Epic: Legends of Fantasy

by John Joseph Adams

  He smiled widely. “And already you are wiser than half the men I’ve brought here. Listen. Here is your lesson. Never try to cheat the Shin. Be forthright, tell them the truth, and—if anything—undervalue your goods. They will love you for it. And they’ll pay you for it too.”

  She nodded. They reached the wagon, and he got out a strange little pot. “Here,” he said. “Use a knife and go cut out some of that grass. Be sure to cut down far and get plenty of the soil. The plants can’t live without it.”

  “Why am I doing this?” she asked, wrinkling her nose and taking the pot.

  “Because,” he said. “You’re going to learn to care for that plant. I want you to keep it with you until you stop thinking of it as odd.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it will make you a better merchant,” he said.

  She frowned. Must he be so strange so much of the time? Perhaps that was why he was one of the only Thaylens who could get a good deal out of the Shin. He was as odd as they were.

  She walked off to do as she was told. No use complaining. She did get out a rugged pair of gloves first, though, and roll up her sleeves. She was not going to ruin a good dress for a pot of drooling, wall-staring, imbecile grass. And that was that.

  While the Gods Laugh

  Michael Moorcock

  Michael Moorcock is best known for his genre-redefining swords-and-sorcery series featuring the albino anti-hero Elric of Melniboné. Books featuring Elric include Stormbringer, The Bane of the Black Sword, and The Weird of the White Wolf, among many others. Other prominent works include the Eternal Champion series, the Warrior of Mars series, the Jerry Cornelius series, and the Hawkmoon series. Moorcock is a winner of numerous awards, including several career awards, such as being named a SFWA Grand Master and being inducted into the SF Hall of Fame, as well as being honored with the World Fantasy and Stoker lifetime achievement awards.

  I, while the gods laugh, the world’s vortex am; Maelstrom of passions in that hidden sea Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me, And in small compass the dark waters cram.

  —Mervyn Peake, “Shapes and Sounds,” 1941

  One

  One night, as Elric sat moodily drinking alone in a tavern, a wingless woman of Myyrrhn came gliding out of the storm and rested her lithe body against him.

  Her face was thin and frail-boned, almost as white as Elric’s own albino skin, and she wore flimsy pale-green robes which contrasted well with her dark red hair.

  The tavern was ablaze with candle-flame and alive with droning argument and gusty laughter, but the words of the woman of Myyrrhn came clear and liquid, carrying over the zesty din.

  “I have sought you twenty days,” she said to Elric who regarded her insolently through hooded crimson eyes and lazed in a high-backed chair, a silver wine-cup in his long-fingered right hand and his left on the pommel of his sorcerous runesword Stormbringer.

  “Twenty days,” murmured the Melnibonéan softly, speaking as if to himself, mockingly rude. “A long time for a beautiful and lonely woman to be wandering the world.” He opened his eyes a trifle wider and spoke to her directly: “I am Elric of Melniboné, as you evidently know. I grant no favours and ask none. Bearing this in mind, tell me why you have sought me for twenty days.”

  Equably, the woman replied, undaunted by the albino’s supercilious tone. “You are a bitter man, Elric; I know this also—and you are grief-haunted for reasons which are already legend. I ask you no favours—but bring you myself and a proposition. What do you desire most in the world?”

  “Peace,” Elric told her simply. Then he smiled ironically and said: “I am an evil man, lady, and my destiny is hell-doomed, but I am not unwise, nor unfair. Let me remind you a little of the truth. Call this legend if you prefer—I do not care.

  “A woman died a year ago, on the blade of my trusty sword.” He patted the blade sharply and his eyes were suddenly hard and self-mocking. “Since then I have courted no woman and desired none. Why should I break such secure habits? If asked, I grant you that I could speak poetry to you, and that you have a grace and beauty which moves me to interesting speculation, but I would not load any part of my dark burden upon one as exquisite as you. Any relationship between us, other than formal, would necessitate my unwilling shifting of part of that burden.” He paused for an instant and then said slowly: “I should admit that I scream in my sleep sometimes and am often tortured by incommunicable self-loathing. Go while you can, lady, and forget Elric for he can bring only grief to your soul.”

