The Fortress of the Pearl

1 How a Thief May Instruct an Emperor

Oone removed a date stone from her mouth and dropped it into the sand of the Silver Flower Oasis. She reached her hand towards one of the brilliant cactus flowers which gave the place its name. She stroked the petals with long, delicate fingers. She sang to herself and it seemed to Elric that her words were a lament.

Respectfully he remained silent, sitting with his back to a palm tree looking to the distant camp and its continuing activity. She had asked bun to accompany her but had said little to him. He heard a calling from the kashbeh high above but when he peered in that direction he saw nothing. The breeze blew over the desert and red dust raced like water towards the Ragged Pillars on the horizon.

It was almost noon. They had returned to the Silver Flower Oasis that morning and the few remains of Alnac Kreb were to be burned with honour according to the customs of the Bauradim that night.

Oone's staff was no longer slung on her back. Now she held the dreamwand in both hands, turning it over and over, watching the light on its burnish and polish as if she had only now seen it for the first time. The other wand, Alnac's, she had tucked into her belt.

"It would have made my task a little easier," she said suddenly, "if Alnac had not acted so precipitously. He did not realise I was coming and was doing his best to save the child, I know. But a few more hours and I could have used his help, perhaps successfully. Certainly I might have saved him."

"I do not understand what happened to him," said Elric.

"Even I do not know the exact cause of his fall," she said. "But I will explain what I can. That is why I asked you to come with me. I would not wish to be overheard. And I must demand your word that you will be discreet."

"I am ever that, madam."

"Forever," she said.

"Forever?"

"You must promise never to tell another soul what I tell you today, nor recount any event which results from the telling. You must agree to be bound by a dreamthief s code even though you are not of our kind."

Elric was baffled. "For what reason?"

"Would you save their Holy Girl? Avenge Alnac? Free yourself from the drug's slavery? Adjust certain wrongs in Quarzhasaat?"

"You know I would."

"Then we may reach an agreement, for it is certain that, unless we help each other, you and the girl and perhaps myself, too, will all be dead before the Blood Moon fades."

"Certain?" Elric was grimly amused. "Are you an oracle, too, then, madam?"

"All dreamthieves are that, to some degree." She was almost impatient, as if she spoke to a slow child. She caught herself. "Forgive me. I forget that our craft is unknown in the Young Kingdoms. Indeed, it's rarely that we travel to this plane at all."

"I have met many supernatural in my life, my lady, but few who seem so human as yourself."

"Human? Of course I am human!" She seemed puzzled. Then her brow cleared. "Ah. I forget that you are at once more sophisticated and less learned than those of my own persuasion." She smiled at him. "I am still not recovered from Alnac's unnecessary dissolution."

"He need not have died." Elric's tone was flat, unquestioning. He had known Alnac long enough to care for him as a Mend. He understood something of Oone's loss. "And there is no way to revive him?"

"He lost all essence," said Gone. "Instead of stealing a dream, he was robbed of his own." She paused, then spoke quickly, as if she feared she would regret her words. "Will you help me, Prince Elric?"

"Yes." He spoke without hesitation. "If it is to avenge Alnac and save the child."

"Even if you risk Alnac's fate? The fate which you witnessed?"

"Even that. Can it be worse than dying in Lord Gho's power?"

"Yes," she said simply.

Elric laughed aloud at her frankness. "Ah, well. Just so, madam! Just so! What's your bargain?"

She moved her hand again towards the silver petals, balancing her wand between her fingers. She was frowning, still not wholly certain of the rightness of her decision. "I think that you are one of the few mortals on this earth who could understand the nature of my profession, who'll know what I mean when I speak of the nature of dreams and reality and how they intersect. I think, too, that you have habits of mind which would make you, if not a perfect ally, then an ally on whom I could to some extent depend. We dreamthieves have made something of a science of a trade which logically can tolerate no consistent laws. It has enabled us to pursue our craft with some success, largely, I suspect, because we are able, to a degree, to impose our wills upon the chaos we encounter. Does this make sense to you, Prince?"

"I think so. There are philosophers of my own people who claim that much of our magic is actually the imposition of powerful will upon the fundamental stuff of reality, an ability, if you like, to make dreams come true. Some claim our whole world was created thus."

Gone seemed pleased. "Good. I knew there were certain ideas I would not have to explain."

"But what would you have me do, lady?"

"I want you to help me. Together we can find a way to what the Sorcerer Adventurers call the Fortress of the Pearl and by so doing one or both of us might steal the dream which binds the child to perpetual sleep and free her to wakefulness, return her to her people to be their seeress and their pride."

"The two are linked, then?" Elric began to rise to his feet, ignoring the call of his ever-present craving. "The child and the Pearl?"

"I think so."

"What is the link?"

"In discovering that, we shall doubtless discover how to free her."

"Forgive me Lady Oone," said Elric gently, "but you sound almost as ignorant as I!"

"In some ways it is true that I am. Before I go further, I must ask you to swear to abide by the Dreamthief's Code."

"I swear," said Elric, and he held up the hand on which his Actorios glowed to show that he swore by one of his people's most revered artefacts. "I swear by the Rings of Kings."

"Then I will tell you what I know and what I desire of you," said Oone. She linked her free hand in his arm and led him further into the groves of palms and cypress. Sensing the shuddering hunger in him which yearned for Lord Gho's terrible drug, she seemed to show some sympathy.

"A dreamthief," she began, "does exactly what the title implies. We steal dreams. Originally our guild were true thieves. We learned the trick of entering the worlds of other peoples' dreams and stealing those which were most magnificent or exotic. Gradually, however, people began to call upon us to steal unwanted dreams-or rather the dreams which entrapped or plagued friends or relatives. So we stole those. Frequently the dreams themselves were in no way harmful to another, only to the one who was in their power..."

Elric interrupted. "Are you saying that a dream has some material reality? That it can be seized, like a volume of verse, say, or money purse, and slipped free of its owner?"

"Essentially, yes. Or, I should say, our guild learned the trick of making a dream sufficiently real for it to be handled thus!" She now laughed openly at his confusion and some of the care went away from her for a moment. "There is a certain talent needed and a great deal of training."

"But what do you do with these stolen dreams?"

"Why, Prince Elric, we sell them ft the Dream Market, twice a year. There's a fine trade in almost any sort of dream, no matter how bizarre or terrifying. There are merchants who purchase them and customers who would buy them. We distill them, of course, into a form which can be transported and later translated. And because we make the dreams take substance, we are threatened by them. That substance can destroy us. You see what happened to Alnac. It takes a certain character, a certain cast of mind, a certain attitude of spirit, all combining, to protect oneself in the Dream Realms. But because we have codified these realms we have also to a degree made them our own to manipulate."

"You must explain more to me," said Elric, "if I am to follow you at all, madam!"

"Very well." She paused at the edge of the grove, where the earth grew dustier and formed a territory between oasis and desert that was a little of both and was neither. She studied the cracked earth as if the cracks were the outlines of a singularly complicated map, a geometry which only she could understand.

