The Skrayling Tree toa-2

by Michael John Moorcock

  There was some dispute among us as to whether we should make the quick march at all or keep to our present pace, so that we remained together. Klosterheim spoke of the gathering winter. It was becoming noticeably colder by the day. We were marching north. Normally, both Pukawatchi and Vikings reserved raiding expeditions for the spring. Winter made movement almost impossible. Ice would form on the rivers soon, and they would not be able to use the canoes.

  So we called a further conference. Eventually it was decided that the two Ashanti, Asolingas and the Bomendando, who were our fastest runners, together with a Pukawatchi called Nagatche, would go ahead for a few miles to get the lie of the land. Then we could make a better-informed decision.

  The three runners set off as the evening sky grew black overhead. An east wind began to blow steadily, biting through layers of clothing. I felt the lash of sleet against my cheeks.

  Night fell. Ipkaptam, Klosterheim, Earl Gunnar and I again conferred around an uncertain fire in a small temporary lodge.

  Ipkaptam believed that the season was coming unusually early. He would have expected another month before the snows arrived. Again he spoke anxiously about offending the winds. It would be best to reach the water as soon as possible. With snow, our jour-ney to Kakatanawa would be far more difficult. With ice it might be impossible, and we would have to wait until the next year. He turned to Klosterheim for suggestions. Were there any other magical allies he could summon? Was there some way to placate the wind so that it blew the snow away from them? What if he were to offer the Snow Wind his most valuable possessions? His children's lives?

  Klosterheim pointed out in Greek that most of his powers were already being used to sustain his supernatural ally Lord Shoashooan threatening our enemies. He had only been able to summon the demon in the first place because of the strange nature of this realm's semisentient winds, which Ipkaptam had already remarked on. It was even possible that Lord Shoashooan was drawing the bad weather to them. But if White Crow was allowed to take the Black Lance back to Kakatanawa, then the Pukawatchi would never defeat their ancient enemies, never redeem their honor. As for summoning powerful spirits, that was now entirely beyond him. With all his experience of the supernatural, he had never been able to control two such forces. Gun-nar mumbled something about having made too many bargains already and said he was thinking on the problem. I-whose powers were virtually nonexistent here, but needed fewer drugs and sorcery to survive-was equally helpless.

  "Then we must do our best with our natural brains," said Klosterheim with some humor.

  The next morning one of the Ashanti returned. The Bomen-dando was glad of the camp. He stood by the fire shivering, his lanky body wrapped in a buffalo robe. He was uneasy and seemed frightened. He said he had left the other two guarding their find while he came to tell us what it was. They also would return if it became too dangerous. They had remained in case they should catch a glimpse of what they guessed was occupying the hills.

  I had never seen such a disturbed look on the Bomendando's face. Clearly, he thought he might not be believed.

  "Come on, man," demanded Gunnar, reaching a threatening hand toward him. "What have you seen out there?"

  "It's a footprint," said the Bomendando. "A footprint."

  "So there are other men here. How many?"

  "This was not a man's footprint." The Bomendando shivered. "It was fresh, and we found others, fainter, when we looked. It is the footprint of a giant. We are in the realm of the giants, Earl Gunnar. This was not part of our agreement. You told us nothing of giants, nothing of the Stone Men. You spoke only of a poorly defended city. You said how the giants had been driven from this land by men and half-lings. You said giants were forbidden to go outside their city. Why did you not tell us of these other giants? These roaming giants?"

  "Giants!" Gunnar was contemptuous. "A trick of the eye. The track had spread, that was all. I've heard tales of giants all my life and have yet to see one."

  But the Bomendando shook his head. He held out his spear. With his hand he measured off another half-length again. "It was that wide and more than twice as long. A giant."

  Ipkaptam became agitated. "They are not supposed to leave their city. They cannot leave it. They are forbidden. The giants have always guarded what they are sworn to guard. If they left, the world would end. It must have been a human you saw."

  The Ashanti was adamant, tired of talk. "There is a giant out there, in those hills," he said. "And where there is one giant, there are often others."