  With a quick movement he turned his gaze from her and lifted the silver wine-cup, draining it and replenishing it from a jug at his side.

  “No,” said the wingless woman of Myyrrhn calmly, “I will not. Come with me.”

  She rose and gently took Elric’s hand. Without knowing why, Elric allowed himself to be led from the tavern and out into the wild, rainless storm which howled around the Filkharian city of Raschil. A protective and cynical smile hovered about his mouth as she drew him towards the sea-lashed quayside where she told him her name. Shaarilla of the Dancing Mist, wingless daughter of a dead necromancer—a cripple in her own strange land, and an outcast.

  Elric felt uncomfortably drawn to this calm-eyed woman who wasted few words. He felt a great surge of emotion well within him, emotion he had never thought to experience again, and he wanted to take her finely moulded shoulders and press her slim body to his. But he quelled the urge and studied her marble delicacy and her wild hair which flowed in the wind about her head.

  Silence rested comfortably between them while the chaotic wind howled mournfully over the sea. Here, Elric could ignore the warm stink of the city and he felt almost relaxed. At last, looking away from him towards the swirling sea, her green robe curling in the wind, she said: “You have heard, of course, of the Dead Gods’ Book?”

  Elric nodded. He was interested, despite the need he felt to disassociate himself as much as possible from his fellows. The mythical book was believed to contain knowledge which could solve many problems that had plagued men for centuries—it held a holy and mighty wisdom which every sorcerer desired to sample. But it was believed destroyed, hurled into the sun when the Old Gods were dying in the cosmic wastes which lay beyond the outer reaches of the solar system. Another legend, apparently of later origin, spoke vaguely of the dark ones who had interrupted the Book’s sunward coursing and had stolen it before it could be destroyed. Most scholars discounted this legend, arguing that, by this time, the Book would have come to light if it did still exist.

  Elric made himself speak flatly so that he appeared to be uninterested when he answered Shaarilla. “Why do you mention the Book?”

  “I know that it exists,” Shaarilla replied intensely, “and I know where it is. My father acquired the knowledge just before he died. Myself—and the Book—you may have if you will help me get it.”

  Could the secret of peace be contained in the Book? Elric wondered. Would he, if he found it, be able to dispense with Stormbringer?

  “If you want it so badly that you seek my help,” he said eventually, “why do you not wish to keep it?”

  “Because I would be afraid to have such a thing perpetually in my custody—it is not a book for an ordinary mortal to own, but you are possibly the last mighty nigromancer left in the world and it is fitting that you should have it. Besides, you might kill me to obtain it—I would never be safe with such a volume in my hands. I need only one small part of its wisdom.”

  “What is that?” Elric enquired, studying her patrician beauty with a new pulse stirring within him.

  Her mouth set and the lids fell over her eyes. “When we have the Book in our hands—then you will have your answer. Not before.”

  “This answer is good enough,” Elric remarked quickly, seeing that he would gain no more information at that stage. “And the answer appeals to me.” Then, half before he realized it, he seized her shoulders in his slim, pale hands and pressed his colourless lips to her scar
let mouth.

  Elric and Shaarilla rode westwards, towards the Silent Land, across the lush plains of Shazaar where their ship had berthed two days earlier. The border country between Shazaar and the Silent Land was a lonely stretch of territory, unoccupied even by peasant dwellings; a no-man’s land, though fertile and rich in natural wealth. The inhabitants of Shazaar had deliberately refrained from extending their borders further, for though the dwellers in the Silent Land rarely ventured beyond the Marshes of the Mist, the natural borderline between the two lands, the inhabitants of Shazaar held their unknown neighbours in almost superstitious fear.

  The journey had been clean and swift, though ominous, with several persons who should have known nothing of their purpose warning the travelers of nearing danger. Elric brooded, recognizing the signs of doom but choosing to ignore them and communicate nothing to Shaarilla who, for her part, seemed content with Elric’s silence. They spoke little in the day and so saved their breath for the wild love-play of the night.