"We have made rules," she said. Her voice was distant, almost as if she spoke to herself. "And codified what we have discovered over the centuries. And yet we are still subject to the most unimaginable hazards..."

"Wait, madam. Are you suggesting that Alnac Kreb, by some wizardry known only to your guild, entered the world of the Holy Girl's dreams and there suffered adventures such as you or I might suffer in this material world?"

"Well put." She turned with a strange smile on her lips. "Aye. And his substance went into that world and was absorbed by it, strengthening the substance of her dreams..."

"The dreams he hoped to steal."

"He hoped to steal only one. The one which imprisons her in that perpetual slumber."

"And then he would sell it, you say, at your Dream Market?"

"Perhaps." She was clearly unwilling to discuss this aspect of the matter.

"Where is that market held?"

"In a realm beyond this one, in a place where only those of our profession, or those who attend upon us, may travel."

"You'd take me there?" Elric spoke from curiosity.

Her glance was a mixture of amusement and caution. "Possibly. But first we must be successful. We must steal a dream so that we may trade it there. Know you, Elric, I have every desire to inform you of all you wish to learn, but there are many things hard to explain to one who has not studied with our guild. They can only be demonstrated or experienced. I am not a native of your world, nor are most dreamthieves from this sphere. We are wanderers-nomads, you might say-between many times and many places. We have learned that a dream in one realm can be an undeniable reality hi another, while what is utterly prosaic in that realm can elsewhere be the stuff of the most fantastic nightmare."

"Is all creation so malleable?" Elric asked with a shudder.

"What we create must ever be, lest it die," she said, her tone one of ironical finality.

"The struggle between Law and Chaos echoes that struggle within ourselves between unbridled emotion and too much caution, I suppose," Elric mused, aware that she did not wish to pursue this particular conversation.

With her foot Gone traced the cracks in the red earth. 'To learn more you must become an apprentice dreamthief..."

"Willingly," said Elric. "I'm sufficiently curious now, madam. You spoke of your laws. What are they?"

"Some are instructive, some are descriptive. First I'll tell you that we have determined that every Dream Realm shall have seven aspects, which we have named. By naming and describing we hope to shape that which has no shape and control that which few can begin to control. By such impositions we have learned to survive in worlds where others would be destroyed within minutes. Yet even when we perform such impositions, even that which our own wills define can become transmuted beyond our control. If you would accompany me and aid me in this adventure, you must know that I have determined we shall pass through seven lands. The first land we call Sadanor, or the Land of Dreams-in-Common. The second land is Marador, which we call the Land of Old Desires, while the third is Paranor, the Land of Lost Beliefs. The fourth land is known to dreamthieves as Celador, which is the Land of Forgotten Love. The fifth is Imador, the Land of New Ambition, and the sixth is Falador, the Land of Madness..."

"Fanciful names indeed, madam. The Guild of Dreamthieves has a penchant for poetry, I think. And the seventh? What is that named?"

She paused before she replied. Her wonderful eyes peered into his, as if exploring the recesses of his own skull. "That has no name," she said quietly, "save any name the inhabitants shall give it. But there, if anywhere, you will find the Fortress of the Pearl,"

Elric felt himself trapped by that gentle yet determined gaze. "And how may we enter these lands?" The albino forced himself to engage with these questions though by now his whole body was crying out for a draft of Lord Gho's elixir.

She sensed his tension, and her hand on his arm was meant to calm and reassure him. "Through the child," said Oone.

Elric remembered what he had witnessed in the Bronze Tent and he shuddered. "How is such a thing achieved?"

Oone frowned and the pressure of her hand increased. "She is our gateway and the dreamwands are our keys. There is no way hi which I will harm her, Elric. Once we have reached the seventh aspect, the Nameless Land, there we might in turn find the key to her particular prison."

"She is a medium, then? Is that what has happened to her? Did the Sorcerer Adventurers know something of her power and in attempting to use her put her into this trance?"

Again she hesitated, then she nodded. "Close enough, Prince Elric. It is written in our histories, of which we have many, though most are inaccessible to us in the libraries of Tanelorn, 'What lies within always has a form without and that which is without takes a shape within.' Put another way, we sometimes say that what is visible must always have an invisible aspect, just as everything invisible must be represented by the visible."

Elric found this too cryptic for him, though he was familiar enough with such mysterious utterances from his own grimoires. He did not dismiss them, but he knew they frequently required much pondering and certain experience before they made complete sense. "You speak of supernatural realms, madam. The worlds inhabited by the Lords of Chaos and of Law, by the elementals, by immortals and the like. I know something of such realms and have even journeyed in them some little way. But I have never heard of leaving part of one's physical substance behind and travelling into those realms by means of a sleeping child!"

She looked at him for a long moment as if she thought he was deliberately disingenuous, then she shrugged. "You will find the realms of the dreamthief very similar. And you would do well to memorise and obey our code."

"You are a strict order, then, madam..."

"If we are to survive. Alnac had the instincts of a good dreamthief but he had not acquired the full discipline. That was one of the chief reasons for his dissolution. You on the other hand are familiar with the necessary disciplines, for they were how you came by your knowledge of sorcery. Without those disciplines you, too, would have perished."

"I have rejected much of that, Lady Gone."

"Aye. So I believe. But you have not lost the habit, I think. Or so I hope. The first law the dreamthief obeys says, Offers of guidance must always be accepted but never trusted. The second says, Beware the familiar, and the third tells us, What is strange should be cautiously welcomed. There are many others, but it is those three which encompass the fundamentals by which a dreamthief survives." She smiled. Her smile was oddly sweet and vulnerable and Elric realised she was weary. Perhaps her grief had exhausted her.

The Melnibonéan spoke gently, looking back to the great red rocks of the Silver Flower's protection and sanctuary. The voices were stilled now. Thin lines of smoke ascended the rich blue of the sky. "How long does it take to instruct and train one of your calling?"

She recognised his irony now. "Five years or more," she said. "Alnac had been a full member of the guild for perhaps six years."

"And he failed to survive in the realm where the Holy Girl's spirit is held prisoner?"

"He was, for all his skills, only an ordinary mortal, Prince Elric."

"And you think I'm more than that?"

She laughed openly. "You are the last Emperor of Melniboné. You are the most powerful of your race, which is a race whose familiarity with sorcery is legendary. True, you have left your bride to be waiting for you while you place your cousin Yyrkoon on the Ruby Throne to reign as Regent until you return-a decision only an idealist would make-but nonetheless, my lord, you cannot pretend to me that you are in any way ordinary!"

In spite of his craving for the poisonous elixir, Elric found himself laughing back at her. "If I am such a man of qualities, madam, how is it that I find myself in this position, contemplating death from the tricks of a second-rate provincial politician?"

"I did not say you admired yourself, my lord. But it would be foolish to deny what you have been and what you could become."

"I prefer to consider the latter, my lady."

"Consider, if you will, the fate of Raik Na Seem's daughter. Consider the fate of his people deprived of then: history and their oracle. Consider your own doom, to perish for no good reason in a distant land, your destiny unfulfilled."

Elric accepted this.

