The White Wolf's Son (22 page)

With a sigh, the Duke of Köln considered his options.

Should he lend his strength to the citizens of Mirenburg and the peasants of Wäldenstein, or should he wait for a more propitious
moment? What were the chances of such a moment ever coming?

As he turned to go deeper into the cave system, he heard a movement outside. He picked up his flame lance from where it lay
hidden beneath a pile of straw. That and its recharger were almost all he had carried away with him from Castle Brass. He
could not possibly have trusted the Warrior in Jet and Gold. The Warrior had already betrayed him at the Mad God’s court,
then returned at a critical moment, pretending to bring them help against Meliadus. Yet should he have rejected that? Could
he have misinterpreted the Warrior’s intentions? Could they have turned the tables against Meliadus, saved hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions, of lives, if he had accepted that help?

Warily he returned to the cave entrance. Had he conjured that strange being back into existence? Riding towards him over the
rolling foothills came the unmistakable figure in armor of glowing black and yellow,
his face, as always, covered by his helm. This refusal to display his face was one of the things which had always made Hawkmoon
suspicious. It was a Dark Empire trait. Yet here he came again, at another crucial moment. What did he want this time?

Hawkmoon smiled bitterly to himself. All was doubt these days.

The Warrior in Jet and Gold might be an agent of the Dark Empire, though he represented himself as an opponent. Would it even
make sense to let the Warrior know he was here? He shrugged. Clearly the Warrior always knew where to find him. He could therefore
have betrayed the survivors of Kamarg many times.

Hawkmoon stepped out into the sunlight to greet his old acquaintance. The Warrior rode up to a few feet below him and stopped,
dismounting from his heavy black horse. His arms were scabbarded. His attitude, as always, was casual.

“Good morning, Duke Dorian.” There was a hint of concern in his deep voice. “I am glad to see you survived the destruction
of Castle Brass.”

“Aye, barely. I might have survived it better, Sir Knight, had I accepted your help.”

“Well, Duke Dorian, fate is fate. A moment’s thought here, a quick decision there, and we might find ourselves in a dozen
different situations. I am a simple Knight of the Balance. Who’s to say which actions we take are ultimately for the best
or not?”

“I hear there’s an uprising down in old Mirenburg.”

“I’ve heard the same, sir.”

“Is that why you are here?”

The Warrior in Jet and Gold lowered his helmeted head as if in thought. “It might be one reason. Yes, perhaps
you guess correctly. I am, as you must know by now, a mere messenger. I obey the Balance and, in doing so, serve the Runestaff.”

“The Runestaff, eh? That mythic artifact. And what is this Balance? Another mythical device?”

“Perhaps, sir. A symbol, at any rate, of the whole quasi-infinite multiverse.”

“So it is Good against Evil? Pure and simple?”

“That struggle is neither pure nor simple, I think. I suppose I am here to help you make a connection in the cosmic equilibrium.”

“Tell me—have you served Granbretan?”

“In my time, sir.”

Hawkmoon began to move back into the cave. “A turncoat. As I suspected.”

“If you like. But I said things were not simple. Besides, you have trusted other turncoats. D’Averc, for instance …”

Hawkmoon knew the truth of this. Even he was considered a turncoat by some.

“Do you serve what you believe in, Sir Warrior?” he asked.

“Do you, my lord Duke? Or do you fight against what you do
not
believe in?”

“They are the same.”

“Not always, Duke Dorian. The multiverse is a complex thing. There are many shades of meaning within it. Many complexities.
We find ourselves in a million different contexts, and in each situation there are subtleties. In some we are great heroes,
in others, great villains. In some we’re hailed as visionaries, in others as fools. Were you a man of strong resolve when
you refused my help at
Castle Brass and allowed Meliadus to defeat you, destroying almost everything you loved?”

Hawkmoon felt something like a knife thrust to his belly. He sighed. “You betrayed us. You stole the crystal when we had defeated
the Mad God. What else could I think?”

“I do not propose to tell you what you should think. But I assure you, I am here to help you.”

