To Rescue Tanelorn (34 page)

“Perhaps. Do you recall anything else of the legend of R’lin K’ren A’a?”

“There is the story of the Creature Doomed to Live.” Elric pushed the food aside and poured wine for himself. “The city is said to have received its name because the Lords of the Higher Worlds once met there to decide the rules of the Cosmic Struggle. They were overheard by the one inhabitant of the city who had not flown when they came. When they discovered him, they doomed him to remain alive for ever, carrying the frightful knowledge in his head…”

“I have heard that story, too. But the one that interests me is that the inhabitants of R’lin K’ren A’a never returned to their city. Instead they struck northward and crossed the sea. Some reached an island we now call Sorcerers’ Isle while others went further—blown by a great storm—and came at length to a large island inhabited by dragons whose venom caused all it touched to burn…to Melniboné, in fact.”

“And you wish to test the truth of that story. Your interest is that of a scholar?”

Duke Avan laughed. “Partly. But my main interest in R’lin K’ren A’a is more materialistic. For your ancestors left a great treasure behind them when they fled their city. Particularly they abandoned an image of Arioch, the Lord of Chaos—a monstrous image, carved in jade, whose eyes were two huge, identical gems of a kind unknown anywhere else in all the lands of the Earth. Jewels from another plane of existence. Jewels which could reveal all the secrets of the Higher Worlds, of the past and the future, of the myriad planes of the cosmos…”

“All cultures have similar legends. Wishful thinking, Duke Avan, that is all…”

“But the Melnibonéans had a culture unlike any others. The Melnibonéans are not true men, as you well know. Their powers are superior, their knowledge far greater…”

“It was once thus,” Elric said. “But that great power and knowledge is not mine. I have only a fragment of it…”

“I did not seek you in Bakshaan and later in Jadmar because I believed you could verify what I have heard. I did not cross the sea to Filkhar, then to Argimiliar and at last to Pikarayd because I thought you would instantly confirm all that I have spoken of—I sought you because I think you the only man who would wish to accompany me on a voyage which would give us the truth or falsehood to these legends once and for all.”

Elric tilted his head and drained his wine-cup.

“Cannot you do that for yourself? Why should you desire my company on the expedition? From what I have heard of you, Duke Avan, you are not one who needs support in his venturings…”

Duke Avan laughed. “I went alone to Elwher when my men deserted me in the Weeping Waste. It is not in my nature to know physical fear. But I have survived my travels this long because I have shown proper foresight and caution before setting off. Now it seems I must face dangers I cannot anticipate—sorcery, perhaps. It struck me, therefore, that I needed an ally who had some experience of fighting sorcery. And since I would have no truck with the ordinary kind of wizard such as Pan Tang spawns, you were my only choice. You are a wanderer, Prince Elric, just as I am. You were a wanderer before Imrryr fell as well as after. Indeed, if it had not been for your yearning to travel, your cousin would never have usurped the Ruby Throne of Melniboné while you were absent…”

“Enough of that,” Elric said bitterly. “Let’s talk of this expedition. Where is the map?”

“You will accompany me?”

“Show me the map.”

Duke Avan drew a scroll from his pouch. “Here it is.”

“Where did you find it?”

“On Melniboné.”

“You have been there recently?” Elric felt anger rise in him.

Duke Avan raised a hand. “Many have come and gone amongst the ruins of Imrryr since she fell, my lord. Most sought treasure. I sought, in that particular case, knowledge. I found a casket which had been sealed, it seemed, for an eternity. Within that casket was this map.” He spread out the scroll on the table. Elric recognized the style and the script—the old High Speech of Melniboné. It was a map of part of the Western Continent—more than he had ever seen on any other map. It showed a great river winding into the interior for a hundred miles or more. The river appeared to flow through a jungle and then divide into two rivers which later rejoined. The “island” of land thus formed had a black circle marked on it. Against this circle, in the involved writing of ancient Melniboné, was the name R’lin K’ren A’a. Elric inspected the scroll carefully. It did not seem to be a forgery.

“Is this all you found?” he asked.

