The Chronicles of Castle Brass

by Michael Moorcock

  His head was still aching, as if the Black Jewel had never been removed. But the ache was fading now and his brain was clearing. Why should he be reliving what was, after all, a fairly mundane incident in his life?—though he had come very close to death.

  'Yisselda?' He looked for her face among those bending over him. But his fantasy remained. He still saw Count Brass, surrounded by his old Kamargian soldiers. There was no woman here at all.

  'Yisselda?' he said again.

  Count Brass said softly. 'Come, lad, we'll take you back to Castle Brass.'

  Hawkmoon felt himself lifted in the count's massive arms and carried to a waiting horse.

  'Can you ride yourself?' Count Brass asked.

  'Aye.' Hawkmoon clambered into the saddle of the horned stallion and straightened his back, swaying slightly as his feet sought the stirrups. He smiled. 'Are you a ghost still, Count Brass? Or have you truly been restored to life. I said I would give anything for you to be brought back to us.'

  'Restored to life? You should know that I am not dead!' Count Brass laughed. 'And these fresh terrors come to haunt you, Hawkmoon?'

  'You did not die at Londra?'

  'Thanks to you, aye. You saved my life. If that Goat rider had got his spear into me, the chances are I'd be dead now.'

  Hawkmoon smiled to himself. 'So events can be changed. And without repercussion, it seems. But where are Kalan and Taragorm now? And the others . . .' He turned to Count Brass as they rode together along the familiar marsh trails. 'And Bowgentle, and Oladahn, and D'Averc?'

  Count Brass frowned. 'Dead these five years. Do you not remember? Poor lad, we all suffered after the Battle of Londra.' He cleared his throat. 'We lost much in our service of the Runestaff. And you lost your sanity.'

  'My sanity?'

  The lights of Aigues-Mortes were coming in sight. Hawkmoon could see the outline of Castle Brass on the hill.

  Again Count Brass cleared his throat. Hawkmoon stared at him, 'My sanity, Count Brass?'

  'I should not have mentioned it. We'll soon be home.' Count Brass would not meet his gaze.

  They rode through the gates of the town and began to ascend the winding streets. Some of the soldiers rode their horses in other directions as they neared the castle, for they had quarters in the town itself.

  'Good night to you!' called Captain Vedla.

  Soon only Count Brass and Hawkmoon were left. They entered the courtyard of the castle and dismounted.

  The hall of the castle looked little different from when Hawkmoon had last seen it Yet it had an empty feel to it.

  'Is Yisselda sleeping?' Hawkmoon asked.

  'Aye,' said Count Brass wearily. 'Sleeping.'

  Hawkmoon looked down at his mud-caked clothes.

  He no longer wore armour. 'I'd best bathe and get to bed myself,' he said. He looked hard at Count Brass and then he smiled. 'I thought you slain, you know, at the Battle of Londra.'

  'Aye,' said Count Brass in the same troubled voice. 'I know. But now you know I'm no ghost, eh?'

  'Just so!' Hawkmoon laughed with joy. 'Kalan's schemes served us much better than they served him, eh?'

  Count Brass frowned. 'I suppose so,' he said uncertainly, as if he was not sure what Hawkmoon meant.

  'Yet he escaped,' Hawkmoon went on. 'We could have trouble from him again.'

  'Escaped? No. He committed suicide after taking that jewel from your head. That is what disturbed your brain so much.'

  Hawkmoon began to feel afraid.

  'You remember nothing of our most recent adventures then?' He moved to where Count Brass warmed himself at the fire.

  'Adventures? You mean the marsh? You rode off in a trance, mumbling something of having seen me out there. Vedla saw you leave and came to warn me. That is why we went in search of you and just managed to find you before you died . ..'

  Hawkmoon stared hard at Count Brass and then he turned away. Had he dreamed all the rest. Had he truly been mad?

  'How long have I—have I been in this trance you mention, Count Brass?'

  'Why, since Londra. You seemed rational enough for a little while after the jewel was removed. But then you began to speak of Yisselda as if she still lived. And there were other references to some you thought dead— such as myself. It is not surprising that you should have suffered such strain, for the jewel was . . .'

