessary.”
Elric stretched out his long, pale hand and placed it on Moonglum’s shoulder. “It will not be necessary yet, old friend.”
Moonglum took this well, but he was clearly saddened. “I’ll wait a few weeks,” he said. “And if you don’t return by then, I might head back towards Elwher. I, too, have unfinished business. If I’m not here when you return, you’ll find me there.”
We left the little redheaded outlander in that room. He preferred, he said, to stay there until we had gone. He wished us luck. He was sure our paths would cross again.
Oona led us out of the Tower of the Hand into cheering streets and gentle sunlight. There, all around the city’s walls, were familiar gentle green hills. Tanelorn had returned to her natural position in the multiverse.
Oona led us swiftly through the twittens and lanes of Tanelorn’s most ancient districts until we entered a low house which had, by its condition, been abandoned years earlier. The upper floors were ruined but the basement was in good repair, its main room guarded by an iron-bound door which Oona, after checking that we weren’t observed, opened with a surprisingly small key.
There seemed to be nothing especially valuable on the other side of the door. The room was furnished with a bed, working and cooking facilities, a desk, chair and several shelves of books and scrolls. It had the neat, well-used air of a nun’s cell.
I didn’t question her. This was one of her smaller surprises, after all.
Only when Elric was physically nearby did I not strongly sense his mind. The albino seemed more ill at ease than anyone else, and I had no clear idea why. I think I assumed a sophistication in him. After all, my experience of the inventive twentieth century was not his. Indeed, he was often awkward in my presence, avoiding my eye and rarely addressing me directly. Clearly I made him deeply uncomfortable and would have left him, if I could. He had something of the air of a somnambulist. I began to wonder if he thought he dreamed all that was happening.
Perhaps he did dream? Perhaps he dreamed us all?
Now Oona crossed to the far wall and pushed back a tapestry hanging to reveal another door.
“Where does this lead?” I asked.
“It depends.” She was smiling a little grimly.
“Upon what?”
“On whether Law or Chaos has control of certain realms.”
“And how do you know?”
“You find out,” she said, “by going through.”
Elric was impatient. “Then let’s go through,” he said. “I’ve a mind to confront Cousin Gaynor on a number of issues.” His hand was on the hilt of Ravenbrand. I admired his wild courage. We might have the same blood and some of the same dilemmas, but we were temperamentally very different. He sought oblivion in action, while I sought it in philosophy. I was reluctant to take decisions, whereas for Elric decisions were everything. He took them, as he took risks, habitually.
If he’d lived a prosaic life, with prosaic considerations, then prosaic things would chiefly have happened to him. But he was in no way prosaic, this wolfish whiteface, who relied on sorcery for his very sustenance.
Would I have been like him in his circumstances? I doubted it. But I had not known a childhood of sorcerous schooling and overbearing tradition. I had not, as a youth, stared into the most profound horror, and learned the skills of the dragonmasters, learned how magically I could manipulate the world. I knew everything about his past, of course, for his memories remained my memories, while he recalled nothing at all of me. In some ways I envied him his lack of consciousness.
With an air of impatience, Elric flung himself through the door and I followed. Oona closed the door behind us.
The three of us stood in a pleasant sunken garden. The kind of place one might seek rest and contemplation and exactly what one would have expected to find on the other side of that door. A comforting domesticity. The garden was surrounded by a high wall which was surrounded in turn by tall buildings, all of which had the effect of making it seem smaller than it was. Herbs and flowers, all sweet-scented, were laid out in formal beds. Peacocks and ornamental roosters strutted between the shrubs. At the center was a pool with a fountain. The fountain was ornate, of some dark, gleaming rock, and its sound added to the garden’s sense of tranquillity.
Although pleasant, the scene was an anticlimax. We had expected something much more dramatic. Elric hesitated. He looked around him, suspiciously. I think he was trying to find something to kill.
Oona was relieved. She had clearly expected some less attractive scene. The garden had no exterior gate. The only way to get in or out was through the door we had just used.
“What now?” Elric glanced impatiently about. “Where do we go?”
“From Tanelorn to Mu Ooria and from Mu Ooria to Tanelorn,” she said, “the way is always by water.”
Elric dipped his hand into the ornamental pool. “By water? How? There’s no room for a ship on this, madam.” He stared with interest at the unusual fish swimming there, as if he expected to find some secret in the pool.
Smiling, Oona reached down with her curved bow and drew it gently across the surface, describing a circle. The circle remained visible. Within, the water became gradually more agitated, full of color and lilting ripples. Suddenly it began to funnel upwards, red and shining, like a fresh wound, a pillar of pulsing ruby light. The color was reflected in our three pale faces, giving our skin the appearance of bone stained with old blood.
Elric grinned his wolf’s grin—the red light dancing in his eyes. “Is this the way?” he asked Oona.
She nodded.
Without a word or any further hesitation, the Melnibonéan flattened his body against the pillar. For a moment he jerked, like a frog on an electric fence, and then was absorbed.
I didn’t move quite so readily and Oona laughed at me, taking my hand and stepping forward, leading me into the yielding, fiery light.
