The White Wolf's Son (27 page)

I felt incredibly important when Prince Yaroslaf told me of Elric’s concern, of his having the city turned upside down in
search of me. We asked if Elric had left a message for us, but of course our coming hadn’t been anticipated.

“Clearly,” said the prince, “your friend didn’t expect you to follow him. He’ll regret not having stayed longer, but he has
been gone for a year now, at least.” He concentrated as he calculated the length of time Elric had been gone. “He is a brave,
noble man, if an unusual one. Sorcery has always made me uneasy, I suppose because I associate it with Granbretan.”

I wondered what spell the albino had cast that disturbed Prince Yaroslaf, but clearly the Protector of Mirenburg didn’t want
to discuss it anymore.

Elric had told them nothing of where he was going, Prince Yaroslaf said, but moments before he said farewell, he had mentioned
the “moonbeam roads.” Everyone in our party knew what this meant. “He has crossed between the worlds, still searching the
multiverse for this young lady,” murmured Oona a bit doubtfully. “I hope he is careful. He lacks much experience of the roads
themselves …”

Great! The one man who seemed to have some chance
of getting me home had not only disappeared but had put himself in extraordinary danger as well. I did my best to remain positive
when I heard this news. I was flattered that so many important people cared about me, but all I really wanted in my heart
was to see my mum and dad again and then mooch off down to the stream and mess about looking for crayfish. On my own. With
them to go home to. Would I ever see them again?
Don’t think about it!
warned my inner voice. I knew it was pointless, but that was the level of depression I got flashes of from time to time.

“Tomorrow,” promised the Prince of Wäldenstein, “we will be able to talk more casually.” He apologized for the formality and
the brevity of our time together. He was delighted that we were comrades of the albino, he said. “That man will go into our
history as the hero who began the revolution against the Dark Empire. Without him, none of this could have happened, and we
should never have sounded the trumpet call which brought us our other great hero—”

I followed his eyes, and I saw the hooded man shake his head very slightly as Prince Yaroslaf changed the subject. The mysterious
lunch guest didn’t want to be known to us. I tried to work out why he was so familiar to me. Surely this wasn’t another trick
of Klosterheim’s. But Klosterheim’s shoulders were narrow.

I had another thought: Gaynor the Damned?

Once again I was suddenly alert. If there was something going on here, I wanted to know about it. I kept my own counsel, though.
I trusted my friends, but I didn’t know these new people. I decided to bring the subject up later and see if anyone else had
ideas.

“How I long to hear your stories,” said the Protector of
Mirenburg. “I look forward to learning how you became friends with the albino. He remains a mystery to me. Yet without him—”
Again he stopped, as if he felt he was saying too much.

Meanwhile, he added regretfully, they were coping with a fresh counterattack from Granbretan in the region of Lyonne, and
he had to oversee the battle plans. “The momentum of this war has been unbelievable. So ill prepared was Granbretan, so careless
in not creating defenses against their own latest war machines, that a revolt in one key city set off a chain reaction. Those
who had once compromised with the Dark Empire, as Count Brass began by doing, learned to trust nothing they were promised.
Almost everyone had lost a loved family member to the savage cruelty of those neurotic masked warriors. They wanted revenge.”

After a bit more ceremony at the end of the lunch, I looked down the table and saw that the cowled man had already left.

We returned to our inn, and Oona disappeared into the city. She came back a while later with a little more news of Elric.
She had talked with other citizens. “My father was certainly here,” she said. “And he seems to have instigated the revolution
almost by accident. His chief motive was to find you, Oonagh. They all mention how he constantly asked after you.”

“Your father?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” she asked.

I hadn’t quite put it all together. Of course, there was every chance she and Monsieur Zodiac were related, but I hadn’t realized
how closely. I was starting to get a dim idea why some people didn’t seem as old (or as young) as they ought to be. We were
all in danger of meeting grandchildren
who looked older than we did! Not that it made complete sense. For instance, if there were millions of possible versions of
my world, there were millions of possible versions of myself—or Oona, or Prince Lobkowitz, Klosterheim and, indeed, Elric!
Or was that what set us apart from most other people? The fact that we were
not
reproduced on every “plane.” Was that why we could move so readily between the worlds, while others couldn’t?

