The Skrayling Tree

by Michael Moorcock

  The tall Indian seemed to know me. He tried to stay me with his hand. “Only she can make the Silver Path across the ice. Wherever she passes, that will give us our way. But she goes against the Winds of the World. They are Winds gone mad. She goes against Lord Shoashooan.”

  I yelled something back at him, but that, too, was snatched from my mouth by the railing currents.

  A sudden cut of cold wind slashed across my face, momentarily blinding me. When I could see again, Oona was gone.

  Behind me I sensed a presence.

  The Indian was climbing onto the back of the mammoth. Behind him, marching down the beach, came a group of warriors who appeared to have stepped off the set of Gõtterdàmmerung. Save for the fact that not all were Scandinavians, I confronted as unwholesome looking a bunch of hardened Vikings as I had ever seen. Immediately I reached for my sword.

  The leader stepped forward out of the press. He wore a silvered mirror helm. I had seen it before. I knew him. And something in me, however terrified, knew the satisfaction of confirmed instinct. My instincts had been right. Gaynor the Damned was abroad again.

  If I had not recognized him by his helm I would have known him by that low, sardonic laughter.

  “Well, well, Cousin. I see our friend heard the sound of my horn. He seems to have inconvenienced you a little.” He held up the curling bull’s horn, covered in ornate copper and bronze, which hung at his belt. “That was the second blast. The third will bring the end of everything.”

  And then he drew his own blade. It was black. It howled.

  I was desperate. I had to help my wife. Yet if I did so now, I would be attacked from behind by Gaynor and his brutish crew.

  Then it was as if Ravenbrand had seized my soul, conscience and common sense, and I found that I’d drawn it again without thought.

  I began to advance towards the armored Vikings.

  I heard the thin, sweet sound of a bone flute. It echoed like a symphony around the peaks. Gaynor cursed and turned, flinging his hatred towards the Indian, who sat cross-legged upon the neck of the mammoth, his eyes closed, his lips pursed, playing his instrument.

  Something was happening to Gaynor’s sword. It twisted and shivered in his hand. He screamed at it. He took it in both hands and tried to control it, but he could not. Was I right? Did the flute actually control the sword?

  Then my own sword almost dragged me towards the causeway and my wife. Behind me I heard the shouts of Gaynor and his men. I prayed they were diverted by the Indian. I had to help my wife, my dearest love, my only sanity.

  “Oona!”

  My voice was turned to nothing by mocking breezes. Every time I tried to call out, the wind stole my every sound. All I could feel and hear were the vibrations in the sword which had somehow found a common harmony with the whirlwind. Did I carry a traitor weapon? Did this sword bear some loyalty to the howling black tornado in whose depths I now made out a glaring, gleeful face, delighting in what it would do to the lone woman still walking towards it, arrow nocked to bowstring, stance resolute, as if she were about to take a shot at a stag?

  Black fog jetted out of the tornado. Long tendrils swam to surround and engulf Oona, who stepped in and out of the tangle like a girl playing hopscotch, her arrow still aimed.

  And then she loosed the arrow.

  The gigantic, inverted pyramid of air and dust began to shout. Something very much like laughter issued from it, a sound which turned my stomach. I ran all the faster until I was standing on the causeway which now moved like mercury under my feet. It took me several moments to regain my balance and discover that I did not need to sink into it. With an effort of will I could walk along it. With even more effort, I could run.

  And run I did as Oona let fly a second arrow and a third, all in a space of seconds. Each arrow formed the points of a V in the thing’s face. It raged and foamed, seeking to shake the arrows loose. Its eyes were full of a knowing intelligence, yet one which had lost all control of itself. Lord Shoashooan was still grinning, still laughing, and again his tendrils were curling, tightening, drawing my wife into the depths of his body.

  The flute’s note rose for a third time.

  Oona was violently ejected from the body of the tornado. Clearly the arrows had worked some mysterious magic in conjunction with the flute. She was flung back to the Shining Path and lay, a tiny heap of bones, covered by that bright, white buffalo robe, on the shifting quicksilver.

