“We were prepared for nothing but death,” said Princess Shanug’a, “until this moment. I wonder what has brought us together now? And why should it bring us together at this moment? Do you have a hint of that, Master Phatt? Are we all moved by the hand of some manipulative Destiny?”
“It can only be the Balance,” said Fallogard Phatt with nodding certainty.
But Elric said nothing. He knew that Stormbringer did not serve the Balance, and, were it not for the runesword, he would not now be here—ready to help the sisters. But did the sword know what they required of it?
Then, suddenly, Elric was struck by a terrifying thought. What if he had already served the sword’s purpose so that Stormbringer no longer had use of the symbiosis on which the albino had come to rely? While this notion filled him with panic, he also loathed himself for his dependency upon the blade. He unhooked its scabbard from his belt and, volunteering what he had earlier refused Gaynor, offered it to the sisters.
“Here is the sword you sought, my kinswomen.” He offered it without question, either in expression or gesture, without hesitation or any sign of reluctance. Honour required nothing else.
Princess Tayaratuka stepped forward and, bowing, received the sword in both her little hands. Her muscles flexed with the blade’s weight, but she did not flinch. She was considerably stronger than she appeared to be.
“We have our Rune,” she said. “We have always had it. Since our people first came here and made this world their own. Even when the dragons left, we were not afraid, for we had our Rune. The Rune of Final Resort, it was called by some. But we had no sword. For the Rune of Final Resort must be spoken in conjunction with a ritual and a certain object. First it is required that the Black Sword be present: then he who wields the Sword must join us in the rune-calling. Then we must know the names of certain entities which must be summoned. All these things must come together at the same time. This is the pattern we must make, to mirror that which already exists and so create a duality which, in turn, releases the raw life-force of the multiverse. And only then, if we are accurate in our delicate weaving, will we revive the allies we seek against Chaos—the power to drive Mashabak and Gaynor and all their minions from our realm! If we are successful in this, Prince Elric, we are prepared to offer you one of three reclaimed treasures …” She glanced towards the Rose, but Wheldrake was quoting excitedly—
“The first of these treasures of Radinglay,
Was a rosewood box with roses ’graved,
While the second was that maiden’s dower,
A fresh-pick’d summer rose in flower.
The third of these treasures were briar rings three,
To make fast the Kind of the Cold Country.”
“Exactly,” said Princess Mishiguya with something of a lifted eyebrow, as if she had scarcely expected her tale to be the subject of a minstrel’s repertoire.
“He has,” said Charion Phatt by way of apology for her near-betrothed, “something of a memory for verse …”
“Especially,” said Wheldrake, bridling at what he interpreted as snobbery, “my own! Disapprove, if you like. I’m adrift in my own rhymes and rhythms.” And he mumbled another stanza or two to himself.
Princess Mishiguya was gracious. The Rose also came to the poet’s defense. “Without Master Wheldrake’s cadences and remembered names we should even now be separated,” she said. “His talents have proved of subtle usefulness to us all.”
“Should we succeed,” said Elric, replying, “I would accept your promise of a gift. For, I must admit, my own fate is somewhat bound up with one of those Objects of Power you have carried so long …”
“Not knowing which of the three you would accept. We did not even know you to be our kin—though it should have occurred to us. Sadly, of course, we no longer have those borrowed gifts in our possession …”
“The gifts are not redeemed!” said the Rose in sudden agitation. “We hid them from Gaynor …”
“You were able to protect us,” said Princess Tayaratuka, “but not your treasures. Gaynor raped them from their hiding place before he fled back to The Ship That Was. Those Objects of Power, lady, are already in the hands of Chaos. I thought you understood that.”
The Rose sat slowly down upon a bench. Something like a groan escaped her. She waved them on. “Which makes your ritual all the more important to us …”
And Elric, following behind the women as they bore his sword into the depths of the palace where the ritual must take place, knew that both his own and his father’s soul must now be truly doomed.
CHAPTER THREE
Rituals of Blood; Rituals of Iron. Three Sisters of the Sword. Six Swords Against Chaos.
Through cloisters of pink-and-red mosaic, down avenues of flowering bushes lit by glowing, refracted sunshine from hidden skylights, past galleries of paintings and sculpture, the four moved steadily. “This has a hint of Melniboné and yet is not Melniboné,” said Elric thoughtfully.
Princess Tayaratuka was almost offended. “There is nothing of your Melniboné here, I hope. We have no strain in us of that warlike line. We are of those Vadhagh who fled the Mabden when Chaos aided them …”
“We of Melniboné determined we should flee no more,” said Elric quietly. He had no quarrel with his ancestors’ determined learning of the arts of battle lest they be scattered again. It was what such easy logic led to that he feared.
“I intended no criticism,” said the princess. “We prefer, if necessary, to wander, rather than imitate the ways of those who would destroy us …”
“But now,” said Princess Shanug’a, “we must do battle with Chaos, to defend what is ours.”
“I did not say that we would not fight,” her sister said firmly, “I said that we would not resort to the building of empires. These are two distinct things.”
