The Skrayling Tree

by Michael Moorcock

  It hung against the living copper which reflected the erratic light of the torch. That black iron, so full of an alien vitality, was caught as if by a magnet. Within the blade I was sure I detected moving runes. Then I thought they might have been mere reflected light from the brand. I shuddered again, this time not from cold but from memory. Ravenbrand was a family heirloom, but I knew little of its history, save that it was somehow the same sword as Elric’s Stormbringer. In my own realm of the multiverse the blade had supernatural qualities, but in its own realm I knew it was infinitely more powerful.

  Some deep strain within me yearned to hold that blade the moment I saw it. I remembered the wild bloodletting, the exhilarating horror of battle, the joy of testing your mettle against all the terrors of natural and supernatural worlds. I could almost taste the pleasure. I reached for the hilt before I had formed a single, conscious thought to do so. Then I reminded myself of my manners, if nothing else, and withdrew my hand.

  Lord Sepiriz looked down on me with that same half-humorous expression, and this time there was a distinct sorrow in his voice when he spoke. “You will take it. It is your destiny to carry Stormbringer.”

  “My destiny! You confuse me with Elric. Why does he not claim this sword?”

  “He believes he seeks it.”

  “And will he find it?”

  “When you find him…”

  I was sure that he was deliberately mystifying me. “I never entertained ambitions to act as your courier…”

  “Of course not. That is why I have your horse ready. Nihrainian horses are famous. Come, leave the sword for the moment, and we will hurry to the stables. If we are in luck, someone is waiting there to meet you.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Fate’s Fool

  If you tell me what my name is,

  Should you tell me what my station,

  I will speak of the Pukwatchis,

  I will lead you to their nation.

  I will show you what to steal.

  W. S. HARTE,

  “The Starry Trail”

  Though I grew familiar with this city’s grotesque and fantastic sights, I was unprepared for the Nihrainian stables. Little of that intricately hewn city lay outside the great caverns into which it was carved. We made our way through miles of impossibly complicated corridors and tunnels, every inch of which was etched with the same disturbing scenes.

  The muggy air tasted heavily of sulphur, and I had difficulty breathing. Lord Sepiriz did not slacken his steady gait and was hard to pace. Gradually the roofs grew higher and the galleries wider. I had the impression we were entering the core of the original city. What we had passed through up to now was a kind of suburb. Here the carvings seemed older. There was greater decay in the rock, some of which seemed almost rotten. Everywhere volcanic fires flared through windows and doorways and fissures in the ground, illuminating what seemed to me an astonishing desolation. Here was not the tranquillity of the Off-Moo chambers, but the stink of death so violent that its ancient memory permeated this living rock. I could almost hear the screams and shouts of those who had died terrible deaths, almost see their reflections trapped in the obsidian and basalt of the walls, writhing in perpetual torment. Once again I wondered if I was in Hell.

  Lord Sepiriz touched his brand to another. This in turn lit the next until in a flash of light I saw we stood at the entrance of a huge amphitheater, like a massive Spanish bullring with tiers of empty stone benches stretching up into a darkness, heavy and threatening. Yellow flames lit the scene from without while from within came an unstable scarlet glow. I felt I stood on the threshold of some strange necropolis. Our very life seemed an insult to the place, as if we intruded on every kind of agony. Even Lord Sepiriz seemed borne down by the sadness and horror. We could have been in the killing fields of the universe.

  “What happened here?” I asked.

  “Ah.” The black giant lowered his head. He was lost for words, so I did not press the question.

  My foot stirred dark dust. It eddied like water. I imagined the blood which had been spilled in this arena, yet could not easily imagine how it had happened. There was no sense it had ever been used for gladiatorial fights or displays of wild beasts.

  “What was this place?” I spoke with some hesitation, perhaps not wishing to hear the answer.

  “At the end, it was a kind of court,” said Lord Sepiriz. He drew in a deep, melancholy breath, like the soughing of a distant wind. “A court where all the judges were mad and all the accused were innocent…” He began to walk across the arena, towards an archway. “A place of judgment which sentenced both court and defendants to a terrible death. This is why there are only ten of us now. Our fate was as preordained as yours as soon as we forged the swords.”

