The Fortress of the Pearl eas-2

by Michael Moorcock

  At last he had reached the doors of the building and was not surprised to find them standing open. He dismounted, threw the bundle over his shoulder and walked heavily into a large, plain room, without decoration or ostentation, hi which were placed seven tall-backed chairs and a lime-washed oak table. Standing in a semi-circle at one end of the table were six robed figures wearing veils not unlike certain sects of the Sorcerer Adventurers. The seventh figure wore a tall, conical hat which completely covered the face. It was this figure who spoke. Elric was not unsurprised to hear a woman's tones.

  "I am the Other," she said. "I believe you have brought us a treasure to add to the glory of Quarzhasaat."

  "If you believe this treasure to add to your glory, then my journey has not been fruitless," said Elric. He dropped the bundle to the ground. "Did Manag Iss tell you all I asked him to tell you?"

  One of the Councillors stirred and said, almost as an oath: "That you are the progeny of sunken Melniboné, aye!"

  "Melniboné is not sunken. Nor does she cut herself off from the world's realities quite as much as do you." Elric was contemptuous. "You challenged our power long ago, and defeated yourselves by your own folly. Now through your greed you have brought me back to Quarzhasaat when I would as readily have passed through your city unnoticed."

  "Do you accuse us!" A veiled woman was outraged. "You who have caused us so much trouble? You, who are of the blood of that degenerate unhuman race which couples with beasts for its pleasures and produces"-she pointed at Elric-"the like of you!"

  Elric was unmoved. "Did Manag Iss tell you to be wary of me?" he asked quietly.

  "He said you had the Pearl and that you had a sorcerous sword. But he also said you were alone." The Other cleared her throat. "He said you brought the Pearl at the Heart of the World."

  "I have brought it and that which contains it," said Elric. He bent down and tugged the velvet free of his bundle to reveal the corpse of Lord Gho Fhaazi, his face still contorted, the great lump in his throat making it seem as if he had an enormously enlarged Adam's apple. "Here is the one who first commissioned me to find the Pearl."

  "We heard you had murdered him," said the Other with disapproval. "But that would be a normal enough action for a Melnibonéan."

  Elric did not rise to this. "The Pearl is in Lord Gho Fhaazi's gullet. Would you have me cut it out for you, my nobles?"

  He saw at least one of them shudder and he smiled. "You commission assassins to kill, to torture, to kidnap and to perform all other forms of evil in your name, but you would not see a little spilled blood? I gave Lord Gho a choice. He took this one. He talked so much and ate and drank so copiously I thought he might well have succeeded in getting the Pearl into his stomach. But he gagged a little and I fear that was the end of him."

  "You are a cruel rogue!" One of the men came forward to look at his would-be colleague. "Aye, that's Gho. His colour has improved, I'd say."

  This jest did not meet with the leader's approval.

  "We are to bid for a corpse, then?"

  "Unless you wish to cut the Pearl free, aye."

  "Manag Iss," said one of the veiled women, lifting her head. "Step out, will you, sir?"

  The Sorcerer Adventurer emerged from a door at the back of the hall. He looked at Elric almost apologetically. His hand went to his knife.

  "We would not have a Melnibonéan spill more Quarzhasaati blood," said the Other. "Manag Iss will cut the Pearl free."

  The leader of the Yellow Sect drew a deep breath and then approached the corpse. Swiftly he did what he had been ordered to do. Blood poured down his arm as he held up the Pearl at the Heart of the World.

  The Council was impressed. Several of the members gasped and they murmured amongst themselves. Elric believed they had suspected him of lying to them, since lies and intrigues were second nature to them.

  "Hold it high, Manag Iss," said the albino. "It is this that you all desired so greedily that you were prepared to pay for it with what was left of your honour."

  "Be careful, sir!" cried the Other. "We are patient with you now. Name your price and then begone."

  Elric laughed. It was not pleasant laughter. It was Melnibonéan laughter. At that moment he was a pure denizen of the Dragon Isle. "Very well," he said, "I desire this city. Not its citizens, not any of its treasure, nor its animals, not even its water. I would let you leave with everything you can carry. I desire only the city itself. It is, you see, mine by hereditary right."

  "What? This is nonsense. How could we agree?" *

  "You must agree," said Elric, "or you must fight me."

  "Fight you? There is only one of you."

  "There is no question of it," said another Councillor. "He is mad. He must be put down like a crazed dog. Manag Iss, call in your brothers and their men."

  "I do not believe it is advisable, cousin," said Manag Iss, clearly addressing Lady Iss. "I think it would be wise to parley."

  "What? Have you turned coward? Has this rogue an army with : hun?"

  Manag Iss rubbed at his nose. "My lady..."

  "Call in your brothers, Manag Iss!"