  I yelled to her as I ran past with no time to see if she still lived, so determined was I to take revenge and stop the creature from attacking her again.

  I was swallowed by an ear-piercing shriek, inhaling foul air and confronting an even fouler face which leered at me from the depths of the wind. It licked dark blue lips and opened a yellow maw and extended its tongue to receive me.

  Instead, the green-brown tongue was cut in two by my Ravenbrand, which yelped its glee like a hound in chase. Another movement of the blade and the tongue was quartered. Intelligence again bloomed in those hideous eyes as it realized it was not dealing with an ordinary mortal but with a demigod, for with that sword bonded to my flesh I knew that I was nothing less. A mortal able to wield the powers of gods and to destroy gods.

  Nothing less.

  I began to laugh at those widening eyes. I grinned in imitation of its bloody mouth as it swallowed its parts back into its core and re-formed them. And while it used its own energy to restore itself, I struck again, this time at one of the glaring eyes, cutting a slender thread of blood across the pupil. The monster moaned and cursed in painful anger. Oona’s arrows had weakened him.

  I struck at the smoky tendrils as if they were flesh, and the sword cut through them. But Lord Shoashooan was constantly forming and re-forming himself, constantly spinning himself into new guises within his inverted cone as if he tried to find the best way of destroying me.

  But he could not destroy me. I fed off the stolen souls of scores of the recently dead. Fresh souls and, moreover, no demon duke to share them with. I knew that familiar, horrible ecstasy. Once tasted it was always feared, never forgotten, always desired. The vital stuff of all those I had killed filled my human body and turned it into something at once unnatural and supernatural, the conduit of the sword’s dark energy. Oona was a forgotten rival. Now I belonged to the sword.

  Deep into the being’s vitals the sword plunged. Only Ravenbrand knew where to stab, for only she was completely on the same plane as the demon lord whose powers I had once sought to harness myself. Now I had no such fine ambition. I was fighting for my life and soul.

  The black energy pouring into me sharpened my senses. I was hideously alive. I was completely alert. I parried every tentacle’s attempt to seize me. I laughed wildly. I drove again and again at the head while all around me the thing’s whirlwind body shrieked and screamed and thrashed, threatening to destroy the mountains.

  Whatever part of me was myself and whatever was Elric of Melniboné, I clung to those identities, and it seemed a thousand other identities were drawn to them. Drawn by the power of the black sword. Could good come out of evil, as evil often came from good? This was no paradox, but a fact of the human condition. I struck two-handed at something which might have been the thing’s jugular and was rewarded. The tornado suddenly collapsed into a wide, filthy cloud, and I was covered with what I supposed was its inner core, its blood. A green sticky mess which hampered my every move, for all my extraordinary strength, and seemed to be hardening on my flesh.

  I had struck the thing a crucial blow, but now I was helpless, whirling around and around and suddenly flung, as my wife had been flung, out onto the Silver Path. I landed winded, but I still clung to the sword and was able to stumble to my feet just in time to see a monstrous white buffalo charging down on me.

  My instinct and my sword’s natural bloodlust worked together. I brought the great black battle blade up like a skewer and gored the massive bison in the chest. A second blow and the buffalo went down. A third and her blood was
gouting onto the ice.

  I turned in triumph, expecting to receive the congratulations of those I had saved.

  The face that met mine was that of a second newcomer. It was as bone-white as my own with eyes just as crimson. He could easily have been my son, for I guessed him to be no older than sixteen. There was an expression of disbelieving horror on his face. What was wrong? He was the boy I had seen on the island, of course. Who was he? Neither my son, nor my brother. Yet that grim face had a distinct likeness to the rest of the family.

  “So,” I said, “the enemy is vanquished, gentlemen. Is there more work to do?” I was met with silence. “Have you no stomach for the adventure?” I was still strutting with egocentric euphoria which came with so much bloodletting.

  Then I realized that these men were looking at me with considerable gravity, as if I had committed some error of taste or perhaps even a crime.

