Revenge of the Rose (28 page)

 
          
And
it was here that Fallogard Phatt stopped and signed for his niece to lower the
litter to the sweet-smelling moss of the cavern floor. “We have entered a zone
where neither Law nor Chaos rules—where the Rule of the Balance is undertaken,
perhaps. Here we shall find Koropith. Here we shall seek the three sisters.”

 
          
Then,
from somewhere above them, where the cavern roof caught the light of a setting
sun and reflected it down to them, they heard a thin, angry shout and a voice
calling from a distant gallery:

 
          
“Hurry,
you idiots! Come up! Come up! Gaynor is here! He has captured the sisters!”

 
          
A
Rose Rejoined; Further Familial Joy; Gaynor’s Rape Thwarted and the Sisters
Found at Last—Still Another Strange Turn of Fate’s Wheel
.

 
          
“Koropith,
my heartsease! Oh, my beauty! Oh, my fruit!” Fallogard Phatt peered up through
the shafts of intersecting light, through the galleries of green foliage and
dark rock, through the richly scented blooms, and stretched slender fingers out
for his son.

 
          
“Quick,
Pa! All of you! Up here! We must not let him succeed!” The boy’s voice was
clear as a mountain spring. His tone was desperate.

 
          
Elric
had found steps cut into the cave wall, winding up towards the roof. Without
further thought he began to climb these, followed by Fallogard and Charion
Phatt who left Wheldrake to protect Mother Phatt.

 
          
Through
the cool tranquility of that tall cave they climbed and Fallogard Phatt,
panting, observed that the place was like a natural cathedral, “as if God had
placed it here as an example to us” (by disposition and background he was a
monotheist) and had it not been for his son’s urgent cries from above he would
have paused to observe the beauty and the wonder of it.

 
          
“There
he is! There’s two of ’em, now!” cries Wheldrake cryptically from below. “You’re
almost there! Carefully, my delicacy! Look out for her, Pa!”

 
          
Charion
needed help from no-one. Sure-footed, her sword already in her hand, she
followed quickly behind Elric and would have passed him had there been room on
the narrow steps.

 
          
They
came to a gallery whose wall was made of a kind of hedge, growing thickly from
the side of the cliff and clearly designed to protect anyone who used the path.
Elric wondered at the artistry of the people who had lived here and if any of
them had survived the coming of Chaos to their world. If so, where were they?

 
          
The
gallery widened and became the entrance to a large tunnel.

 
          
And
there stood Koropith Phatt, gasping with the burning immediacy of his
predicament yet weeping to see his father and cousin again. “Quick, Pa! Gaynor
will destroy her if we do not hurry! There is some chance he will destroy them
all—destroy everyone!”

 
          
And
he was dashing ahead of them, pausing to make sure they followed, dashing on
again, calling. He had gained height and seemed to have lost weight; was
turning into a skinny youth, as angular and gangling as his father. Dashing
through galleries of green light, through peaceful chambers, through suites of
rooms which looked out over the vastness of the cave itself, from windows set
cunningly near the roof, and none of them occupied, all of them with a faint
air of desolation. Dashing up curving stairways and gracefully sinuous
corridors, through a city that was a palace or a palace that was large as a
city, where a gentle people had lived in civilized harmony—

 
          
—and
then comes the sounding of a pair in psychic, supernatural and physical combat—an
explosion of orange light, a collapsing of a certain kind of darkness, the
swirl of unnatural colours, followed by sounds, as if of a deep, irregular
heartbeat—

 
          
—and
Elric leads the others into a hall that, in its artfulness and delicate
architectural intelligence, rivals the great cave below—almost an homage to
it …

 
          
—and
lying upon a floor of pale blue marble shot through with veins of the most
subtle silver is the body of a young woman in brown and green, a great shock of
pink-gold hair identifying her at once. There is a sword near her unmoving
right hand, a dagger still in her left.

 
          
“Ah!
No!” cries Koropith Phatt in anguish. “She cannot be dead!”

 
          
Elric,
sheathing Stormbringer, knelt beside her, feeling for a pulse and finding one,
faint, steady, in her cool throat just at the moment she opened her lovely
hazel eyes and frowned at him. “Gaynor?” she murmured.

 
          
“Gone,
it seems,” said Elric. “And the sisters with him, I think.”

 
          
“No!
I was sure I had protected them!” The Rose made a weak movement of her arms,
tried to rise and failed. Koropith Phatt hovered at Elric’s shoulder, murmuring
and crooning with helpless concern. She gave him a reassuring smile. “I am
unharmed,” she said. “Merely exhausted …” She drew two quick breaths. “Gaynor
has a Lord of Chaos to help him in this, I think. It took all the spells I bought
in Oio to resist him. I have little left.”

 
          
“I
did not understand you to be a sorceress as well as a swordswoman,” Elric said,
helping her to sit.

 
          
“Our
magic is of a natural order,” she said, “but not all of us chose to practise
it. Chaos has fewer weapons against it, which proved an advantage to me, though
I had hoped to imprison him and learn more from him.”

 
          
“He
is in Count Mashabak’s employ still, I think,” said Elric.

 
          
“That
much, sir, I know,” said the Rose softly and with a significance only clear to
herself.

 
          
Soon
they had her seated on a cushioned settle, her skin pale pink in the gentle
light of the blue hall, her hair folding about her delicate skull like petals.