  There came a shout from the margins of the camp. Warriors ran towards us, pointing over their shoulders.

  In the slanting sleet I saw a figure emerging. He was indeed very tall and broad. My head would scarcely have reached his chest, but he was a third the size of any giants I had previously encountered.

  He was dressed in a heavy black coat, covered by a fur-lined cloak. On his head was an oddly shaped hat, its brim turned up at

  three corners, sporting a couple of plumes. His white hair was tied back with a loose, black bow.

  I heard Klosterheim curse behind me.

  "Is that our giant?" I asked.

  Ipkaptam was shaking his head. "That's no giant," he said. "That's a human."

  The newcomer took off his hat by way of a peace sign. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said, "my name is Lobkowitz. I was traveling in these parts and seem to have lost my way. Is there any chance, do you think, that I could warm my bones a little at your fire?"

  He loomed over us, almost as tall as our tepees. I felt like a ten-year-old boy in the presence of a very burly man.

  Klosterheim came forward and bowed. "Good evening, Prince Lobkowitz," he said. "I had not expected to see you here."

  "It's a turning multiverse, my dear captain." The broad-faced, genial nobleman peered hard at Klosterheim. He frowned in apparent surprise. "Forgive me if I seem rude," he said, "but is it my impression, sir, or have you shrunk a foot or two since last we met?"

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Gentleman at Large

  But the mischievous Puk-Wudjies,

  They the envious Little People,

  They the fairies and the pygmies,

  Plotted and conspired against him.

  "If this hateful Kwasind,' said they,

  "If this great, outrageous fellow

  Goes on thus a little longer,

  Tearing everything he touches,

  Rending everything to pieces,

  Filling all the world with wonder,

  What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies?

  Who will care for the Puk-Wudjies,

  He will tread us down like mushrooms,

  Drive us all into the water,

  Give our bodies to be eaten,

  By the wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs,

  By the Spirits of the Water!"

  LONGFELLOW, "The Song of Hiawatha"

  Klosterheim and Lobkowitz had been acquainted in Christendom. They were not friends. Klosterheim was deeply suspicious of every word the newcomer uttered. Lobkowitz, while more affable, seemed equally wary of Klosterheim. Gunnar said something about two peoples forever at odds. He believed the races must be natural enemies.

  As Prince Lobkowitz stood with his back to our fire, Gunnar asked him what brought him to the region.

  "Very little, sir. My business was with another party, but you know how it is, this close to a node on the great tree of time. Although it makes travel between the worlds a little easier, it also makes it confusing. Variances of scale, which would be so vast as to be unnoticed elsewhere, are not so great here. The closer to where worlds connect, the less we are, as it were, divided. We do our best, sir; but the Balance must be served, and the Balance determines everything in the end, eh?" The huge fellow had a rather quiet manner. It seemed odd to find delicacy in one of his size.

  His apparent diffidence put a swagger into Gunnar the Doomed. He was the only one of us to be amused. "My men described your footprint. To hear them talk you were at leas
t ten feet tall, though I must admit you're the biggest human being I've ever met. You're even bigger than Angris the Frank, and he is still a legend. Are they all your size where you come from?"

  "Pretty much," said Prince Lobkowitz. Gunnar did not miss the sardonic tone. His faceless helm turned to regard the huge man with some curiosity. I, too, felt I was missing what might have been a joke.

  The sleet continued to fall. It was not settling as snow. Ipkap-tam decided it was too warm for bad snow, that what we had was no more than an autumn squall. In a couple of days it might even seem like summer again. He had experienced the phenomenon many times.

  Now that we thought Lobkowitz was our giant, Ipkaptam was far more at ease. It was decided we would indeed send the main warriors ahead at a rapid trot while I would bring up the rear. Prince Lobkowitz, who knew the terrain no better than I did, elected to stay behind with us. "At least until it becomes possible to rejoin my party!"

