A Quest-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic

by Margaret Weis

  “It is a golden sail.”

  “You recognize it?” Elric asked her.

  “Oh, indeed I do. It is the galleon of Earl Saxif D'Aan. He has found us. Perhaps he was lying in wait along our route, knowing we must come this way.”

  “How far are we from the Gate?”

  “I am not sure.”

  At that moment, there came a terrible noise from below, as if something sought to stave in the timbers of the ship.

  “It's in the forward hatches!” cried Smiorgan. “See what it is, friend Elric! But take care, man!”

  Cautiously Elric prized back one of the hatch covers and peered into the murky fastness of the hold. The noise of stamping and thumping continued and, as his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the source.

  The white horse was there. It whinnied as it saw him, almost in greeting.

  “How did it come aboard?” Elric asked. “I saw nothing. I heard nothing.”

  The girl was almost as white as Elric. She sank to her knees beside the hatch, burying her face in her arms.

  “He has us! He has us!”

  “There is still a chance we can reach the Crimson Gate in time,” Elric reassured her. “And once in my own world, why I can work much stronger sorcery to protect us.”

  “No,” she sobbed, “it is too late. Why else would the white horse be here? He knows that Saxif D'Aan must soon board us.”

  “He'll have to fight us before he shall have you,” Elric promised her.

  “You have not seen his men. Cutthroats all. Desperate and wolfish! They'll show you no mercy. You would be best advised to hand me over to Saxif D'Aan at once and save yourselves. You'll gain nothing from trying to protect me. But I'd ask you a favor.”

  “What's that?”

  “Find me a small knife to carry, that I may kill myself as soon as I know you two are safe.”

  Elric laughed, dragging her to her feet. “I'll have no such melodramatics from you, lass! We stand together. Perhaps we can bargain with Saxif D'Aan.”

  “What have you to barter?”

  “Very little. But he is not aware of that.”

  “He can read your thoughts, seemingly. He has great powers!”

  “I am Elric of Melniboné. I am said to possess a certain facility in the sorcerous arts, myself.”

  “But you are not as single-minded as Saxif D'Aan,” she said simply. “Only one thing obsesses him—the need to make me his consort.”

  “Many girls would be flattered by the attention—glad to be an Empress with a Melnibonéan Emperor for a husband.” Elric was sardonic.

  She ignored his tone. “That is why I fear him so,” she said in a murmur. “If I lost my determination for a moment, I could love him. I should be destroyed! It is what she must have known!”

  V

  THE GLEAMING GALLEON, SAILS AND SIDES ALL GILDED SO THAT IT seemed the sun itself pursued them, moved rapidly upon them while the girl and Count Smiorgan watched aghast and Elric desperately attempted to recall his elemental allies, without success.

  Through the pale blue light the golden ship sailed relentlessly in their wake. Its proportions were monstrous, its sense of power vast, its gigantic prow sending up huge, foamy waves on both sides as it sped silently towards them.

  With the look of a man preparing himself to meet death, Count Smiorgan Baldhead of the Purple Towns unslung his battle-ax and loosened his sword in its scabbard, setting his little metal cap upon his bald pate. The girl made no sound, no movement at all, but she wept.

  Elric shook his head and his long, milk-white hair formed a halo around his face for a moment. His moody, crimson eyes began to focus on the world around him. He recognized the ship; it was of a pattern with the golden battle-barges of Melniboné—doubtless the ship in which Earl Saxif D'Aan had fled his homeland, searching for the Crimson Gate. Now Elric was convinced that this must be that same Saxif D'Aan and he knew less fear than did his companions, but considerably greater curiosity. Indeed, it was almost with nostalgia that he noted the ball of fire, like a natural comet, glowing with green light, come hissing and spluttering towards them, flung by the ship's forward catapult. He half expected to see a great dragon wheeling in the sky overhead, for it was with dragons and gilded battlecraft like these that Melniboné had once conquered the world.

  The fireball fell into the sea a few inches from their bow and was evidently placed there deliberately, as a warning.

  “Don't stop!” cried Vassliss. “Let the flames slay us! It will be better!”

  Smiorgan was looking upwards. “We have no choice. Look! He has banished the wind, it seems.”

