The Dragon in the Sword (35 page)

I was horrified. “But do you know anything of Sharadim and her dead brother?”

“I’ve heard nothing, save that they returned to Chaos on unfinished business…”

“Then we must try to return to Chaos, also,” I said. “We have the cup Sepiriz told us of. Now we seek the horned horse. But how can we get back to Chaos, Jermays, can you say?”

“You are here,” said Jermays the Crooked in some surprise, and opening the door he revealed daylight, a rich, exotic smell, dark fleshy leaves and a trail which disappeared into what was apparently a tropical forest.

And, when we had passed through the archway, Jermays had gone, together with the door and any sign of the Nuremberg dungeons.

It was at this point that von Bek lowered the chalice, an expression of dismay on his face. “I have failed! I have failed! Oh, why did you let me leave!”

“What is it?” cried Alisaard in surprise. “What is the matter, my dear?”

“I had the opportunity to kill them. I did not take it!”

“Do you think you could have killed them in the presence of this cup?” I asked him reasonably. “Aside from the fact that you had no weapon?”

He calmed a little. “But it was my single opportunity to destroy them. To save millions. I surely will not be given a second chance!”

“You have achieved your ambition,” I told him. “But you have achieved it obliquely, according to the methods of the Balance. I can promise you that now they will destroy themselves, thanks to what happened in that vault today. Believe me, von Bek, they are now as thoroughly doomed as any of their victims.”

“Is this truth?” He looked from me to the chalice. The golden cup no longer glowed, but although it was plain, it still possessed enormous power.

“It is the truth, I swear.”

“I did not know you possessed the power of prediction, Herr Daker.”

“In this case I do. They can last only a short while longer. Then all three will die by their own hands and their tyranny will collapse.”

“Germany and the world will be free of them?”

“Free of their particular evil, I promise you. Free of everything save the memory of their cruelty and barbarism.”

He drew a great, sobbing breath. “I believe you. Then Sepiriz kept his word to me?”

“He kept his word in his usual way,” I said. “By ensuring that your ambition and his own coincided. By gaining something which serves his own mysterious ends and which in turn serves ours. All our actions are linked, all our destinies have something in common. An action taken in one plane of the multiverse can achieve a result in quite a different plane, perhaps millennia (and who knows what kind of distance?) apart. Sepiriz plays the Game of the Balance. A series of checks, adjustments, fresh moves, all designed to maintain ultimate equilibrium. He is only one such servant of the Balance. There are several, to my knowledge, moving here and there through all the myriad planes and cycles of the multiverse. Ultimately we cannot any of us know the full pattern or detect a true beginning or an end. There are cycles within cycles, patterns within patterns. Perhaps it is finite, but it seems infinite to us mortals. And I doubt if even Sepiriz sees the whole Game. He merely does what he can to ensure that neither Law nor Chaos can achieve a complete advantage.”

“And what of the Lords of the Higher Worlds?” asked Alisaard, who already knew something of this. “Can they perceive the entire scheme?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Their vision is perhaps in some sense even more limited than our own. Frequently it is the pawn who perceives more than the king or queen, by virtue of having less at stake, perhaps.”

Von Bek shook his head. Quietly he murmured: “And I wonder if there will ever be a time when all those gods and goddesses and demigods will cease their warring? Will cease to exist, perhaps?”

“There may be such periods in the cyclic histories of the myriad realms,” I said. “There could be an end to all this, when the Lords of the Higher Worlds and all the machinery of cosmic mystery shall be no more. And perhaps that is why they fear mortals so much. The secret of their destruction, I suspect, lies in us, though we have yet to realise our own power.”

“And do you have a hint of what that power may be, Eternal Champion?” said Alisaard.

I smiled. “I think it is simply the power to conceive of a multiverse which has no need of the supernatural, which, indeed, could abolish it if so desired!”

And at that point the jungle heaved once, turning itself into a flowing ocean of molten glass which somehow did not burn us.

Von Bek yelled and lost his footing, keeping hold of the chalice. Alisaard grabbed him and tried to help him up. A noisy wind was blowing. I made my way to my companions. Von Bek was up again. “Use the Actorios!” I cried to Alisaard, who still had the stone in her keeping. “Find the shadow path again!”

