The few surviving Stukas turned to seek the relative safety of the high skies, but Elric ignored them. We flew on.
Ten minutes later we came upon a great sea of Junkers bombers. It struck me that their crews were my own countrymen. Some of them could be cousins or distant relatives. Ordinary, decent German boys caught up in the nonsense of militarism and the Nazi dream. Was it right to kill such people, in any cause? Were there no other alternatives?
Whitesnout followed her sister down the hidden air trails. Their tails cracked like gigantic whips, venom frothed and seethed in their mouths and nostrils. Our dragons fell upon their prey with all the playful joy of young tigers finding themselves in a herd of gazelle.
Guns fired at us, but not a single shot struck. The dragons’ steely scales deflected anything that hit them. For the gunners it was impossible—they must have thought they were dreaming.
Down we went and all I saw were Nazi hooked crosses, a symbol which stood for every infamy, every dishonor, every cynical cruelty the world had ever known. It was those crosses I attacked. I did not care about the crews who flew under such banners. Who were not ashamed to fly under such banners.
Down I dived. Whitesnout’s venom seared from her mouth, blown by red-hot air generated in one of her many stomachs. The flaming poison struck bomber after bomber, all still with their loads. They blew into fragments before our eyes.
Some of the planes tried to peel away. Some dropped their bombs at random. But again the dragons circled. Again the planes were destroyed. The few that remained turned tail and raced back towards Germany. What story would they tell when they returned? What story would they dare tell? They had failed, however they explained it.
And thus we gave birth to a famous legend. A legend which took credit for the victory of the RAF over the Luftwaffe. The legend which many believed turned the course of the war and caused Hitler to lose all judgment and perhaps what was left of his sanity. A legend which proved as powerful, in the end, as the Nazi myth unleashed on the peoples of Europe. Ours was the legend of the Dragons of Wessex, which came to the aid of the English in their hour of need. A legend which elevated British morale as thoroughly as it crushed German. Even the story of the Angel of Mons from the first world war was not as potent in its time as the legend of the Dragons of Wessex. King Arthur, Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, it was said, all reappeared. Flying on the fabulous beasts of ancient days, they came to serve their nation in its hour of need. The story would eventually be suppressed, as Hess was to discover. The legend was so powerful that propaganda resources of both nations were devoted to promoting or denying it.
By the time we flew home to Germany, we had destroyed several squadrons of bombers and innumerable fighters. The Battle of Britain had turned significantly. From that moment on, Hitler acted with increased insanity as his predictions lost credibility. From that moment on, his famous luck wholly deserted him.
As the tireless dragon bore me back to Bek, I mourned. I endured the anguish of my own conscience. Though the cause had been right, I had still made war on my own people. I understood all the reasons why I should have done it, but I would never, for the rest of my life, be fully reconciled to this burden of guilt. If I survived and peace was restored, I knew I would meet some mothers whom I would not be able to look in the eye.
The joy of victory, the thrill of the flight, was tempered by a strange melancholy which has remained with me ever since.
By the time we reached Bek, the place was evidently deserted. There wasn’t a guard in sight. Hitler and his people had left in disgust and everyone else had made haste to disassociate themselves with the place. There was nothing left to guard.
The place was oddly still as we landed on the battlements and cautiously made our way down into the old armory.
Scenes of mayhem were everywhere. Blood was everywhere. But no corpses. And no cup.
Where was the Grail? All the evidence indicated it was never removed from Bek. But did Klosterheim somehow take it?
Oona gestured to me to wait for her as she slipped away into the deserted castle.
I felt Elric’s hand on my shoulder again, an affectionate brotherly gesture.
“We must find Klosterheim.” I turned and started to make my way back up the stairs.
“No!” Elric was emphatic.
“What? It’s my duty to follow him,” I said.
“I’ll follow Klosterheim,” said Elric. “If I’m successful you’ll never see him again. I’ll return to Melniboné. These young dragons have done good work and must be rewarded.”
“And Oona? Your daughter?”
“The dreamthief’s daughter stays here.” With a cold crack of his cloak he turned his back on me and strode for the steps leading from the chamber. I wanted to ask him to return. I had much to thank him for. But, of course, I had served him also. We had been of mutual help. I had saved him from eternal slumber and he had turned the tide of war. The Luftwaffe was crushed. By the courage of a few and with the help of a powerful legend.
Britain would gather strength. America would help her. Eventually the fascists would be ousted from power and democracy restored.
But before that moment came, the blood of millions would be spilled. It was hard to see who would win anything from that terrible conflict.
I looked helplessly around at our old armory. So much violence had taken place here. How would it ever feel like home to me again?
How much I’d lost since Gaynor’s first visit to Bek! When he tried to get the Raven Sword from me in order to kill my doppelgänger’s daughter! I had certainly lost a kind of innocence. I had also lost friends, servants. And a certain amount of self-respect.
What had I gained? Knowledge of other worlds? Wisdom? Guilt? A chance to turn the tide of history, to stop the spread of Nazi tyranny? Many yearned to be able to do that. Circumstances of blood and time had put me in a position to change the course of the war in favor of my country’s enemy.
The guilt grew more intense as Allied bombing increased. Cologne. Dresden. Munich. All the beautiful old cities of our golden past gone into rubble and bitter memory. Just as we had blown the memory and pride of other nations to smithereens and defiled their dead. And all for what?
What if this pain, this pain of all the world, could be stopped? By the influence of one object? By the thing they called the Runestaff, the Grail, Finn’s Cauldron—the object that created a field of serenity and balance all around it. Sustaining its own survival and the survival of the multiverse.