  'Yisselda!' Hawkmoon cried out in sudden grief. 'You say she is dead?'

  'Aye—at the Battle of Londra, fighting as well as any other warrior—she went down...'

  'But the children—the children . . .' Hawkmoon struggled to remember the names of his children. 'What were they called? I cannot quite recall . . .'

  Count Brass sighed a deep sigh and put his gauntleted hand on Hawkmoon's shoulder. 'You spoke of children, too. But there were no children. How could there be?'

  'No children.'

  Hawkmoon felt strangely empty. He strove to remind himself of something he had said quite recently. 'I would give anything if Count Brass could live again . . .'

  And now Count Brass lived again and his love, his beautiful Yisselda, his children, they were gone to limbo—they had never existed in all those five years since the Battle of Londra.

  'You seem more rational,' said Count Brass. 'I had begun to hope that your brain was healing. Now, perhaps, it has healed.'

  'Healed?' The word was a mockery. Hawkmoon turned again to confront his old friend. 'Have all in Castle Brass—in the whole Kamarg—thought me mad?'

  'Madness might be too strong a word,' said Count Brass gruffly. 'You were in a kind of trance, as if you dreamed of events slightly different to those which were actually taking place . . . that is the best way I can describe it. If Bowgentle were here, perhaps he could have explained it better. Perhaps he could have helped you more than we could.' The count in brass shook his heavy, red head. 'I do not know, Hawkmoon.'

  'And now I am sane,' said Hawkmoon bitterly.

  'Aye, it seems so.'

  'Then perhaps my madness was preferable to this reality.' Hawkmoon walked heavily towards the stairs. 'Oh, this is so hard to bear.'

  Surely it could not all have been a graphic dream. Surely Yisselda had lived and the children had lived?

  But already the memories were fading, as a dream fades. At the foot of the stairs he turned again to where Count Brass still stood, looking into the fire, his old head heavy and sad.

  'We live—you and I? And our friends are dead. Your daughter is dead. You were right, Count Brass—much was lost at the Battle of Londra. Your grandchildren were lost, also.'

  'Aye,' said Count Brass almost inaudibly. 'The future was lost, you could say.'

  Epilogue

  Nearly seven years had passed since the great Battle of Londra, when the power of the Dark Empire had been broken. And much had taken place in those seven years. For five of them Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Koln, had suffered the tragedy of madness. Even now, two years since he had recovered, he was not the same man who had ridden so bravely on the Runestaff's business. He had become grim, withdrawn and lonely. Even his old friend, Count Brass, the only other survivor of the conflict, hardly knew him now.

  'It is the loss of his companions—the loss of his Yisselda,' whispered the sympathetic townspeople of the restored Aigues-Mortes. And they would pity Dorian Hawkmoon as he rode, alone, through the town and out of the gates and across the wide Kamarg, across the marshlands where the giant scarlet flamingoes wheeled and the white bulls galloped.

  And Dorian Hawkmoon would ride to a small hill which rose from the middle of the marsh and he would dismount and lead his horse up to the top where stood the ruin of an ancient church, built before the onset of the Tragic Millennium.

  And he would look out across the waving reeds and the rippling lagoons as the mistral keened and its melancholy voice would echo the misery in his eyes.

  And he would try to recall a dream.

  A dream of Yisselda and two children whose names he could not remember. Had they ever
had names in his dream?

  A foolish dream, of what might have been, if Yisselda had survived the Battle of Londra.

  And sometimes, when the sun began to set across the broad marshlands and the rain began to fall, perhaps, into the lagoons, he would stand upon the highest part of the ruin and raise his arms out to the ragged clouds which raced across the darkening sky and call her name into the wind.

  'Yisselda! Yisselda!'

  And his cry would be taken up by the birds which sailed upon that wind.

  'Yisselda!'

  And later Hawkmoon would lower his head and he would weep and he would wonder why he still felt, in spite of all the evident truth, that he might one day find his lost love again.

  Why did he wonder if there were still some place— some other Earth perhaps—where the dead still lived? Surely such an obsession showed that there was a trace of madness left in his skull?