  Ayanawatta stepped forward. He reached out and wrenched the sword from my hand, flinging it to the path. Then he turned me around and showed me what lay behind me. “She was to lead us across the ice. Only White Buffalo Woman can walk the Shining Path. Now she is dead.”

  It was Oona. Her white buffalo robe was stained with blood. She had three sword wounds. The wounds were exactly where I had struck the white buffalo.

  Slowly the horror of what I had done infused me. I picked up the sword and flung it far out across the ice.

  In my battle madness, as she had come to save me, I had killed my own wife!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Shining Path

  Golden was the city ere Rome were mud,

  Philosophies she dream’d ere Greece was form’d

  Senses she explor’d before the rise of Man;

  Long was her glory before decline began.

  ALBERT AUSTIN,

  “Ancient, In Ancient Days Atlantis Dream’d”

  Disbelievingly I stumbled towards the frail corpse. Had I really killed my wife? I prayed that this was the illusion and not the bizarre beast I had cut down with my sword.

  The wind had fled in defeat and left behind it a deep, triumphant silence. I heard my own footfalls on the silvery path, smelled the sweet salt of fresh blood as I knelt and reached towards the warm, familiar face.

  Then I was knocked sprawling. The albino youth I had first seen on the island stooped and swiftly wrapped my wife in the buffalo robe. Without hesitation he began to run towards the great pyramid city. As he ran, the Silver Path extended before him and remained behind him where he passed. I raised myself to follow him, but I was exhausted. I had no sword. All my stolen energy was draining from me.

  I stumbled and fell on the unstable causeway. My hands sank into mercury. I tried to crawl. My cry filled worlds with sorrow.

  Then Lobkowitz was there, and with the Indian stood over me and helped me to my feet.

  “He seeks to save her,” said Lobkowitz. “There is a chance. See? Even in death she has the power to make the path.”

  “Why did you let me—?” I stopped myself. I had never been one to blame others for my own follies, but this was worse than anything I could possibly have imagined. There were terrible resonances within me as Elric’s memories confronted mine and came together in common guilt. Only now did I remember who I really was. How had Elric managed to take me over so thoroughly? I looked about me, expecting him to appear as he had first appeared to me in the concentration camp. But our relationship was by now far more profound.

  Lobkowitz signed to the Indian. “Ayanawatta, sir. If you would take his other arm…”

  Ayanawatta responded immediately, and I was hauled bodily up as the two men mounted the massive pachyderm who waited impatiently for us.

  Now I could see the reasons for their urgency.

  The Vikings were returning. Already they were running towards the pathway, which would be as useful to them as it would be to us. They had reassembled around their leader, who, in his mirror helm, still looked for all the world like my defeated enemy, Gaynor the Damned. I heard their voices echoing across the ice. Were they gaining on us?

  I struggled to find my sword, but the two men gripped me tightly, and I was too weary to fight them.

  “Do not fear Gunnar and company,” said Prince Lobkowitz. “We will reach the safety of the city before they catch up with us.”

  “Once we are through the gates, he cannot harm us,” the other man agreed.

  I was relieved to see that at least the youth was safe. His pace dropped to a walk as he passed beneath the gateway and disappeared within. I looked back again. Gunnar—or Gaynor—was still pursuing us. There was something odd about the perspective. They seemed either too far away or too small in relation to the gigantic mammoth. Perhaps all this was an illusion or another dream? Should I trust my own eyes? Could I trust any of my senses? I felt as if I had swelled enormously in size and lost substance at the same time. My skin felt like a balloon about to burst. My head was fuzzy with a kind of fever. All perspective around me seemed to be warping and shifting. The mammoth became smaller, then larger. I felt sick. My eyes ached, and I could hold my head up no longer.

  As the pair dragged me towards the city I lost my senses entirely. By the time I recovered we were behind the tall walls of the Kakatanawa city, and an unexpected security filled me. The youth with my wife’s corpse was nowhere to be seen. Indeed, to my astonishment, the great courtyard around the gigantic city was completely deserted. And yet I had noted complex activity earlier as I approached the ziggurat. It seemed that everything had become an inchoate illusion, like a dream without rational meaning. How could such a vast city now give the impression of being empty?

