To Rescue Tanelorn (45 page)

THE BLACK BLADE’S SONG

(The White Wolf’s Song)

(1994)

Come, Mephistophilis, let us dispute again,

And argue of divine Astrology.

Tell me, are there many Heavens above the moon?

Are all celestial bodies but one globe,

As is the substance of this centric earth?

Christopher Marlowe,
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

An Unusual Occurrence on the Xanardwys Road

T
HE RIDER WAS
lean, almost etiolated, but subtly muscled. His ascetic features were sensitive, his skin milk-white. From deep cavities within that half-starved face moody crimson eyes burned like the flowers of Hell. Once or twice he turned in his saddle to look back.

A tribe of Alofian hermaphrodites at his heels, the man rode eastward across the Dakwinsi Steppe, hoping to reach fabled Xanardwys before the snows blocked the pass.

His pale silver mare, hardiest of all Bastans, was bred to this terrain and had as determined a hold on life as the sickly albino who had to sustain himself by drugs or the stolen life-stuff of his fellows.

Drawing the black sealskin snow-cloak about him, the man set his face against the weather. His name was Elric and he was a prince in his own country, the last of his long line and without legitimate issue, an outcast almost everywhere in a world coming to hate and resent this alien kind as the power of Melniboné faded and the strength of the Young Kingdoms grew. He did not much care for his own safety but he was determined to live, to return to his island kingdom and be reunited with his sweet cousin Cymoril, whom he would one day marry. It was this ambition alone which drove him on through the blizzard.

Clinging to his horse’s mane as the sturdy beast pressed against the deepening drifts which threatened to bury the world, Elric’s senses grew as numb as his flesh. The mare moved slowly across the ridges, keeping to the high ground, heading always away from the afternoon sun. At night Elric dug them both a snow-hole and wrapped them in his lined canvasses. He carried the equipment of the Kardik, whose hunting grounds these were.

Elric no longer dreamed. He was almost entirely without conscious thought. Yet still his horse moved steadily towards Xanardwys, where hot springs brought eternal summer and where scarlet roses bloomed against the snow.

Towards evening on the fifth day of his journey, Elric became aware of an extra edge of coldness in the air. Though the great crimson disc of the setting sun threw long shadows over the white landscape, its light did not penetrate far. It now appeared to Elric that a vast wall of ice loomed up ahead, like the sides of a gigantic, supernatural fortress. There was something insubstantial about it. Perhaps Elric had discovered one of those monumental mirages which, according to the Kardik, heralded the inevitable doom of any witness.

Elric had faced more than one inevitable doom and felt no terror for this one, but his curiosity aroused him from the semi-stupor into which he had fallen. As they approached the towering ice he saw himself and his horse in perfect reflection. He smiled a grim smile, shocked by his own gauntness. He looked twice his real age and felt a hundred times older. Encounters with the supernatural had a habit of draining the spirit, as others whom he had met could readily testify…

Steadily his reflection grew larger until without warning he was swallowed by it—suddenly united with his own image! Then he was riding through a quiet, green dale which, he sincerely hoped, was the Valley of Xanardwys. He looked over his shoulder and saw a blue cloud billowing down a hillside and disappearing. Perhaps the mirror effect had something to do with the freakish weather of this region? He was profoundly relieved that Xanardwys—or at least its valley—was proving a somewhat substantial legend. He dismissed all questions concerning the phenomenon which had brought him here and pressed on in good spirits. All around were the signs of spring—the warm, scented air, the bright wild-flowers, the budding trees and shrubs, the lush grass—and he marveled at a wonderful paradox of geography which, according to the tales he’d heard, had saved many fugitives and travelers. Soon he must come to the ivory spires and ebony roofs of the city herself where he would rest, buy provisions, shelter and then continue his journey to Elwher, which lay beyond all the maps of his world.

The valley was narrow with steeply rising sides, like a tunnel, roots and branches of dark green trees tangling overhead in the soft earth. Elric felt a welcome sense of security and he drew deep breaths, relishing the sweet fecundity all around. This luxury of nature after the punishing ice brought him fresh vitality and new hope. Even his mare had developed a livelier gait.

However, when after an hour or two the sides grew yet steeper and narrower, the albino prince began to puzzle. He had never encountered such a natural phenomenon and indeed was beginning to believe that this gorgeous wealth of spring might be, after all, supernatural in origin. But then, even as he considered turning back and taking heed of a prudence he usually ignored, the sides of the valley began to sink to gentler rolling hills, widening to reveal in the distance a misty outline which must surely be that of Xanardwys.

After pausing to drink at a sparkling stream, Elric and his mare continued on. Now they crossed a vast stretch of greensward flanked by distant mountains, punctuated by stands of trees, flowery meadows, ponds and rivers. Slowly they came closer to the domestic reassurance of Xanardwys’s rural rooftops.

Elric drew in a deep, contented sigh.

A great roaring erupted suddenly in Elric’s ears and he was blinded as a new sun rose rapidly into the western sky, shrieking and wailing like a soul escaped from hell, multicoloured flames forming a pulsing aura. Then the sound became a single, deep, sonorous chord, slowly fading.

Elric’s horse stood mesmerized, as if turned to ice. The albino dismounted, cursing and throwing up his arm to protect his eyes. The broad rays stretched for miles across the landscape, bursting from the pulsing globe and carrying with them huge shapes, dark and writhing, seeming to struggle and fight even as they fell. And now the air was filled with an utterly horrifying noise, like the beating of a million pairs of monstrous wings. Trumpets bellowed, the brazen voices of an army, heralding an even more horrible sound—the despairing moan of a whole world’s souls voicing their agony, the fading shouts and dying cries of warriors in the last, weary stages of a battle.

