My fingers closed on the sword’s familiar hilt. The torchlight half blinded me, but I climbed to my feet, using the sword to help me. I looked up and recognized the armored outline. Gaynor, of course, had found us. No doubt he or one of his men had seen my foolish light or the panther leaving the cave entrance and investigated.
Gaynor’s unhappy laughter boomed in his helm. “This will make a splendid tomb for the pair of you. A shame you will lie here unknown and forgotten for the rest of eternity.”
He was a splendid figure in his silvery armor, a black sword on his left hip and the mysterious ivory sword on his right. He had a glow about him that I could only believe was supernatural. His flesh had a look of exaggerated health. He swaggered in the joy of it all and mocked the feeble thing I was.
Or had been.
My anger outweighed my fear. I reached and drew Ravenbrand to me. I held my old sword in my two hands. I felt its familiar balance, coupled with an unfamiliar power. I snarled at him. As I gripped the sword, some of that filthy, stolen vitality coursed into me. It filled my veins with dark energy. It filled them with evil strength. Now I was laughing, also. Laughing back at my cousin Paul Gaynor von Minct and relishing his doom.
Part of me was troubled by how I was behaving, but something of Elric was in me now and the sword responded to that.
“Greetings, Gaynor,” I found myself saying. “I thank you for your courtesy in saving me the trouble of tracking you down. Now I shall kill you.”
Gaynor laughed in turn as he saw the prone Melnibonéan. I suppose I must have looked a little odd, dressed in my tattered twentieth-century clothes, holding the great iron battle blade in two hands. But his laughter wasn’t as confident as it might have been and Klosterheim, beside him, was not at all amused. He had not expected to find two of us.
“Well, cousin,” Gaynor said, leaning on his pommel, “you’ve come to prefer the darkness to the light, I see. Selective ignorance was always a trait of your side of the family, eh?”
I ignored this. “You have done a great deal of killing since we last met, Prince Gaynor. You appear to have slaughtered an entire race.”
“Oh, the Off-Moo! Who’s to tell, cousin? Who’s to tell? They suffered the delusion common to all isolated peoples. They decided that because they had never been conquered, they were invulnerable. The British have the same delusion in your world, do they not?”
I was not here to discuss imperial delusions or the philosophy of isolationism. I was here to kill him. A completely unfamiliar bloodlust was rising in me. I felt it take me in its grip. Not a pleasant sensation for one of my basic disposition. Was it a response to Gaynor’s threats? Or was the sword transferring to me what it had earlier transferred to Elric?
I trembled with the excess energy which pulsed through me. Now came unexpected desires of all kinds, all forming one single directive in my mind—kill Gaynor and any who rode with him. I anticipated the sweet slicing of the sword into flesh, the impact of the bone as it shattered under sharpened steel which slipped through muscles and sinew as smoothly as a spoon through soup, leaving red ruin behind. I anticipated the relish I would know as a human life was taken to feed my own greedy soul. I licked my lips. I regarded Gaynor’s followers as so much food and Gaynor himself the tastiest choice of all. I could feel my own hot breath panting in my throat, the saliva, blood as salt, on my tongue and I had begun to scent at the men and beasts before me, recognizing each individual by their specific smell. I could smell their blood, their flesh, their sweat. I could even smell the tears as I took my first Nazi and he wept briefly for his mortal soul as I sucked it from him.
The yelling in the cave, the stamp of the horses and the clash of metal, echoed everywhere. It was impossible to tell where all my enemies were. I killed two before I realized it and their souls went to strengthen me, so that I moved with even greater speed, the sword writhing and turning in my hands like a living creature, killing, killing, killing. Killing, while I laughed my wolf’s laugh and dedicated my victims to eternal service with Duke Arioch of Chaos.
Gaynor, typically, had thrown his men to the front. Within the confines of that cavern I could not easily reach either him or Klosterheim. I had to hack my way through men and horses.
I saw my cousin pull something from within his clothing. A golden staff, raging with fiery light, as if all the life of all the worlds was contained within. He held it before him as one might hold a weapon and then, from his scabbard, he drew Stormbringer, the blade he had stolen from my doppelgänger, brother to the Raven Sword I now held.