  They were becalmed. Elric smiled a grim smile. He knew now what the folk of the Young Kingdoms must have felt when his ancestors had used these identical tactics against them.

  “Elric?” Smiorgan turned to the albino. “Are these your people? That ship's Melnibonéan without question!”

  “So are the methods,” Elric told him. “I am of the blood royal of Melniboné. I could be Emperor, even now, if I chose to claim my throne. There is some small chance that Earl Saxif D'Aan, though an ancestor, will recognize me and, therefore, recognize my authority. We are a conservative people, the folk of the Dragon Isle.”

  The girl spoke through dry lips, hopelessly: “He recognizes only the authority of the Lords of Chaos, who give him aid.”

  “All Melnibonéans recognize that authority,” Elric told her with a certain humor.

  From the forward hatch, the sound of the stallion's stamping and snorting increased.

  “We're besieged by enchantments!” Count Smiorgan's normally ruddy features had paled. “Have you none of your own, Prince Elric, you can use to counter them?”

  “None, it seems.”

  The golden ship loomed over them. Elric saw that the rails, high overhead, were crowded not with Imrryrian warriors but with cutthroats equally as desperate as those he had fought upon the island, and, apparently, drawn from the same variety of historical periods and nations. The galleon's long sweeps scraped the sides of the smaller vessel as they folded, like the legs of some water insect, to enable the grappling irons to be flung out. Iron claws bit into the timbers of the little ship and the brigandly crowd overhead cheered, grinning at them, menacing them with their weapons.

  The girl began to run to the seaward side of the ship, but Elric caught her by the arm.

  “Do not stop me, I beg you!” she cried. “Rather, jump with me and drown!”

  “You think that death will save you from Saxif D'Aan?” Elric said. “If he has the power you say, death will only bring you more firmly into his grasp!”

  “Oh!” The girl shuddered and then, as a voice called down to them from one of the tall decks of the gilded ship, she gave a moan and fainted into Elric's arms, so that, weakened as he was by his spell-working, it was all that he could do to stop himself falling with her to the deck.

  The voice rose over the coarse shouts and guffaws of the crew. It was pure, lilting and sardonic. It was the voice of a Melnibonéan, though it spoke the common tongue of the Young Kingdoms, a corruption, in itself, of the speech of the Bright Empire.

  “May I have the captain's permission to come aboard?”

  Count Smiorgan growled back: “You have us firm, sir! Don't try to disguise an act of piracy with a polite speech!”

  “I take it I have your permission then.” The unseen speaker's tone remained exactly the same.

  Elric watched as part of the rail was drawn back to allow a gangplank, studded with golden nails to give firmer footing, to be lowered from the galleon's deck to theirs.

  A tall figure appeared at the top of the gangplank. He had the fine features of a Melnibonéan nobleman, was thin, proud in his bearing, clad in voluminous robes of cloth-of-gold, an elaborate helmet in gold and ebony upon his long, auburn locks. He had gray-blue eyes, pale, slightly flushed skin, and he carried, so far as Elric could see, no weapons of any kind.

  With considerable dignity, Earl Saxif D'Aan
began to descend, his rascals at his back. The contrast between this beautiful intellectual and those he commanded was remarkable. Where he walked with straight back, elegant and noble, they slouched, filthy, degenerate, unintelligent, grinning with pleasure at their easy victory. Not a man amongst them showed any sign of human dignity; each was overdressed in tattered and unclean finery, each had at least three weapons upon his person, and there was much evidence of looted jewelry, of noserings, earrings, bangles, necklaces, toe- and finger-rings, pendants, cloak-pins and the like.

  “Gods!” murmured Smiorgan. “I've rarely seen such a collection of scum, and I thought I'd encountered most kinds in my voyages. How can such a man bear to be in their company?”

  “Perhaps it suits his sense of irony,” Elric suggested.

  Earl Saxif D'Aan reached their deck and stood looking up at them to where they still positioned themselves, in the poop. He gave a slight bow. His features were controlled and only his eyes suggested something of the intensity of emotion dwelling within him, particularly as they fell upon the girl in Elric's arms.

  “I am Earl Saxif D'Aan of Melniboné, now of the Islands Beyond the Crimson Gate. You have something with you which is mine. I would claim it from you.”