“Why should you help me?”

“I do not help you for any sentimental reason, but because you serve the interests of the Balance.”

“And that purpose?”

A pause. Then the Warrior in Jet and Gold said slowly, “To maintain itself. To sustain the equilibrium of the world. Of every
world.”

“Every world? There are others?”

“An almost infinite number. It was into one of these I offered you the chance to escape.”

Hawkmoon dropped his head in thought. “Worlds where our history has taken a different turn. Where the Empire never rose to
power?”

“Aye—and where that power has been divided or successfully resisted.”

“Where I accepted your help in defense of Castle Brass?”

“Indeed.”

“What happened there?”

“Many things. From each event sprang many others.”

“But I won?”

“Sometimes at great cost.”

“Isolda?”

“Sometimes. I told you. I do not serve individuals. I could not. I serve only the Runestaff and, through that,
the Balance. Which determines only equilibrium. The Balance is destroyed and restored as it is needed. In one world you are
its savior, in another its destroyer. Now it is needed again and must be remade. But there are those who would remake it and
use it not in the interests of humanity but in their own evil interest.”

“The Balance is not a force for good?”

“What is ‘good’? The Runestaff serves the Balance. Some believe they are one and the same. Equilibrium. The form of justice
on which all other justice is based.”

“I was once told that justice had to be created by mankind’s efforts.”

“That is another form of justice. That is within your control. But only fools seek to control the Balance or any of its components.
It is no more possible to do that than for an individual to control a whirlwind or the tides. Or the direction in which Earth
goes round the sun.”

Hawkmoon was confused. He was not an intellectual. He was a soldier, a strategist. For most of his life he had been a man
of action. Yet he knew in his bones that he had not best served his cause by refusing the help of the Warrior in Jet and Gold.

“And you have brought me the crystal?”

“A crystal breaks and becomes many crystals. I have brought you a piece of that crystal.”

Oladahn, hearing the conversation, crept out of the cave and greeted the Warrior in Jet and Gold with a friendly hand. His
red fur still bore some of the signs of the fire which had almost consumed him as he and the others fled Castle Brass through
the old underground tunnels. But now he moved with all the energy he had feared gone forever.

“What’s that crystal do, Warrior?” Oladahn asked.

“It enables its holders to step in and out of this world and into many others. It enables you to move a whole army from one
continent to another in an instant. It enables its possessor to challenge Fate.”

“Much as the amulet I lost summoned help from other worlds?” said Hawkmoon, accepting the pyramid-shaped fragment. “I’ll need
such help if I’m to fight the Empire again.”

The Warrior seemed satisfied. “You’ll go to Mirenburg, then? With you to lead them, there is a good chance of the uprising
succeeding. Mirenburg now produces the most advanced ornithopters and weapons.”

“I shall have to seek the opinions of my companions,” Hawkmoon told him. “I have responsibilities. We suffered much in the
fall of the Kamarg.”

“You have my sympathy,” said the Warrior, remounting his horse. “I will return tomorrow for your decision.”

Hawkmoon was frowning when he went back into the caves, the fragment of crystal clenched in his fist.

E
LRIC WAS NOW
convince that the child he sought was not in that Mirenburg where he had helped create a rebellion. He had returned to the
Mirenburg he had first visited, which existed contemporaneously with the house in Ingleton where Oonagh’s parents waited anxiously
for his news. Here he was able to telephone Mr. and Mrs. Beck. He learned from them that his daughter, Oona, had also disappeared
into the Mittelmarch, looking for Oonagh.

Mirenburg’s beauty had faded under Communism, but she was fortunate in that she had suffered little during the Second World
War, having been swallowed by the Nazis with no more fighting than it took to gobble up Czechoslovakia. Her great twin-steepled
cathedral of St. Maria and St. Maria continued to dominate the center of the city, which was built on two hills divided by
a river. The old city was chiefly on the east bank, and the new one on the west. Its great, brutal monuments to Communist
civic planning, tall, near-featureless apartment buildings and factory chimneys, rose above the primarily eighteenth-and nineteenth-century
building with its astonishing mixture of architectural styles, including many from Mirenburg’s last great shining period.
Around the turn of the twentieth century her prince had commissioned some of
the great modern architects such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Shaw, Wright, Voysey and Gaudíi to design new municipal buildings.