It did not alarm me. I leaped and sliced and was almost upon my cousin as he took in his reins, cursing at me, the Runestaff returned to his shirt, the black blade howling. I knew that the blade could not be resheathed until it had taken souls. That was the bargain one always made with such a sword.
Urging his men forward, the Knight of the Balance turned his great pale horse back into the tunnel and yelled for Klosterheim to follow. But I was between him and Klosterheim, who was grappling at his horse’s reins. I swung my sword upwards, trying to get through his guard. Every time I struck, the Raven Sword was countered by Stormbringer. By now both swords were howling like wolves and shrieking as they clashed, their red runes rippling up and down the black iron like static electricity. And that hideous strength still flowed into my veins.
Gaynor was neither laughing nor cursing. He was screaming.
Something happened to him every time the two swords crossed.
He began to blaze with an eerie crimson fire. The fire burned only briefly, and when it went out, Gaynor looked even more drawn.
Metal met metal with a terrible clang and every time the same fire raged through Gaynor.
I did not understand what was happening, but I pressed my advantage.
Then, to my astonishment, my cousin let go of the Black Sword and his left hand reached for the ivory blade, scabbarded on his opposite hip.
For some reason this amused me. I swung a further arc of iron and he bent backwards, barely avoiding it. The ivory sword met the black and for a moment it was as if I had hit a wall at sixty miles an hour. I was instantly stopped. The Black Sword continued to moan and its remaining energy still passed into me, but the white sword had countered it. I swung again. Gaynor, untriumphant but clearly glad enough to survive, spurred his horse into the darkness of the passage, Klosterheim and the remains of his band fast behind him.
I was suddenly too weak to continue after them. My own legs buckled. I was paying the price for all that unexpected power.
I tried to keep my senses, knowing that Gaynor would immediately take advantage of me if he knew that I, like Elric, had collapsed.
I could do nothing to save myself.
I stumbled deeper into the cavern, now a charnel house of dead horses and human corpses, and tried to reach Elric, to revive him, to warn him of what was happening.
My pale hand reached out towards his white, unresponsive face, and then I was absorbed by darkness, vulnerable to anything that now desired my life.
I heard my name being called. I guessed it was Gaynor, returning to have his revenge upon me.
I took a fresh grip on the sword, but the energy no longer filled me. I had paid my price for what it had given me. It had paid its price to me.
I remember thinking, sardonically, that the account was now fully closed.
But I looked up into Oona’s face, not Gaynor’s. Had any time passed? I could still smell the blood and torn flesh, the ordure of savage battling. I could feel cold iron against my hand. But I was too weak to rise. She lifted me. She gave me water and some kind of drug which set my veins to shaking before I drew a long, deep breath and was able to get to my feet.
“Gaynor?”
“Already witnessing the destruction of his army,” she said. She had an air of satisfaction. I had the impression her lips were bloody. Then she licked them, like a cat, and they were clean.
“How so? The Off-Moo?”
; “Meerclar’s children,” she said. “All the panthers were revived. They wasted no time hunting down their favorite prey. The troogs are dead or fled and most of the savages have gone back to their old territories. Gaynor can no longer protect them against their traditional enemies. They would be going to their instant doom if they followed him into the Grey Fees.”
“So he cannot conquer the Grey Fees?”
“He believes he has the power to do it without his army. For he has the white sword and he has the cup. These he believes contain the power of Law, and he believes the power of Law will give him the Grey Fees.”
“Even I know that’s madness!” I began to walk unsteadily to where the Melnibonéan was still lying. Now, however, he had the air of a man experiencing ordinary sleep. “What can we do to stop him?”
“There’s a chance,” she said quietly, “that he cannot be stopped. Just by introducing those two great objects of power into the Grey Fees he could unbalance the entire multiverse, sending it spinning to its eternal destruction and all living, feeling creatures with it.”
“One man?” I said. “One mortal?”
“Whatever happens,” she said, “it is predicted that the fate of the multiverse shall depend upon the actions of one mortal man. That encourages Gaynor. He thinks he is the mortal chosen for that honor.”