Where was it, this panacea for the grief of nations?
Where was it, but in our own hearts?
Our imaginings?
Our dreams?
Had all I experienced in Mu Ooria been a complex but unreal nightmare into which the dreamthief’s daughter lured me? An illusion of magic, of the Grail, of unending life? Once I was in no doubt of the Grail’s properties or of its power for good. But now I wondered if the thing actually was a power for good? Or was it self-sustaining and not interested in questions of human morality?
Was Gaynor right? Did the Grail demand the blood of innocents to be effective? Was that the final irony? No life without death?
Oona came through the ruined doorway, a shaft of sunlight behind her. She had found her bow and arrows where she had hidden them.
She looked at me and realized that Elric was gone.
She ran for the old staircase.
“Father!”
She disappeared up the steps before I could reach the door. I called after her, but she ignored me or did not hear.
I went up the stairs rapidly, but something made me slow when I reached the top of the tower and the narrow corridor which led to the roof. I moved reluctantly and looked out at the battlements where Elric held his daughter in a tender embrace.
Behind him the dragons muttered and stamped, anxious to be aloft again. But Elric was slow to leave. When he lifted his face those troubled eyes were weeping.
I watched him place a gen
tle kiss on his daughter’s forehead. Then he strode over to the impatient Blacksnout and stood scratching the great beast under her scales. With a quick, graceful movement, he climbed into his saddle and called in his musical voice, called to his dragon sisters.
With a massive crash of wings the two great reptiles mounted the evening air. I watched their dark shapes circling against the great red disk of the setting sun.
They banked with slow grace into a dark shadow and were suddenly gone.
Oona turned, dry-eyed, her voice unnaturally low. “I can see him anytime I choose,” she said. She held something in her hand. A small talisman.
“In his dreams?” I asked.
She stared at me for a moment.
Then I followed her inside.
EPILOGUE
T he rest of the story is a matter of public record. Neither Oona nor myself, of course, remained in Germany. Indeed, we were certain of arrest. And, if arrested, we had a clear idea of our likely fate. So Prince Lobkowitz helped us get to Sweden and from there to London. Having helped in the destruction of my own country’s air fleet and begun the process of Hitler’s defeat, I continued the war against the Nazis. I joined the BBC as a broadcaster for a while and worked as an interpreter with a Red Cross psychiatric unit when the Allies started moving into Germany and Austria. Even I, with my experience of Nazi brutality, could scarcely bear the scenes which every new day brought.
I saw little more of Lobkowitz, who was busy with the War Crimes people, and nothing of Bastable. Oona went to Washington when the United States entered the war and joined a special operations unit.
I saw Bek once more before the Russians took it over. The Red Army had billeted its officers there. Even they remarked on the sense of peace the old place had. I was bound to agree. Though its recent history had scarcely been tranquil, tranquillity is what that house radiated for a mile or more around it in the old Bek estates. I heard that the local authorities eventually turned Bek into a rest home for mental patients, and I was pleased.
When at last the Wall came down and I reclaimed my home, I allowed it to continue in its most recent function, asking only that I have a few rooms in the old part of the house, along with the armory and the tower. Here I study quietly in the sure knowledge that somewhere I will discover a clue to the Grail’s current incarnation. That it lies at Bek, there is no doubt. Here all wounds seem eventually to heal. This is all we saved from the Nazis.
In May 1941 it became clear that the Luftwaffe was no longer capable of conquering Britain. Disturbed that Hitler was attacking the Soviet Union without first securing the alliance of her “natural brothers in arms,” Rudolf Hess flew single-handed to Scotland. He parachuted out of his Messerschmitt and landed safely. He spent a few hours at Castle Auchy, the traditional home of the Clan McBegg, which had a bad reputation in those parts. He then set off to find the Marquess of Clydesdale, whom he wrongly believed to be a Nazi sympathizer. What Hess told the marquess and those sent to arrest him was that he had the secret of the Wessex Dragons who rose from their secret caverns under England’s most beautiful downs to serve her in her hour of need. He claimed that he knew how to contact King Arthur, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, and that he also knew the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. He proposed that the Grail was the catalyst to reunite the Nordic peoples against the common Bolshevik/Asian threat. He asked several times to speak to Churchill, but published documents show that MI5 was of the firm opinion that Hess had completely lost his mind. All reports confirm this view. Churchill steadfastly refused to see him.
Hess was sentenced at Nuremberg as a war criminal and became the only surviving prisoner in Spandau prison. He allegedly hanged himself in his prison cell in Spandau in 1987. He was ninety-one. All that time he had been refused permission to publish and had given almost no interviews, though he insisted he had information of crucial intelligence to the authorities. There is a theory that he was murdered by the British Secret Service, who feared what he would tell the public when he was released.
Hess was to play no further part in my story. This would not be true of Elric, however. He is still in my soul. Still shares my mind. At night, when I do dream, I dream Elric’s life as if it were my own. I have a sense that I live not only Elric’s destiny, but the destiny of hundreds like us. I am never truly free of him. His story continues, and I continue to be a part of it, as does Oona, the dreamthief’s daughter, who became my wife. We chose to have no natural children but adopted three girls and two boys. We intend to let our blood die out.
How the Grail was found and what happened to us is a story which, like that of Rudolf Hess, remains to be told.
Meanwhile, we are at rest here for the moment. Glad to enjoy some respite in the great struggle—that game in which we all have important parts to play. The never-ending game of life and death.
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