She continued. "It is probable, too, that you have no rival as a sorcerer in your world. While your specific skills might be of little use to you in the adventure I propose, your experience, knowledge and understanding might make the difference between success and failure."

Elric had become impatient as his body's demand for the drug grew unbearable. "Very well, Lady Gone. Whatever you decide, I shall agree to."

She took a step back from him and looked at him coolly. "You had best return to your tent and find your elixir," she said softly.

Familiar desperation filled the albino's mind. "I shall, madam. I shall." And turning he strode swiftly back towards the gathered tents of the Bauradim.

He scarcely spoke to any of those who greeted him as he passed. Raik Na Seem had moved nothing from the tent Elric had last shared with Alnac Kreb, and the albino hastily drew the flask from his saddle-bag, taking a deep draft and feeling, for a short while at least, the relief, the resurgence of energy, the illusion of health which the Quarzhasaati's drug gave him. He sighed and turned towards the entrance of the tent as Raik Na Seem came up, his brow furrowed, his eyes full of pain which he tried to disguise. "Have you agreed to help the dreamthief, Elric? Will you attempt to achieve what the prophecy predicted? Bring our Holy Girl back to us? There is now less time than there ever was. Soon the Blood Moon will be gone."

Elric dropped the flask onto the carpet which covered the ground. He bent and picked up the Black Sword, which he had unbuckled while he walked with Oone. The thing thrilled in his fingers and he felt vaguely nauseated. "I will do whatever is required of me," the albino said.

"Good." The older man gripped Elric by the shoulders. "Oone has told me that you are a great man with a great destiny and that this time is one of considerable moment in your life. We are honoured to be part of that destiny and grateful for your concern..."

Elric accepted Raik Na Seem's words with all his old grace. He bowed. "I believe that the health of your Holy Girl is more important than any fate of mine. I will do whatever is possible to bring her back to you."

Oone had entered behind the Bauradim's First Elder. She smiled at the albino. "You are ready now?"

Elric nodded and began to buckle on the Black Sword, but Oone stopped him with a gesture. "You'll find the weapons you need where we travel."

"But the sword is more than a weapon, Lady Oone!" The albino knew a kind of panic.

She held out Alnac's dreamwand to him. "This is all you need for our venture, my lord Emperor."

Stormbringer murmured violently as Elric let the sword fall back to the cushions of the tent. It seemed almost to threaten him.

"I am dependent..." he began.

She shook her head gently. "You are not. You believe that sword to be part of your identity but it is not. It is your nemesis. It is the part of you which represents your weakness, not your strength."

Elric sighed. "I do not understand you, my lady, but if you do not wish me to bring the sword, I'll leave it."

Another sound, a peculiar growl, from the blade, but Elric ignored it. He left both flask and sword in the tent and strode to where horses awaited them to carry them from the Silver Flower Oasis back to the Bronze Tent.

As they rode a little distance behind Raik Na Seem, Gone told Elric something more of what the Holy Girl meant to the Bauradim.

"As you perhaps have already realised, the child holds in trust the history and the aspirations of the Bauradim-their collected wisdom. Everything they know to be true and of value is contained within her. She is the living representation of her people's learning-what is the essence of their history-of a time before they became desert dwellers even. If they lose her, there is every chance, they believe, that they must begin their history all over again-relearn hard-won lessons, relive experience and make the mistakes and blunders which so painfully informed their people's understanding down the centuries. She is Tune, if you like-their library, museum, religion and culture personified in a single human being. Can you imagine, Prince Elric, what her loss means to them? She is the very soul of the Bauradim. And that soul is imprisoned where only those of a certain skill can even find her, let alone free her."

Elric fingered the dreamwand which now replaced his runesword at his hip. "If she were only an ordinary child, bringing sorrow to her family through her condition, I would be inclined to help if I could," he said. "For I like this people and their leader."

"Her fate and yours are intertwined," said Gone. "Whatever your sentiments, my lord, you probably have little real choice in the matter."

He did not wish to hear this. "It seems to me, madam, that you dreamthieves are altogether too familiar with myself, my family, my people and my destiny. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Yet I cannot deny you know more than anyone, save my betrothed, about my inner conflicts. How come you by this power of divination and prophecy?"

She spoke almost casually. "There is a land all dreamthieves have visited. It is a place where all dreams intersect, where all that we have in common meets. And we call that land the Birthplace of the Bone, where mankind first assumed reality."

"This is legend! And primitive legend at that!"

"Legend to you. Truth to us. As one day you'll discover."

"If Alnac could foretell the future, why did he not wait for you to come to help him?"

"We rarely know our own destinies, only the general movements of the tides and of the figures who stand out in their world's histories. All dreamthieves, it is true, know the future, for half their lives are spent without Time. For us there is no past or future, only a changing present. We are free of those particular chains while bound as strongly by others."

"I have read of such ideas, but they mean very little to me." "Because you lack experience to make sense of them." "You have already spoken of the Land of Dreams-in-Common. Is that the same as the Birthplace of the Bone?" "Perhaps. Our people are undecided on the point." Temporarily invigorated by the drug, Elric began to enjoy the conversation, much of which he saw as mere pleasant abstraction. Free of his runesword he knew a kind of lightness of spirit which he had not experienced since the first months of his courtship of Cymoril in those relatively untroubled years before Yyrkoon's growing ambition had begun to contaminate life at the Melnibonéan Court.

He recalled something from one of his own people's histories. "I have seen it said that the world is no more than what its denizens agree it is. I remember reading something to that effect in The Gabbling Sphere which said, 'For who is to say which is the inner world and which the outer? What we make reality may be what will alone decides, and what we define as dreams may be the greater truth.' Is that a philosophy close to your own, Lady Gone?" "Close enough," she said. "Though it seems a little airy." They rode like this, almost like two children on a picnic, until they reached the Bronze Tent when the sun was setting and were led, once more, into the place where men and women sat or lay around the great raised bed on which rested the little girl who symbolised their entire existence.

It seemed to Elric that the illuminating braziers and lamps were burning lower than when last he was here, and that the child looked even paler than before, but he forced an expression of confidence when he turned to Raik Na Seem. "This time we shall not fail her," he said.

Oone appeared to approve of Elric's words and watched carefully as, on her instructions, Varadia's frail body was lifted from the bed and placed this time upon a huge cushion which, in its turn, was set between two other cushions, also of great size. She signed to the albino to lay his body down on the far side of the child while she herself took up her position on the girl's left.

"Grasp her hand, my lord Emperor," said Oone ironically, "and place the crook of the dreamwand over both yours and hers, as you saw Alnac do."

Elric felt some trepidation as he obeyed her, but he knew no fear for himself, only for the child and her people, for Cymoril waiting for him in Melniboné, for the boy who prayed in Quarzhasaat that he would return with the jewel his jailer had demanded. His hand locked to the girl's by the dreamwand, he knew a sense of fusion that was not unpleasant, yet seemed to burn as hot as any flame. He watched as Oone did the same thing.

Immediately Elric felt a power possess him and for a moment it was as if his body grew lighter and lighter until it threatened to drift away on the slightest breeze. His vision faded, yet dimly he could still see Oone. She seemed to be concentrating.