  The captain of the Yellow Sect rubbed at one silk-clad arm and he frowned. "Prince Elric, I understand that you force us to a challenge. But we have not threatened you. The Council honestly came here to bid for the Pearl..."

  "Manag Iss, you repeat their lies," said Elric, "and that is not an honourable thing to do. If they meant me no harm, why were you and all your brothers standing by? I saw almost two hundred warriors in the grounds."

  "That was a precaution only," said the Other. She turned to her fellow Councillors. "I told you I thought it was stupid to summon so many so soon."

  Elric said evenly: "Everything you have done, my nobles, has been stupid. You have been cruel, greedy, careless of others' lives and wills. You have been blind, thoughtless, provincial and unimaginative. It seems to me that a government so careless of anything but its own gratification should be at very least replaced. When you have all left the city I will consider electing a governor who will know better how to serve Quarzhasaat. Then, later perhaps, I will let you back into the city..."

  "Oh, slay him!" cried the Other. "Waste no more time on this. When that's done we can decide amongst ourselves who owns the Pearl"

  Elric sighed almost regretfully and said: "Best parley with me now, madam, before I myself lose patience. I shall not, once I have drawn my blade, be a rational and merciful being..."

  "Slay him!" she insisted. "And have done with it!"

  Manag Iss had the face of a man condemned to more than death. "Madam..."

  She strode forward, her conical hat swaying, and tugged the sword from the scabbard. She raised the blade to behead the albino.

  He reached out swiftly. His arm was a striking snake. He gripped her wrist. "No, madam! I am, I swear, giving you fair warning..."

  Stormbringer murmured at his side and stirred.

  She dropped the sword and turned away, nursing her bruised wrist.

  Now Manag Iss reached for his fallen blade, making as if to sheath it, and then, with a subtle movement, tried to bring the weapon up and take Elric in the groin, an expression of resignation crossing his terrified features as the albino, anticipating him, sidestepped and in the same action drew the Black Sword, which began to sing its strange demonic song and glow with a terrible black radiance.

  Manag Iss gasped as his heart was pierced. The hand that still held the Pearl seemed to stretch out, offering it back to Elric. Then the jewel had rolled from his fingers and rattled on the floor. Three Councillors rushed forward, saw Manag Iss's dying eyes and stepped backward.

  "Now! Now! Now!" cried the Other, and, as Elric had expected, from every cranny of the Meeting House, members of the various sects of Sorcerer Adventurers came, their weapons at the ready.

  And the albino began to grin his horrible battle-grin, and his red eyes blazed and his face was the skull of Death and his sword was the vengeance of his own people, the vengeance
of the Bauradim and all those who had suffered under the injustice of Quarzhasaat over the millennia.

  And he offered up the souls he took to his patron Duke of Hell, the powerful Duke Arioch who had grown sleek on many lives dedicated to him by Elric and his black blade.

  "Arioch! Arioch! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!"

  Then the true slaughter began.

  It was a slaughter to make all other such events pale into insignificance. It was a slaughter that would never be forgotten in all the annals of the desert peoples, who would learn of it from those who fled Quarzhasaat that night-flinging themselves into the waterless desert rather than face the white laughing demon on a Bauradi horse who galloped up and down their lovely streets and taught them what the price of complacency and unthinking cruelty could be.

  "Arioch! Ariochl Blood and souls!"

  They would speak of a white-faced creature from Hell whose sword poured with unnatural radiance, whose crimson eyes blazed with hideous rage, who seemed possessed, himself, of some supernatural force, who was no more master of it than were his victims. He killed without mercy, without distinction, without cruelty. He killed as a mad wolf kills. And as he killed, he laughed.

  That laughter would never leave Quarzhasaat. It would remain on the wind which came in from the Sighing Desert, in the music of the fountains, the clang of the metal-workers' and jewellers' hammers as they fashioned their wares. And so would the smell of blood remain, together with the memory of slaughter, that terrible loss of life which left the city without a Council and an army.

  But never again would Quarzhasaat foster the legend of her own power. Never again would she treat the desert nomads as less than beasts. Never again would she know that self-destructive pride so familiar to all great empires in decline.

  And when the slaughter was finished, Elric of Melniboné slumped in his saddle, sheathing a sated Stormbringer, and he gasped with the demon power which still pulsed through him and he took a great Pearl from his belt and held it to the rising sun.

  "They have paid a fair price now, I think."

  He tossed the thing into a gutter where a little dog licked congealing blood.

  Above, the vultures, called from a thousand miles around by the prospect of memorable feasting, were beginning to drop like a dark cloud upon the beautiful towers and gardens of Quarzhasaat.

  Elric's face held no pride in his achievement as he spurred his horse for the West and the place on the road where he had told Anigh to await them with enough Kwani herbs, water, horses and food to cross the Sighing Desert and seek again the more familiar politics and sorceries of the Young Kingdoms.

