The Dreamthief's Daughter: A Tale of the Albino

by Michael Moorcock

“It might save your life, my friend. And yours is the only life I care for.”

  “It could bring me torment, and the same to all others in Tanelorn.”

  I shook my head. “If they break their word, they can no longer be representatives of Law.”

  “What kind of Law do they represent, even now? A Law willing to sacrifice justice for ambition.” Moonglum dragged at my arm as I began to descend the steps back to the ground. “And that’s what makes me doubt everything they promise. Be wary of them, my lord.” He gave up trying to persuade me and fell back. “I’ll be watching for any signs of their treachery and I’ll do what I can to ensure the duel’s fair. But I say again—it’s folly, my friend. Your mad, old blood has seized your brain again.”

  I was amused by this. “That mad blood has found us many ways out of trouble, friend Moonglum. Sometimes I trust it better than any logic.” But I could not raise his spirits.

  A dozen others, including Brut of Lashmar, begged me to be cautious. But something in me was determined to break this stalemate, to follow my blind instincts and embrace a story that was not inevitable, that took a fresh direction. I wanted to prove that it was not the working-out of some prefigured destiny. As I’d told Moonglum, this was by no means the first time I had let the old blood blaze through my veins, sing its song in me and fill my being with wild joy. If I lived, I swore it would not be the last time I felt that thrill.

  I was entirely alive again. I was taking risks. My life and soul were the stakes.

  I marched down the steps, shouted for the gates to be raised. Demanded that the she-wolf be gone. That the faceless knight meet me alone.

  When I had put Tanelorn’s walls at my back and stepped across the causeway out into that barren world, the she-wolf had vanished. I looked into a mirror. I saw my own blazing features, my glaring ruby eyes, my fine, white hair whipping about my shoulders as the wind continued to blow across the ash desert.

  The dismounted knight’s helm and breastplate reflected everything they faced. Seemingly an advantage in battle. It would feel as if you were fighting yourself!

  The knight stood with a silvery steel broadsword in his gauntleted hands. I was disturbed by the sight of it. He had not carried it earlier. This sword was a mirror of Stormbringer in everything but color. A negative image. I could easily recognize the symbols of sorcery, and that silver sword had no magical properties to speak of. I would have smelled them. Instead it exuded a deadness, a negativity.

  No sorcery. Or sorcery so subtle even I couldn’t detect it? A slow chill passed through me, leaving me wary and briefly weaker.

  I felt a frisson of déjà vu.

  Something chuckled from within the silver helm. A different note, almost a whisper.

  “We act out our stories many times, Prince Elric. And occasionally we are granted the means to change them. You will understand, I hope, that in some of those stories, in some of those incarnations, you lose. In some, you die. In others, you suffer more than death.”

  Again that mysterious chill.

  “I think this will be one of those other stories, my lord.”

  Then the gleaming blade was rushing down on me.

  I barely blocked it in time. Stormbringer growled as she clashed with that white steel. She was expressing hatred. Or was it fear? Not a sound I had heard from her before.

  I felt energy flowing out of me. With every countered blow, I found it harder to lift my sword. I peered into the silver helm as we fought but could see no hint of the features within.

  I was horrified. I relied on my sword’s strength to sustain my own. And now instead Stormbringer was sapping my strength. What aided this mysterious warrior? Why had I not smelled sorcery? I was clearly the victim of some supernatural force.

  The knight was not an expert swordsman, as I had expected. He was rather clumsy. Yet every blow of mine was met. Only rarely did the knight feint back at me. He seemed to be playing an entirely defensive role, This, too, made me suspicious. If I had not agreed to the fight, I would have ended it there and then and returned to the city.

  I was used to the wild song of my sword as I fought, but now Stormbringer merely vibrated with her blows. And those vibrations seemed feebler for every passing moment.

  Moonglum had been right. I was the victim of a trap. I had no choice but to fight on.