He looked into the face of the Holy Girl and for a second thought he saw her skin turn still whiter, her eyes glow as crimson as his own, and a strange thought came and went in his mind: If I had a daughter she would look thus...

And then it was as if his bones were melting, his flesh dissolving, his whole mind and spirit dissipating. He gave himself up to this sensation as he had determined he must, since he now served Oone's purpose, and now the flesh became flowing water, the veins and blood were coloured strands of air, his skeleton flowed like molten silver, mingling with the Holy Girl's, becoming hers, then flowing on beyond her, into caverns and tunnels and dark places, into places where whole worlds existed in hollowed rock, where voices called to him and knew bun and sought to comfort him or frighten him or tell him truths he did not wish to learn; and then the air grew bright again and he felt Oone beside him, guiding him, her hand on his, her body almost his body, her voice confident and even cheerful, like one who moves towards familiar danger; danger which she had overcome many times. Yet there was an edge to her voice which made him believe she had never faced a danger as great as this one and that there was every chance neither of them would return to the Bronze Tent or the Silver Flower Oasis.

And there was music which he understood was the very soul of this child turned into sound. Sweet, sad, lonely music. Music so beautiful he would have wept had he anything more than the airiest substance.

Then he saw blue sky before him, a red desert stretching away towards red mountains on the horizon, and he had the strangest of sensations, as if he were coming home to a land he had somehow lost in his childhood and then forgotten.

2 In the Marches at the Heart's Edge

As Elric felt his bones re-form and the flesh resume its familiar weight and contour he saw that the land they had entered seemed scarcely any different from that which they had left. Red desert stretched before them, red mountains lay beyond. So familiar was the landscape that Elric looked back, expecting to see the Bronze Tent, but immediately behind him now yawned a chasm so vast that no further side could be seen. He knew sudden vertigo and checked his balance, somewhat to Oone's amusement

The dreamthief was dressed in her same functional velvets and silks and seemed a little amused by his response. "Aye, Prince Elric! Now we are indeed at the very edge of the world! We have only certain choices here and they do not include retreat!"

"I had not considered it, madam." Looking more closely, he realised that the mountains were considerably taller and were all leaning in the same direction, as if bent by a tremendous wind.

"They are like the teeth of some ancient predator," said Oone with a shudder of one who might actually have stared into such a maw at some time in their career. "Doubtless the first stage of our journey takes us there. This is the land we dreamtnieves call Sadanor. The Land of Dreams-in-Common."

"Yet you seem unfamiliar with the scenery."

"The scenery varies. We know only the nature of the land. It may change in its details. But where we travel is frequently dangerous not because it is unfamiliar but because of its familiarity. That is the second rule of the dreamthief."

"Beware the familiar."

"You learn well." She seemed unduly pleased by his response, as if she had doubted her own description of his qualities and was glad to have them confirmed. Elric began to realise the degree of desperation involved in this adventure and was seized by that wild carelessness, that willingness to give himself up to the moment, to any experience, which so set him apart from the other lords of Melniboné, whose lives were ruled by tradition and a desire to maintain their power at any cost.

Smiling, his eyes alight with all their old vitality, he bowed ironically. "Then lead on, madam! Let us begin our journey towards the mountains."

Gone, a little startled by his mood, frowned. But she began to walk through sand so light it stirred like water around her feet. And the albino followed.

"I must admit," he said, after they had walked for perhaps an hour, without noting any shift in the position of the light, "the more I am in this place, the more it begins to disturb me. I thought the sun obscured, but now I realise there is no sun hi the sky at all."

"Such normalities come and go in the Land of Dreams-in-Common," said Gone.

"I would feel more secure with my sword at my side."

"Swords are easily come by here," she said.

"Drinkers of souls?"

"Perhaps. But do you feel the need for that peculiar form of sustenance? Do you crave Lord Gho's drug?"

Elric admitted to his own surprise that he had lost no energy. For perhaps the first time in his adult life he had the sense that he was physically as other people, able to sustain himself without calling on any form of artifice. "It occurs to me," he said, "that I might be well-advised to make my home here."

"Ah, now you begin to fall into another of this realm's traps," she said, lightly enough. "First there is suspicion and maybe fear. Then there is relaxation, a feeling that you have always belonged here, that this is your natural home, or your spiritual home. These are all illusions common to the traveller, as I am sure you know. Here those illusions must be resisted, for they are more than sentiment. They may be traps set to snare you and destroy you. Be grateful that you have more apparent energy than that which you normally know, but remember another rule of the dreamthief: Every gain is paid for, either before or after the event. Every apparent benefit could well have its contrary disadvantage."

Privately Elric still thought the price for such a sense of well-being might be worth the paying.

It was at that moment that he saw the leaf.

It drifted down from over his head, a broad, red-gold oak leaf, falling gently as any ordinary autumn shedding, and landed upon the sand at his feet. Without at first finding this extraordinary, he bent to pick the leaf up.

Oone had seen it, too, and made as if to caution bun, then changed her mind.

Elric laid the leaf on the palm of his hand. There was nothing unusual about it, save that there was not a tree visible in any direction. He was about to ask Oone to explain this phenomenon when he noticed that she was staring beyond him, over his shoulder.

"Good afternoon to you," said a jaunty voice. "This is luck indeed, to find some fellow mortals in such a miserable wilderness. What trick of the Wheel brought us here, do you think?"

"Greetings," said Oone, her smile growing broad. "You're ill-dressed, sir, for this desert."

"I was told neither of my destination nor of the fact that I was leaving..."

Elric turned and to his surprise saw a small man whose sharp, merry features were shadowed by an enormous turban of yellow silk. This headdress, at least as wide as the man's shoulders, was decorated with a pin containing a great green gem and from it sprouted several peacock feathers. He seemed to be wearing many layers of clothing, all highly coloured, of silk and linen, including an embroidered waistcoat and a long jacket of beautifully stitched blue patchwork, each shade subtly different from the one next to it. On his legs were baggy trousers of red silk and his feet sported curling slippers of green and yellow leather. The man was unarmed, but hi his hands he held a startled black and white cat upon whose back were folded a pair of silky black wings.

The man bowed when he saw Elric. "Greetings, sir. You would be the incarnation of the Champion on this plane, I take it. I am-" He frowned as if he had for a second forgotten his own name. "I am something beginning with 'J' and something beginning with 'C.' It will return to me in a moment. Or another name or event will occur, I'm sure. I am your-what?-amanuensis, eh?" He peered up into the sky. "Is this one of those sunless worlds? Are we to have no night at all?"

Elric looked to Gone, who did not seem wary of this apparition. "I did not ask for a secretary, sir," he said to the small man. "Nor did I expect to be assigned one. My companion and I are on a quest in this world..."

"A quest, naturally. It is your role, as it is mine to accompany you. That's in order, sir. My name is-" But again his own name eluded him. "Yours is?"

"I am Elric of Melniboné and this is Oone the Dreamthief."

"Then this is the Land the dreamthieves call Sadanor, I take it. Good, then I am called Jaspar Colinadous. And my cat's name is Whiskers, as always."

