Revenge of the Rose (4 page)

 
          
“I
sent thy mother there to remain until I joined her. I gave her the means, our
Scroll of Dead-Speaking, and she is safe in that sweet eternity, which many
souls seek and which few find. I swore an oath that I would do all I could to
be reunited with her.”

 
          
The
shade stepped forward, as if entranced, and reached to touch Elric’s face with
something like affection. But when the hand fell away there was only torment in
the old man’s undead eyes.

 
          
Elric
knew a certain sympathy. “Have you no companions here, Father?”

 
          
“Only
thou, my son. Thee and I now haunt these ruins together.”

 
          
An
unwholesome frisson: “Am I, too, a prisoner here?” said the albino.

 
          
“At
my humour, aye, my son. Now that I have touched thee we are bound together,
whether thou leavest this place or no, for it is the fate of such as I to be
linked always to the first living mortal his hand shall fall upon. We are one,
now, Elric—or shall be.”

 
          
And
Elric shuddered at the hatred and the relish in his father’s otherwise desolate
voice.

 
          
“Can
I not release you, Father? I have been to R’lin K’ren A’a, where our race began
in this realm. I sought our past there. I could speak of it …”

 
          
“Our
past is in our blood. It travels with us. Those degenerates of R’lin K’ren A’a,
they were never our true kin. They bred with humans and vanished. It was not
they who founded or preserved great Melniboné …”

 
          
“There
are so many stories, Father. So many conflicting legends …” Elric was
eager to continue the conversation with his father. Few such opportunities had
existed while Sadric lived.

 
          
“The
dead know truth from lies. They are privy to that understanding, at least. And
I know the truth of it. We did not stem from R’lin K’ren A’a. Such questings
and speculations are unnecessary. We are assured of our origins. Thou wouldst
be a fool, my son, to question our histories, to dispute their truth. I had
thee taught this.”

 
          
Elric
kept his own counsel.

 
          
“My
magic called the jill-dragon from her cave. The one I had the strength to
summon. But she came and I sent her to thee. This is the only sorcery I have
left. It is the first significant sorcery of our race and the purest, the
dragon-sorcery. But I could not instruct her. I sent her to thee knowing she
would recognize thee or she would kill thee. Both actions would have brought us
together, eventually, no doubt.” The shade permitted itself a crooked smile.

 
          
“You
cared no more than that, Father?”

 
          
“I
could
do
no more than that. I long
for thy mother. We were meant to be united for ever. Thou must help me reach
her, Elric, and help me swiftly for my own energies and spells weaken—soon
Arioch or Mashabak shall claim me. Or destroy me entirely in their struggle!”

 
          
“You
have no further means of escaping them?” Elric felt his left leg shake
uncontrollably for a few seconds before he forced it to obey his will. He
realized it had been too long since he had last taken the infusion of herbs and
drugs which allowed him the energy of a normal creature.

 
          
“In
a way. If I remain attached to thee, my son, the object of my unjust hate, then
my soul could hide with thine, occupying thy flesh and mine, disguised by blood
that is my blood.
They would never sniff
me out!
”

 
          
Again
Elric was seized by a sensation of profound cold, as if death already claimed
him; his head was a maelstrom of ungoverned emotions as he sought desperately
to take a grip on himself, praying that with the sun’s rising his father’s
ghost would vanish.

 
          
“The
sun will not rise here, Elric. Not here. Not until the moment of our release or
our destruction. That is
why
we are
here.”

 
          
“But
does Arioch not object to this? He is my patron, still!” Elric looked for a new
madness in his father’s face but could find none.

 
          
“He
is otherwise engaged and could not come to thee now, whether to aid or to
punish. His dispute with Count Mashabak absorbs him. That is why thou canst
serve me, to perform the task I did not know to perform when alive. Wouldst
thou do this thing for me, my son? For a father who always hated thee but did
his duty by thee?”

 
          
“If
I performed this task for you, Father, would I be free of you?”

 
          
His
father lowered his head in assent.

 
          
Elric
put a trembling hand upon the pommel of his sword and flung back his head so
that the long white hair filled the air like a halo in the moonlight and his
uneasy eyes rose to stare into the face of the dead king.

 
          
He
let out a sigh. In spite of all his horrors, there was some part of him which
would be fulfilled if he achieved his father’s desire. He wished, however, that
he had been permitted the choice. But it was not the Melnibonéan way to permit
choice. Even relatives had to be bonded by more than blood.

 
          
“Explain
my task, Father.”

 
          
“Thou
must find my soul, Elric.”

 
          
“Your
soul
—?”

 
          
“My
soul is not with me.” The shade itself seemed to make an effort to remain
standing. “What animates me now is my will and old sorcery. My soul was hidden
so that it might rejoin thy mother, but in avoiding Mashabak’s and Arioch’s
wrath, I lost that which contained it. Find it for me, Elric.”

 
          
“How
shall I recognize it?”