  Two more blows of mine were met by two of the knight’s and then I was staggering, my knees buckling. I could barely lift my sword, which increasingly became a dead weight in my hands. I was baffled. The urgency of my movements tired me further. I had been completely outmaneuvered.

  Again a low unfamiliar chuckle came from the depths of that helm.

  I rallied everything I had. I tried to call on Arioch for help, but I was overwhelmed with tiredness. An unnatural tiredness. I used all my sorcerer’s disciplines to bring my mind back into control over my body, but it was no use. The heavy pall of enchantment seeped through my being.

  Within a few minutes of that fight beginning I lost my footing, and fell backwards onto the harsh, white ground. I saw the armored figure stoop and take Stormbringer and I was horrified. I had no means of resistance. I tried to struggle up and failed. Few could handle that sword without evil consequences, yet my opponent was casually able to pick her up. My certainties were collapsing around me. I feared I was going mad.

  As my vision began to blur, I grew aware of the armored figure looking down on me, still laughing.

  “Well, Prince Elric. Our bargain and our duel are settled and you are free to return to Tanelorn. We’ll not harm the city, have no fear. I have what we came for.”

  The knight then lifted the helm for the first time. A woman looked down at me. A woman with pale, radiant features, with blond hair and glaring black eyes. A woman whose teeth were pointed, whose lips were on fire.

  I knew immediately how I had been deceived.

  “Lady Miggea, I presume.” I could barely whisper. “You gave your word. The word of Law.”

  “You didn’t listen carefully enough. It was the wolf who swore not to fight. Your blood is wise,” she said softly, “but it informs your heart, not your mind. These are urgent times. There is much at stake. Sometimes the old rules no longer sustain the reality.”

  “You’ll not keep your word? You said you’d leave the city in peace!”

  “Of course, I shall. I’ll let it die of natural causes.”

  “What do you mean?” My words were a dry gasp. I was beginning to realize the folly of my decision. Moonglum was right. I had brought untold disaster both to myself and my world. All because I had followed wild “instinct” rather than logic. There are times when faith provides only further catastrophe.

  “There’s no more water in this realm. Only what you see. Nothing to sustain your gardens. Nothing for you to drink.” She smiled to herself as she held up Stormbringer by the blade, clutching it in a fist which seemed to grow larger as she spoke. “Nothing to help you. No supernatural aid. You cannot return to your own realm. It took my power to bring you here and keep you here. Few are as powerful as Miggea of Law. No human aid will save you. In time you’ll wither away and that will be the end of you and your stories. But I have been merciful. You’ll know none of this, Prince Elric, for you will be asleep.”

  As my sight faded and the last of my strength went out of me, I made one last attempt to rise. “Sleep?”

  Her horrid crazed face came close to mine. She pursed her lips and blew into my eyes.

  And then I descended into dreaming darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Dreamthief’s Daughter

  I became dimly aware of my friends from the city carrying me back. I was entirely incapable of movement, drifting in and out of an enchanted sleep, only vaguely conscious of the surrounding world, sometimes completely oblivious to it. I knew my friends, especially Moonglum, were concerned. I tried to rouse myself, to speak, but every effort took me deeper into my dreamworld.

  I did not want to go deeper.
I feared something there. Something which Miggea had prepared for me.

  The only course open to me was the interior. Incapable of movement or communication, yet aware of my own condition, I finally let myself slip slowly down, afraid that I might never emerge again from the pit of my own complex psyche. Drowning in my own dark dreams.

  The last of my will deserted me. I began to fall. Away from Tanelorn. Away from all the fresh dangers of the future. Dangers I would not be able to face without my sword. And how would the sword be used? To destroy the Balance itself? My mind was in a turmoil. Falling at last into oblivion was a relief.

  I was unconscious for seconds, and then I began to dream. In my dream I saw a man clothed in rags, standing with his face turned from his own house, a book in his hand and a great bundle on his back. I wanted to ask him his name, but his eyes were filled with tears and he could not see me. For a moment I thought when he turned towards me his face would be mine, but it was a plain, round human head. He hesitated and then began to return to his house where his wife and children waited for him, glad he had not left them. They had not seen how distressed he was. For one of my kind to feel sympathy for such ordinary souls was almost disgusting, yet I longed to help these people in their misery.