At this, the cat gave voice to a small, intelligent noise, to which its owner listened carefully and nodded.

"I recognise this land now," he said. "You'll be seeking the Marador Gate, eh? For the Land of Old Desires."

"You are a dreamthief yourself, Sir Jaspar?" Gone asked in some surprise.

"I have relatives who are."

"But how came you here?" Elric asked. "Through a medium? Did you use a mortal child, as we did?"

"Your words are mysterious to me, sir." Jaspar Colinadous adjusted his turban, the little cat tucked carefully under one voluminous silk sleeve. "I travel between the worlds, apparently at random, usually at the behest of some force I do not understand, frequently to find myself guiding or accompanying venturers such as yourselves. Not," he added feelingly, "always dressed appropriately for the realm or the moment of my arrival. I dreamed, I think, I was the sultan of some fabulous city, where I possessed the most astonishing variety of treasures. Where I was waited upon..." Here he coloured and looked away from Gone. "Forgive me. It was a dream. I have awakened from it now. Unfortunately the clothes followed me from the dream..."

Elric believed the man's words were close to nonsense, but Gone had no difficulty with them. "You know a road, then, to the Marador Gate?"

"Surely I must, if this is the Land of Dreams-in-Common." Carefully he placed the cat on his shoulder and then began to rummage in his sleeves, within his shirt, in the pockets of his several garments, producing all manner of scrolls and papers and little books, boxes, compacts, writing instruments, lengths of cord and reels of thread, until one of the rolled pieces of vellum caused him to cry out in relief. "Here it is, I think! Our map." He replaced all the other items in exactly the places he had drawn them from and unrolled the parchment. "Indeed, indeed! This shows us the road through yonder mountains."

"Offers of guidance..." began Elric.

"And beware the familiar," said Oone softly. Then she made a dismissive gesture. "Here we have conflict already, you see, for what is unfamiliar to you is highly familiar to me. That is part of the nature of this land." She turned to Jaspar Colinadous. "Sir? May I see your map?"

Without hesitation, the small man handed it to her. "A straight road. It's always a straightish road, eh? And only one. That's the joy of these Dream Realms. One can interpret and control them so simply. Unless, of course, they swallow one up completely. Which they are wont to do."

"You have the advantage of me," said Elric, "for I know nothing of this world. Neither was I aware that there are others like it."

"Aha! Then you have so much wonder to anticipate, sir! So many marvels yet to witness. I would tell you of them, but my own memory is not what it should be. I frequently have only the vaguest of recollections. But there is an infinity of worlds and some are yet unborn, some so old they have grown senile, some born of dreams, some destroyed by nightmares." Jaspar Colinadous paused apologetically. "I grow over-enthusiastic. I do not intend to confuse you, sir. Just know you that I am a little confused myself. I am ever that. Does my map make sense to you, Lady Dreamthief ?"

"Aye." Gone was frowning over the parchment. "There is only one pass through those mountains, which are called the Shark's Jaws. If we assume that the mountains are lying to our north, then we must bear to the north-east and there find the Shark's Gullet, as it's named here. We are much obliged to you, Master Jaspar Colinadous." She rolled up the map and returned it to him. It disappeared into one of his sleeves and the cat crept down to lie, purring, in the crook of his arm.

For a moment, Elric had the strongest instinct that this likable individual had been called up by Oone from her own imagination, though it was impossible to believe he did not exist in his own right, such a self-confident personality was he. Indeed, Elric had the passing fancy that perhaps he, himself, was the phantasy.

"You'll note there are dangers hi that pass," said Jaspar Colinadous casually, as he fell in beside them. "I'll let Whiskers scout for us, if you like, when we get closer."

"We should be much obliged to you, sir," said Oone.

They continued their journey across the bleak landscape, with Jaspar Colinadous telling tales of previous adventures, most of which he could only half recall, of people he had known, whose names escaped nun, and of great moments in the histories of a thousand worlds whose importance now eluded him. To hear him was like coming upon the old halls of Imrryr, on the Dragon Isle, where once huge series of windows had told hi pictures the tales of the first Melnibonéans and how they had come to then- present home. Now they were mere shards, small fragments of the story, brilliant details whose context was only barely imaginable and whose information was gone forever. Elric ceased trying to follow Jaspar Colinadous's conversation but, as he had learned to do with the fragments of glass, let himself enjoy them for then- texture and then: colour instead.

The consistency of the light had begun to disturb nun and eventually he interrupted the little man in his flow and asked him if he, too, was not made uncomfortable by it.

Jaspar Colinadous took this opportunity to stop and remove his slippers, shaking sand from them as Oone waited ahead of them, her stance impatient. "No, sir. Supernatural worlds are frequently sunless, for they obey none of the laws we are familiar with in our own. They may be flat, half-spheres, oval, circular, even shaped like cubes. They exist only as satellites to those realms we call 'real,' and therefore are dependent not upon any sun or moon or planetary system for their ordering, but upon the demands-spiritual, imaginative, philosophical and so on-of worlds which do, in fact, require a sun to heat them and a moon to move their tides. There is even a theory that our worlds are the satellites and that these supernatural worlds are the birthplaces of all our realities." His shoes again free from sand, Jaspar Colinadous began to follow Oone, who was some distance on, having refused to wait upon them.

"Perhaps this is the land ruled by Arioch, my patron Duke of Hell," said Elric. "The land from which the Black Sword sprung."

"Oh, quite possibly, Prince Elric. For, see, there's a hellish sort of creature stooping on your friend at this very moment and us without a weapon between us!"

The three-headed bird must have flown at such a great height it had not been seen to approach, but now it was dropping at terrifying speed from above and Oone, alerted by Elric's cry of warning, began to run, perhaps hoping to divert it in its descent upon her. It was like a gigantic crow, with two of its heads tucked deep into its neck, while the other stretched out to help its downward flight, its wings spread behind it, its claws extended, ready to seize the woman.

Elric began to run forward, screaming at the thing. He, too, hoped that this activity would disturb the creature enough to make it lose its momentum.

With a terrible cawing which seemed to fill the entire heavens, the monster slowed its descent a trifle in order to make a more accurate strike on the woman.

It was then that Jaspar Colinadous cried from behind Elric:

"Jack Three Beaks, thou naughty bird!" t The beast wavered in the air, turning all heads towards the turbanned figure who strode decisively towards it across the sand, his cat alert on his arm.

"What's this, Jack? I thought you were forbidden living meat!" Jaspar Colinadous's voice was contemptuous, familiar. Whiskers growled and gibbered at the thing, though it was many times larger than the little cat.

With a croak of defiance the bird flopped onto the sand and began to run at some considerable speed towards Oone, who had stopped to witness this bizarre event. Now she took to her heels again, the three-headed crow in pursuit.

"Jack! Jack! Remember the punishment."

The bird's cry was almost mocking. Elric began to stumble through the desert in its track, hoping to find means of saving the dreamthief.

It was then that he felt something cut through the air above his head, fanning him with unexpected coolness, and a dark shape sped in pursuit of the thing Jaspar Colinadous had called Jack Three Beaks.