I would like to have explored this very different Mirenburg, but everyone else felt it was too dangerous for me to go out
on my own. Our inn was called The Nun and Turtle. A very well known place, I was told. I was sure that if we had enemies hiding
in the city, they would be bound to know that we had arrived. There was even a chance they were staying at the same inn!

Even when they explained the old folk tale behind The Nun and Turtle’s name I didn’t understand it any better. But the inn
was clean and comfortable, a bit like an English B and B. Eating at communal tables seemed the rule here. We all sat down
to supper together in the dining room, and it was then I put my theory about time and the multiverse to Prince Lobkowitz.

“Is that it, Prince?” I asked.

He nodded seriously.

“It’s something I’ve considered myself, Miss Oonagh. It could be that we are somehow separated in time as well as space. The
Dark Empire of Granbretan, for instance, probably exists in our distant future. Lord Renyard’s Mirenburg seemed to be about
two hundred years in your past. We might accidentally be meddling with, or even changing, history, or perhaps we are being
changed by it. We know that time is by no means as simple as we were
taught it was—neither linear nor cyclic. Some even argue that time is a field, acted on to produce a whole sequence of events
occurring coincidentally and thus producing divisions, changing directions, new dimensions. Why does the multiverse have to
be in a permanent sense of flux, for instance? What would be gained from a perfect and constant balance between Law and Chaos?”
He went on a bit longer and rather lost me, but I understood the general drift.

I was very sleepy, but when, before bedtime, Lord Renyard asked if I wanted to go for a walk, I agreed. He was fascinated
by how like his own city the older buildings, the layout of streets and so on, were. However, the differences were what commanded
his attention. He found most of it, especially the fashion for creating buildings which looked like grotesque creatures, absolutely
vulgar and was relieved that next to a more modern building called The Oranesians, the old cathedral of St. Maria and St.
Maria was still standing. We climbed twisting cobbled stairway streets to reach it. Once at the doors of the ancient Gothic
church, Lord Renyard took off his hat and bowed his head as if in prayer while I looked around, seeing the whole city spread
out below, its huge factory chimneys, with their glaring or tormented faces, like besieging giants.

Mirenburg was clearly on a war footing. The city walls were lined with guns and ornithopters. They squatted on every available
flat space, on roofs and in squares. People told us that Wäldenstein had successfully driven back the Dark Empire and that
its armies were now in Frankonia and Iberia, trying to drive the Granbretanners back into the sea. Already—to serve a strategy,
most suspected—the Empire troops had retreated back across the
Silver Bridge that spanned thirty miles of sea, and were now massed in their land stronghold. But the enemy would not give
up its empire easily. So far they had not begun to take stock of their old knowledge or set their sorcerer-scientists to work.

Two names, Bous-Junge and Taragorm, were whispered. These were apparently the Empire’s greatest sorcerer-scientists, who both
studied the old lore and added new.

“This is a dark world, mademoiselle,” said Lord Ren-yard. “Darker, I think, than my own.”

“You believe some worlds are darker than others?” I asked. “I mean naturally darker and more evil?”

“I suspect it. Where evil has had longer to take root, in soil more conducive to its growth. Surely only the first universe,
the first world, where all the avatars of all our heroes dwell, was innocent. No new worlds begin afresh. They are developments
of earlier worlds. So therefore it could be possible that some universes develop a kind of
habit
of evil …”

T
HE INTERIOR OF
the church was disappointing. Clearly it had been a thousand years or more since Christians had worshipped there. Now it
was full of strange pictures and even stranger idols. I began to understand a little of what Lord Renyard said. Neither of
us wanted to stay there. We both preferred the building’s familiar exterior. As we came back out into the fading sunlight
I asked him if he thought this world had developed that habit of evil. It was possible, he said, but he hoped not. The forms
people worshipped or used as channels to their own souls were not always what we would regard as beautiful or artistic. “Taste,”
he said. “I had considered a scholarly discourse on the subject.
Sartor Resartus?

“Law and Chaos?” I said. “They’re not the same as good and evil, I’m told.”

