The Dragon in the Sword (36 page)

The unicorn now waded across a shallow lake of blood.

Waist-deep in this, and shivering with horror, we pressed on.

It was as if we walked through the blood of all those who had died thus far in service of Sharadim’s lust for a perverse and immortal power.

3

T
HAT HORRIBLE LAKE
stretched in all directions, filling all our horizons. Save for the unicorn leading the way and the three of us, there were no other occupants, it seemed, in the entire Realm of Chaos.

For some reason I could not rid my mind of the idea that we were, indeed, wading through the blood of countless murdered souls. It seemed to me, as time went on, that perhaps this was not blood shed by Sharadim or the Lords of Chaos. It could as easily be blood which I had spilled as the Eternal Champion. I had slaughtered Humanity. I had been responsible for the deaths of so many others, in all my myriad guises. I felt that even this vast plain of blood was only a fraction of it.

Again my two friends had linked arms, like lovers. I was slightly ahead of them, still following the unicorn. I began to see reflections in the red liquid. I saw my face as John Daker, as Erekosë, as Urlik Skarsol, as Clen of Clen Gar. And the action of that cool wind seemed to bring words with it.

“You are Elric, whom they shall call Womanslayer. Elric, who betrayed his race, just as Erekosë betrayed his race. You are Corum, killed by a Mabden woman, whom you loved. Remember Zarozinia? Remember Medhbh. Remember all those you betrayed and who betrayed you. Remember all the battles you fought. Remember Count Brass and Yisselda. You are the Eternal Champion, eternally doomed to fight in all mankind’s wars and in all the Eldren’s wars, just and unjust. What meaningless actions are yours! The noble become the ignoble. The impure become the pure. All is malleable. All changes. Nothing remains constant in the schemes of Man or Gods. Yet you go on down the aeons, through plane after plane of existence, allowing yourself to be used as a pawn in a pointless cosmic game…”

“No,” I told myself, “
there is a point to it. I must do positive penance in my remorse. I must redeem myself. And in that redemption I shall discover peace. And in peace, at last, I shall find my Ermizhad. I shall know some small freedom…
”

“You are Ghardas Valabasian, Conqueror of the Distant Suns, and you have no need of anyone
…”

“I
am the Eternal Champion, bound by cosmic chains to a duty still undone!”

“You are M’v Okom Sebpt O’Riley, Gunholder of the Qui Lors Venturers, you are Alivale and you are Artos. You are Dorian, Jeremiah, Asquiol, Goldberg, Franik…
” And the list of names went on and on and on. They rang in my ears like bells. They beat in my head like drums. They clashed like weapons of war. Weapons of war, filling my eyes with blood. A million faces assailed me. A million murdered creatures.

“
You are the Eternal Champion, doomed always to fight, never to rest. There is no end to the battle. Law and Chaos are relentless enemies. There can never be reconciliation. The Balance demands too much of you, Champion. You grow weak in its service…
”

“
I have no choice. It is what I am destined to do. And all of us must fulfill our destinies. There can be no choice. No choice…
”

“You
can choose whom you fight for. You can rebel against that destiny. You can alter it.”

“But I cannot abolish it. I am the Eternal Champion, and I have no doom save this doom, no life save this life, no pain save this pain. Oh, Ermizhad, my Ermizhad…
”

The rhythm of my wading legs seemed to be the same as the rhythm of the words in my head. I was speaking aloud now. “I am the Eternal Champion and I pursue a Cosmic Doom. I am the Eternal Champion and my destiny is set for me, my destiny is war and death, my destiny is fear…”

The voice which spoke to me was my own voice. The voice which answered me was my own voice. There were tears streaming from my eyes, but I brushed them aside. I waded on. I waded through that terrible lake of blood.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I shook it off. “I am the Eternal Champion. I have no life, save that. I have no means to alter what I am. I am the Champion. I am the hero of a thousand worlds and yet I have no true name of my own…”

“Daker! Daker, man! What is happening to you? Why are you mumbling so?” It was von Bek’s voice, distant and agitated.

“I am pursued by destiny. I am the toy of fate. The Chaos Lord spoke truth in that. Yet I shall not weaken. I shall not serve his cause. I am the Eternal Champion. My remorse is complete, my guilt is so great, my doom is already set…”

“Daker! Take hold of yourself!”

But I was lost in my monomaniacal self-absorption. I could think of nothing but the dreadful irony of my predicament. I was a demigod in the Six Realms, a legendary hero throughout the multiverse, a noble myth to millions. Yet all I knew was sadness and terror.

“My God, man, you are going thoroughly mad! Listen to me! Without you Alisaard and I are completely lost. We have no means of knowing where we are or what we are supposed to do. The unicorn leads us to the sword. Which only you among us can bear, just as only I could take hold of the Grail!”

But the war-drums continued to sound in my ears. My mind was filled with the clash of metal. My heart was consumed by melancholy at my own dreadful fate.

Von Bek’s voice broke in again. “Remember who you are, man! Remember what you are doing! Herr Daker!”

I saw only blood ahead of me, blood behind me, blood on every side.

“Herr Daker! John!”

“I am Erekosë, who slew the human race. I am Urlik Skarsol who fought against Belphig. I am Elric of Melniboné and I shall be so many others…”

“No, man! Remember who you really are. There was a time you told me about. A time when you had no memories of being the Champion. Was that some kind of beginning for you? Why are you still called John Daker? That is your first identity. Before you were called, before they named you Champion.”