Elric sensed an atmosphere of depression everywhere. Civil war had touched Wäldenstein. Rivalries between families of Slavic
and German origin flared up as soon as the Communist heel had been lifted. Throughout the Soviet empire and its satellites
time had frozen in the 1930s. Civil rights and a radical change in public consciousness had marginalized race and culture
as a means of distinguishing peoples. Only in the backward regions of the world did these things continue to inform the views
of the majority.

The war had been short; the UN had interceded with help from the von Beks as mediators. The von Beks had goodwill in Mirenburg,
though their family had not lived there for many years. Mirenburg had suffered many attacks by would-be conquerors, from the
Huns to the Austrians and the Germans and, the last time, from her own people.

It became characteristic of the post-Soviet wars that ancient rivalries, encouraged by those who wished to divide and rule,
culminated in the grudges only now being settled. Industrialized, turned into one of the most productive cities in the Soviet
empire, exporting the Popp, the only car to rival the VW, Mirenburg had been a showcase. Vehicles, plane parts, light weapons,
poured from her factories. Today she produced Fords for the local market. Wäldenstein’s labor was cheaper and her pollution
laws were not yet as rigorous as Germany’s, so the cars were produced at a more competitive price. Thus her great chimneys
belched black smoke and glowing cinders into the sky night and day, and her ancient houses
grew dark with the soot of over fifty years. Elric had known the city since the fourteenth century, but he had not known it
to stink so much since 1640, when the river had run dry and sewage had filled the bed.

Elric employed what skills of divination remained to him in this world, and became convinced that Oonagh had returned to this,
her own sphere, assuming she had not been killed in the catastrophe whose realities he had originally witnessed underground.

He had not been pleased to abandon his horse or his clothes en route to this sphere. Samson would be well cared for, however,
in Mu-Ooria. Elric never felt entirely comfortable in the dress of our own period, which was why he affected evening clothes
so often, but he had no need for secrecy, at least. Here he was recognized as a member of Mirenburg’s old ruling class, and
it suited most citizens to address him as “Count.” Not that they were entirely unsuspicious of him. The local legend of Karmingsinaugen
was still remembered as involving the most sensational crimes reported in Wäldenstein in the nineteenth century, and the role
was always attributed to him by the tabloid newspapers, who believed he might share his ancestor’s tastes. He remembered how
in earlier centuries they had pursued him through the narrow streets, brands flaring in their fists, baying for his blood.
In those days he had still possessed his sword, and on occasions it had suited him to release the power and feed off their
uncouth souls. But of late he found commonly available medicines to sustain him. His taste for raw life-stuff was only a memory.
He remained amused, however, by the evident fear of him some superstitious souls betrayed.

Yet for all his familiarity with the citizens, not one
could tell him where the little girl might be. “We would have heard, Count Zcabernac,” they insisted, “if an unaccompanied
English girl were living here.”

“But what if she appeared to have her father with her, say, or a couple of uncles?”

“I’d know. So would many others.” This from the overweight landlady of his pension. She had suggested he return to England,
perhaps leaving an e-mail address or telephone number where he could be contacted.

Then, just as he had begun to inquire about the availability of flights from Munich, something happened which made him determined
to stay. He was sitting reading the
Mirenburgerzeitung
in a café not far from his pension when he looked up and saw a tall man making his way hastily across the busy Ferngasse,
barely missed by a clanking number 11 tram. He recognized the man at once as Klosterheim, whom he had last caused to be imprisoned
in that other Mirenburg. Full of alarm, Elric immediately set off in pursuit, through the streets and alleys and into the
old thieves’ quarter, now the home of bohemians and students. Klosterheim disappeared into a traditional hostelry, Raspazian’s,
and was ordering a drink at the bar when Elric walked in and seated himself in the shadows near the door.