  While the prince went off to relieve himself, I was warned secretly by Gunnar to keep an eye on Lobkowitz and to kill him if he acted at all suspiciously. Klosterheim was especially uneasy. He said that the man was not necessarily malign but that his presence

  suggested there were other, possibly dangerous, elements involved in this adventure.

  I asked him to be more specific. What did he know about Lobkowitz? Had the newcomer followed us here? Was he in league with the Kakatanawa?

  "He has no more right to enter the Kakatanawa stronghold than I," said Klosterheim. "But he has friends who also seek what I seek and what Gunnar seeks. I believe he shares a mutual interest. It will do no harm to make an ally of him now. It's best he's kept in the rear, at least until we know what we are facing. He might be a spy, for instance, sent to learn our secrets. If not, we could use someone of his size."

  Gunnar was unhappy. "There are too many unknown elements in this. My idea was to come here, take what I needed, and leave. I had not expected Klosterheim, the Pukawatchi-nor giants ..."

  "That man is not a giant," insisted Ipkaptam. "He is human. You would know if he was a giant."

  With a scowl, Klosterheim agreed. "This is a strange area of the multiverse," he confirmed. "It is, as Lobkowitz says, a node. Where the branch joins the tree, eh? Usually we are too far away from a node to experience this phenomenon, but here I would guess it is common."

  I accepted this oddness was familiar to them and trusted their judgment. Only Gunnar continued to be ill at ease. He kept muttering about superstition and repeating what was clearly a simplification if not a lie-that he was here for one reason only, and he had promised his fighters the loot of the City of Gold.

  Ipkaptam signaled for Gunnar, Klosterheim and the others to follow and set off at a lope. The main war party fell in behind him, and all were soon lost in the mists of the deep valleys. I was glad to keep a slower pace. It gave me a chance to speak to the gigantic man, to ask him how he had found himself here. He said he was traveling with a friend and they had become separated. The next thing he knew, he said, he spotted our camp. His friend was clearly nowhere in the area.

  "And is this friend similar in size to you?" I asked. Prince Lobkowitz sighed. "These are not my natural surroundings, Prince Elric, any more than they are yours."

  I agreed with some feeling that they were not mine. If I discovered I was on a wild-goose chase, then Gunnar should pay with interest for all my wasted hours. While I had once sought the seclusion and isolation of the countryside, nowadays I again preferred the alleys, the noisy streets and crowded public places of urban life. Nonetheless, events had curious resonances, I said. It made me think that perhaps this adventure had parallels with a life I could not quite remember.

  As Ipkaptam predicted, the snow held off and the sleet continued to fall. The Pukawatchi boys and women were not loquacious. Lobkowitz and I were thrown together as a result. He was oddly closemouthed on some subjects, and when I accused him, half joking, of talking like an oracle, he laughed loudly. "I think that's because I am talking like an oracle," he said.

  He explained that this age was not his own. He was something of an interloper. But this realm, or one like it, was similar to his own past. As he was sure I understood, he did not dare inadvertently reveal anything of the future, yet he was constantly tempted to use his knowledge.

  It was the reason, he said, for prophecies and omens to be so obscure. A directly related account of coming events automatically changed those events. Knowledge of them meant that some could act to avoid what they disliked. This not only made prophecy dangerous, it added to the multiplicity of the worlds. A few ill-judged words could create branch after branch of additional alternatives. It served no general purpose, he said. Few such branches survived for long.

  I remembered the Stone Giants and their meaningless prophecies, but I said nothing to Lobkowitz, even though we were together, tending to walk behind the main party, following tracks the Pukawatchi and Vikings had made.

  Then as we began to approach the foothills of the mountains, the sleet changed to snow. By the following morning it had settled

  and the sky had cleared. It was a blue day. Snow lay before us all the way to the mountains, and tracks were rare. Where a buffalo had passed, you could see immediately. Also hare and birds had used the land ahead, but of the Pukawatchi trail there was nothing.

  Prince Lobkowitz seemed both amused by and sympathetic to this turn of events. He suggested that with his extra height he could go on ahead and see if he could find the Pukawatchi camp. Not entirely trusting him I said that we could travel together. That way I could stand on his shoulders, perhaps, and get a longer view. Thus we could make the best use of each other's relative size.