  “You mean the Lady Vassliss of Jharkor?” Elric said, his voice as steady as Saxif D'Aan's.

  Saxif D'Aan seemed to note Elric for the first time. A slight frown crossed his brow and was quickly dismissed. “She is mine,” he said. “You may be assured that she will come to no harm at my hands.”

  Elric, seeking some advantage, knew that he risked much when he next spoke, in the High Tongue of Melniboné, used between those of the blood royal. “Knowledge of your history does not reassure me, Saxif D'Aan.”

  Almost imperceptibly, the golden man stiffened and fire flared in his gray-blue eyes. “Who are you, to speak the Tongue of Kings? Who are you, who claims knowledge of my past?”

  “I am Elric, son of Sadric, and I am the four-hundred-and-twenty-eighth Emperor of the folk of R'lin K'ren A'a, who landed upon the Dragon Isle ten thousand years ago. I am Elric, your Emperor, Earl Saxif D'Aan, and I demand your fealty.” And Elric held up his right hand, upon which still gleamed a ring set with a single Actorios stone, the Ring of Kings.

  Earl Saxif D'Aan now had firm control of himself again. He gave no sign that he was impressed. “Your sovereignty does not extend beyond your own world, noble emperor, though I greet you as a fellow monarch.” He spread his arms so that his long sleeves rustled. “This world is mine. All that exists beneath the blue sun do I rule. You trespass, therefore, in my domain. I have every right to do as I please.”

  “Pirate pomp,” muttered Count Smiorgan, who had understood nothing of the conversation but had gathered something of what passed by the tone. “Pirate braggadocio. What does he say, Elric?”

  “He convinces me that he is not, in your sense, a pirate, Count Smiorgan. He claims that he is ruler of this plane. Since there is apparently no other, we must accept his claim.”

  “Gods! Then let him behave like a monarch and let us sail safely out of his waters!”

  “We may—if we give him the girl.”

  Count Smiorgan shook his head. “I'll not do that. She's my passenger, in my charge. I must die rather than do that. It is the Code of the Sealords of the Purple Towns.”

  “You are famous for your adherence to that Code,” Elric said. “As for myself, I have taken this girl into my protection and, as hereditary emperor of Melniboné, I cannot allow myself to be browbeaten.”

  They had conversed in a murmur, but, somehow, Earl Saxif D'Aan had heard them.

  “I must let you know,” he said evenly, in the common tongue, “that the girl is mine. You steal her from me. Is that the action of an Emperor?”

  “She is not a slave,” Elric said, “but the daughter of a free merchant in Jharkor. You have no rights upon her.”

  Earl Saxif D'Aan said: “Then I cannot open the Crimson Gate for you. You must remain in my world forever.”

  “You have closed the gate? Is it possible?”

  “To me.”

  “Do you know that the girl would rather die than be captured by you, Earl Saxif D'Aan? Does it give you pleasure to instill such fear?”

  The golden man looked directly into Elric's eyes as if he made some cryptic challenge. “The gift of pain has ever been a favorite gift amongst our folk, has it not? Yet it is another gift I offer her. She calls herself Vassliss of Jharkor, but she does not know herself. I know her. She is Gratyesha, Princess of Fwem-Omeyo, and I would make her my bride.”

  “How can it be that she does not know her own name?”

  “She is reincarnated—soul and flesh are identical—that is how I know. And I have waited, Emperor of Melniboné, for many scores of years for her. Now I shall not be cheated of her.”

  “As you cheated yourself, two centuries past, in Melniboné?”

  “You risk much with your directness of language, brother monarch!” There was a hint of a warning in Saxif D'Aan's tone, a warning much fiercer than any implied by the words.

  “Well,” Elric shrugged, “you have more power than we. My sorcery works poorly in your world. Your ruffians outnumber us. It should not be difficult for you to take her from us.”

  “You must give her to me. Then you may go free, back to your own world and your own time.”

  Elric smiled. “There is sorcery here. She is no reincarnation. You'd bring your lost love's spirit from the netherworld to inhabit this girl's body. Am I not right? That is why she must be given freely, or your sorcery will rebound upon you—or might—and you would not take the risk.”