It was the black and white cat. The beast flung his little body at the bird's central neck and sank all four sets of claws into the feathers. With a shrill scream the gigantic three-headed crow whirled round, its other heads trying to peck at the tenacious cat and just failing to reach it.

To Elric's astonishment the cat seemed to swell larger and larger as if feeding on the life-stuff of the crow, while the crow appeared to grow smaller.

"Bad Jack Three Beaks! Wicked Jack!" The almost ridiculous figure of Jaspar Colinadous strutted up to the thing now, wagging a finger, at which beaks snapped but dared not bite. "You were warned. And now you must perish. How came you here at all? You followed me, I suppose, when I left my palace." He scratched his head. "Not that I recall leaving the palace. Ah, well..."

Jack Three Beaks cawed again, glaring with mad, frightened eyes in the direction of his original prey. Oone was approaching again.

"This creature is your pet, Master Jaspar?"

"Certainly not, madam. It is my enemy. He knew he'd had his last warning. But I think he did not expect to find me here and believed he could attack living prey with impunity. Not so, Jack, eh?"

The answering croak was almost pathetic now. The little black and white cat resembled nothing so much as a feeding vampire bat as it sucked and sucked of the monster's life-stuff.

Oone watched in horror as gradually the crow shrank to a tiny, wizened thing and Whiskers at last sat back, huge and round, and began to clean himself, purring with considerable pleasure. Clearly pleased with his pet, Jaspar Colinadous reached up to pat his head. "Good lad, Whiskers. Now poor Jack's not even gravy for an old man's bread." He smiled proudly at his two new Mends. "This cat has saved my life on many an occasion."

"How had you the name of that monster?" Oone wished to know. Her lovely features were flushed and she was out of breath. Elric was reminded suddenly of Cymoril, though he could not exactly identify the similarity.

"Why, it was Jack frightened the principality I visited before this." Jaspar Colinadous displayed his rich clothing. "And how I came to be so favoured by the folk of that place. Jack Three Beaks always knew the power of Whiskers and was afraid of him. He had been terrorising the people when I arrived. I tamed Jack-or strictly speaking, Whiskers did-but let him live, since he was a useful carrion eater and the province was given to terrible heat in the summer. When I fell through that particular rent hi the fabric of the mul-tiverse he must have come with me, without realising I was already here with Whiskers. There's little mystery to it, Lady Oone."

She drew a deep breath. "Well, I'm grateful for your aid, sir."

He inclined his head. "Now, had we better not move on toward the Marador Gate? There are more, if less unexpected, dangers ahead of us hi the Shark's Gullet. The map marks 'em."

"Would that I had a weapon at my side," said Elric feelingly. "I would be more confident, whether it were an illusion or no!" But he marched beside the others as they moved on towards the mountain.

The cat remained behind, licking his paws and cleaning himself, for all the world like an ordinary domestic creature which had killed a pantry-raiding mouse.

At last the ground began to rise as they reached the shallow foothills of the Shark's Jaws and saw ahead of them a great, dark fissure in the mountains, the Gullet which would lead them through to the next land of their journey. In the heat of the barren wilderness the pass looked cool and almost welcoming, though even from here Elric thought he could see shapes moving in it. White shadows flickered against the black.

"What manner of people live here?" he asked Gone, who had not shown him the map.

"Chiefly those who have either lost their way or become too fearful to continue the journey inward. The other name for the pass is the Valley of Timid Souls." Gone shrugged. "But I suspect it is not from them that we shall be in danger. At least, not greatly. They'll ally themselves with whatever power rules the pass."

"And the map says nothing of its nature?"

"Only that we should be wary."

There came a noise from behind them and Elric turned, expecting a threat, but it was only Whiskers, looking a little plumper, a little sleeker, but back to his normal size, who had at last caught up with them.

Jaspar Colinadous laughed and bent to let the cat leap onto his shoulder. "We have no need of weapons, eh? Not with such a handsome beast to defend us!"

The cat licked his face.

Elric was peering into the dark pass, trying to determine what he might find there. For a moment he thought he saw a rider at the entrance, a man mounted on a silvery grey horse, wearing strange armour of different shades of white and grey and yellow. The warrior's horse reared as he turned it and rode back into the blackness and Elric knew a sensation of foreboding, though he had never seen the figure before.

Oone and Jaspar Colinadous were apparently unaware of the apparition and continued with untiring stride in the direction of the

Elric said nothing of the rider but instead asked Gone how it was that they had all walked for hours and felt neither hungry nor weary.

"It is one of the advantages of this realm," she said. "The disadvantages are considerable, however, since a sense of time is easily lost and one can forget direction and goals. Moreover, it's wise to bear in mind that while one does not appear to lose physical energy or experience hunger, other forms of energy are being expended. Psychic and spiritual they may be, but they are just as valuable, as I'm sure you appreciate. Conserve those particular resources, Prince Elric, for you'll have urgent need of them soon enough!"

Elric wondered if she, too, had caught sight of the pale warrior but, for a reason he could not understand, was reluctant to ask her.

The hills were growing taller and taller around them as, subtly, they moved into the Shark's Gullet. The light was dimmer already, blocked by the mountains, and Elric felt a chill which was not altogether the result of the shade.

He became aware of a rushing sound and Jaspar Colinadous ran towards a high bank of rocks to peer over them and look down. He turned, a little baffled. "A deep chasm. A river. We must find a bridge before we can go on." He murmured to his winged cat, which immediately took flight over the abyss and was soon lost in the gloom beyond.

Forced to pause, Elric knew sudden gloom. Unable to gauge his physical needs, uncertain of what events took place in the world he had left, perturbed by the knowledge that their time was running short and that Lord Gho would certainly keep his word to torture young Anigh to death, he began to believe that he could well be on a fool's errand, embarked on an adventure which could only end in disaster for all. He wondered why he had trusted Gone so completely. Perhaps because he had been so desperate, so shocked by the death of Alnac Kreb...

She touched him on the shoulder. "Remember what I told you. Your weariness is not physical here, but it manifests itself in your moods. One must seek spiritual sustenance as assiduously as you would normally seek food and water."

He looked into her eyes, seeing warmth and kindness there. Immediately his despair began to dissipate. "I must admit I was beginning to know strong doubt..."

"When that feeling overwhelms you, try to tell me," she said. "I am familiar with it and might be able to help you..."

"So I am entirely in your hands, madam." He spoke without irony.

"I thought you understood that when you agreed to accompany me," she said softly.

"Aye." He turned in time to see the little cat coming back and alighting on Jaspar Colinadous's shoulder. The turbanned man listened carefully and intelligently and Elric was certain that the cat was speaking.

At last Jaspar Colinadous nodded. "There's a good bridge not a quarter of a mile from here and it leads to a trail winding directly into the pass. Whiskers tells me that the bridge is guarded by a single mounted warrior. We can hope, I suppose, that he will let us cross."

They followed the course of the river as the sky overhead grew darker and darker and Elric wished that, together with his lack of hunger and tiredness, he did not feel the rapid drop in temperature which made his body shake. Only Jaspar Colinadous was unaffected by the cold.