I felt something tugging at my body, pulling me away from her. I tried to hold on, but lost my grip. I was swimming through roaring, fluttering flames, down into a scarlet abyss which threatened to drown me in all the spilled blood of the multiverse. Fire which did not burn, but licked at the secret places of the soul. Fire which revealed gibbering faces, like the faces of the damned in Hell. Obscenely tortured bodies, a writhing ballet of torment. But I was not burned.
The fire had the quality of water, for I could swim through it easily. I hadn’t drawn a single breath and felt no need for air. I was reminded of the thick, sluggish waters of the Heavy Sea which lay beyond Melniboné.
As I swam, I looked about for the others, but they had disappeared. Had this been a plan on the part of Elric and Oona to get rid of me now that I’d served my turn?
Behind me I had the sense of a malignant, monstrous presence. I swam faster than ever, even as the creature gathered speed. When I glanced back, seeking a glimpse of what pursued me, all I could see was a huge, shadowy white bulk, like the body of a shark seen through twilight seas. It seemed to carry the weight of the ages. It moved as in great pain. I heard it utter a peculiar groan. I felt something brush by me and then fall away back into the depths, as if it had attempted to attack me and failed.
I swam on through forests of identical ruby pillars. I swam between banks of blue flame and over fields of emerald and pearl. And I still had no need to draw breath, no need to defend myself.
I swam through cities in
flames. I swam over battles between whole peoples and I swam over the destruction of worlds. I swam through tranquil woods and flowering fields and then, quite unexpectedly, I was inhaling liquid.
I coughed, flung myself upwards, and emerged into blazing blackness.
From somewhere in the darkness I heard an exultant voice. Oona was speaking to my doppelgänger. “Welcome, Father,” she said. “Welcome to Mu Ooria. Welcome to your destiny.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Greater Blasphemy
T he other two were waiting for me as I waded to shore. It was bitterly cold. In that weird phosphorescent light from the lake, I saw the by now familiar outlines of Mu Ooria, but they seemed more ragged than before. Every so often a column of pale fire would rise for a moment, flutter into fragments and subside. While I had no idea of the cause, there was an ominous quality to the fire which made me fear the worst. I heard distant sounds, like the thin striking of a clock, pnin, pnin, pnin, a roar like a landslide, then laughter in the darkness. A crash. A panting noise, like the ardor of coupling dogs. The echo of what might have been a scream. A sense that something terrible was taking place, something obscene.
I did my best to keep my fears to myself. “On the evidence,” I said, “Gaynor has been successful in his ambitions here.”
As was his unconscious habit when disturbed, Elric put his hand on the pommel of Ravenbrand. “Then we had best go to see him at once.”
I was beginning to understand that my near-twin was incautious by nature. What would seem insanity to an ordinary man was for Elric the logical course of action.
Oona smiled at this. “Perhaps we should first find out what his strength is. Remember, Father, that your sorcery could be limited here. Even the sword might lack her normal powers.”
Elric shrugged at this but seemed willing to trust her judgment. After all, we were here largely at her volition and she knew far more about this world than either of us.
Making no effort to hide himself, Elric began to stride towards the city, following the curve of the shoreline. We could only continue in his wake.
Soon the signs of Gaynor’s ambitions could be seen everywhere in that haunted, unsteady darkness. More than once we stumbled over the prone body of a giant black cat which had previously hunted this territory. Twice we found what were Off-Moo remains—crumpled corpses, hacked cartilage, but no bones. Did the Off-Moo have bones, in the conventional sense? We found one of their long, conical headdresses and still could not tell if they fitted the shape of the head or exaggerated it. We found signs of fires made from Off-Moo artifacts. We found the bodies of troogs and savages everywhere. Evidently some had fought amongst themselves for whatever prizes they discovered in Mu Ooria. I guessed there was little here they would value, which would make their destructiveness all the more frenzied.
How had they defeated the Off-Moo, who had been so well and cleverly protected? The dormant Off-Moo, those who had resembled statues and who guarded their borders, had clearly been caught unawares. They had never had a chance to wake. The Off-Moo’s ability to direct deadly stalactites against their enemies had somehow been impaired. Initially knowing nothing of the Off-Moo, Gaynor had somehow learned much since I last visited their city.
Signs of savage, mindless cruel destruction were everywhere.
What had become of the Off-Moo? Had they fled? Were they in hiding in the city? Had they all been killed? Or captured? It was hard for me to remember that Gaynor had gathered supernatural allies since I had last visited this realm.
We saw a few silhouettes moving in the ruins. They had the shambling walk of the troogs or the swagger of the half-blind savages who fought beside them.
As we drew nearer to them, even Elric began to keep to the shadows, watching to see what they were doing. But it was clear they were doing very little, save sifting through the ruins for the loot they had hoped to find. I couldn’t imagine what possessions of the Off-Moo would be valuable to these semi-brutes. Where was Gaynor’s main army?