  Earl Saxif D'Aan turned his head away so that Elric might not see his eyes. “She is the girl,” he said, in the High Tongue. “I know that she is. I mean her soul no harm. I would merely give it back its memory.”

  “Then it is stalemate,” said Elric.

  “Have you no loyalty to a brother of the royal blood?” Saxif D'Aan murmured, still refusing to look at Elric.

  “You claimed no such loyalty, as I recall, Earl Saxif D'Aan. If you accept me as your emperor, then you must accept my decisions. I keep the girl in my custody. Or you must take her by force.”

  “I am too proud.”

  “Such pride shall ever destroy love,” said Elric, almost in sympathy. “What now, King of Limbo? What shall you do with us?”

  Earl Saxif D'Aan lifted his noble head, about to reply, when from the hold the stamping and the snorting began again. His eyes widened. He looked questioningly at Elric, and there was something close to terror in his face.

  “What's that? What have you in the hold?”

  “A mount, my lord, that is all,” said Elric equably.

  “A horse? An ordinary horse?”

  “A white one. A stallion, with bridle and saddle. It has no rider.”

  At once Saxif D'Aan's voice rose as he shouted orders for his men. “Take those three aboard our ship. This one shall be sunk directly. Hurry! Hurry!”

  Elric and Smiorgan shook off the hands which sought to seize them and they moved towards the gangplank, carrying the girl between them, while Smiorgan muttered: “At least we are not slain, Elric. But what becomes of us now?”

  Elric shook his head. “We must hope that we can continue to use Earl Saxif D'Aan's pride against him, to our advantage, though the gods alone know how we shall resolve the dilemma.”

  Earl Saxif D'Aan was already hurrying up the gangplank ahead of them.

  “Quickly,” he shouted. “Raise the plank!”

  They stood upon the decks of the golden battle-barge and watched as the gangplank was drawn up, the length of rail replaced.

  “Bring up the catapults,” Saxif D'Aan commanded. “Use lead. Sink that vessel at once!”

  The noise from the forward hold increased. The horse's voice echoed over ships and water. Hooves smashed at timber and then, suddenly, it came crashing through the hatch-covers, scrambling for purchase on the deck wit
h its front hooves, and then standing there, pawing at the planks, its neck arching, its nostrils dilating and its eyes glaring, as if ready to do battle.

  Now Saxif D'Aan made no attempt to hide the terror on his face. His voice rose to a scream as he threatened his rascals with every sort of horror if they did not obey him with utmost speed. The catapults were dragged up and huge globes of lead were lobbed onto the decks of Smiorgan's ship, smashing through the planks like arrows through parchment so that almost immediately the ship began to sink.

  “Cut the grappling hooks!” cried Saxif D'Aan, wrenching a blade from the hand of one of his men and sawing at the nearest rope. “Cast loose—quickly!”

  Even as Smiorgan's ship groaned and roared like a drowning beast, the ropes were cut. The ship keeled over at once, and the horse disappeared.

  “Turn about!” shouted Saxif D'Aan. “Back to Fhaligarn and swiftly, or your souls shall feed my fiercest demons!”

  There came a peculiar, high-pitched neighing from the foaming water, as Smiorgan's ship, stern uppermost, gasped and was swallowed. Elric caught a glimpse of the white stallion, swimming strongly.

  “Go below!” Saxif D'Aan ordered, indicating a hatchway. “The horse can smell the girl and thus is doubly difficult to lose.”

  “Why do you fear it?” Elric asked. “It is only a horse. It cannot harm you.”

  Saxif D'Aan uttered a laugh of profound bitterness. “Can it not, brother monarch? Can it not?”

  As they carried the girl below, Elric was frowning, remembering a little more of the legend of Saxif D'Aan, of the girl he had punished so cruelly, and of her lover, Prince Carolak. The last he heard of Saxif D'Aan was the sorcerer crying:

  “More sail! More sail!”

  And then the hatch had closed behind them and they found themselves in an opulent Melnibonéan day-cabin, full of rich hangings, precious metal, decorations of exquisite beauty and, to Count Smiorgan, disturbing decadence. But it was Elric, as he lowered the girl to a couch, who noticed the smell.

  “Augh! It's the smell of a tomb—of damp and mold. Yet nothing rots. It is passing peculiar, friend Smiorgan, is it not?”