  “You made them? You mined the metal here… ?

  “We took the original metal from a master blade. War raged as always between Law and Chaos. We thought to make a powerful agent against one of them. The swords were forged to fight against whichever power threatened to tilt the Balance. Law against Chaos or Chaos against Law. We drew on all our many powers to make them, and when they were finished we knew we had found the means to save worlds and perhaps destroy them at the same time. A mysterious power entered one of the blades. While they were otherwise identical and could feed great vitality to those who wielded them, Storm-bringer was subtly different. Those who made that particular blade and summoned the magic required to enliven it knew they had created something that was oddly, independently evil. Somehow, though Mourn-blade, the sister sword, had little such power, those who handled Stormbringer developed a craving for killing. Honest blacksmiths became mass murderers. Women killed their own children with the blade. Ultimately it was decided to put both the handlers and Stormbringer on trial…”

  “Here?”

  Sepiriz lowered his head in assent. “Here, in the stables. This is where the horses were exercised and exhibited. We loved our beautiful horses. But it seemed the only suitable place. Originally this ring was used for equestrian displays. Our Nihrainian horses are very unusual in that while they exist on this plane, they simultaneously exist on another. This gives them some useful qualities. And some entertaining ones.” Sepiriz smiled as a happy memory intruded on the sadness.

  Then, pulling himself together, he straightened his shoulders and clapped his enormous hands.

  The sound was like a shot in the huge, silent arena. It brought an almost instant reaction.

  From within came a whinny, a snort. Something pounded the hard surface. Another great whinny, and out of the archway, mane flaring as if in the wind, sprang a horse of supernatural proportions. A monstrous black stallion, big enough to carry Sepiriz. He reared, flailing bright jet hooves and glaring from raging ocher eyes. The beast’s mane and tail became a wild mass of black fire. He was muscular, nervous. This gigantic beast expressed impatience rather than anger. But at a word from Sepiriz, the horse cocked his ears forward and immediately settled. I had never seen a creature respond so swiftly to human command.

  Although there was no doubting the animal’s physical presence, I quickly noticed that for all his activity, he scarcely stirred the dust of the arena floor and left no hoofprints of any kind.

  Noting my curiosity, Sepiriz laid a hand gently on my shoulder. “The horse, as I told you, exists on two planes at once. The ground he gallops on is unseen by us.”

  He led me up to the horse, who nuzzled at him, seeking a familiar treat. The beast already wore a saddle and bridle and seemed equipped for war as well as travel.

  I reached a hand towards the mighty head and rubbed the animal’s velvet nose. I noted the bright, white teeth and red tongue, the hot, sweet breath.

  “What is his name?” I asked.

  “He has no name in your terms.” Sepiriz did not elaborate. He looked towards the walls, searching for something he had expected to find there. “But he will carry you through all danger and serve you to the death. Once you are in his saddle, he will
respond as any horse, but you will find him, I think, unusually intelligent and capable.”

  “He knows where I am to go?”

  “He is not prescient!”

  “No?” For a moment the ground beneath my feet shifted like liquid, then as quickly resettled. Again Sepiriz refused to answer my unspoken question. He was still searching. His eyes scanned the long, empty stone benches stretching into the gloom. I noticed that the darkness seemed to have absorbed some of the upper tiers. Smoke or mist swirled and gave carved figures expressions of gloating glee, then of wild, innocent joy.

  Sepiriz noted this at the same time I did. I was certain I saw a flash of alarm in his eyes. Then he smiled with pleasure and turned as another horse emerged from the archway into the stadium. This horse had a rider. A familiar rider. A man I had met more than once. Our families had been related for centuries. His was a branch which had supported Mozart and been famous for its taste and intelligence.

  This rider had first introduced himself to me in the 1930s as a representative of an anti-Nazi group. His handsome, heavy features were enhanced now by an eighteenth-century wig, a tricorn hat and military greatcoat. He looked like one of the famous portraits of Frederick the Great. Of course it was my old acquaintance, the Austrian prince Lobkowitz. His clothing was bulky, completely unsuitable for this volcanic cavern. His face was already beaded with sweat, and he dabbed at himself with a vast handkerchief of patterned Persian silk.