  Time passed. At last I saw the man leave his house with his burden and walk away until he was out of sight. I began to follow him, but when I reached the crest of the hill he had gone. I saw a valley and in that valley a number of different battles were being fought. Men burned castles, villages and towns. They slaughtered women and children. They killed everything that lived, and then they turned on one another and began to kill again. The only road took me through this valley. Reconciled, I began my descent.

  I had not gone very far, however, before a small, hunched figure jumped from a rock onto the path in front of me and, grinning, offered me an elaborate bow. He spoke to me, but I could not hear him. He became frustrated, signing and gesturing, but still I could not understand him. Eventually he took me by the hand and led me around a corner of the rock. There ahead was what seemed like an ocean, rising vertically to form a wall in front of me. Through the ocean ran a gleaming road of dappled light, like one ray of sunshine falling on water.

  So strange was the perspective that I felt almost ill. Yet the crooked little man continued to lead me until we had stepped onto that dappled road and were walking up its steep surface. I had the strong smell of ozone in my nostrils. The road then straightened and became a silver moonbeam in a complex lattice of moonbeams, like the roadways through the realms. My guide was gone.

  I was alarmed. At the same time I realized I had a feeling of physical well-being. I had never known it before. I had only ever experienced pain or relief from pain, but never a body that did not know pain at all. All my life I had had to deal with some weakness, either physical or moral. Now I began to feel fresh, elated, even relaxed. Yet I knew that in reality I had no physical body at all, that it was only my dreaming soul which wandered these worlds of enchantment.

  The conflicting emotions within me did nothing to help my condition. I did not know if this was part of Miggea’s trap. I did not know which path to choose. I looked up into all that vast complexity and I saw a million roads, each one like a ray of light, on which creatures of every kind walked. I knew that there was no such thing as a multiversal vacuum, that every apparently empty space was populated. I saw the roadways as branches of a great silver tree, whose roots somehow went deep down into my own brain. I knew that this was the fundamental structure of the multiverse. I decided, in spite of recent experience, to trust my instincts and to follow a small branch running off a more substantial limb.

  I set foot on the pale road and it gave slightly to my step. It made walking a pleasure. In no time I had passed half a dozen branches, heading for my chosen path. But as I did so, I realized that the weave of the branches was more complicated than I had originally seen. I found myself in a tangle of minor brambles, which blocked my way and which I could not easily push aside. My body felt so light, so insubstantial that there was no danger of my breaking the branches. It seemed to me that tiny figures moved along other branches, just as I moved along mine.

  Eventually I found ways of passing through the branches so that I disturbed very little. I had the impression that somewhere up there might be another creature, far bigger than myself, perhaps a version of myself, who was carefully trying to avoid knocking me from my branch.

  At one point I paused. I was no longer dressed in my ordinary clothes but wore full Melnibonéan war armor. Not the elaborate baroque of ceremonial plate, but the efficient, blade-turning protection a man needed in battle. I had no sense of weight to the armor, any more than there was to my body. I half assumed I had died and become some kind of wandering ghost. If I remained here for a long time, I would gradually grow amorphous and merge with the atmosphere, breathed in like dust by the living.

  Having lost my original direction, I found myself wandering down increasingly narrow and twisting branches. I thought I must soon step upon the last twig at the farthest edge of the multiversal tree. I was beginning to despair when I saw that the track led through a tunnel formed of willow boughs. On the other side of that tunnel was a weirdly shaped cottage, thatched with the straw of centuries, its bricks apparently borrowed from every source in existence, its windows at peculiar angles and of odd sizes, its door narrow and tall, its chimneys fantastically curled. From the roof of the small porch hung several baskets of blooming flowers and a birdcage. Under the birdcage sat a black and white sheepdog, her tongue lolling as if she had just come in from a day’s work.