But even as she reached into her purse to find the stone the Grail had begun to sing. It was a different note to the one we had first heard. It was softer, calmer. Yet it held an astonishing authority. And the glassy undulations slowly subsided. The smooth hills of obsidian grew quite still. And we could see a path leading through them. Beyond the path was a sandy beach.

Holding the chalice before him, von Bek led us towards that shore. Here was a force, I realised, far stronger than the Actorios. A force for order and equilibrium able to exert enormous power upon its surroundings. It dawned on me that much of what had happened up until now had been engineered by Sepiriz and his kind. I had already seen that von Bek had an affinity with the Grail the way that I had a similar affinity with the Sword. Von Bek had been needed to find the Grail. And now he was bringing it into this realm, close to the place called The World’s Beginning. Was there significance in this action?

We had reached the shore. Above us were grassy dunes and beyond that a horizon. We tramped up to the dunes and stood looking out over a plain which appeared to be without end. It stretched ahead of us, an infinity of waving grasses and wild flowers, without a tree or a hill to break the flatness. There was a subtle scent all around us and, when we turned, the ocean of glass had gone. Now the plain stretched away in that direction also!

I saw a man approaching us. He strode with a leisurely gait through the tall grass. The light wind tugged at his robes. He wore black and silver. I thought for one wild moment that Hitler or one of his henchmen had followed us into this realm. But then I recognised the grey hair, the patriarchal features. It was the Archduke Balarizaaf. Almost as soon as I noticed him he stopped, raising his hand in greeting.

“I will not advance much closer, if you’ll forgive me, mortals. That object you carry is inimical to my particular constitution!” He smiled, almost in self-mockery. “And I must admit I do not welcome its presence in my realm. I have come to strike a bargain with you, if you’ll listen.”

“I make no bargains with Chaos,” I told him. “Surely you understand that?”

He chuckled. “Oh, Champion, how poorly you understand your own nature. There have been times and there will be others when you know loyalty only to Chaos…”

I refused to be drawn. Obstinately, I said: “Well, Archduke Balarizaaf, I can assure you that I possess no such loyalty at this moment. I am my own creature, as best I can be.”

“You were always that, Champion, no matter what side you seemed to serve. That is the secret of your survival, I suspect. Believe me, I have nothing but admiration…” He coughed, as if he had caught himself in a moment of discourtesy. “I respect all you say, Sir Champion. But I am offering you the chance to alter the destiny of at least a full cycle of the multiverse, to change your own destiny, to save yourself, perhaps, from all the agony you have already known. I assure you, if you pursue this present course, it will bring you further pain, further remorse.”

“I have been told it will bring me at least some peace and the possibility of being with Ermizhad again.” I spoke firmly. I resisted his arguments, for all their apparent sense and certainty.

“A respite, nothing more. Serve me, and you will possess almost everything you desire. Immediately.”

“Ermizhad?”

“One so like her you would come to forget any difference. One even more beautiful. Adoring you, as no man has been adored before.”

I laughed at him then, to his evident surprise.

“You are truly a Lord of Chaos, Archduke Balarizaaf. You have no real imagination. You believe that all a mortal seeks is the same power as you possess. I loved an individual in her complexity. I have come to understand that even more since I have suffered the delusions this place imposes upon the human brain. If I cannot know again the woman I loved, I want no substitute. What do I care if I am adored by her or not? I love her for herself. My imagination delights not in control of her, but in the fact that she exists. I had no part in her existence. I merely celebrate it. And I would celebrate it for eternity, though I be parted from her for eternity. And if I am reunited, even for a brief while, that is more than justification for the agony I suffer. You have stated, more concisely than I, what Chaos stands for, Lord Archduke, and why I resist you!”

Balarizaaf shrugged and seemed to accept my statement in good humour. “Then perhaps there is something else you would want from me? All I ask of you is that you take up the Dragon Sword in my name. The Eldren women are virtually finished. Sharadim and Flamadin rule the Six Realms of the Wheel. If you serve me in this one small thing, so that I may consolidate this little fragment of the multiverse under my control, then I will do everything I can to return you to your Ermizhad. The game is over here, Sir Champion. We have won. What more can you do? Now you have the opportunity to serve yourself. Surely you cannot wish to be Fate’s fool for ever?”

