“I knew he would have to come here if we defeated him at Bek,” she said. “He hopes to contact Arioch. But I think I’ll have a surprise for him.”
Oona led the way into the center of the stones. Beyond, the sea was very calm. Perfect weather for an invasion, I thought. I looked for the U-boat, but it wasn’t visible from this point.
The translucent light washed around our feet and legs like surf. “Draw your swords, gentlemen,” she said. “I will need their energy.”
We obeyed her. This beautiful young girl and the confidence she radiated fascinated us. She held up her bow staff and then dipped it into the opalescent substance, drawing it up like paint and describing extraordinary geometric patterns in the air, linking one stone to another until they were crisscrossed with a cat’s cradle of pearly, sparkling force.
At the same time Oona spoke. She murmured and sang, making spells. There was a sense of urgency about her movements and her voice.
Lights began to zigzag wildly until I was thoroughly confused and blinded. She took Ravenbrand from me and described a large oval with it. The oval undulated and formed a tunnel in the light. Walking along the tunnel of light towards us, I saw a figure.
Fromental!
The Frenchman strolled into the circle of stones as if looking for a good place for a picnic. To confirm this intention, he held in his hand a covered basket. He was completely unsurprised to see us and greeted us with a cheerful wave. Stepping into the stone circle, a crimson light surrounded him, wrapping around him like a bloody coat. It flared and was gone. The milky web also disappeared. A stink of something old and hot remained. I recognized the smell but did not know why.
“Am I in time?” he asked Oona.
“I hope so,” she said. “Did you bring her?”
Fromental lifted the basket. “Here she is, Lady Oona. Shall I take her out?”
“Not yet. We have to be sure he is coming. He will get here somehow. As will Arioch. Gaynor expects to meet Arioch at the Stones of Morn. They have been here before.”
“My Lord Arioch is with us now,” said Elric quietly.
Elric’s whole manner changed. He sensed his master’s presence in the circle. He spoke rapidly, urgently.
“My Lord Arioch. Forgive us for this intrusion. Give us your good will, I beg, for the sake of our ancient covenants. I am Elric of Melniboné and our blood is bound to the same destiny.”
A voice, sweet as childhood, spoke from the air. “You are my mortal offspring. You represent my interests in other realms, but not in this one. Why are you here, Elric?”
“I seek revenge upon an enemy, my lord. One who serves you. Who offered you this portal.”
“One of my servants cannot be your enemy.”
“One who serves two masters is nobody’s friend,” Elric replied.
The voice, whose warmth embraced and comforted like an old, loving relative, chuckled.
“Ah, bravest of my slaves, sweetest of my succulent children. Now I remember why I love thee.”
My throat filled with bile. Being in the invisible creature’s presence was almost physically unbearable. Even Oona seemed unwell. But Elric was if anything more relaxed than usual, even tranquil. “I am destined to serve thee, great Duke of Hell. The old pact is between my blood and thine. The one who dubs himself Knight of the Balance has already betrayed one Lord of the Higher World, and I know he would betray another.”
“I cannot be betrayed. It is impossible. I trust nothing. I trust no one. I imprisoned Miggea for him. And this was to be my payment. This is a rich, delicious realm. There is much in it to relieve my boredom. Gaynor swore loyalty to me. He would not dare try my patience further.”
“Gaynor’s loyalty is to Law before Chaos.” I heard myself speak. My voice was a kind of echo in my own skull and sounded like Elric’s. “And I assure you, Duke Arioch, I owe you no loyalty. It is not in my interest to allow you to enter my realm. Your forces already destroy too much. But I can offer you the means of claiming your payment from Gaynor.”
Arioch was amused. I glimpsed the outline of a golden face, the most beautiful face in the multiverse, and I loved it. “Those are not my forces, little mortal. They are the forces of the Lady Miggea. They are the forces of Law who make war against your world.”
“Gaynor wishes you to oppose them?”
“I have no interest in his wishes, only his actions. He merely offered me an opportunity. It is in my nature to oppose Law. “
“Then our interests are the same,” I agreed. “But we cannot strike the same bargain with you that Gaynor struck.”