  This seemed to amuse him even further. I said I thought my suggestion perfectly reasonable. He was recalling another event, he said, which had nothing to do with me directly, and he apologized.

  He agreed; so we increased our pace. When the going became difficult for me, I was able to ride his mighty shoulder or otherwise make use of his unusual size and strength. It was the strangest riding I have ever done and was something of a change for me, though again I was troubled by vague memories of distant incarnations. Yet as far as I know I have always been Elric of Melni-bone, for all that various seers and sorcerers insist otherwise. Some people relish the numinous the way others value the practical. I have had enough experience of the numinous to place great value on what is familiar and substantial.

  When Lobkowitz raised the subject, I told him what I knew for certain. While I hung in some distant realm facing the death of everything I loved, I also dreamed the Dream of a Thousand Years, which had brought me here. He would probably think I was mad.

  He did not. He said that he was familiar with such phenomena. Many he knew took them for granted. He had traveled widely, and there was little that was especially novel to him.

  As it happened, we did not go far before the snow began to melt, revealing enough of a trail for our trackers to follow again.

  But a certain valuable camaraderie had developed between Prince Lobkowitz and myself. I had the impression he, too, had more in common with me than with the others, even Klosterheim. I asked him about that gaunt-faced individual.

  "He is an eternal," Lobkowicz said, "but he is not reincarnated, simply reborn over and over again at the point of his death. This is a gift he received from his master. It is a terrible gift. His master is called in these realms 'Lucifer.' As I understand it, this Lord of the Lower Worlds has charged Klosterheim with finding the Holy Grail. This was the pivot, the regulator of the Great Balance itself. But Klosterheim also seeks some sort of alliance with the Grail's traditional guardian."

  I asked who that was. He said that I was distantly related to the family who would become its guardians. The Grail had disappeared more than once, however, and when that happened, it must be sought wherever the path leads. The stolen artifact had a habit of disguising itself even from its protectors. He had never been directly involved in this Grail-que
st, he said-not, at any rate, as far as he could recall-but the quest continued through a multiplicity of pasts, presents and futures. He envied me, he said, my lack of memory. He was the second to make that remark. I told him with some feeling that if my condition was what he called a lack of memory, I was more than glad to have nothing else to remember. He made an apology of sorts.

  Soon we reached the rendezvous with the rest of our party. They had little to report. The original owners of the canoes had fled, leaving most of their camp intact, so we spent a good night. In the morning we began to load the canoes when the blizzard hit us. It howled through the camp for hours, heaping up snow in huge banks. A wild east wind. By the time we were able to go out again, we found three feet of snow and ice already forming on the river. Up ahead the snow was bound to be thicker. We would either have to winter here or go on by foot. Ipkaptam said we could load the canoes and use them as sleds. That would keep the tribe together, as it would be foolish to leave the women and children. And so we set off, first carrying the canoes and then, as it became possible to drag them, pulling them behind us until we had reached the mountains proper. The sharp crags rose darkly above us, threatening the evening sky.

  "They're evil-looking peaks," said Gunnar the Doomed, bending to pick up a handful of snow and rub it with relish into his neck. "But at least the weather's improving." I had forgotten how much Norsemen love snow. They yearn for it the way Moors yearn for rain.

  Klosterheim pointed out the pass through the mountains. A dark gash ran between peaks glinting like black ice, probably basalt. Already the mountainsides were heavy with snow, and more snow weighed down the pines and firs of the flanks. There was no moving water. Game was rarely seen. Occasionally I glimpsed a winter hare running across the snow, leaving black tracks in a white flurry. Hawks hung high in the sky, seeing no prey below. I do not think I had ever seen such a winter wasteland. In its own grandeur, its uncompromising bleakness, it was impressive. But unless some magical paradise lay within those mountains, protected from the weather, we were none of us likely to survive. All common sense told us to turn back while we could and spend the winter in more agreeable conditions.