  Even the mammoth appeared surprised, lifting her huge trunk, her tusks actually making whistling noises in the air as she raised her head, and trumpeting out a greeting which received no response, save from the echoes among the empty tiers and the distant peaks.

  Where were the Kakatanawa, the giant Indians who had brought me to the Chasm of Nihrain and ultimately to this world? I tried to free myself from the friendly hands still holding me. I needed to find someone who would give me the answers. I think I was babbling. At some point thereafter I fell into a deep sleep. But it was not a comforting sleep. My dreams were as disturbed as my life had become, and as mysterious.

  In those dreams I saw a thousand incarnations of Oona, of the woman I loved, and in those same dreams I killed her a thousand times in a thousand different ways. I knew a thousand different kinds of remorse, of unbearable grief. But out of all this spiritual agony I seemed to find a tiny thread of hope. I saw it as a thin, grey wire which led from tragedy towards joyous resolution, where all fear was driven away, all terror quietened, all gentle dreams made real. And I wondered if Kakatanawa were just another name for Tanelorn, if here I might rest and have my love and my life restored.

  “This is not Tanelorn.” I awoke refreshed. The black giant Sepiriz was staring down at me. He held a goblet in his hand which he offered me. Yellow wine. [ drank and felt better still. But then memory came back, and I sprang off the dais on which I had been lying. I looked around for my sword. Apart from the platform on which I had slept, the room was entirely empty. I ran into the next room, out of a door, into a corridor. All empty. No furniture. No occupants.

  “Is this Kakatanawa?”

  “It is the city of that people, yes.”

  “Have they fled? I saw them…”

  “You saw what travelers have seen for centuries now. You saw a memory of the city as she was in her prime. Now she dies, and her people are reduced to those few you have already met.”

  “And where are they?”

  “Returned to their positions.”

  “My wife?”

  “She is not dead.”

  “Alive? Where?”

  Sepiriz tried to comfort me. He offered me more of the wine. “I told you that she was not dead. I did not say she was alive. The tree alone no longer has that power. The bowl alone no longer has that power. The di
sk itself alone has no power. The staff alone no longer has the power. The blade alone no longer has that power. The stone alone no longer has that power. The pivot is gone. Only if the Balance is restored can she live. Meanwhile, there is some hope. Three by three, the unity.”

  “Let me see her!”

  “No. It is too soon. There is more to do. And unless you play your prescribed role, you will never see her.”

  I could only trust him, though his assurances had hidden aspects to them. He had promised me I would see Oona again, but he had not told me she might take a different form.

  “Do you understand, Count Ulric, that the Lady Oona saved your life?” asked Sepiriz gently. “While you fought Lord Shoashooan most bravely and weakened him considerably, it was the dreamthief’s daughter who dealt him the final, dissipating blow, which sent his elements back to the world’s twelve corners.”

  “She shot those arrows, I remember…”

  “And then, after you precipitously attacked the demon duke, thinking you saved her, she aided you again. She at last took the shape of the White Buffalo whose destiny was to make our final road across the ice. She had the greatest tradition of resisting Lord Shoashooan. Do you understand? She became the White Buffalo. The Buffalo is the trail-maker. She can lead the way to new realms. In this realm, she is the only force the wind elementals fear, for she carries the spirit of all the spirits.”

  “There are more elementals?”

  “They combined in Lord Shoashooan, who was ever a powerful lord with many alliances among the air elementals. But now he has taken them in thrall. Although the twelve spirits of the wind are conquered by his powers, they can still re-form. All the winds serve him in this realm. It is why he succeeds so well. He commands those elementals who were once the friends of your people.”

  “Friends no longer?”

  “Not while that mad archetype enslaves them. You must know that the elementals serve neither Law nor Chaos, that they have only loyalty to themselves and their friends. Only inadvertently do they serve the Balance. And now, against their will, they serve Lord Shoashooan.”