We were coming close to the great plaza of the city. Everywhere the mysterious towers of the Off-Moo burned with that strange fluttering white fire. What I had mistaken for their screaming was the noise the towers made as they burned. The sound of a mortal voice.
Where the towers burned, neither the conquerors nor the conquered were in evidence.
We decided we would have to capture one of the savages and interrogate him. Oona cocked her head, listening. She walked rapidly towards a burning tower and peered in.
Seconds later a dark shape appeared in the doorway. Its own robes flickered as the fire flickered and its eyes glittered. I saw no welcome in them.
Oona exchanged a few words with the figure. Cautiously he came out of the tower and glided towards us. It was hard to tell from the long, stony face if we were recognized or not. The Off-Moo spoke slowly, in Greek:
“Gaynor did this to us. He feared we would try to stop him in his ambitions. And he feared rightly. But he has made exceptional alliances with certain of the Lords of the Higher Worlds and so gained the knowledge of how to defeat us and with what.”
“How many of you has he killed?” Elric spoke with the direct bluntness of a professional soldier.
“That remains to be seen, sir. I am Scholar Crina. I was not here when Gaynor attacked. When I returned I found our city much as you find it now. My departing colleagues were able to inform me that the weight of barbarians overwhelmed them. But before that something else occurred.”
“Where are the barbarians now?” I asked. I was shivering, still soaked through. “Do you know?”
“They marched away,” was all he would say.
“Where’s this Gaynor?” Elric asked brusquely. “Presumably his will is what it always was?”
“He has done what he needed to do here.”
“And what was that?”
“He has stolen our Great Staff and now marches against the Grey Fees.”
“Impossible,” said Oona. “The staff is useless in his blood-soaked hands. It could as easily destroy him as aid him. No one would take such a risk. Nobody would be so foolish as to chance such destruction.”
“No one except Gaynor,” said Elric.
“What does he expect to gain from invading the Grey Fees?” I asked.
Scholar Crina answered that question. “Enormous power. Power over the forces of creation themselves. This was what he first offered us, if we would help him. Naturally we refused him.”
“The gods would never allow it.”
Scholar Crina seemed amused. “No sane being would. But there is a theory that the Lords of the Higher Worlds themselves are no longer entirely sane, as disturbing changes take place throughout the multiverse. A conjunction comes. All the realms will realign within the great field of Time. New destinies will be decided. New realities. Yours is not the only story. There are others. Other lives. Other dreams. All lead to the same great supernatural moment. Nothing is as certain as it was. Even loyalties to Law and Chaos are no longer permanent. Look at Gaynor. He employs both Law and Chaos in his attempt to make himself the ruler of worlds. Once such things were impossible for mortals. But now, it seems, even mortal power increases and becomes less stable.”
“Gaynor does not mean to destroy himself,” said Oona. “He no doubt believes he is invulnerable now that he bears your Great Staff.”
“He claims to be king of the world. And it is true that his possession of our Great Staff gives him the confidence to march upon the Grey Fees. But to what end? What can he hope to achieve, save complete destruction of the multiverse?”
“He reminds me of a certain dictator in my own country,” I said mildly. “His madness, his poor grasp on reality seems to be what drives him. His addiction to power is so great, he will destroy whole realms in order to satisfy his craving.”
Scholar Crina lowered his eyes. “He has no ordinary sense of self-interest. Those are the most dangerous people of all to gain control of a civilization.”
&n
bsp; “Echoes,” said Oona thoughtfully to herself. “On how many planes, do you think, is a version of this story being played out? We believe we have volition, but we can do little to change the consequences or the direction of our actions, because those consequences and actions are taking place, with minuscule differences expanding to vast differences, on countless levels of the multiverse.”
Elric showed no interest in her philosophy. “If Gaynor can be stopped on this plane,” he said, “then presumably his defeat will be echoed, as his victories are?”
She smiled at him. “Well, Father, if anyone was best fitted to change his own destiny, then it is you.”
Neither Elric nor I knew exactly what she meant, but I shared his sense of determination.
“Gaynor’s power was too great for us,” said Scholar Crina.
“But your Staff,” said Oona. “How could he have taken that from you?”
“The Staff itself appears to have allowed it,” said Scholar Crina simply. “We have always known it had volition. That is how it came to us.”
They were referring to the malleable artifact—bowl, child, staff—I had witnessed the Off-Moo manipulating in that first ceremony. Or had they been the manipulators? Were they perhaps the manipulated? I remembered how it had changed shape. At whose volition?
“Does it always take the form of a staff?” I asked him. I recalled all the shapes it had made.
“We know it as the Runestaff,” he said. “But it takes several forms. It is a staff and a cup and a stone and is one of the great regulators of our realities.”
“Is that what my people know as the Grail?” I remembered von Eschenbach and some of our own family legends. “Were you its guardians?”
“In this realm,” he said. “And in this realm we have failed.”
“You mean various versions of the Grail inhabit other realms?”
Scholar Crina was regretful. “Only one Great Staff exists,” he said. “It represents the Balance itself. Some say it is the Balance. Its influence extends far beyond any realm in which it is kept.”