“I understand you, my lady,” said the albino, “and I accept that difference. I have no liking for my people’s penchant for empirebuilding.”
“Well, my lord, there are many other ways to achieve security,” said Princess Mishiguya a little mysteriously, even sharply, as they continued their way through the lovely apartments and galleries of this most civilized of settlements.
Princess Tayaratuka still carried the great sword, though with a certain effort. Even when Elric offered to take the weight for a while she refused, as if this were her duty.
Now a corridor widened into another triangular cloister which surrounded a cool rose garden open to the dark blue sky above. At the centre of the garden was a fountain. The base of the fountain was carved with all manner of odd and grotesque creatures, somewhat out of keeping with the general style, and the plinth rose up in a three-sided column to where it widened into a large bowl around which were carved the sinuous shapes of dragons and maidens engaged in some cryptic dance. Silvery water still sprayed from the fountain and Elric felt that it was a kind of blasphemy to bring the Black Sword to a place of such peace.
“This is the Garden of the Rune,” said the Princess Mishiguya. “It lies at the very centre of our realm, our land; at the centre of this palace. This was the first garden built by the Vadhagh when they came here.” She took a deep breath of the ancient rosy scent. She held it as if it might be her last.
Princess Tayaratuka set the scabbarded runesword upon a bench and went to put her hands in the cool water, pouring it over her head almost as if she sought a blessing. Princess Shanug’a walked to the far end of the first of the three galleries and returned almost immediately bearing a cylinder of pale gold set with rubies which she handed now to Princess Mishiguya who drew from the cylinder another tube, of finely carved ivory bound with gold, and this tube she handed to Princess Tayaratuka who, in turn, drew from that a rod of engraved grey stone whose dark blue runes twisted and writhed as if alive and were like those same runes Stormbringer bore. Elric had seen such things on only one other object, the sword Mournblade, which his cousin had sought to bear against him, the sister sword to Stormbringer.
Dimly, he recalled other tales of runic objects, but he had studied little in such areas. Did they have qualities in common?
Princess Tayaratuka was holding up the stone cylinder now, wondering at the shifting runes as if she had never seen them alive before, and her lips moved as she read them, forming words she had been taught in a time before she had learned to read any ordinary alphabet. This was her inheritance, this Rune of Power …
“Only three virgins born of the same mother and the same father at the same time may know the Ritual of the Rune,” said Shanug’a in a whisper. “But the Rune cannot be completed until we have seen the Black Sword’s runes and read those aloud in the Garden of the Rune. All these things must happen at once. Then, if we have spoken the Rune correctly, and if the magic has not faded in the centuries since it was distilled then perhaps we shall regain those things with which our ancestors brought us to this realm.”
Princess Mishiguya went to the bench where the hellsword rested, almost passively, and she picked it up and took it to the fountain where her sister, Shanug’a, waited, the water flowing over her and seeming to merge with the silken gown she wore, and Shanug’a took the sword’s grip in both her little hands and pulled deliberately so that bit by bit the blade emerged from the scabbard, the angry scarlet runes glowing already along the black metal, and a song escaped the sword that was unlike anything Elric had heard before. In all other hands, even perhaps Gaynor’s, the unscabbarded hellsword would have resisted, turned upon the one who sought to hold it and almost certainly killed them. Important sorcery was needed to hold the Black Sword even for a short while. Yet now it sang a song so strange and so sweet, high and unhappy, full of longing and unfulfilled hungers, that Elric was momentarily terrified. He had never suspected such qualities in the sword.
Even as Stormbringer continued its strange, unlikely song, Princess Shanug’a raised it high in the air and brought the tip down into the centre of the oddly carved bowl so that suddenly the fountain ceased to gush and at once there was a silence in the rose garden.
A stillness came to the sky above, as if the dark-blue light froze; a stillness in the garden, as if every flower and bud waited; a stillness in that triangular cloister, as if the very stones held themselves in readiness for some momentous event.
Even the three sisters seemed frozen in the attitudes of their ritual.
Awed by the scene, Elric felt he intruded and it occurred to him to withdraw, as if he were not required here, but Princess Tayaratuka was turning to him, smiling—offering him the runestone as it writhed and glowed in her palm.
“It is for you to read,” she said. “Only you, of all the creatures in the multiverse, have this power. That is why we sought you so eagerly. You must read our Rune—as we read the Black Sword’s. Thus shall we begin the weaving of this powerful magic. This is what we have been trained to do, almost since birth. You must believe us and trust us, Prince Elric.”
“I have sworn the blood-bond,” said Elric simply. He would do whatever they required of him, even if it meant his death, the enslavement of his immortal soul, the prospect of a hellish eternity. He would trust them without question.
The monstrous battle-blade stood upright in the bowl, the song still escaping it, the runes still flickering up and down its radiant black metal. It was almost as if it were about to speak, to transform itself into another shape, possibly its true shape. And Elric felt a chill in his soul and it seemed for a second that he looked into his future, to some predetermined doom for which this was a kind of rehearsal. Then he disciplined his mind and contemplated the task at hand.