“Why should he not be?”
“Because another has already been chosen,” she said.
“Do you know who it is?”
“Yes.”
I waited, but she said no more. She leaned over her father, testing for his pulse, checking his eyes, just as I had earlier. She shook her head. “Exhausted,” she said. “Nothing else. Too much sorcery, even for him.” She rolled up a cloak and put it under his head. It was a strange, rather touching gesture. All around us was death and destruction. Spilled blood was everywhere, yet Elric’s daughter behaved almost as if she kissed a child good night in its own bed.
She picked up Stormbringer and resheathed it for him. Only then did I realize I still held Ravenbrand in my hand. Oona had found Elric’s sword where Gaynor had hurled it when it turned on him and instead of giving him strength, burned up what remained of his energy.
“Well,” I said, “at least we have the stolen sword back.” Oona nodded reflectively. “Yes,” she said, “Gaynor must change his plans.”
“Why didn’t Stormbringer feed off him earlier?”
“By betraying Miggea, he also lost her help. He seemed to think he would be able to keep it, in spite of her being a prisoner. She has to be able to exert her will in order to aid him, and he ensured that she could not.”
I heard a mumble and looked to where Elric lay. He stirred. His lips formed words, tiny sounds. Troubled sounds. The sounds of a distant nightmare.
Oona laid her cool hand upon her father’s forehead. The Melnibonéan immediately breathed more regularly and his body no longer twitched and trembled.
When, eventually, he opened his eyes, they were full of wise intelligence.
“At last,” he said. “The tide can be turned.” His hand went to the handle of his runesword and caressed it. I had the feeling she had somehow communicated everything that had happened to him. Or did he get it telepathically from me?
“Perhaps it can be, Father.” Oona looked around her, as if seeing the signs of battle for the first time. “But I fear it will take more resources than we can summon now.”
The Prince of Melniboné began to rise. I offered him my arm. He hesitated, then took it with an expression of profound irony on his face.
“So now we are both whole men again,” he said.
I was impatient with this. “I need to know what unique qualities that staff or cup or whatever it is and that white sword have. Why are we fighting for possession of them? What do they represent to Gaynor?”
Elric and Oona stared at me in some surprise. They had concealed nothing deliberately from me. They had simply not thought to tell me.
“They exist in your own legends,” said Oona. “Your family protected them on your plane. That is your traditional duty. According to your legends the Grail is a cup with magical properties, which can restore life and can only be beheld in its true, pure form by a knight of equally true and pure soul. The sword is the traditional sword which bestows great nobility upon its wielder, if used in a noble cause. It has been called many names. It was lost and Gaynor sought it. Klosterheim got it from Bek. Miggea told him that if he bore both the black sword and the white and took them, together with the Grail, into the Grey Fees, he would be able to set his will upon existence. He could re-create the multiverse.”
I found this incredible. “He believed such nonsense?”
Oona hesitated. Then she said: “He believed it.”
I thought for a moment. I was a twentieth-century man. How could I give any credibility to such mythical tomfoolery? Perhaps all I was doing was dreaming after hearing some overblown piece of Sturm und Drang. Was I trapped in the story of Parsifal, The Flying Dutchman and Götterdämmerung all at the same time? Of course it was impossible to pursue such logic. Not only had I been party to Elric’s past, his entire experience of the sorcerous realms, but I recollected everything I had seen since escaping from the Nazi concentration camp. From the moment my sword clove the cliff of Hameln, I had accepted the laws of wizardry.
I began to laugh. Not the mad laughter I’d offered Gaynor, but natural, good-humored self-mockery.
“And why should he not have done?” I said. “Why should he not believe anything he chooses?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Beyond the Grey Fees
W e must follow Gaynor,” said Oona. “Somehow we must stop him.”
“His soldiers are scattered or destroyed,” I said. “What harm can he do?”
“A great deal,” she said. “He still has a sword and the Grail.”