“The scroll was sealed and this was embedded in the seal,” Duke Avan said, handing something to Elric.

Elric held the object in his palm. It was a tiny ruby of a red so deep as to seem black at first, but when he turned it into the light he saw an image at the centre of the ruby and he recognized that image. He frowned, then he said, “I will agree to your proposal, Duke Avan. Will you let me keep this?”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No. But I should like to find out. There is a memory somewhere in my mind…”

“Very well, take it. I will keep the map.”

“When did you have it in mind to set off?”

“We’ll ride to the coast tomorrow. My ship awaits us. From there we sail round the southern coast to the Boiling Sea.”

“There are few who have returned from that ocean,” Elric murmured sardonically. He glanced across the table and saw that Moonglum was imploring with his eyes for Elric not to have any part of Duke Avan’s scheme. Elric smiled at his friend. “The adventure is to my taste.”

Miserably, Moonglum shrugged.

The coast of Lormyr disappeared in warm mist and the Vilmirian schooner dipped its graceful prow towards the west and the Boiling Sea.

Only once before had Elric ventured into this sea and then he had flown high above it on a bird of gold and silver and brass, seeking the bleak island on which stood the magical palace of Ashaneloon—Myshella’s palace. Standing on the poop deck Elric stared ahead into the writhing mist and tried not to think of Myshella and the dreams and emotions she had awakened within him. He wiped sweat from his face and turned to see Moonglum’s worried countenance.

“You still keep patience with me, Master Moonglum. Your warnings are always well-founded and yet I never heed them. I wonder why that is.”

Moonglum raised his gloomy eyes to regard the taut sails of the schooner. “Because you desire danger as other men desire love-making or drinking—for in danger you find forgetfulness.”

“Do I? Few of the dangers we have faced together have helped me forget. Rather they have strengthened my memories, improved the quality of my sorrow…” Elric drew a deep, melancholy breath. “I go where danger is because I think that an answer might lie there—some reason for all this tragedy and paradox. Yet I know I shall never find it.”

“Yet that is why you sail to R’lin K’ren A’a, is it not? You hope that your remote ancestors had the answer you want?”

“R’lin K’ren A’a is a myth. Even should the map prove genuine what shall we find but a few ruins? Imrryr has stood for ten thousand years and she was built at least two centuries after my people settled on Melniboné. Time will have taken R’lin K’ren A’a away.”

“And the Jade Man?”

“If the statue ever existed, it could have been looted at any time in the past hundred centuries.”

“And the Creature Doomed to Live?”

“A myth.”

“But you hope that it is all as Duke Avan says…?”

“No, Moonglum. I
fear
that it is all as he says.”

The wind blew whimsically and the schooner’s passage was slow as the heat grew greater and the crew sweated and murmured fearfully. And upon each face was a stricken look. Only Duke Avan seemed to retain his confidence. He called to his men to take heart, that they should all be rich soon and he gave orders for the oars to be unshipped and the men stripped down to man them, revealing skins as red as those of a cooked lobster. Duke Avan made a joke of that. The Vilmirians did not laugh.

Around the ship the sea bubbled and roared, and they navigated by their crude instruments alone, for the steam obscured everything. Once a green thing erupted from the sea and glared at them before disappearing.

They ate and slept little and Elric rarely left the poop deck. Moonglum bore the heat silently and Duke Avan went about the ship encouraging his men, seemingly oblivious of the discomfort.

“After all,” he pointed out to Moonglum, “we are only crossing the outer reaches of the sea. Think what it must be like at the middle.”

“I would rather not. I fear I’ll be boiled to death before another day has passed.”

“Nonsense, friend Moonglum, the steam is good for you. There is nothing healthier!” Duke Avan stretched seemingly with pleasure. “It cleans all the poisons from the system.”

Moonglum offered him a withering look and Avan laughed. “Be of better cheer, Master Moonglum. According to my charts—such as they are—a couple of days will see us nearing the coasts of the Western Continent.”

“The thought fails to raise my spirits very greatly,” Moonglum said and went to find his cabin.