One sister now stood on each side of the column, looking up at the sword. Their voices began to chant in unison, until it was no longer possible to distinguish their cadences from the sword’s …
… Then Elric found that he was lifting up the runestone in his two hands stretched before him and his lips began to form wordless, beautiful sounds …
They had sought him for his sword; but they had sought him also for this unique gift. Only Elric of Melniboné, of all living mortals, had the power and the skills to read such potent symbols, to voice them as they must be voiced, matching each part of a note to each nuance of the rune. This rune, the sisters knew by heart, but the rune that blazed upon the Black Sword they themselves had to read. Thus they combined all their resources, all their talents, into the reading of a double rune, the mightiest of all Runes of Power.
The runesong rose in volume and became increasingly complicated—
—for now the four adepts were rune-weaving—folding their spells in and out of time, moving their voices beyond the audible range, making the air crease and shiver into thousands of strands which they wove and threaded—
—weaving the runes into a thing of impossible strength, making the very atmosphere bubble and dance, while all around now the shrubs and flowers swayed, as if adding their own rhythms and cadences to the runesong.
Everything was alive with a thousand different qualities, blending and separating, changing and transforming. Colours ran through the air like rivers. Eruptions of nameless forces came and went around them, while the bowl and the sword and the runestone seemed to become the only constancies in that double triangle.
Elric now understood how this was a place of enormously concentrated psychic energy. From this source, he guessed, they had drawn the power with which they had so far resisted Chaos—enough at least to protect a few settlements like these. But with the power of the Black Sword combined, the Garden of the Rune was becoming something infinitely mightier than anything it could have become on its own.
… to shatter the Sword of Alchemy and make the One power Three …
Elric realized he was hearing a story woven in amongst the runes, almost an incidental to the ritual they performed. It was a story of how these people were led by a dragon through the dimensions—a dragon which had dwelled once within a sword. Such legends were common to his folk and doubtless referred to some long-forgotten part of their wandering history. At last they had come to this land, which was uninhabited by human folk. So they made it their own, building to follow the existing contours of the earth, its forests and rivers. But first they had built the Garden of the Rune. For through their considerable sorcery they had changed and hidden the power which, they believed, was the result of their salvation and any future salvation for their descendants.
The runesong went on. The story continued. Into the fountain were built what the song called ‘the tools of last resort’. The princesses’ ancestors passed the runestone down from mother to daughter since they believed no man capable of carrying the secret.
Only against Chaos could these tools of last resort be used, and only then when all else had failed them. They could only be used in combination with another great Object of Power. The borrowed Objects of Power which the sisters had held, and with which they had intended to bargain for Elric’s help, ignorant of how close a kinsman he was, were not strong enough for the work.
Gaynor had stolen those Objects, knowing that Chaos feared them and desired them. One such Object had already been stolen from the Rose and returned to her possession by a surprising and circuitous means. The others she had guarded better. But none had been powerful enough to use in the Ritual of the Garden.
Yet while the three sisters sought Elric and the Black Sword, others, like Elric, had sought what the sisters carried. Now the circle was completed. Now every proper element in the psychic model was in place, giving the four of them the astral means to range free, to let their minds and souls roam beyond the dimensions, beyond the Spheres, even beyond the multiverse; to re-enter it with a fresh knowledge, a deeper understanding of that complex geometry whose secrets were the basis for all sorcery; whose forms were the basis for all poetry and all song; whose language was the basis of all thought and whose shapes were the basis for all aesthetics, for all beauty; all ugliness … Into this the four plunged, weaving with their runesongs fresh and original psychic patterns which
had the effect of healing wounds and ruptures in the walls of time and space, while at the same time creating an enormous force with which to reanimate three other ancient Objects of Power.
More urgent and more complex were the runes now as they sang with their bodies and swam with their minds through near-infinities of screaming rainbows; sailing through their own bodies and out again into worlds and worlds of desolation, millennia of unchecked joy and a hint of that seductive ordinariness where so much of the human heart must always lie but which it so rarely celebrates …
So those old unhuman folk wove their spell, making manifest the promise of the runes, controlling the potency of un-moral magic which knew no loyalty save to itself.
The spell grew upon its own volition now, as it was meant to do, twisting and curling and creeping like the supple boughs of the yew-hedge which clung together to create so much modest strength, and then they began to fashion what they had woven, forming it and re-forming it over and over again between them, twisting it and turning it, throwing it one to the other, touching it and tasting it and sniffing it and stroking it, until the force they now balanced between them, which hovered over the Black Sword itself, was of the perfect supernatural shape and almost ready for release …
Yet still the songs must be sung, to hold the force, to channel it; to bridle it and saddle it; to charge it with a moral will, to force it to make a choice—for this stuff, this prime matter, was constitutionally incapable of choice, of moral direction or persuasion. And so must be forced …
Forced by a concentration of psychic energy, of disciplined will and moral strength which resisted all attack upon it, either from without or within, and which refused to be deflected from its purpose by an argument, example or threat …