Elric confirmed this. “If we are swift, we could stop him reaching the Grey Fees. If we do that, we shall all be free of his ambitions. But the Fees are malleable—subject to human will, it’s said. If that will is complemented with Gaynor’s new power . . .”
Oona was striding for the tunnel. She disappeared into the shadows. “Follow me,” she said. “I’ll find him.”
We mounted wearily, Elric and I. Each of us had a black runesword at his belt. For the first time since this affair started, there was real hope we could capture Gaynor before he did further damage. Perhaps I was stupid to believe that the ownership of a sword conferred a sense of self-respect upon me, but I now felt Elric’s equal. Not just the sword, but what I had done with it made me proud to ride beside the gloomy Prince of Ruins in pursuit of a kinsman still capable of destroying the fundamental matter of existence.
That I should feel self-respect as a result of killing almost half-a-score of my fellow human beings was a mark of what I had become since my capture by the Nazis. I, who in common with most of my family, abhorred war and was disgusted by mankind’s willingness to kill their own so readily, in such numbers and with such abandon, was now as thoroughly blooded as any of the Nazis we fought here in the world of Mu Ooria. And the strongest thing I felt was satisfaction. I looked forward to killing the rest.
In a way the Nazis’ rejection of traditional humanism led to their appalling fates. It is one thing to mock the subtle infrastructures of a civil society, to claim they serve no purpose, but quite another to tear them down. Only when they were gone did we realize how much our safety and sanity and civic well-being depended on them. This fascist lesson is learned over and over again, even into modern times.
Emerging from the tunnel with guttering torches we saw ahead of us one of the panthers awakened by Elric’s sorcery. The beast turned bright knowing eyes on us. It was leading us through the caverns, searching, I was certain, for my cousin Gaynor.
Was the panther Oona? Or was the beast mentally controlled by my doppelgänger’s daughter? Mystified, we could do nothing save trust the beast as it padded ahead of us, occasionall
y looking back to make sure we followed.
I was half expecting another ambush from a furious Gaynor. My cousin would be considering his revenge on us already. But I soon realized he would no longer be flinging an army into the Grey Fees. His army had been destroyed.
As if to demonstrate this destruction, the panther led us straight through Gaynor’s camp. The big cats had done their work swiftly and efficiently. Ruined troog bodies lay everywhere, most with their throats torn out. The savages had also been attacked, but clearly a great many of them had fled back to their own territories. I doubted if Gaynor would be able to raise another army from their ranks.
A weird howling came from behind us, as if jackals mourned their own kind, and then, from around a huge stalagmite rode Gaynor. Klosterheim and the remains of his men followed him, though not with enthusiasm. Gaynor whirled the great ivory runesword around his head, bearing down on us with single-minded hatred. I could not tell if the sounds came from him or the blade.
Elric and I acted as one.
Our swords were in our hands. Their murmuring became a shrill whine modifying to a full-throated howl which made the white blade’s sound seem feeble.
Gaynor had become used to unchallenged power. He seemed surprised by this resistance, in spite of his recent experience. He tugged on his reins, bringing his horse to a skidding turn and urged his men towards us.
Once again I felt the battle frenzy in my veins. I felt it threatening to take over my entire being. Beside me Elric was laughing as he spurred towards the leading rider. The howling of his sword changed, first to triumph as it bit into its victim’s breast, then to a satiated murmur as it drank the man’s soul.
My own black battle blade twisted in my hand, thrusting forward before I could react, taking the next rider in the head, shearing off half his skull in the process. And again the sword drank, uttering a thirsty croon as the Nazi’s life essence poured into it and mixed with mine. Those who lived by the sword, I thought . . . The idea took on an entirely new meaning. I saw Klosterheim and urged my horse towards him. Elric and Gaynor were fighting on horseback, sword against sword. Two more of Gaynor’s men came at me. I swung the heavy sword—it moved like a pendulum—and took the first rider in the side, the second, as I swung back behind me, in the thigh. As the first died, I finished the second. Their soulless remains slumped like so much butcher’s meat in their saddles. I found myself laughing at this. I turned again and met the crazed ruby blaze of Elric’s own eyes, my eyes, glaring back at me.