 
          
“It
resides in a box. No ordinary box, but a box of black rosewood carved all with
roses and smelling always of roses. It was your mother’s.”

 
          
“How
came you to lose such a valuable box, Father?”

 
          
“When
Mashabak appeared to claim my soul, then Arioch, I drew up a false soul, which
is the spell I taught thee in
Incantations
After Death
, to deceive them. This quasi-soul became the object of their
feuding for a while and my true soul fled to safety in the box which Diavon
Slar, my old body-servant, was to keep safely for me on strictest instructions
of secrecy.”

 
          
“He
maintained your secrecy, Father.”

 
          
“Aye—and
fled, believing he had a treasure, believing he could control me through his
possession of that box! He fled to Pan Tang with what he understood to be my
trapped spirit—some children’s tale he had heard—and was disappointed to find
no spirit obeyed him at his command. So he planned, instead, to sell his booty
to the Theocrat. As it happened, he never reached Pan Tang but was seized by
sea-raiders from the Purple Towns. They included the box in their casual booty.
My soul was truly lost.” And with this came a flicker of a former irony, the
faintest of smiles.

 
          
“The
pirates?”

 
          
“Of
them, I know only what Diavon Slar told me as I was extracting the vengeance I
had warned him I would take. The raiders probably returned to Menii, where they
auctioned their booty. My soulbox left our world entirely.” Sadric moved
suddenly and it was as if an insubstantial shadow shifted in the moonlight. “I
can still sense it. I know it traveled between the worlds and went where now
only the jill-dragon can follow. That is what has thwarted me. For, until I
called thee, I had no means of pursuit. I am bound to this place and now to
thee. Thou must fetch back my soulbox, Elric, so that I can rejoin thy mother
and rid myself of unjust hate. As thou wilt rid thyself of me.”

 
          
Trembling
with conflicting passions, Elric spoke at last:

 
          
“Father,
I believe this to be an impossible quest. I cannot but suspect you send me upon
it out of hatred alone.”

 
          
“Hatred,
aye, but more besides.
I must rejoin your
mother, Elric! I must. I must.
”

 
          
Knowing
his father’s abiding obsession, that convinced Elric of the ghost’s veracity.

 
          
“Do
not fail me, my son.”

 
          
“And
should I succeed? What will happen to us, Father?”

 
          
“Bring
back my soul and we are both released.”

 
          
“But
if I fail?”

 
          
“My
soul will leave its prison and enter thee. We shall be united until thy death—I,
with my unjust hatred, bonded to the object of my hatred, and thee burdened by
all
thou
most hatest in proud
Melniboné.” He paused, almost to savour this. “That would be my consolation.”

 
          
“Not
mine.”

 
          
Sadric
nodded his corpse’s head in silent understanding, and a soft, unlikely laugh
escaped his throat. “Indeed!”

 
          
“And
dost thou have other aid for me in this, Father? Some spell or charm?”

 
          
“Only
what thou comest by on the way, my son. Bring back the rosewood box and we both
can go our own ways. Fail, and our destinies and souls are linked for ever!
Thou wilt never be free of me, thy past, or Melniboné! But thou wilt bring the
old glories back, eh?”

 
          
Elric’s
drug-enlivened body began to tremble. The flight and this encounter had
exhausted him, and there were no souls here on which his sword could feed.

 
          
“I
am ailing, Father, and must soon return. The drugs that sustain me were lost
with my pack animals.”

 
          
Sadric
shrugged. “As for that, thou hast merely to discover a source of souls on which
thy blade might feed. There’s killing a-plenty ahead. And a little more that I
perceive, but yet it does not come clear …” He frowned. “Go …”

 
          
Elric
hesitated. Some ordinary impulse wanted him to tell his father that he no
longer killed casually to further any whim. Like all Melnibonéans, Sadric had
thought nothing of killing the human folk of their empire. To Sadric, the
runesword was merely a useful tool, as a stick might be to a cripple.
Supernatural schemer though his father was, player of complex games against the
gods, he still unquestioningly assumed that one must pledge loyalty to one
demon or another in order to survive.

 
          
Elric’s
vision, of universally held power, a place like Tanelorn, owing allegiance
neither to Law nor to Chaos but only to itself, was anathema to his father who
had made a religion and a philosophy of compromise, as had all his royal race
for millennia, so that compromise itself was now raised over all other virtues
and become the backbone of their beliefs. Elric wanted, again, to tell his
father that there were other ideas, other ways to live, which involved neither
excessive violence, nor cruelty, nor sorcery, nor conquest, that he had learned
of these ideas not merely from the Young Kingdoms but also from his own folk’s
histories.

 
          
Yet
he knew that it would be useless. Sadric was even now devoting all his
considerable powers to restoring the past. He knew no other way of life or,
indeed, of death.

 
          
The
albino prince turned away, and it seemed to him at that moment that he had
never experienced such grief, even when Cymoril had died on the blade of his
runesword, even when Imrryr had blazed and he had known he was doomed to a
rootless future, a lonely death.