  “Good morning, sir.” His voice a little hoarse, he reined in and lifted his hat, for all the world as if we met on a country bridle path near Bek. “I’m mightily glad to see you. We have a destiny to pursue. Sentient life depends upon it. Have you brought the sword?”

  Lobkowitz dismounted as Lord Sepiriz came towards him, towering over the Austrian, who was not a short man. Sepiriz kneeled to embrace him. “We were unsure you could perform so complicated a figure. We had other means ready, but they were even more fragile. You must have succeeded thus far, or you would not have joined us.”

  Prince Lobkowitz put his hand on Lord Sepiriz’s arm and came to shake my hand. He was in high spirits. Indeed, I found his attitude a little unseemly, considering my circumstances, if not his. His warm charm, however, was impossible to resist.

  “My dear Count von Bek. You cannot know the odds against your being here and our meeting like this. Luck, if not the gods, seems on our side. The dice are tossed by a fierce wind, but now at least there is a little hope.”

  “What is the task? What do you seek to accomplish?”

  Lobkowitz looked at Lord Sepiriz in surprise. He seemed to expect the black giant to have told me more. “Why, sir, we seek to save the life and soul of your dear wife, my protégée, Oona, the dreamthief’s daughter.”

  I was horrified. “My wife is in danger? What is happening back there? Is someone attacking the house?”

  “In relation to our position in the scheme of things, she is no longer at your house in Canada. She is further inland, deep in the Rockies, and facing an enemy who draws his strength from every part of the multiverse. Unless we reach her at exactly the right moment, where our story intersects with hers, she will perish.”

  I could not control the pain I experienced at this news. “How did she come to be where she is? Could you not have helped her?”

  Prince Lobkowitz indicated his costume. “I was until lately, sir, in the service of Catherine the Great. Where, I might add, I met your unsavory ancestor Manfred.”

  For one of such habitual grace, he seemed in poor temper. I apologized. I was a simple man. I had no means of understanding this topsy-turvy tumble of different worlds. It was more than I could normally do to try to imagine the space between the Earth and the Moon. Yet my veins beat with anxious blood at the thought of my beloved wife in danger, and I feared for my children, for everything that had meaning to me. I wanted to turn on this pair and blame them for my circumstances, but it was impossible. Another intelligence lurked within my own.

  Gradually his presence was growing stronger. Elric of Melniboné, who believed in the reality of only one world, understood perhaps instinctively the complexity of the multiverse. His experience, if not his intellect, told him how one branch sometimes intersected with another and sometimes did not, how branches grew quickly, took on bizarre shapes, and died as suddenly as they appeared.

  Elric understood this science as his own sorcerous wisdom, captured over years of education in the long dreams which gave the Melnibonéan capital its nickname of the Dreamers’ City. For Elric’s people extended their lives through drug- and sorcery-induced dreams which assumed their own reality, sometimes for thousands of years. By this means, too, did their dragon kin, to whom they were related by blood, sleep and dream and manifest themselves, no doubt, in others’ dreams. It was dangerous for anyone but the full adept to attempt such an existence. And dangerous, I knew, to try to change a narrative which gave some kind of uneasy order to our lives. At best we could create a whole new universe or series of universes. At worst we could destroy those which now existed and by some mistake or unlucky turn of the cards consign ourselves and everything we knew to irreversible oblivion.

  My twentieth-century European sensibilities were repelled by such ideas, yet Elric’s soul was forever blended with my own. And Elric’s memory was filled with experiences I would normally dismiss as the fantasies of a tormented madman.

  Thus I accepted and refused to accept at the same time. It was a wonder I had the coordination to mount the huge horse. He was at least as large as the famous old warhorses of past legends. I looked for Sepiriz, to ask him a question, but he had gone. The saddle and stirrups were modified for a man of my size, yet the saddle still felt huge, giving me an unfamiliar sense of security.