The rough wall of rocks at the chasm's edge gradually fell away, curving inward towards the pass, and very soon they saw the bridge ahead of them, a narrow spur of natural stone pushing outward over the foaming river below. And they heard the echo of the water as it plunged yet deeper down the gorge. Yet nowhere was there the guard which the little cat had reported.

Elric moved cautiously in the lead now, again wishing he had a weapon to give him reassurance. He reached the bridge and set a foot upon it. Far down at the foot of the chasm's granite walls grey foam leapt and danced and the river gave voice to its own peculiar song, half triumph, half despair, almost as if it were a living thing.

Elric shivered and took another step. Still he saw no figure in that deepening gloom. Another step and he was high above the water, refusing to look down lest the water call him to it. He knew the fascination of such torrents and how one could be drawn into them, hypnotised by their rush and noise.

"See you any guard, Prince Elric?" called Jaspar Colinadous.

"Nothing," the albino cried back. And he took two more steps.

Gone was behind him now, moving as cautiously as he. He peered to the bridge's further side. Great slabs of dank rock, covered in lichen and oddly coloured creepers, rose up and disappeared into the dark air above. The sound of the river made him think he heard voices, little skittering sounds, the scuffle of threatening limbs, but still he saw nothing.

Elric was half-way across the bridge before he detected the suggestion of a horse in the shadows of the gorge, the barest hint of a rider, perhaps wearing armour which was the colour of his own bone-white skin.

"Who's that?" The albino raised his voice. "We come in peace. We mean no harm to anyone here."

Again it might have been that the water made him believe he heard a faint, unpleasant chuckle.

Then it seemed the rush of water grew louder and he realised he heard the sound of hooves on rock. Formed as if by the spray, a figure suddenly appeared on the far side of the bridge, bearing down on him, its long, pale sword poised to strike.

There was nowhere to turn. The only way of avoiding the warrior was to jump from the bridge into the torrent below. Elric found his vision dimmed even as he prepared to spring forward, hoping to catch the horse's bridle and at least halt the rider in his tracks.

Then again there was a whirring of wings and something fixed itself on the attacker's helm, slashing at the face within. It was Whiskers, spitting and yowling like any ordinary alley cat engaged in a brawl over a piece of ripe fish.

The horse reared. The rider gave out a shriek of rage and pain and released the bridle hi order to try to pull the little cat from him. Whiskers rushed upward into the air, out of reach. Elric glimpsed glaring, silvery eyes, a skin which glowed with the leper's mark, and then the horse, out of control, had slipped on the wet rock and fallen sideways. For a moment it tried to get back to its feet, the rider yelling and roaring as if demented, the long, white sword still hi his hand. And then both had tumbled over the edge of the bridge and went falling, a chaotic mixture of arms and hooves, down into the echoing chasm to be swallowed by the distant, murky waters.

Elric was gasping for breath. Jaspar Colinadous came to grip his arm and steady him, helping him and Gone cross to the far side of the rocky slab and stand upon the bank, still scarcely aware of what had happened to them.

"I'm grateful again to Whiskers," said Elric with an unstable grin. "That's a valuable pet you have, Master Colinadous."

"More valuable than you know," said the little man feelingly. "He has played a crucial part in more than one world's history." He patted the cat as the beast returned to his arms, purring and pleased with himself. "I'm glad we were able to be of service to you."

"We're well rid of the bridge's guardian." Elric peered down into the foam. "Are we to encounter more such attacks, my lady?"

"Most certainly," she said. She was frowning as if lost in some conundrum only she perceived.

Jaspar Colinadous pursed his lips. "Here," he said. "Look how the gorge narrows. It becomes a tunnel."

It was true. They could now see how the rocks leaned in upon one another so that the pass was little more than a cave barely large enough to let Elric enter without bending his head. A set of crude steps led up to it and from time to time a little flicker of yellow fire appeared within, as if the place were lit by torches.

Jaspar Colinadous sighed. "I had hoped to journey with you further than this, but I must turn back now. I can go no further than the Marador Gate, which is what this seems to be. To do so would be to destroy me. I must find other companions now, in the Land of Dreams-in-Common." He seemed genuinely regretful. "Farewell, Prince Elric, Lady Gone. I wish you success in your adventure."

And suddenly the little man had turned and walked swiftly back over the bridge, not looking behind him. He left them almost as suddenly as he had arrived and was gone back into the darkness before either could speak, his cat with him.

Gone seemed to accept this and, at Elric's questioning glance, said: "Such people come and go here. Another rule the dreamthief learns is Hold on to nothing but your own soul. Do you understand?"

"I understand that it must be a lonely thing to be a dreamthief, madam."

And with that Elric began to climb the great rough-hewn steps which led into the Marador Gate.

3 Of Beauty Found in Deep Caverns

The tunnel began to descend almost as soon as they had entered it. Where it had first been cool, now the air became hot and humid so that sometimes it seemed to Elric he was wading through water. The little lights which gave faint illumination were not, as he had first thought, lamps or brands, but seemed naturally luminescent, delicate nodes of soft, glowing substance, almost fleshlike in appearance. He and Oone found that they were whispering, as if unwilling to disturb any denizens of this place. Yet Elric did not feel afraid here. The tunnel had the atmosphere of a sanctuary and he noticed that Oone, too, had lost some of her normal caution, though her experience had taught her to be wary of anything as a potentially dangerous illusion.

There was no obvious transition from Sadanor to Marador, save perhaps a slight change of mood before the tunnel opened up into a vast natural hall of richly glowing blues and greens and golden yellows and dark pinks, all flowing one to the other, like lava which had only recently cooled, more like exotic plants than the rock they were. Scents, like those of the loveliest, headiest flowers, made Elric feel as though he walked in a garden, not unlike the gardens he had known as a child, places of the greatest security and tranquility; yet there was no doubt that the place was a cavern and that they had travelled underground to reach it.

At first delighted by the sight, Elric began to feel a certain sadness, for until now he had not remembered those gardens of childhood, the innocent happiness which conies so rarely to a Melnibonéan, no matter what their age. He thought of his mother, dead in childbirth, of his infinitely mourning father, who had refused to acknowledge the son who, in his opinion, had killed his wife.

A movement from the depths of this natural hall and Elric again feared danger, but the people who began to emerge were unarmed and they had faces full of restrained melancholy.

"We have arrived in Marador," whispered Gone with certainty.

"You are here to join us?" A woman spoke. She wore flowing robes of myriad, glistening colour, mirroring the colours of the rock on walls and roof. She had long hair of faded gold and her eyes were the shade of old pewter. She reached to touch Elric-a greeting- and her hand was cold on his. He felt himself becoming infected with the same sad tranquility and it seemed to him that there could be worse fates than remaining here, recalling the desires and pleasures of his past, when life had been so much simpler and the world had seemed easily conquered, easily improved.

Behind him Oone said in a voice which sounded unduly harsh to his ear: "We are travellers in your land, my lady. We mean you no harm, but we cannot stay."

A man spoke. "Travellers? What do you seek?"

"We seek," said Elric, "the Fortress of the Pearl."