But shortly thereafter the sea grew slowly less frenetic and the steam began to disperse and the heat became more tolerable until at last they emerged into a calm ocean beneath a blue sky in which hung the golden sun. The spirits of the crew rose and they buried the three men who had succumbed on a little yellow island where they found fruit and a spring of fresh water. While they lay at anchor off the island Duke Avan called Elric to his cabin and showed him the ancient map.

“See! This island is marked there. The map’s scale seems reasonably accurate. Another three days and we shall be at the mouth of the river.”

Elric nodded. “But it would be wise to rest here for a while until our strength is fully restored and the morale of the crew is raised higher. There are reasons, after all, why men have avoided the jungles of the West over the centuries.”

“Certainly there are savages there—some say they are not even human—but I’m confident we can deal with those dangers. I have much experience of strange territories, Prince Elric.”

“But you said yourself you feared other dangers.”

“True. Very well, we’ll do as you suggest.”

On the fourth day a strong wind began to blow from the east and they raised anchor. The schooner leaped over the waves under only half her canvas and the crew saw this as a good omen.

“They are mindless fools,” Moonglum said as they stood clinging to the rigging in the prow. “The time will come when they will wish they were suffering the cleaner hardships of the Boiling Sea. This journey, Elric, will benefit none of us, even if the riches of R’lin K’ren A’a are still there.”

But Elric did not answer. He was lost in strange thoughts, unusual thoughts for him, for he was remembering his childhood, the mother he had never known and his father. They had been the last true rulers of the Bright Empire—proud, insouciant, cruel. They had expected him—perhaps because of his strange albinism—to restore the glories of Melniboné. Instead he had destroyed what was left of that glory. They, like himself, had had no real place in this new age of the Young Kingdoms, but had refused to acknowledge it. This journey to the Western Continent, to the land of his ancestors, had a peculiar attraction for him. Here no new nations had emerged. The continent had, as far as he knew, remained the same since R’lin K’ren A’a had been abandoned. The jungles would be the jungles his folk had known, the land would be the land that had given birth to his peculiar race, moulded the character of its people with their sombre pleasures, their melancholy arts and their dark delights. Had his ancestors felt this agony of knowledge, this impotence in the face of the understanding that existence had no point, no purpose, no hope? Was this why they had built their civilization in that particular pattern, why they had disdained the more placid, spiritual values of mankind’s philosophers? He knew that many of the intellectuals of the Young Kingdoms pitied the powerful folk of Melniboné as mad. But if they had been mad and if they had imposed a madness upon the world that had lasted a hundred centuries, what had made them so? Perhaps the secret did lie in R’lin K’ren A’a—not in any tangible form but in the ambiance created by the dark jungles and the deep, old rivers. Perhaps here, at last, he would be able to feel at one with himself.

He ran his fingers through his milk-white hair and there was a kind of innocent anguish in his crimson eyes. He was the last of his kind and yet he was unlike his kind. Moonglum had been wrong. Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.

It was on the morning of the third day that the coast was sighted and the schooner steered her way through the sandbanks of the great delta and anchored, at last, at the mouth of the dark and nameless river.

Evening came and the sun began to set over the black outlines of the massive trees. A rich, ancient smell came from the jungle and through the twilight echoed the cries of strange birds and beasts. Elric was impatient to begin the quest up the river. Sleep—never welcome—was now impossible to achieve. He stood unmoving on the deck, his eyes hardly blinking, his brain barely active, as if expecting something to happen to him. The rays of the sun stained his face and threw black shadows over the deck and then it was dark and still under the moon and the stars. He wanted the jungle to absorb him. He wanted to be one with the trees and the shrubs and the creeping beasts. He wanted thought to disappear. He drew the heavily scented air into his lungs as if that alone would make him become what at that moment he desired to be. The drone of insects became a murmuring voice that called him into the heart of the old, old forest. And yet he could not move—could not answer. And at length Moonglum came up on deck and touched his shoulder and said something and passively he went below to his bunk and wrapped himself in his cloak and lay there, still listening to the voice of the jungle.