“Ah, how many long cycles of the multiverse have passed since then.”

“John Daker, pull yourself together. For all our sakes!” Von Bek was yelling, but his voice sounded still very far away.

“You are the Champion who bears the Black Sword. You are the Champion, Hero of the Thousand-Mile Line…”

The blood was lapping about my chest. Somehow I was sinking deeper and deeper into it. I was about to drown in all that blood I had spilled.

“Herr Daker! Come back to us. Come back to yourself!”

I could no longer be sure of any identity. I had so many. And yet were they all the same? What a poor, unfulfilled life it was to fight so. I had never wanted to fight. I had never known the sword until King Rigenos called me as Defender of Humanity…

The blood was at my chin. I grinned. Why should I care? It was only fitting.

A cold, small voice spoke to me. “John Daker, this will be your only real betrayal, if you betray that identity. That which is truly yourself.” It was von Bek speaking again. I shrugged him off.

“You will die,” I heard him say, “not because of your human weakness but because of your inhuman strength. Forget that you were the Eternal Champion. Remember your ordinary mortality!”

The blood lapped against my lips. I began to laugh. “See! I drown in this concrete reminder of my own guilt!”

“Then you are a fool, Herr Daker. We were wrong to trust you as a friend. And so were the Eldren women. And so were the Ursine Princes. And so was Ermizhad foolish to trust you as a lover. It was John Daker she loved, not Erekosë, the monstrous tool of Fortune…”

The blood was in my mouth. I began to spit it out. I rose gasping. I had been on my knees. The level of the lake had not risen. It was I who had fallen. I stood up, staring blankly for a moment at Count von Bek and Alisaard. They were holding me, shaking me.

“You are John Daker,” I heard him say again. “It was John Daker whom she loved. Not that relentless sword-swinger!”

I coughed. I could still hardly understand him. But then gradually it dawned on me that what he said had meaning. And as the meaning grew clearer, I thought that perhaps he spoke the truth.

“Ermizhad loved Erekosë,” I said.

“She might have called you that, for that was the name King Rigenos gave you. But the one she really loved was John Daker, the ordinary, decent mortal who was caught up in a web of hatred and appalling destiny. You cannot change what happened to you, but you can change what you have become, John Daker! Don’t you see that?
You can change what you have become!”

It seemed to me at that moment these were the wisest words I had heard for many a year. I wiped the liquid from my face. It was not blood at all. I shook the drops from my eyes, from my hands.

Ahead of us, the unicorn waited patiently. I realised that once again I had lost my grip on reality. But now it was clear I had somehow lost a little of my real identity in all my cosmic adventurings. I had been discontented as John Daker. My world had seemed grey to me. But in some ways it had been richer than all the wild, fantastical spheres I had visited…

I reached out and shook von Bek by the hand. I was smiling at him. “Thank you, my friend. You are the best comrade, I think, that I have ever had.”

He, too, was smiling. The three of us stood there in that crimson lake and we hugged one another while overhead the sky began to boil and smoulder and turn as angry a red as the waters below.

Then it seemed to us that the ocean of blood rose up to meet the falling sky, forming a single vast wall of glittering crimson crystal.

We looked around us for the unicorn, but it had vanished. Now ahead was nothing but the vast crimson cliff. And then I remembered the vision we had been shown at Morandi Pag’s. And staring into that wall I saw it, embedded there, like an insect in amber, a green-black blade in which a tiny fragment of yellow flickered.

“There it is,” I said. “There is the Dragon Sword!”

My friends were silent.

It was only then that I realised the liquid had solidified completely. Our legs were as perfectly set in crystalline rock as was the sword. We were trapped.

I heard the sound of hoofbeats. The rock in which my legs were encased trembled as the horses grew closer. Twisting my body round I looked over my shoulder.

Two figures rode towards us on identical horses. On bright, black horses. They were dressed in gaudy finery, matching surcoats and cloaks, matching swords and banners. And one was Sharadim, Empress of the Six Realms. And the other was her dead brother, Flamadin, who sought to drink my soul and make it his own.

Now, standing at the base of the great red cliff, the Archduke Balarizaaf, again in the guise of a sober patrician, folded his arms and waited. He was smiling. He disdained to look at me. He called instead to Sharadim and Flamadin. “Greetings, sweet servants. I have kept my promise to you. Here are three little morsels, stuck like flies on a paper, for you to do with as you will!”

Flamadin threw back his gaunt, grey head and a hollow laugh escaped it. His voice was, if anything, more lifeless than when I had last heard it, on the edge of the volcano in Rootsenheem. “At last! I shall be complete again. And I have learned to be wise. I have learned that it is folly to serve any master save Chaos!”

I looked for a sign of real intelligence in that poor, dead face. I saw nothing.

Yet I still felt that I looked into my own features. It was almost as if Flamadin were a parody reminding me what I as the Eternal Champion was in danger of becoming.

I felt sorry for the creature. But at the same time I was deeply afraid.

The two slowed their horses and advanced towards us at a walk. Sharadim looked at Alisaard and she smirked. “Have you heard, my dear? The Eldren women are driven from their own realm. They hide like rats in the warrens of the old bearfolk.”

Alisaard looked back at her with a firm eye. “That news was offered by your lackey Armiad. When I last saw him he had grown to resemble the pig he always was. Do I detect a similar coarsening in your own features, my lady? How long can it be before your affinities with Chaos begin to show?”