“They have a small thing that belonged to my father, that’s all,” said Elric casually. “They inadvertently took it with them. I doubt they know they have it! They had a boat, you say?”
“From the harbour yonder.” She pointed through the window to the grey water enclosed by two long quays, each terminated by a tall lighthouse. There were only fishing boats moored there now. “The Onna Peerthon, she was. She calls here regularly with a cargo of haberdashery and needle-goods, usually, from Shamfird. Captain Gnarreh normally refuses passengers, but the sisters offered him a price, we heard, that he would have been a fool to refuse. But as to their destination …”
“Captain Gnarreh will return?”
“Next year, almost certainly.”
“And what lies beyond your shores, lady?”
She shook her head and laughed as if she had never heard such a joke before. “First the island reefs and then the Heavy Sea. Should anything exist on the other side of the Heavy Sea—should it have a far side, indeed—then we have no knowledge of it. You are very ignorant, sir, if I may say so.”
“You might say so, madam, and I apologize to you. I have been lately under some little enchantment and my mind is clouded.”
“Then you should rest, sir, not be journeying towards the very edge of the world!”
“Which island might they have wished to visit?”
“Any one of a score, sir, would be my guess. If you like, I can find you an old map we have.”
Gratefully Elric accepted her offer and took the map up to his room, poring over it in the hope that perhaps some instinct would direct his attention to the appropriate island. After half-an-hour of this, he was no wiser and was about to prepare for bed when he heard a sound below, a raised voice, that he thought he recognized.
It was with lifting heart that Elric, who had thought he would never see the man again, ran to the top of the stairs and looked down into the inn’s main hall where a small red-headed poet, in frock-coat and trousers, waistcoat and cravat which looked as if they had come rather too close to a fire, declaimed some ode he hoped would buy him a bed—or at least a bowl of soup—for the night. “Gold was the colour Gwyneth gave to Gwinefyr. And coral for cheeks, eyes blue as the sea. And bearing so perfect, so gracious, so fine. And lips red as Burgundy grapes, lush on the vine. These were the gifts she gave unto her tragic Queen. Her Queen of Caprice, by Tragedy Redeem’d. Great Scott, sir! I thought you gone to perdition a year or more ago! It’s good to see you, sir. You can help me with your Memoriam. I had so few particulars. I am afraid you will not like it. If I remember, it is not your preferred style. It tends, I will admit, to the Heroic. And the ballade form is considered merely quaint by many.” He began to search his pockets for his manuscript. “It has gone, I fear, the way of the triolet. Or, indeed, the rondel—‘Lord Elric left his homeland weeping, For his dear young bride whom he loved of yore. We see him stand by the open door. While the sweet tears down her cheeks are creeping.’—an attempt, dear friend, I must admit, to catch the popular taste. Such trifles have great general appeal and your subject, sir, I felt might attract public fancy. I had hoped to immortalize you, while at the same time—Aha! No, that is upon a Hugnit I met last week—and you will say that the rondel is inappropriate to epic form—but one has to dress up one’s epics, these days—sweeten them in some way. And a few innocuous cadences do a great deal to achieve that end. I have no money, you see, sir …”
And the poor little fellow looked suddenly wan. He sat himself down upon a bench, his shoulders slumped, even his shock of red hair limp upon his avian head, his fingers screwing up miscellaneous pieces of paper in some unconscious pantomime of self-disgust.
“Why, then, I must commission a work from you,” said Elric descending. He put a sympathetic hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “After all, did you not tell me once that patronage of the artist was the only valuable vocation to which a prince might aspire?”
At which Wheldrake grinned, cheered by this confirmation of a friendship he believed gone for ever. “It has not been easy for me, sir, just lately, I must admit.” There was a wealth of recent horror in the poet’s eyes and Elric did not tax him on it. He knew himself that all Wheldrake wished to do at present was rid his mind of the memories. The poet had a momentary recollection and smoothed out the last piece of paper he had crumpled. “Yes, the Ballade Memoriam, I recall—I suppose it is a somewhat limited form. But for parody, sir—unexcelled! A warrior rode death’s lonely road, No lonelier road rode he …” Again this brief revival of his old spark failed to ignite, as it were, the flashpan of his soul. “I am rather wanting, sir, I think, of food and drink. This is the first human settlement I have seen in several months.”
And then Elric had the pleasure of ordering food and ale for his friend and watching him come slowly back to something like his old self. “Say what you will, sir, no poet ever did his best work starving, though he may have starved himself whilst doing the work, that I’ll grant. They are different things, however.” And he sat back from the bench, adjusting his bony bottom upon the boards, and belched discreetly before letting out a great sigh, as if only now could he afford to allow himself to believe that his fortunes had changed. “I am mighty glad to see you, Prince Elric. And glad, too, of your aristocratic conscience. I hope, however, you’ll allow me to discuss the technicalities of the commission in the morning. As I remember, sir, you have only a passing interest in the profession of versification—questions of metre, rhyme—Licence, Poetic Combination, Mixed Metre—Orthometry in general—do not concern you.”