  The thud of the two horses’ hoofs on the soft turf, the muted creak and clatter of Elric’s harness and sword, were the only sounds to break the stillness of the clear winter day as the pair rode steadily, nearing the quaking, treacherous trails of the Marshes of the Mist.

  One gloomy night, they reached the borders of the Silent Land, marked by the marsh, and they halted and made camp, pitching their silk tent on a hill overlooking the mist-shrouded wastes.

  Banked like black pillows against the horizon, the clouds were ominous. The moon lurked behind them, sometimes piercing them sufficiently to send a pale tentative beam down on to the glistening marsh or its ragged, grassy frontiers. Once, a moonbeam glanced off silver, illuminating the dark silhouette of Elric, but, as if repelled by the sight of a living creature on that bleak hill, the moon once again slunk behind its cloud-shield, leaving Elric thinking deeply. Leaving Elric in the darkness he desired.

  Thunder rumbled over distant mountains, sounding like the laughter of far-off gods. Elric shivered, pulled his blue cloak more tightly about him, and continued to stare over the misted lowlands.

  Shaarilla came to him soon, and she stood beside him, swathed in a thick woolen cloak which could not keep out all the damp chill in the air.

  “The Silent Land,” she murmured. “Are all the stories true, Elric? Did they teach you of it in old Melniboné?”

  Elric frowned, annoyed that she had disturbed his thoughts. He turned abruptly to look at her, staring blankly out of crimson-irised eyes for a moment and then saying flatly:

  “The inhabitants are unhuman and feared. This I know. Few men ventured into their territory, ever. None have returned, to my knowledge. Even in the days when Melniboné was a powerful empire, this was one nation my ancestors never ruled—nor did they desire to do so. Nor did they make a treaty. The denizens of the Silent Land are said to be a dying race, far more selfish than my ancestors ever were, who enjoyed dominion over the Earth long before Melnibonéans gained any sort of power. They rarely venture beyond the confines of their territory, nowadays, encompassed as it is by marshland and mountains.”

  Shaarilla laughed, then, with little humour. “So they are unhuman are they, Elric? Then what of my people, who are related to them? What of me, Elric?”

  “You’re unhuman enough for me,” replied Elric insouciantly, looking her in the eyes. She smiled.

  “A compliment? I’ll take it for one—until your glib tongue finds a better.”

  That night they slept restlessly and, as he had predicted, Elric screamed agonizingly in his turbulent, terror-filled sleep and he called a name which made Shaarilla’s eyes fill with pain and jealousy. Wide-eyed in his grim sleep, Elric seemed to be staring at the one he named, speaking other words in a sibilant language which made Shaarilla block her ears and shudder.

  The next morning, as they broke camp, folding the rustling fabric of the yellow silk tent between them, Shaarilla avoided looking at Elric directly but later, since he made no move to speak, she asked him, in a voice which shook somewhat, a question.

  It was a question which she needed to ask, but one which came hard to her lips. “Why do you desire the Dead Gods’ Book, Elric? What do you believe you will find in it?”

  Elric shrugged, dismissing the question, but she repeated her words less slowly, with more insistence.

  “Very well then,” he said eventually. “But it is not easy to answer you in a few sentences. I desire, if you like, to know one of two things.”

  “And what is that, Elric?”

  The tall albino dropped the folded tent to the grass and sighed. His fingers played nervously with the pommel of his runesword. “Can an ultimate god exist—or not? That is what I need to know, Shaarilla, if my life is to have any direction at all.

  “The Lords of Law and Chaos now govern our lives. But is there some being greater than them?”

  Shaarilla put a hand on Elric’s arm. “Why must you know?” she said.

  “Despairingly, sometimes, I seek the comfort of a benign god, Shaarilla. My mind goes out, lying awake at night, searching through black barrenness for something—anything—which will take me to it, warm me, protect me, tell me that there is order in the chaotic tumble of the universe; that it is consistent, this precision of the planets, not simply a brief, bright spark of sanity in an eternity of malevolent anarchy.”

