Revenge of the Rose (25 page)

 
          
“These
are just silly words, little Elric. Wisps of dandelion on the summer breeze.
Yet here you are, through no decision of your own. And here I am, by determined
effort, exactly where I wish to be. Which freedom seems the best to you, my
poorly pigmented pet?”

 
          
“If
you are saying, Lord Arioch, would I rather be myself or thyself, I must still
say that I would be myself; for perpetual Chaos must be as tedious as perpetual
Law, or any other constant. A kind of death. I believe I still have more to
relish of the multiverse than hast thou, Sir Demon. I still live. I am still of
the living.”

 
          
And
from within the helm of Prince Gaynor the Damned came a great groan of anguish,
for he, like Esbern Snare, was neither of the living nor the dead.

 
          
Then,
sitting astride the ectoplasmic ball in which Count Mashabak squatted and
glared, there appeared the naked, golden image of a handsome youth, a dream of
fair Arcadia, whose goodness was sweeter than honey, whose beauty was richer
than cream, and whose wicked eyes, delirious with cruelty, flashed the
appalling lie for everything unholy and perverse that it was.

 
          
It
giggled.

 
          
Arioch
giggled. Then grinned. Then made water over the bulging membrane, as his
helpless rival, engorged with the psychic energies of a hundred suns, raged and
shouted from within, as helpless as a weasel in a snare.

 
          
“
Mad Jack Porker ran the cripple down again;
seized him by the brain
,
they said;
didn’t stop till he was dead … Greedy Porker, Greedy Porker, hung him
by his humpo-storker … Sit still, my dear count, while I take my
comforts, sir, I pray you. You are an ill-mannered demon, sir. I always said
so … Hee, hee, hee … Do you smell cheese, sir? Would you
have a piece of ice about you, Jim? Hee, hee, hee …
”

 
          
“As
I believe I observed earlier,” said the albino prince to the still-cowed
Gaynor, “the most powerful of beings are not necessarily the most intelligent,
nor, indeed, sane, nor well-mannered. The more one knows of the gods, the more
one learns this fundamental lesson …” He turned his back upon Arioch and
his clock, trusting that his patron demon did not decide, upon a whim, to
extinguish him. He knew that while he protected that tiny spark of self-respect
within him, nothing could destroy him in spirit. It was his own thing; what
some would have called his immortal soul.

 
          
Yet
with every movement and every word he trembled and weakened, wanting to cry out
that he was no more than Arioch’s creature, to do his master’s every bidding
and be rewarded by his master’s every bounty: and, even so, be struck down, as
he might be struck now, on a chance change of his master’s mood.

 
          
For
this was the other thing that Elric knew; that to compromise with Tyranny is
always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in
resistance. This knowledge gave Elric his strength—his profound anger at
injustice and inequality—his belief, now that he had visited Tanelorn, that it
was possible to live in harmony with mortals of all persuasions and remain
vital and engaged with the world. These things he would neither sell nor offer
for sale and, in refusing to give himself up wholly to Chaos, it meant he bore
his weight of crimes upon his own conscience and must live, night and day, with
the knowledge of what and whom he had killed or ruined. This, he guessed, was a
weight that Gaynor had been unable to bear. For his part, he would rather bear
the weight of his own guilt than the weight that Gaynor had chosen.

 
          
He
turned again to look up at that obscene clock, Arioch’s cruel joke upon his
slaves, upon his conquered rival, and every atom of his deficient blood cried
out against such casual injustice, such delight in the terror and misery of
others, such contempt for everything that lived within the multiverse,
including itself; such cosmic cynicism!

 
          
“Have
you brought me thy father’s soul, Elric? Where is that which I told thee to
find, my sweet?”

 
          
“I
seek it still, Lord Arioch.” Elric knew that Arioch had not yet established his
rule across this whole realm and that his hold upon his new territory must
still be tenuous. This meant that Arioch had nothing like the power he
possessed in his own domain, where only the most crazed sorcerer would ever
consider venturing. “And when I find it, I shall give it up to my father. Then,
I would say, the rest is between yourself and him.”

 
          
“You
are a brave little stoat, my darling, now that you are no longer in my kingdom.
But this one shall soon be mine. All of it. Do not anger me, darling pale one.
Soon the time will come when thou shalt
serve mine every command!
”

 
          
“Possibly,
great Lord of Hell, but meanwhile that time is not here. I make no further
bargains. And I believe that thou wouldst as readily keep our old bargain as
have none at all.”

 
          
A
growl of rage escaped Lord Arioch as he pummeled at the ectoplasmic prison with
his fists, while Count Mashabak screamed with insane laughter from within. The
Duke of Hell looked down upon the labouring thousands, each one of whom
maintained, only by the most accurate and mechanical rhythms, the lives of its
fellows, and he smirked, threatening with a pointed, golden finger to poke at
one of the little figures and so bring the whole complicated structure to
collapse.

 
          
Then
he looked up at where Gaynor the Damned stood, unmoving, as he had been for
some time. “Find me that flower and I will make you a Knight of Chaos, immortal
nobility, ruling in our name a thousand kingdoms!”

 
          
“I
will find the flower, great duke,” said Gaynor.

 
          
“We
shall make an example of thee, Elric,” said Arioch. “Even now. By conquering
thee, I shall establish Chaos fully upon this plane.” And one golden hand
stretched suddenly, longer and longer, larger and larger, towards Elric’s face.
But the albino had drawn his runesword with all the rapid skill of years and
the great battle-blade roared out a challenge and a threat to all the myriad
denizens of the Lower, Middle and Higher Worlds, to come to it, to cast themselves
upon it, to feed it and its master, for this thing was not an owned thing at
all, but had become, if it had not always been, an independent force whose sole
loyalty was to its own existence, yet was as dependent upon Elric’s wielding it
as Elric was dependent upon its energy for his own survival. This unholy
symbiosis, more profoundly mysterious than the wisest philosophers could
fathom, was what made Elric the chosen child of Fate and it was what had, in
the end, robbed him of his happiness.