  The pleasant pastoral scene made me oddly wary. I had become used to traps and delusions. My enemies seemed to enjoy making promises they had no intention of keeping, as if they had just discovered the power of the lie. If this image were a lie, it was a clever one. Everything looked perfect, including the plume of smoke coming from the chimney, the smell of baking, the domestic clatter from within.

  I glanced back. Behind me, dwarfing everything, was the multiverse. Its great lattice filled all the myriad dimensions, its branches stretched into infinity. And its light shone down on this little cottage which sat exactly on the edge of the abyss, a great dark wood behind it. I tried to move forward and to my astonishment had some difficulty. The armor was heavy. My body, though feeling fit, was weary. In an instant I had become fully corporeal!

  I opened the gate of the cottage and dragged myself up the slate path to knock on the door. I remembered to remove my helmet. It was an awkward thing to carry under one’s arm, all angles and filigree.

  “Come in, Prince Elric,” called a cheerful young voice. “You have trustworthy instincts, it seems.”

  “Sometimes, madam.” I passed through the narrow doorway and found myself in a low-ceilinged room with black beams and white plaster. On the floor was luxurious carpet and on the walls were tapestries, living masterpieces showing every manner of human experience. I was astonished at the opulence, which seemed in contrast to the domestic atmosphere.

  A young woman came from the next room, evidently the kitchen, wiping flour from her hands and arms. The powder fell in a silvery shower to the rich maroon carpet. She sniffed and then sneezed, apologizing. “I have waited for you for what seems an eternity, my lord.”

  I could not speak. I looked at one of my own kind. She had extraordinary, aquiline beauty, with slanting eyes and delicate, small, slightly pointed ears. Her eyes were red as fresh strawberries in a skin the color of bleached ivory. Her long, bone-white hair fell in soft folds down over her shoulders. She wore a simple shirt and breeches, over which she had thrown a rough linen apron. And she was laughing at me.

  “My friend Jermays put you on the right road, I see.”

  “Who was that little man?”

  “You’ll meet him again in time, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “We all do. Often when our stories start to alter. Sometimes one’s destiny changes ra
dically. A new tale is born. A new myth to weave in with the old. A new dream.”

  “I am dreaming this. I am dreaming you. Therefore I am dreaming this conversation. Does this mean that I am mad? Has the enchantment which holds me in sleep also attacked my brain?”

  “Oh, we all dream one another, Prince Elric, in some ways. It is our dreams and our demands upon them which have made us so various and at odds with so much and so many.”

  The young woman even had gestures which I recognized.

  “Would you do me the honor, madam, of telling me your name.”

  “I’m called White Hare Sister by the dreamthieves and shape-changers amongst whom I was raised. But my mother calls me Oona, after the custom of her folk.”

  “Her name is Oone?”

  “Oone the Dreamthief. And I am Oona, the dreamthief’s daughter. And Oonagh will be my daughter’s name.”

  “Oone’s daughter?” I hesitated. “And mine?”

  She was laughing openly now as she came towards me. “I think it likely, don’t you?”

  “I did not know there was—issue.”

  “Oh, quite spectacular ‘issue,’ I assure you, Father.”

  The word struck at me with the force of a tidal wave. Father! An emotional blow worse than any sword stroke. I wanted to deny it, to say anything which would prove me to be dreaming. To make this fact disappear. But my eyes could not deceive me. Everything about her showed that she was my daughter and Oone’s. I had loved Oone briefly. We had sought the Fortress of the Pearl together. But as I remembered this, another thought occurred to me. More deception!

  “Not enough time has passed,” I said. “You are too old to be my daughter.”

  “In your plane, perhaps, my lord, but not on this one. Time is not a road. It’s an ocean. I believe you and my mother celebrated your friendship here in this realm.”

  I liked her irony.

  “Your mother—?” I began.

  “Her interests are no longer in these worlds, although she occasionally visits the End of Time, I understand.”