“Merciful heavens, no! Not at all. Not at all. Evil is a cruel and selfish thing. Chaos can be wild and generous, and just
as some Lords of Law are self-sacrificing and concerned for others, so are some Lords of Chaos. Did you never hear of Lady
Miggea of Law or Lord Arioch of Chaos? Both are selfish and calculating. Both would sacrifice anyone else to their ambition.
Yet Armein of Chaos is jolly and openhanded by all accounts, as is Lord Arkyn
of Law. They would be friends in other circumstances, I’m sure, those Lords of the Higher Worlds.”

“Then why on earth are they at odds?” I asked.

“Their duty demands it. We all serve Fate in some way. We all have loyalties and predispositions. We all have different remedies
for the world’s pain.”

“Do these lords and ladies fight all the time?”

“Some do. Some do not. They do their duty. They are loyal to their cause. Only rarely do you hear of a renegade like Gaynor.”

“And does anyone serve these lords and ladies from choice?”

“Certainly. The Knights of the Balance. Born to struggle in perpetual battle.”

“Have you met any of these knights?” I was beginning to wonder if Lord Renyard’s faith in the so-called Balance, which my
mother had talked to me about as well, was as needy as that of the people who had filled St. Maria and St. Maria with such
hideous idols.

“I believe I have met some. I believe you have, also.”

“My grandmother? Can women…?”

“Absolutely. There are many great champions, I hear, who are women. There are some who are androgynous. All colors and tastes.”
He uttered that strange, barking laugh. “Your grandmother, Oona, is a quasi-immortal. Her blood, of course, is that of champions.”

“But she isn’t a champion herself?”

“I do not know, and it is not my place, dear mademoiselle, to speculate. Her father, who calls himself Count Zodiac—”

“Which would make him my great-grandfather. He seems immortal.”

“By no means. Only in his dreams, from what my friend Lobkowitz tells me!”

“Is Prince Lobkowitz a champion? Lieutenant Fromental?”

“They carry the wisdom which sometimes helps a champion. Or so I’m told. Companions of the Order, perhaps? Like their friend
and, I hope, mine, the Chevalier St. Odhran. But Colonel Bastable is almost certainly a knight, as well as a member of the
League of Temporal Adventurers.”

“And what’s Gaynor, then?”

“Like Klosterheim, Gaynor allowed his selfish greed and egomania to possess his whole being. Both once served nobler causes.
Both renounced those causes. You know, my dear, that I am a rationalist. I am of the Enlightenment. It is my whole being.
Much of what you are asking should best be asked of Lobkowitz himself. Or your grandmother!”

I knew I was pestering him as we walked back down the steps. It was dusk and he wanted to get back to the inn. He had my hand
in his paw as we hurried along. But I had a lot of questions. “Herr Klosterheim was once a Companion of that Order?”

“Yes, but not loyal to Chaos or Law. Now he embraces Evil, which is a much lesser thing. A petty thing, though dangerous and
often powerful. Yet I suspect that he, if not Gaynor, serves the purposes of Law while not necessarily sharing its ideals.”

“I heard someone mention the Lords of Hell, the Lords of Entropy. Who are they?”

“Names, nothing else. Lords, like Arioch, who are greedy and cruel, are sometimes called the Dukes of Hell by humans, but
they are a miscellaneous crew. Lady
Miggea, though she be a corrupted servant of Law, is called by many who have confronted her a Duchess of Hell. And some of
the great elementals are also mistakenly identified with Lucifer.”

“So does Lucifer exist?” I asked.

Lord Renyard looked troubled at this. “We no longer know,” he said.

The shadows were gathering. We had walked further than we realized, and it was a long way back.

“So who’s the most powerful?” I wanted to know. “Law or Chaos?”

“Neither,” he said after a little thought.

“Okay. Then what single quality do you associate with them?”

Perhaps to keep his mind off the potential dangers of the city at night, Lord Renyard gave my question some thought. At last
he answered, “Love is one.”

“And the other?”

“Greed.”

We had taken a wrong turn. Lord Renyard paused as we came out of an alley. Across from us was an old bridge. We were down
where the river made a radical curve. Lord Renyard set out for the bridge.