The temptation was great and yet I had little difficulty resisting him the moment I looked at Alisaard’s desperate face. It was from loyalty to the Eldren that I fought, that I played this turn of the game. If I denied that loyalty, then I denied all right to being united again with the woman I loved. So I shook my head, saying instead to Count Ulric von Bek, “My friend, would you be so good as to take the chalice a little nearer to the Archduke so that he may inspect it?”

And with a shriek, a ferocious, malevolent and terrific noise which denied all the sweet reason of his earlier tone, the Archduke Balarizaaf fell backwards, his very substance beginning to change as von Bek approached him. His flesh seemed to boil and transmogrify on his bones. In a matter of moments he revealed a thousand different faces, very few of them even remotely human.

And then he had gone.

I fell to my knees, shuddering and weeping. Only then did I realise what I had been resisting, how much I had been tempted by his invitation and his promises. My strength had gone out of me.

My friends helped me up.

The cool wind flowed through the grass and it seemed to me that this was not a production of Chaos at all. This was, temporarily at least, the result of the Grail’s influence. Once more I was impressed by the cup’s power to bring order even in the heart of Chaos!

Alisaard was speaking softly to me. “It is here,” she said. “The horned horse is here.”

Trotting towards us through the grass, its head lifted as it uttered a whinny of greeting, came a beast whose coat flashed sometimes silver, sometimes gold. From its forehead there grew a single horn. Like the Grail it bore a strong resemblance to something from my familiar earthly mythology. Alisaard was smiling in delight as the beast came up to her and nuzzled her hand.

From behind us a voice came. It was a familiar voice, but it was not the voice of the Archduke Balarizaaf.

“I will take the cup, now,” it said.

Sepiriz stood there. There was something in his eyes which suggested pain. He reached out his great black hand to von Bek. “The cup, if you will.”

Von Bek was reluctant. “It is mine,” he said.

Sepiriz displayed a rare flash of anger. “That cup belongs to nobody,” he murmured. “That cup is its own thing. It is a singular object of power. All who attempt to own it are corrupted by their folly and their greed. I had not expected you to say such a thing, Count von Bek!”

Chastened, von Bek bowed his head. “Forgive me. Herr Daker says that you made it possible for me to initiate the selfdestruction of the Nazis.”

“That is so. It is now woven into the pattern of their destiny, by your courageous actions here and by what occurred when you sought out the Grail. You have achieved much for your own people, von Bek, I can assure you.”

And with a great sigh, von Bek handed Sepiriz the Grail. “I thank you, sir. Then what I meant to accomplish is done.”

“Aye. If you wish, you can return to your own plane and your own time. You have no obligation to me.”

But von Bek looked tenderly at Alisaard and he smiled at me. “I think I will stay to see this thing through, win or lose. I have a mind to see how this particular phase of your game ends, Lord Sepiriz.”

Sepiriz seemed pleased with this, though his eyes still spoke of some secret fear. “Then you must follow this horse,” he said. “It will lead you to the Dragon Sword. The forces of evil are gathering even greater strength now. It will not be long before the Realms of the Wheel collapse completely, reduced to the stuff of Chaos. For this particular realm is stabilised, to the extent that it is stable at all, by those which surround it. If they are consumed, then pure Chaos will be the result. A mass of horrifying obscenity at which these Nightmare Marches merely hint. Nothing will survive in anything like its previous form. And you will be trapped within it for ever. Forever prey to the whims of a Balarizaaf a thousand times more powerful than he is at present!” He paused, drawing in a great breath. “Do you still elect to remain here, Count von Bek?”

“Naturally,” said my friend, with characteristic and almost comical aristocratic aplomb. “There are still a few Germans in the world who understand the nature of good and evil and where their duty lies!”

“So be it,” said Sepiriz. He folded the chalice into his robe and was gone.

Not knowing what we must face when we got there, we followed the unicorn. Already the influence of the Grail was fading. The grass first turned a peculiar shade of yellow, then of orange, then of red.