“I’ll take your advice on all of that, my friend.” Elric wondered at his affection for the little man, his admiration for that strange, clever mind so thoroughly lost to its proper context that it must be for ever grasping at the only constancies it had, those of the poetic craft. “And there is no haste. I would be glad of your company on a voyage I expect to be undertaking. As soon as a likely ship is free. Failing that, I might be forced to employ a little sorcery …”
“As a last resort, sir, I beg you. I’ve rather had my fill of wizardry and wild romance for the moment.” Master Wheldrake took a conclusive pull upon his ale-pot. “But I seem to recall such stuff is as familiar to you, Prince Elric, as the Peckham Omnibus is to me, and I would rather link my fortune with one like yourself, who has at least some understanding of Chaos and her whimsical eruptions. So I shall be glad to accept both commission and companionship. I am mighty glad to see you again, sir.” And with that he fell upon his own arm, snoring.
Then the albino prince took the little poet up and carried him, as if he were a child, to his room before returning to his own bed and his contemplation of the map—the islands of the great reef and, beyond it, darkness, an impossible ocean, unnavigable and unnatural, the Heavy Sea. Reconciled to hiring some fishing boat to visit the islands one by one, he fell into a deep sleep and was awakened by a scratching at his door and the bellow of some maid informing him that it was past the one thousand and fifteenth hour (their largest division of yearly time in Ulshinir) and there would be no breakfast for him if he did not rise at once.
He did not care for breakfast, but he was anxious to confer with Wheldrake on the subject of the three sisters and was somewhat surprised, once he had prepared himself for the day, to discover the poet declaiming on the very subject—or so it seemed …
“Lord Soulis is a keen wizard,
A wizard mickle of lear:
Who cometh in bond of Lord Soulis,
Thereof he hath little cheer.
“He hath three braw castles to his hand,
That wizard mickle of age;
The first of Estness, the last of Westness,
The middle of Hermitage.
“He has three fair mays into his hand,
The least is good to see;
The first is Annet, the second is Janet,
The third is Marjorie.
“The firsten o’ them has a gowden crown,
The neist has a gowden ring;
The third has sma’gowd her about,
She has a sweeter thing.
“The firsten o’ them has a rose her on,
The neist has a marigold;
The third of them has a better flower,
The best that springeth ower wold.”
The inn’s female servant, the landlady and her daughter, listened enraptured to Wheldrake’s sing-song rendering. But it was the words that captured Elric’s imagination …
“Good morning, Master Wheldrake. Is that a dialect of your own land?”
“It is, sir.” Wheldrake kissed the hands of the ladies and strutted with all his old vigour across the room to greet his friend. “A border ballad, I believe, or something made very like one …”
“You did not write it?”
“I cannot answer you honestly, Prince Elric.” Wheldrake sat down on the bench opposite the albino and watched him sip a dish of stewed herbs. “Have some honey in that.” He pushed the pot forward. “It makes it palatable. There are some things I do not know if I wrote, if I heard, if I copied from another poet—though I doubt there’s any can match Wheldrake’s command of the poetic arts (I do not claim genius—but mere craft)—for I am prolific, you see. It is my nature, and perhaps my doom. Had I died after my first volume or two I should even now reside in Westminster Abbey.”
Not wishing a lengthy and impossible-to-follow explanation on the nature of this particular Valhalla, Elric, as had become his habit, merely let the unfamiliar words roll by.
“But this Lord Soulis. Who is he?”
“A mere invention, for all I know, sir. I was reminded of the ballad by the three ladies here, but, of course, perhaps our three elusive sisters struck a memory, too. Certainly, if I remember further verses I’ll speak up. But I believe it no more than a coincidence, Prince Elric. The multiverse is full of specific numbers of power and so on, and three is particularly popular with poets since three names are always excellent means of ringing changes on something long—which, of course, is the nature of narrative verse. Again, this slides from favour wherever I go. The artist is beyond fashion, but his purse, sir, is not. That’s an odd ship, isn’t it, sir, come into the harbour overnight?”
Elric had seen no ship. He put down his bowl and let Wheldrake lead him to the window where the landlady and her daughter still leaned, staring at a craft whose hull gleamed black and yellow and whose prow bore the marks of Chaos, while from her mast there flew a red-and-black flag centred with a sign in some unlikely alphabet. On her forecastle, weighting the ship oddly so that she was stern-light in the water and showing too much of her rudder, was a tall, square object swathed in black canvas and filling almost the whole deck. Occasionally the thing moved in a sudden convulsion and then was still again. There was no clue to what the canvas hid. But, as Elric watched, a figure strolled from the cabin under the forward deck, stood for a second on the polished planks and seemed to look directly at him. Elric could scarcely return the gaze, since the helmet had no eyes he could make out. It was Gaynor the Damned and the standard he flew was, Elric now recollected, that of Count Mashabak. They were fully rivals, it seemed, serving warring patrons.
Gaynor returned to his cabin and next a plank was lowered from the moored galley and laid onto the mole. The ship’s hands moved with lithe speed, almost like monkeys, to secure the gangplank as there stepped onto it a lad of no more than fifteen, clad in all the vivid, pretty finery of a pirate lord, a cutlass in one side of his sash, a sabre in the other, to stride up towards the town with the confident swagger of a conqueror.