“Gaynor promises me an entry into your realm. By means of his magic and his wisdom. You will not do the same for me?”
“No, master.” Elric. “We do not have the means. The great object of power is lost to us.”
“Gaynor will bring it here.”
“Perhaps,” said Elric. He spoke with respect but also with the firmness of one who regarded himself the equal of Gods. “Master, you have no rights in this realm.”
“I have rights in all realms, little slave. Nonetheless, I grow tired of this game. I appear to be playing against my own self-interest. As soon as Gaynor brings the key, I and my armies will pass through to bring unbridled Chaos to a bored little world. Miggea’s forces are without the guidance of a vital mind. We shall soon defeat them. Your fears are unnecessary.”
“And if Gaynor does not bring the key, Your Excellency?” said Oona, gazing levelly up at the golden head.
“Then Gaynor is mine. Mine to eat. Mine to regurgitate whenever I choose. Mine to drink. Mine to piss. Mine to tickle. Mine to kiss. Mine to shit and mine to fart. Mine to take his heart. Mine to clothe with iron shoes. Mine to dance. Mine to bruise. Mine to use.” The achingly beautiful lips smacked like a troll’s in a fairy tale. I began to wonder if it were only Miggea of Law who grew senile amongst the Lords of the Higher Worlds. Could the whole race of gods have grown too old to have any clear idea of their desires or interests? Was the multiverse in the hands of such creatures? Was our own condition reflected in theirs?
Fromental, meanwhile, followed none of this. We spoke a language completely alien to him. He looked from Oona to me, eyebrows raised, asking a silent question.
Elric saw something and pointed. Without a thought, he folded both hands around Stormbringer’s hilt.
Gaynor, still in his armor but looking somewhat the worse for wear, appeared on the white beach. Had the U-boat brought him to Morn? He clearly could not see anything within the stone circle and thus believed himself to be alone. He was swordless, apparently with no weapons. And he had no cup with him either.
We took a certain pleasure in watching Gaynor advance.
He paused before entering the circle. He peered in. We remained invisible to him. Ocher light filled the spaces between the stones.
“Master? Lord Arioch?”
Arioch’s voice was a gentle invitation. “Enter.”
Gaynor stepped through.
And found all his enemies awaiting him.
He turned in startled fury. He tried to step back out of the circle, but he was trapped.
“Have you brought me the key, little mortal?” Arioch spoke again with a delicacy suggesting he tasted each syllable before he released it into the air.
“I could not, sire.” His attention was more on us than on the Lord of the Higher Worlds. “The thing has a mind of its own . . .”
“But it is your duty to control it.”
“It cannot be controlled, my lord. It has a will, I swear, if not intelligence.”
“But I told you all that, little mortal. And you assured me you had the means of gaining control. That is why I helped you. That is why I imprisoned Lady Miggea for you.”
Elric laughed as Gaynor’s confidence ebbed. “I came for more help,” said our enemy almost pathetically. “A little more. But why? How . . . ? These are your enemies, my lord. They who would oppose you.”
“Oh, I think they have shown
me rather more respect, Prince Gaynor, than I have received from you. You seem to think it possible to lie to a Lord of the Higher Worlds. You seem to think I’m some bottle imp to give you as many wishes as you desire. I am no such thing! I am a Duke of Hell! I have ambitions which go far beyond your imaginings. And my patience is ended. How shall I punish you, little Prince?”
“I can bring you through, my lord, I swear. I just have to return to Bek. Mighty forces even now rise to dominate this realm. Hour by hour they gain more territory, more power. Only you, through me, can defeat them, my lord.”
“I have no interest in saving this realm,” said Arioch in regal astonishment. “I just wished to play with it for a while. Now my only pleasure, little Gaynor, will be to play with you.”
Oona turned to Fromental and snatched the basket from his hands. She reached into it and lifted out its contents.
It appeared to be a miniature model. An intricate ivory cage made of thousands of tiny bones from which a tiny voice raged.