  He did not look back on the city which, in the name of his ancestors, had been conquered at last.

  5 An Epilogue at the Waning of the Blood Moon

  The celebrations at the Silver Flower Oasis had continued long after the news came of Elite's vengeance-taking on those who would have harmed the Holy Girl of the Bauradim. The news was brought by Quarzhasaatim, fleeing from the city in an action which had no precedent in all their long history.

  Oone the Dreamthief, who had stayed at the Silver Flower Oasis longer than was necessary and who was yet reluctant to leave and go about her proper business, learned of Elric's vengeance without joy. The news saddened her, for she had hoped for something else to happen.

  "He serves Chaos as I serve Law," she said to herself. "And who is to say which of us is the worse enslaved?" But she sighed and threw herself into the festivities with a force which was less than spontaneous.

  The Bauradim and the other nomad clans did not notice, for their own pleasure was intensified. They were rid of a tyrant, of the only thing in the desert lands that they had ever feared.

  "The cactus tears our flesh so that we shall be shown where water is," said Raik Na Seem. "Our troubles were great, but thanks to you, Oone, and Elric of Melniboné, our troubles turned to triumphs. Soon some of us will visit Quarzhasaat and set out the terms on which we intend to trade in future. There will be a welcome equality about the transaction, I think." He was greatly amused. "But we will wait until the dead are decently eaten."

  Varadia took Oone's hand and they walked together beside the pools of the great oasis. The Blood Moon was waning and the silver petals of the flowers were shining brighter still. Soon the Blood Moon must wane and the flowers shed their petals and then it would be time for the people of the desert to go their different ways.

  "You loved that white-faced man, did you not?" Varadia asked her friend.

  "I hardly knew him, child."

  "I knew you both very well, not so long ago." Varadia smiled. "And I am growing rapidly, am I not? You said as much yourself."

  Oone was forced to agree. "But there was no hope for it, Varadia. We have such different destinies. And I have scant sympathy for the choices he makes."

  "He is driven, that one. He has little in the way of ordinary volition." She pushed a strand of honey-coloured hair away from her dark features.

  "Perhaps," said Oone. "Yet some of us can refuse the destiny that the Lords of Law and Chaos set out for us and still survive, still create something which the gods are forbidden to touch."

  Varadia was sympathetic. "What we create remains a mystery," she said. "It is still hard for me to understand how I made that Pearl, creating the very thing my enemies sought in order to escape them. And then it became real!"

  "I have known this to happen," said Oone. "It is those creations that a dreamthief seeks and earns a living from." She laughed. "That Pearl would bring me a good wage for a long time if I took it to market."

  "How is it that reality is formed from dreams, Oone?"

  Oone paused and looked down into the water which reflected the faint pink disc of the moon. "An oyster, threatened by intrusion from without, seeks to isolate that threat by forming the thing around it that eventually becomes a pearl. Sometimes that is how it happens. At other times the will of humanity is so strong, the desire for something so intense, that they will bring into existence that which was thought until then to be impossible. It is not unusual, Varadia, for a dream to be made reality. This knowledge is one of the reasons why my respect for humanity is maintained, in spite of all the cruelties and injustices I witness in my travels."

  "I think I understand," said the Holy Girl.

  "Oh, you will understand all this very well in time," Oone assured her. "For you are one of those capable of such creation."

  A few days later Oone was ready to ride away from the Silver Flower Oasis, towards Elwher and the Unmapped East. Varadia spoke with her for the last time.

  "I know you have a further secret," she said to the dreamthief. "Will you not share it with me?"

  Oone was astonished. Her regard for the girl's sensitive intelligence increased. "Do you want to talk more about the nature of dreams and reality?"

  "I think you carry a child, Oone," said Varadia directly. "Is that not so?"

  Oone folded her arms and leaned against her horse. She shook her head in frank good humour. "It is true that all the wisdom of your people is accumulated in you, young woman."

  "The child of one you have loved and who is lost to you?"

  "Aye," said Oone. "A daughter, I think. Maybe even a brother and a sister, if the omens are properly interpreted. More than pearls can be conceived in dreams, Varadia."

  "And will the father ever know his offspring?" gently asked the Holy Girl.

  Oone tried to speak and discovered that she could not. She looked away quickly towards distant Quarzhasaat. Then, after a few moments, she was able to force herself to answer.

  "Never," she said.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: c42d0e17-a9c9-4c08-b992-ae3af50d1868

  Document version: 2

  Document creation date: 2005-11-24

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  OCR Source: "Танелорн: Всё о Майкле Муркоке" http://www.moorcock.narod.ru/, правка текста by para
gwinn 2005-10-08

  Document authors :

  Nina (El)

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