  Then he would sigh and arrange his features so that none who saw him would know that he had mourned and he would climb upon his horse and, as the dusk fell, ride back to Castle Brass where his old friend waited for him.

  Where Count Brass waited for him.

  This Ends

  The First Of The

  Chronicles Of Castle Brass

  The Sixth Book of Hawkmoon

  The Champion of Garathorm

  MICHAEL MOORCOCK

  Edited by John Davey

  www.sfgateway.com

  Quotes

  Then the Earth grew old, its landscapes mellowing and showing signs of age, its ways becoming whimsical and strange in the manner of a man in his last years.

  The High History of the Runestaff

  And when this History was done there followed it another. A Romance involving the same participants in experiences perhaps even more bizarre and awesome than the last. And again the ancient Castle of Brass in the marshy Kamarg was the centre for much of this action..

  — The Chronicles of Castle Brass

  Book One

  Departures

  Chapter One

  Representations And Possibilities

  Dorian Hawkmoon was no longer mad, yet neither was he healthy. Some said that it was the Black Jewel which had ruined him when it had been torn from his forehead. Others said that the war against the Dark Empire had exhausted him of all the energy he would normally need for a full lifetime and that now there was no more energy left. And some would have it that Hawkmoon mourned for the love of Yisselda, Count Brass's daughter, who had died at the Battle of Londra. In the five years of his madness Hawkmoon had insisted that she was still alive, that she lived with him at Castle Brass and bore him a son and a daughter.

  But while causes might be the subject of debate in the inns and taverns of Aigues-Mortes, the town which sheltered beneath the great Castle of Brass, the effects themselves were plain to all.

  Hawkmoon brooded.

  Hawkmoon pined and shunned human company, even that of his good friend Count Brass. Hawkmoon sat alone in a small room at the top of the castle's highest tower and, with chin on fist, stared out over the marshes, the fields of reeds, the lagoons, his eyes fixed not on the wild white bulls, the horned horses or the giant scarlet flamingoes of the Kamarg, but upon a distance, profound and numinous.

  Hawkmoon tried to recall a dream or an insane fantasy. He tried to remember Yisselda. He tried to remember the names of the children he had imagined while he had been mad. But Yisselda was a shadow and he could see nothing of the children at all. Why did he yearn? Why was he full of such a deep and lasting sense of loss? Why did he sometimes nurse the thought that this, which he experienced now, was madness and that the dream - that of Yisselda and the children - had been the reality?

  Hawkmoon no longer knew himself and had lost the inclination, as a result, to communicate with others. He was a ghost. He haunted his own apartments. A sad ghost who could only sob and groan and sigh.

  At least he had been proud in his madness, said the townsfolk. At least he had been complete in his delusions.

  'He was happier mad."

  Hawkmoon would have agreed with such sentiments, had they been expressed to him.

  When not in the tower he haunted the room where he had set up his War Tables - high benches on which rested models of cities and castles occupied by thousands of other models of soldiers. In his madness he had commissioned this huge array from Vaiyonn, the local craftsman. To celebrate, he had told Vaiyonn, their victories over the Lords of Granbretan. And represented in painted metal were the Duke of Koln himself, Count Brass, Yisselda, Bowgentle, Huillam D'Averc and Oladahn of the Bulgar Mountains - the heroes of the Kamarg, most of whom had perished at Londra. And here too were models of their old enemies, the Beast Lords - Baron Meliadus in his wolf helm, King Huon in his Throne Globe, Shenegar Trott, Adaz Promp, Asrovak Mikosevaar and his wife, Flana (now the gentle Queen of Granbretan). Dark Empire infantry, cavalry and flyers were ranged against the Guardians of the Kamarg, against the Warriors of Dawn, against the soldiers of a hundred small nations.

  And Dorian Hawkmoon would move all these pieces about his vast boards, going through one permutation after another; fighting a thousand versions of the same battle in order to see how a battle which followed it might have changed. And his heavy fingers were often upon the models of his dead friends, and most of all they were upon Yisselda. How could she have been saved? What set of circumstances would have guaranteed her continuing to live?