Miggea, still trapped, was furious.
“How did you do that?” I asked Oona in astonishment.
“It is not difficult. Scale is the only thing that varies from realm to realm. Each realm, as I explained to you, is on a slightly different scale, which is how we are able to navigate between them and why we are not immediately aware of their existence.
“I arranged for Lieutenant Fromental to bring her here. Miggea is very powerful, but quite thoroughly imprisoned. Given her own volition she would soon adjust her scale to the realm in which she finds herself. I do not have the power to release her. Only the one who imprisoned her can do that.”
“You have brought another of these creatures to my world?” This seemed the height of irresponsibility to me. “To war against the one already here? To turn the whole planet into a battlefield?”
“You will see,” said Oona. “But you must all leave the circle now. First, give me your sword.”
Against all sense I handed her Ravenbrand. Then Elric, Fromental and I stepped outside the Stones of Morn.
The little we could see became a shadow play. The dark, lounging presence of Duke Arioch, the swift, elegant figure of Oona placing the cage of bone on the ground. Gaynor transfixed. Oona then touched the cage with the point of my sword. I heard Arioch’s voice, faintly booming. “Well, my lady, it seems it is no longer in my interest to hold you captive.”
A noise like splitting flint.
A terrible crack.
Something began to boil and writhe and grow within the circle. Something which cackled and squealed with idiot laughter and pushed against whatever force the stone circle held. Miggea, having escaped the cage, now sought to escape the circle.
The stones shook. They might have been dancing. Then they were still, straight, waiting. They looked to me as they must have looked when the first Druids newly erected them. Tall, white granite, flashing in the light from the sun.
Suddenly a figure of unstable fire stood before us, caught in the circle, writhing uncontrollably, screaming silently out at us. Gaynor’s face was burning. His whole body was in flames. Burning with a million conflicts generated in his ungenerous heart. And there he was again, standing beside himself, still flaming, still screaming. He was begging us for something. Could it have been forgiveness? Or merely release? Another dancing, burning figure, and another, until they made a full circle within the circle.
From above, the shadowy golden face of Duke Arioch smiled and whistled as if watching a puppet show, and the senile, drooling, cackling creature that had once been one of Law’s greatest aristocrats poked at Gaynor’s twisting body, which changed shape and size, became many versions of itself, then one, then fragmented again. I heard his screams. They were like nothing else I had ever heard in all my life.
Arioch and Miggea tugged at him, breaking off pieces of his many identities in their struggle. They played with him as cats might play with a cricket. There was little animosity between them. All their hatred was directed at Gaynor, stupid Gaynor, who had thought he could play one of them off against the other.
He begged them to stop.
I was close to begging for the same thing! A thousand Gaynors filled the circle. A thousand different kinds of pain.
Oona regarded this with quiet satisfaction, in much the same way she might look upon a piece of domestic handiwork and congratulate herself.
“He cannot bring himself back to his archetype,” she said. “It is the only way we survive. A sense of identity is all we have. At this moment all Gaynor’s many identities are in conflict. He is being disseminated throughout the multiverse. The convergence Gaynor sought to use for his own selfish ends has proved to be his undoing.”
“Too many!” Arioch swore. “You promised me the power of Law. I already possess the power of Chaos. Where, fractured Gaynor, is the Grail?”
The replies were various, multitudinous, horrifying. “She has it!” was the only coherent phrase we heard.
Then Gaynor was gone.
Miggea was gone.
Arioch’s voice was a satisfied, luscious whisper. “The Grail is still there. At my point of entry, where he promised to bring me through.”
Monstrous lips smacked.
And then Arioch, too, disappeared.
Between them, he and Miggea tore Gaynor into a million psychic shreds.
A rustling, like an autumn wind, and sorcery was gone from that realm. The old stones pushed their way up through ordinary grass. A bright sun shone in the sky. The surf washing the white beach was the loudest sound we had ever heard. I turned to Fromental. “You struck this bargain with Oona when you met her at Miggea’s prison?”