  There was no doubt my horse was pleased to have a rider. He moved impatiently, ready to gallop. At Lobkowitz’s suggestion I cantered the stallion around the arena. The Nihrainian steed trod the ground with evident familiarity, tossing his great black mane and snorting with pleasure. I noted the strong, acrid smell he exuded when he moved. It was the smell I normally associated with a wild predator.

  Lobkowitz followed me, saying little but clearly noting my handling of the animal. He congratulated me on my horsemanship, which made me laugh. My father and brothers had all despaired of me as the worst rider in the family!

  As we rode, I begged him to tell me more about Oona and her whereabouts. He asked that I respect any reticence on his part. Knowledge of a future could change it, and it was our task not to change the future but to ensure that, in one realm at least, it be a future I desired for my loved ones and myself. I must trust him. With some reluctance, I bowed to his judgment. I had no reason, I said, not to trust him, but my head ached with many questions and uncertainties.

  Sepiriz returned bearing a scabbarded sword. Was it the sword I knew as Ravenbrand, which Elric called Stormbringer? Or was it the sister sword, Mournblade? Sepiriz did not tell me. “Each sword is of equal power. The power of the other avatars weakens in proportion to their distance from the source. It is as well it happened this way,” he said. “The Kakatanawa have already gone home. The circle tightens. Here.”

  As I reached to accept the sword, I thought its metal voiced a faint moan, but it could have been my imagination. There was, however, a distinct, familiar vibrancy to the hilt as it settled into my right hand. Automatically I hooked the scabbard to the heavy saddle.

  “So,” I said. “I am prepared to follow a road for which I have no maps, in a quest whose purpose is mysterious, with a companion who seems scarcely more familiar with the territory than I am. You place much faith in me, Sepiriz. I would remind you that I remain suspicious of your motives and your part in my wife’s endangerment.”

  Sepiriz accepted this, but clearly he did not intend to illuminate me further. “Only if you are successful in this adventure will you ever know more of the truth concerning the swords,” the black seer told me. “But if you do, indeed, succeed in fulfilling your de
stiny, of serving Fate’s purpose, then I promise, what you hear shall hearten you.”

  And with that Lobkowitz yelled for us to be off. We must be free of Nihrain before the new eruption, when all here will be destroyed, and Sepiriz and his brothers will ride out into the world to fulfill another part of their complex destiny.

  I could do nothing but follow him. The prince bent over his horse’s neck and rode with impossible speed out of the huge amphitheater and down corridors of liquid scarlet veined with black and white and tunnels of turquoise, milky opal and rubies. All carved in the same relief. Faces begged and twisted in agony. Their eyes yearned for any kind of mercy. Vast scenes stretched for miles, every figure minutely detailed, all exquisitely individual. Landscapes of the most appalling beauty, of elaborate horror and hideous symmetry, rose and fell around me as I rode. All were given movement by my own speed. Were they designed to be seen thus? A creative style best appreciated from the back of a galloping warhorse?

  I began to believe that I inhabited a fantastic dream, a nightmare from which I must inevitably wake. Then I remembered all I had learned from Oona and realized that I might never wake, might never see her or my children again. This infuriated me, firing me with a righteous anger against Fate or whatever less abstract force Sepiriz and his kind served.

  I put all that emotion into my riding, into following the expert Lobkowitz through tunnels, chambers, corridors of dazzling diamonds and sapphires and carnelians, down long slopes and up flights of steps, our horses’ hooves never quite touching the ground of the paths we traced. I gasped and braced myself to fall the first time the horse galloped across the air separating one part of the mountain from another. By the second experience I had learned to trust its surefooted pace over an invisible landscape.

  We galloped through oceans of lava, through foaming rivers of dust, over blue-veined pools of marble, sometimes blinded by a fiery light, sometimes plunging through pitch darkness. The great black horses never tired. When we passed through caverns of ice, their breath erupted like smoke from their nostrils, but they were otherwise undisturbed by any natural obstacle. Now I understood what a valuable animal Sepiriz had loaned me.