It was only as the figure drew close to the inn that Elric recognized who it was—and he wondered again at the turning Spheres of the multiverse, marveled at the extraordinary combinations of events and worlds, both in and out of the dimensions of time, that were possible within the undiscoverable parameters of the quasi-infinite.
While, at the same moment something within him warned him that what he saw might be an illusion or worse: it could be someone whom illusion had consumed, who had given themselves up wholly to Chaos and was nothing more than Gaynor’s marionette.
Yet, by her walk and the way she had of looking about her, alert and cheerful as she seemed, Elric could hardly believe she was unwillingly in Gaynor’s service.
He left the window and went to greet her as the door was opened by Ernest Wheldrake, whose bright blue eyes went wide as he piped, with joyful surprise:
“Why, Charion Phatt, disguised as a boy! I am in love! You have grown up!”
CHAPTER TWO
In Which Old Acquaintanceships Are Resumed and New Agreements Reached.
Charion Phatt had reached womanhood since their last meeting and there was something about her which suggested her air of confidence was founded on faith in herself, rather than any artificial bravado. She was only a little surprised to see Wheldrake and even as she grinned a greeting at him her eyes searched inside the inn and found Elric.
“I bring an invitation from the ship’s master for you—for you gentlemen—to join him this evening,” she murmured.
“How long have you been in Prince Gaynor’s service, Mistress Phatt?” asked Elric, with proper care to keep his tone neutral.
“Long enough, Prince Elric—more or less since I last saw you—that dawn on the gypsy bridge …”
“And your family?”
She smoothed chestnut hair against the lace and silk of her shirt. Her lids for a second hid her eyes. “They, sir? Why, I’m in alliance with Prince Gaynor on account of them. We are seeking them and have been seeking them since that great destruction.”
And briefly she explained how Gaynor had found her imprisoned as a witch in a distant realm and had told her that he, too, sought her uncle and grandmother, since they alone, he believed, could tread with any certainty the pathways between the dimensions and lead him to the three sisters.
“You are certain they survived?” asked Wheldrake gently.
“Uncle and Grandmama, at least,” she said, “of those I’m certain. And I think little Koropith is further off—or veiled from me, perhaps. I’d guess something of him continues to exist—somewhere …” Then she took her leave of them and walked on into the town to buy, she said, a few luxuries.
“I am truly, truly in love,” Wheldrake confided to his friend, who refrained from suggesting that there was a certain unsuitability in their ages. Wheldrake was approaching fifty, he would guess, and the young woman was not much more than eighteen.
“Such differences as exist between us mean nothing when two hearts beat in harmony,” said Wheldrake rapturously, and it was not certain if he quoted himself or some admired peer.
Elric fell silent, ignoring his friend’s effusions, and wondering at the ways of the multiverse, this environment which, as a sorcerer, he had until then only understood in terms of symbols.
He considers the symbol of the Balance, of that equilibrium which once all philosophers strove to achieve, until, by expediency or by threats to their lives and souls, they began to strike bargains, some with Law but mostly with Chaos, which is an element closer to the natures of most sorcerers. And so they ensured that they could never reach the goal for which they had been trained: For which some of them had been born: For which a few of them were fated. These last were the ones who understood the great perversion which had taken place, who understood all that they had given up.
Gaynor, ex-Prince of the Universal, understood better than any other, for he had known perfection and lost it.
It is at this moment, as he closes the door to an ordinary inn, that Elric realizes his terror has turned to something else, a kind of determination. A kind of cold insanity. He gambles not only upon his own soul’s fate, not only upon his father’s—but far more. Rather than continue to be baffled by events, controlled by them, he makes up his mind to enter the game between the gods, and play it to the full, play it for himself and his mortal friends, the remaining creatures that he loves—for Tanel
orn. This is no more than a promise he makes within himself, as yet scarcely coherent—but it will become the foundation of his future actions, this refusal to accept the Tyranny of Fate, to let his destiny be moved by every whim of some half-bestial divinity, whose only right over him is due to the superior power he wields. It is a reality his father accepted, even as he played the game, subtly and carefully, with his life and soul as the main stake—it is a reality, however, that Elric is beginning to refuse …
There is in him, too, another kind of coldness, the coldness of anger at any creature that can casually have so many of its fellows slain. It is an anger not only directed at Gaynor, but at himself. Perhaps that is why he fears Gaynor so much, because they are almost the same creature. If some philosophies were to be believed, they could indeed be aspects of a single creature. Deep memories stir in him but are unwelcome. He drives them down to where they lurk again, like the beasts of some impossible deep, terrifying all that encounter them, but themselves terrified by the light …
That other part of Elric, the part that is all Melnibonéan, chides him for a fool, wasting time with useless niceties of conscience and suggests that an alliance with Gaynor might give them, together, the power he desires to challenge—and perhaps even vanquish.
Or, even a temporary truce between the two would gain him, perhaps, his immediate needs—though what then? What would take place when Arioch demanded everything he had enjoined Elric to find? Could a Duke of Hell be tricked, even defeated, banished from a certain plane, by a mortal?