“We did not know exactly what we would do with Miggea, but it was useful to have her in portable form.” Fromental winked. “Now I must return to my friends. Tanelorn is saved, but they will want to know the rest of this story. I am sure we’ll meet again, my friend.”
“And the Off-Moo? Do you know their fate?”
“They have another city, that is all I know. On the far shore of the lake. They went there. Few were killed.”
With the air of a man who had urgent business, he shook hands with me and walked back to the shore. A skiff with two seamen waited for him, offering him a salute as he got into the boat. I had made the wrong presumptions about the U-boat. Fromental had sent it ahead of him. He waved to us again and was then rowed quickly over to the U-boat. Perhaps I would never know how he managed to send a captured goddess to us by submarine!
As I watched the conning tower disappear below the waves, my attention returned to the depressing realities of my own realm. Where a conquering air fleet was ensuring that Adolf Hitler would soon control the world.
I reminded Elric that my work was unfinished. If the Grail was still at Bek, perhaps I could find a way of using it against the Nazis. At the very least it should ultimately be returned to Mu Ooria.
The dreamthief’s daughter smiled at me, as if at an innocent. “What if the Grail always belonged at Bek?” she said. “What if it was lost and the Off-Moo were merely its temporary guardians? What if it decided to return home?”
I scarcely took this in as something else dawned on me. I looked urgently to Elric. “Klosterheim!” I cried. “Both of us survived his bullets because we were in the presence of the Grail and did not know it! The Grail works against dissipation. Gaynor could not have performed his magic with it on his person. The Grail’s still there. But that means everyone who was in its presence survived. Which means Klosterheim could even now be in possession of the Grail.”
Elric paused. I sensed that he was reluctant to stay in this dream. He wanted to rejoin Moonglum and continue his adventurings in the world he understood best. At last he said, “Klosterheim, too, has earned my vengeance. We’ll go back to Bek.” He paused, laying a long-fingered hand on my shoulder. For a moment he was a brother.
When we returned to the beach the dragons were already waiting for us, as if they knew we needed them. They
were rattling their quills and skipping with impatience from one huge foot to the other. The sun flashed off their butterfly colors dazzling all around. They were young Phoorn, capable of flying halfway around the world without tiring. They yearned to be aloft again.
We unrolled our skeffla’an and saddled our dragons. Climbing onto their broad backs, we settled ourselves in the natural indentations which could, on a Phoorn, take up to three riders.
With a murmur from Elric, still the great dragonmaster, bright reptilian wings cracked and moved the heavy air, cracked again and took us into the afternoon sky with the steady beat of rowers across a lake. They increased speed with each mighty flap, tails lashing and curling to steer us through the rushing currents of the air. With necks stretched out and great eyes blazing, they scanned the cloud ahead. Ancient firedrakes.
We skimmed the sea, then swept gracefully upwards until we were flying east over the gentle wooded hills and dales again, back towards Germany.
This time Elric took a slightly different course, going farther south than I might have expected, perhaps to witness the devastation of the proud hub of Empire in defeat. He, too, understood the peculiar ambivalences of owing allegiance to a dying empire.
But now there was some extra purpose to Elric’s flight as he led us down through the clouds and into the late afternoon light—to where an aerial dogfight was in progress. Two Spitfires wheeled and climbed as their guns blazed at an overwhelming pack of Stukas. The German planes had been deliberately fitted with screaming sirens to make them sound more deadly. The air filled with their dreadful Klaxons, but the Spitfires, with extraordinary lightness and maneuverability, gave back their best.
Elric was shouting as he urged his dragon down. I heard his voice faintly on the wind as I followed him. After the incredible exhilaration of our dive, Blacksnout turned her long head, narrowed her great yellow eyes, and snorted.
She snorted acid fire.
Fire struck first one Stuka and then another. Plane after plane went down in an instant as the dragon swept the squadron with her terrible breath. I saw looks of astonishment on the thankful faces of the Spitfire pilots as they banked upwards and flew as fast as they could into the cloud.
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