  Sometimes Count Brass would enter the room, his eyes troubled. He would run his fingers through his greying red hair and watch as Hawkmoon, absorbed in his miniature world, brought forward a squadron of cavalry here, drew back a line of infantry there. Hawkmoon either did not notice the presence of Count Brass on these occasions or else he preferred to ignore his old friend until Count Brass would clear his throat or otherwise make it evident that he had come in. Then Hawkmoon would look up, eyes introspective, bleak, unwelcoming, and Count Brass would ask softly after Hawkmoon's health. Hawkmoon would reply curtly that he was well.

  Count Brass would nod and say that he was glad.

  Hawkmoon would wait impatiently, anxious to get back to his manoeuvrings on his tables, while Count Brass looked around the room, inspected a battle-line or pretended to admire the way Hawkmoon had worked out a particular tactic.

  Then Count Brass would say:

  'I'm riding to inspect the towers this morning. It's a fine day. Why don't you come with me, Dorian?"

  Dorian Hawkmoon would shake his head. 'There are things I have to do here.'

  'This?' Count Brass would indicate the wide trestles with a sweep of his hand. 'What point is there? They are dead. It is over. Will your speculation bring them back? You are like some mystic - some warlock - thinking that the facsimile can manipulate that which it imitates. You torture yourself. How can you change the past? Forget. Forget, Duke Dorian.'

  But the Duke of Koln would purse his lips as if Count Brass had made a particularly offensive remark, and would turn his attention back to his toys. Count Brass would sigh, try to think of something to add, then he would leave the room.

  Hawkmoon's gloom coloured the atmosphere of the whole Castle Brass and there were some who had begun to voice the opinion that, for all that he was a Hero of Londra, the duke should return to Germany and his traditional lands, which he had not visited since his capture, at the Battle of Koln, by the Dark Empire lords. A distant relative now reigned as Chief Citizen there, presiding over a form of elected government which had replaced the monarchy of which Hawkmoon was the last living direct descendant. But it had never entered Hawkmoon's mind that he had any home other than his apartments in Castle Brass.

  Even Count Brass would sometimes think, privately, that it would have been better for Hawkmoon if he had been killed at the Battle of Londra. Killed at the same time that Yisselda had been killed.

  And so the sad months passed, all heavy with sorrow and useless speculation, as Hawkmoon's mind closed still more firmly around its single
obsession until he hardly remembered to take sustenance or to sleep.

  Count Brass and his old companion, Captain Josef Vedla, debated the problem between themselves, but could arrive at no solution.

  For hours they would sit in comfortable chairs on either side of the great fireplace in the main hall of Castle Brass, drinking the local wine and discussing Hawkmoon's melancholia. Both were soldiers and Count Brass had been a statesman, but neither had the vocabulary to cope with such matters as sickness of the soul.

  'More exercise would help,' said Captain Josef Vedla one evening. 'The mind will rot in a body which does nothing. It is well known.'

  'Aye - a healthy mind knows as much. But how do you convince a sick mind of the virtues of such action?' Count Brass replied. 'The longer he remains in his apartments, playing with those damned models, the worse he gets. And the worse he gets, the harder it is for us to approach him on a rational level. The seasons mean nothing to him. Night is no different to day for him. I shudder when I think what must be happening in his head!'

  Captain Vedla nodded. 'He was never one for overmuch introspection before. He was a man. A soldier. Intelligent without being, as it were, too intelligent. He was practical. Sometimes it seems to me that he is a different man entirely now. As if the old Hawkmoon's soul was driven from its body by the terrors of the Black Jewel and a new soul entered to fill the place!'

  Count Brass smiled at this. 'You're becoming fanciful, captain, in your old age. You praise the old Hawkmoon for being practical - and then make a suggestion like that!'

  Captain Vedla was also forced to smile. 'Fair enough, Count Brass! Yet when one considers the powers of the old Dark Empire lords and remembers the powers of those who helped us in our struggle, perhaps the idea could have some foundation in terms of our own experience?'

  'Perhaps. And if there were not more obvious answers to explain Hawkmoon's condition, I might agree with your theory.'