  Elric sighed and his quiet tones were tinged with hopelessness. “Without some confirmation of the order of things, my only comfort is to accept anarchy. This way, I can revel in chaos and know, without fear, that we are all doomed from the start—that our brief existence is both meaningless and damned. I can accept, then, that we are more than forsaken, because there was never anything there to forsake us. I have weighed the proof, Shaarilla, and must believe that anarchy prevails, in spite of all the laws which seemingly govern our actions, our sorcery, our logic. I see only chaos in the world. If the book we seek tells me otherwise, then I shall gladly believe it. Until then, I will put my trust only in my sword and myself.”

  Shaarilla stared at Elric strangely. “Could not this philosophy of yours have been influenced by recent events in your past? Do you fear the consequences of your murder and treachery? Is it not more comforting for you to believe in deserts which are rarely just?”

  Elric turned on her, crimson eyes blazing in anger, but even as he made to speak, the anger fled him and he dropped his eyes towards the ground, hooding them from her gaze.

  “Perhaps,” he said lamely. “I do not know. That is the only real truth, Shaarilla. I do not know.”

  Shaarilla nodded, her face lit by an enigmatic sympathy; but Elric did not see the look she gave him, for his own eyes were full of crystal tears which flowed down his lean, white face and took his strength and will momentarily from him.

  “I am a man possessed,” he groaned, “and without this devil-blade I carry I would not be a man at all.”

  Two

  They mounted their swift, black horses and spurred them with abandoned savagery down the hillside towards the marsh, their cloaks whipping behind them as the wind caught them, lashing them high into the air. Both rode with set, hard faces, refusing to acknowledge the aching uncertainty which lurked within them.

  And the horses’ hoofs had splashed into quaking bogland before they could halt.

  Cursing, Elric tugged hard on his reins, pulling his horse back on to firm ground. Shaarilla, too, fought her own panicky stallion and guided the beast to the safety of the turf.

  “How do we cross?” Elric asked her impatiently.

  “There was a map—” Shaarilla began hesitantly.

  “Where is it?”

  “It—it was lost. I lost it. But I tried hard to memorize it. I think I’ll be able to get us safely across.”

  “How did you lose it—and why didn’t you tell me of this before?” Elric stormed.

  “I’m sorry, Elric—but for a whole day, just before I found you in that tavern, my memory was gone. Somehow, I lived throu
gh a day without knowing it—and when I awoke, the map was missing.”

  Elric frowned. “There is some force working against us, I am sure,” he muttered, “but what it is, I do not know.” He raised his voice and said to her: “Let us hope that your memory is not too faulty, now. These marshes are infamous the world over, but by all accounts, only natural hazards wait for us.” He grimaced and put his fingers around the hilt of his runesword. “Best go first, Shaarilla, but stay close. Lead the way.”

  She nodded, dumbly, and turned her horse’s head towards the north, galloping along the bank until she came to a place where a great, tapering rock loomed. Here, a grassy path, four feet or so across, led out into the misty marsh. They could only see a little distance ahead, because of the clinging mist, but it seemed that the trail remained firm for some way. Shaarilla walked her horse on to the path and jolted forward at a slow trot, Elric following immediately behind her.

  Through the swirling, heavy mist which shone whitely, the horses moved hesitantly and their riders had to keep them on short, tight rein. The mist padded the marsh with silence and the gleaming, watery fens around them stank with foul putrescence. No animal scurried, no bird shrieked above them. Everywhere was a haunting, fear-laden silence which made both horses and riders uneasy.

  With panic in their throats, Elric and Shaarilla rode on, deeper and deeper into the unnatural Marshes of the Mist, their eyes wary and even their nostrils quivering for scent of danger in the stinking morass.

  Hours later, when the sun was long past its zenith, Shaarilla’s horse reared, screaming and whinnying. She shouted for Elric, her exquisite features twisted in fear as she stared into the mist. He spurred his own bucking horse forwards and joined her.