Peering into the troubled vivacity of that mighty light, Elric felt heavy, muscular, gigantic forms, stinking with a sweet, bestial, almost overpowering odour, landing with massive thuds, shaking the ground with such force that the entire terrain threatened to collapse. This rain of monsters did not cease. It was only the purest of luck which saved Elric from being crushed under one of the falling bodies. He had the impression of metal ringing and clashing, of voices screaming and calling, of wings beating, beating, beating, like the wings of moths against a window, in a kind of frantic hopelessness. And still the monsters continued to fall out of a sky whose light changed subtly now, growing deeper and more stable until the entire world was illuminated by a steady, scarlet glare against which flying, falling shapes moved in black silhouette—wings, helmets, armour, swords—twisted in the postures of defeat. Now the predominant smell reminded Elric of the Fall and the sweet odour of rot, of the summer’s riches returning to their origins, and still mingled with this was the foetid stink of angry brutes.

As the light became gentler and the great disc began to fade, Elric grew aware of other colours and more details. The stink alone threatened to steal his senses—the snorting, acrid breath of titanic beasts, threatening sudden death and alarming every revitalized fibre of his being. Elric glimpsed brazen scales, huge silvery feathers, hideously beautiful insect eyes and mouths, wondrously distorted, half-crystalline bodies and faces, like Leviathan and all his kin, emerging after millions of years from beneath a sea which had encrusted them with myriad colours and asymmetrical forms, made them moving monuments in coral, with faceted eyes which stared up in blind anguish at a sky through which still plunged, wings flapping, fluttering, folded or too damaged to bear their weight, the godlike forms of their supernatural kind. Clashing rows of massive fangs and uttering sounds whose depth and force alone was sufficient to shake the whole valley, to topple Xanardwys’s towers, crack her walls and send her townsfolk fleeing with black blood boiling from every orifice, the monsters continued to fall.

Only Elric, inured to the supernatural, his senses and his body tuned to alien orchestrations, did not suffer the fate of those poor, unlucky creatures.

For mile upon mile in all directions, through light now turning to a bloody pink flecked with brass and copper, the landscape was crowded with the fallen titans: some on their knees; some supporting themselves upon swords, spears or shields; some stumbling blindly before collapsing over the bodies of their comrades; some lying still and breathing slowly, resting with wary relief as their eyes scanned the heavens. And still the mighty angels fell.

Elric, with all his experience, all the years of mystic study, could not imagine the immensity of the battle from which they fled. He, whose own patron Chaos Duke had the power to destroy all mortal enemies, attempted to imagine the collective power of this myriad army, each common soldier of which might belong to Hell’s aristocracy. For these were the very Lords of Chaos, each one of whom had a vast and complex constituency. Of that, Elric was certain.

He realized that his heart was beating rapidly and he was breathing in brief, painful gasps. Deliberately he took control of himself, convinced that the mere presence of that battered host must ultimately kill him. Determined, at least, to experience all he could before he was consumed by the casual power of the monsters, Elric was about to step forward when he heard a voice behind him. It was human, it was sardonic, and its accent was subtly queer, but it used the High Speech of Old Melniboné.

“I’ve seen a few miracles in my travels, sir, but by heavens, it must be the first time I’ve witnessed a shower of angels. Can you explain it, sir? Or are you as mystified as me?”

A Dilemma Discovered in Xanardwys

The stranger was roughly the same height and build as Elric, with delicate, tanned features and pale blue eyes, sharp as steel. He wore the loose, baggy, cream-coloured clothing of some outland barbarian, belted with brown leather and a pouch which doubtless holstered some weapon or charm. He wore a broad-brimmed hat the colour of his shirt and breeches and he carried over his right shoulder another strange-looking weapon, or perhaps a musical instrument, all walnut, brass and steel. “Are you a denizen of these parts, sir, or have you been dragged, like me, through some damnable Chaos vortex against your will? I am Count Renark von Bek, late of the Rim. And you, sir?”

“Prince Elric of Melniboné. I believed myself in Xanardwys, but now I doubt it. I am lost, sir. What do you make of this?”

“If I were to call upon the mythology and religion of my ancestors, I would say we looked at the defeated Host of Chaos, the very archangels who banded with Lucifer to challenge the power of God. All peoples tell their own stories of such a war amongst the angels, doubtless echoes of some true event. So they say, sir. Do you travel the moonbeams, as I do?”

“The question’s meaningless to me.” Elric’s attention was focused upon just one of the thousands of Chaos Lords. They lay everywhere now, darkening the hills and plains as far as the horizon. He had recognized certain aspects of the creature well enough to identify him as Arioch, his own patron Duke of Hell.

Count von Bek became curious. “What do you see, Prince Elric?”

The albino paused, his mind troubled. There was a mystery to all this which he could not understand and which he was too terrified to want to understand. He yearned with all his being to be elsewhere, anywhere but here; yet his feet were already moving, taking him through the groaning ranks whose huge bodies towered above him, seeking out his patron. “Lord Arioch? Lord Arioch?”

A frail, distant voice. “Ah, sweetest of my slaves. I thought thee dead. Has thou brought me sustenance, darling heart? Sweetmeats for thy lord?”

There was no mistaking Lord Arioch’s tone, but the voice had never been weaker. Was Lord Arioch already considering his own paradoxical death?

“I have no blood, no souls for thee today, great duke.” Elric made his way towards a massive figure lying panting across a hillside. “I am as weak as thee.”

“Then I love thee not. Begone…” The voice became nothing but fading echoes, even as Elric approached its source. “Go back, Elric. Go back whence ye came…It is not thy time…Thou shouldst not be here…Beware…Obey me or I shall…” But the threat was empty and both knew it. Arioch had used all his strength.