 
          
“This
must not be!” Arioch pulled back in thwarted anger. “Force must not fight
force! Not yet. Not yet.”

 
          
“There
is more than Law and Chaos at work in the multiverse, my lord,” said Elric
calmly, the sword still held before him, “and more than one of these is thine
enemy. Do not anger me too much.”

 
          
“Ah,
most dangerous and courageous of my souls, thou art truly fitted to be my
chosen mortal above all the others, ruling in my name, with my power. Whole
worlds would be thine, Elric—whole Spheres to mould to thy every whim. All
pleasure can be thine. All experience. And unendingly. Without price or
consequence. Eternal pleasure, Elric!”

 
          
“I
have made myself clear, already, Lord Duke, on the subject of perpetuality. It
could be that one day in the future I shall determine that my fate lies wholly
with thee. But until that time …”

 
          
“I
shall attack thy memory. That I
can
do!”

 
          
“Only
in some ways, Lord Arioch. Never in dreams. In my dreams, I recall everything.
But with this pell-mell twirling from plane to plane and Sphere to Sphere, the
worlds of memory and dreams become confused with the worlds of reality and
immediacy. Aye, you can attack my mind, my lord. But not my soul’s memory.”

 
          
Which
set insane Count Mashabak to cackling again. “
Gaynor!
” His wild eyes caught sight of his former servant. “
Free me from this and thy reward will be
tenfold what I promised.
”

 
          
“Death,”
said Gaynor suddenly. “Death, death, death is all I’m greedy for. And that you
all deny me!”

 
          
“Because
we value thee, dear one …” said the honey-sweet boy, lifting its head and
chittering, like a startled wren. “I am Chaos. I am everything. I am the Lord
of the Non-Linear, Captain of the
Random
Particle
and Entropy’s greatest celebrant! I am the wind from nowhere and I
am the drowner of worlds; I am the Prince of Infinite Possibility! What
glorious changes shall bloom upon the face of the multiverse, what unlikely and
perverse marriages shall be sanctified by hell’s priesthood, and what wonders
and pleasures there will be, Elric! Nothing predictable. The only true justice
in the multiverse—where all, even the gods, are subject to random birth and
random annihilation! To banish Resolution and have instead eternal Revolution.
A multiverse in permanent, gorgeous Crisis!”

 
          
“I
fear I have spent too long with the gentler folk of the Young Kingdoms,” said
Elric softly, “to be much tempted by thy promises, my lord. Nor can I say I am
much feared of thy threats. Prince Gaynor and myself are upon a quest. If we
are to be of service to one another, sir, then I propose you let us continue
upon that quest.”

 
          
At
which Arioch shifted his beautiful rump upon the yielding globe and said
pettishly, “The damned one can go on his way. As for thee, recalcitrant
servant, I cannot punish thee directly, but I can hamper thy quest until this
more trustworthy servant achieves his end—whereupon I shall promise him far
more than Mashabak promised him. I shall promise him a true death.”

 
          
There
came a sob from within Gaynor’s peculiar helm and he fell to his knees, perhaps
in gratitude.

 
          
Now
Arioch raised a golden hammer in either fist and his youthful features were
ablaze with glee as he brought first one hammer and then another down upon the
yielding surface of the ectoplasmic womb, and with each blow came an unlikely
booming, like that of a great gong, while within the prison Count Mashabak
clapped scaly claws to his asymmetrical ears and howled in fearsome silence, as
if whole universes were in anguish.

 
          
“It
is the Time,” cried Arioch. “It is the Time!”

 
          
Down
falls Elric, screaming, with his hands, too, upon his ears. And Gaynor goes
down, crawling and shrieking in a voice so high-pitched it sounds above the
booming of the hammers.

 
          
And
then there is a low whistling and Elric feels his substance being sucked away,
bit by bit, from this plane to another. And he tries to fight against that
force which only a Duke of Hell would use, since it damages whole histories and
peoples with the violence of the dimensional rupturing, but he is helpless and
his runesword will not help him. Stormbringer seems glad to leave that lifeless
plane; it needs to feed on living souls and Arioch had offered it not a morsel
from his store.

 
          
Yet,
even as he watches the monstrous clock shimmer and grow misty to his sight,
even as Gaynor’s mysterious armour becomes faintly outlined against a fainter
landscape, the albino sees a huge grey shape loping towards him, the red tongue
lolling, the grey-green eyes glaring, the white fangs clashing in its ferocious
head, and he knows that it is the hungered werewolf, become so maddened by its
lack of food that it is ready to risk even Stormbringer’s edge!

 
          
But
then it has turned, sniffing, its savage mouth grinning and the hot saliva
showering from its jaws, the ears laid first forward, then laid back, and it seems
to curve in mid-air, a single fluid motion, and direct its great body straight
upwards to where Lord Arioch giggles, then squeals in genuine surprise as
Esbern Snare buries his fangs in the throat of one he recognizes as his true
tormentor.

 
          
So
startled was Arioch, and so sparing now of his remaining powers upon this
plane, that he could neither change his shape nor did he wish to flee—for by
fleeing he would leave his captured rival, who might then be freed, and that he
could not bear. So he struggled upon the swaying clock while the damned souls
below worked frantically to correct every unpredictable motion of the thing,
and the last Elric saw of Esbern Snare was his wolf body burning with a fierce,
red-gold light as if he gave up, with selfless joy, his last few embers of
life.