 
          
It
was some while, after Koropith had returned with Wheldrake and Mother Phatt,
through tunnels easier to climb than the outer steps, before the Rose was ready
to tell them what had occurred after she had reached this cave (“slithering
through the dimensions like sneak-thieves”). She had found the sisters hidden,
having failed in a quest of their own, which had taken them so far afield. Not
for the first time she had offered them her aid, and they had been glad to
accept it, but some rupturing of the cosmic fabric had been detected by Gaynor,
whose own stronghold lay not fifty miles from here, and he had arrived with a
small army to seize the sisters and their treasure. He had not expected to be
resisted, especially by the singular magic commanded by the Rose, which was of
a nature too subtle for Chaos easily to understand.

 
          
“My
magic draws neither from Law nor from Chaos,” she said, “but from the natural
world. Sometimes it takes a century for one of our spells to stifle the roots
of some spectacular tyranny, but when it is dead, it is thoroughly dead. It was
our vocation to seek out tyranny and destroy it. So successful were we that we
began to anger certain Lords of the Higher Worlds, who ruled through such
people.”

 
          
“You
are the Daughters of the Garden,” said Wheldrake, breaking in and then stopping
apologetically. “There is an old Persian tale which speaks of you, I think. Or
perhaps it is from
Baghdad
. The Daughters of Justice was another name … But you were
Martyred … Forgive me, madam. There was a tale …

 
          
“Came
cruel Count Malcolm to that land,
With fire and steel in either hand,

 
          
And
a curse which fouled his breath;
I seek the Flowers of Bannon Brae;

 
          
I
bring them pain and death.

 
          
“Good
heavens, madam, sometimes I feel I am trapped in some vast, unending epic of my
own invention!”

 
          
“You
recall the old ballad’s ending, Master Wheldrake?”

 
          
“There
are one or two,” said Wheldrake diplomatically.

 
          
“You
recall a certain ending, however, do you not?”

 
          
“I
recall it, madam,” said Wheldrake in dawning horror. “Oh, madam! No!”

 
          
“Aye,”
said the Rose. And she spoke slowly, with great, weary strength …

 
          
“Each
brand that burn’d in Bannon Brae,
Was a soul in cruel torment.

 
          
Count
Malcolm who cut the bright flowers down,
Left but one to sing Lament.

 
          
“I,”
said the Rose, “was the only flower not, eventually, cut down by him whom the
ballad calls ‘Count Malcolm’. The one whom Gaynor had preceded, with his lies
to us concerning his own heroic struggles against the forces of the Dark.” And
she paused, as if she stilled a tear. “That was how we were caught unawares of
the invasion. We trusted Gaynor. Indeed, I spoke for him! He is economical in
his methods, I learned. He deceives us all with the same few tales. Our valley
was a wasteland within hours. You can imagine the upheavals, for we were
unprepared for Chaos, which could only enter our realm through mortal agency.
Through Gaynor’s agency. And that of the unwitting fools he deceived …”

 
          
“Oh,
madam!” says Wheldrake again. At which she reaches out a friendly hand to
comfort him. But he would comfort her. “The only flower …”

 
          
“Save
one,” she said, “but she resorted to desperate sorcery and died an unholy
death …”

 
          
“The
sisters are not your kinswomen, then?” murmured Fallogard Phatt. “I had
assumed …”

 
          
“Sisters
in spirit, perhaps, though they are not of my vocation. They seek to resist a
common enemy, which is why I have aided them until now. For they, among others,
possess the key to my own particular goal.”

 
          
“But
where has Gaynor taken them?” Charion Phatt wished to know. “His stronghold is
only fifty miles from here, you say?”

 
          
“And
it is surrounded by a Chaos army awaiting only his order to march against us.
But I do not know yet if he has the sisters.”

 
          
“He
took them, surely?” Charion Phatt said.

 
          
But
the Rose shook her head. Gradually, she was restoring herself and was now able
to walk unaided. “I had to hide them from him. There was so little time. I
could not hide their treasures with them. But I do not know if I acted swiftly
enough.”

 
          
It
was evident she did not want to be asked further questions about that incident,
so they asked her and Koropith what had happened on the Gypsy causeway. She
told them how she had found Gaynor and the sisters at the very moment Mashabak
was about to cut the bridge. He had been summoned, of course, by Gaynor. “I
sought to stop Mashabak and save as many lives as I could. But in so doing I
allowed Gaynor to escape—though not with the sisters, who had managed to free
themselves from him. I had tried to warn the gypsies and when that failed I
went in search of Gaynor—or Mashabak. We have come close, Koropith and I, to
finding them at different times, but now we know they have returned here, as
have the sisters. Chaos gathers strength. This realm is almost theirs, save for
the resistance provided by ourselves, and the sisters.”

 
          
“I
have little stomach for a journey to a Court of Chaos, madam,” said Wheldrake
slowly, “but if I can be of any assistance to you in this matter, please feel
free to make use of me however you wish.” He offered her a grave little bow.

 
          
And
Charion, at her intended’s side, donated her own sword and wits in the Rose’s
service.

 
          
All
of which was accepted graciously but with lifted hand. “We do not yet know what
we must do,” she said and then she raised herself to her feet, the velvet robe
falling in folds upon the marble couch, and, lifting her marvelous head, pursed
her lips in a whistle.

 
          
There
came the sound of padded feet upon those marble floors and a hot panting, as if
the Rose had summoned the Hounds of Hell to aid them; then into the hall
bounded three huge dogs—great wolf-hounds with lolling red tongues and fangs of
pre-human heritage—a white hound, a blue-grey hound and a pale golden hound,
ready, it seemed, to do battle with any enemy, pursue any prey. And they
grouped at the Rose’s side and looked up into her face as if ready to obey her
slightest order.