Oone was clearly displeased by his frankness. "We have no desire to tarry in Marador. We wish only to learn the location of the next gate, the Paranor Crate."

The man smiled wistfully. "It is lost, I fear. Lost to all of us. Yet there is no harm in loss. There is comfort in it, even, don't you feel?" He turned dreaming, distant eyes on them. "Better not to seek that which can only disappoint. Here we prefer to remember what we most wanted and how it was to want it..."

"Better, surely, to continue looking for it?" Elric was surprised by his own blunt tone.

"Why so, sir, when the reality can only prove inadequate when compared against the hope?"

"Think you so, sir?" Elric was prepared to consider this notion, but Oone's grip on his arm tightened.

"Remember the name that dreamthieves give this land," she murmured.

Elric reflected that it was truly the Land of Old Desires. All of his own forgotten yearnings were returning to him, bringing a sense of simplicity and peace. Now he remembered how those sensations had been replaced by anger as he began to realise that there was little likelihood of his dreams ever coming true. He had raged at the injustice of the world. He had flung himself into his sorcerous studies. He had become determined to change the balance of things and introduce greater liberty, greater justice by means of the power he had in the world. Yet his fellow Melnibonéans had refused to accept his logic. The early dreams had begun to fade and with them the hope which had at first lifted his heart. Now here was the hope offered him again. Perhaps there were realms where all he desired was true? Perhaps Marador was such a world.

"If I went back and found Cymoril and brought her here, we could live in harmony with these people, I think," he said to Oone.

The dreamthief was almost contemptuous.

"This is called the Land of Old Desires-not the Land of Fulfilled Desire! There is a difference. The emotions you feel are easy and easily maintained-while the reality remains out of your reach, while you merely long for the unattainable. When you set out to discover fulfillment, Elric of Melniboné, then you achieved stature in the world. Turn your back on that determination-your own determination to help build a world where justice reigns-and you'll lose my respect. You'll lose respect for yourself. You'll prove yourself a liar and you'll prove me a fool for believing you could help me save the Holy Girl!"

Elric was shocked by her outburst, which seemed offensive hi that particular atmosphere of serenity. "But I think it is impossible to build such a world. Better to have the prospect, surely, than the knowledge of failure?"

"That is what all hi this realm believe. Remain here, if you will, and believe what they believe forever. But I think one must always make an attempt at justice, no matter how poor the prospect of success!"

Elric felt tired and wished to settle down and rest. He yawned and stretched. "These people seem to have a secret I would learn. I think I will talk to them for a while before continuing."

"Do so and Anigh dies. The Holy Girl dies. And everything of yourself that you value, that dies also." Gone did not raise her voice. She spoke almost in a matter-of-fact tone. But her words had an urgency which broke Elric's mood. It was not for the first time that he had considered retreating into dreams. Had he done so, his people would now be ruled by him, and Yyrkoon would be dead or exiled.

Thought of his cousin and his cousin's ambition, of Cymoril waiting for him to return so that they might be married, helped remind Elric of his purpose here and he shook off the mood of reconciliation, of retreat. He bowed to the people of the cavern. "I thank you for your generosity, but my own path lies forward, through the Paranor Gate."

Oone drew a deep breath, perhaps in relief. "Tune's not measured in any familiar way here, Prince Elric, but be assured it's passing more rapidly than I would like..."

It was with a sense of deep regret that Elric left the melancholy people behind him and followed her further into the glowing caverns.

Oone added: "These lands are well-called. Be wary of the familiar."

"Perhaps we could have rested there? Restored our energies?" said Elric.

"Aye. And died full of sweet melancholy."

He looked at her in surprise and saw that she had not been unaffected by the atmosphere. "Is that what befell Alnac Kreb?"

"Of course not!" She recovered herself. "He was fully able to resist so obvious a trap."

Elric now felt ashamed. "I almost failed the first real test of my determination and my discipline."

"We dreamthieves have the advantage of having been tested thus many times," she told him. "It gets easier to confront, though the lure remains as strong."

"For you, too."

"Why not? You think I have no forgotten desires, nothing I would not wish to dream of? No childhood which had its sweet moments?"

"Forgive me, madam."

She shrugged. "There's an attraction to that aspect of the past. To the past in general, I suppose. But we forget the other aspects-those things which forced us into fantasy in the first place."

"You're a believer in the future, then, madam?" Elric tried to joke. The rock beneath their feet became slippery and they were forced to make the gentle descent with more caution. Ahead Elric thought he heard again the sound of the river, perhaps where it now raced underground.

"The future holds as many traps as the past," she said with a smile. "I am a believer in the present, my lord. In the eternal present." And there was an edge to her voice, as if she had not always held this view.

"Speculation and regret offer many temptations, I suppose," said Elric; then he gasped at what he saw ahead.

Molten gold was cascading down two well-worn channels in the rock, forming a gigantic V-shaped edifice. The metal flowed unchecked and yet as they approached it became obvious that it was not hot. Some other agent had caused the effect, perhaps a chemical in the rock itself. As the gold reached the floor of the cavern it spread into a pool and the pool in turn fed a brook which bubbled, brilliant with the precious stuff, down towards another stream which seemed at first to contain ordinary water, but when Elric looked more carefully he saw that that stream was, in turn, comprised of silver and the two elements blended as they met. Following the course of this stream with his eyes, he saw that they met, some distance away, with a further river, this one of glistening scarlet, which might be liquid rubies. In all his travels, in the Young Kingdoms and the realms of the supernatural, Elric had seen nothing like it. He made to move towards it, to inspect it further, but she checked him.

"We have reached the next gate," she said. "Ignore that particular wonder, my lord. Look."

She pointed between twin streams of gold and he could just make out something shadowy beyond. "There is Paranor. Are you ready to enter that land?"

Remembering the dreamthieves' term for it, Elric allowed himself an ironic smile. "As ready as I shall ever be, madam."

Then, just as he stepped towards the portal, there came the sound of galloping hooves behind them. They rang sharply on the rock of the cavern. They echoed through the gloomy roof, through a thousand chambers, and Elric had no time to turn before something heavy struck his shoulder and he was flung to one side. He had the impression of a deathly white horse, of a rider wearing armour of ivory, mother-of-pearl and pale tortoiseshell, and then it was gone through the gate of molten gold and disappearing into the shadows beyond. But there was no doubt in EIric's mind that he had encountered one of the warriors who had already attacked him on the bridge. He had the impression of the same mocking chuckle as the hooves faded and the sound was absorbed by whatever lay beyond the gate.

"We have an enemy," said Oone. Her face was grim and she clenched her hands to her sides, clearly taking a grip on herself. "We have been identified already. The Fortress of the Pearl does not merely defend. She attacks."

"You know those riders? You have seen them before?"

She shook her head. "I know their kind, that's all."

"And we've no means of avoiding them?"

"Very few." She was frowning to herself again, considering some problem she was not prepared to discuss. Then she seemed to dismiss it and taking his arm led him under the twin cascades of cool gold into a further cavern, which this time suddenly filled with a gentle green glow, as if they walked beneath a canopy of leaves in autumn sunlight. And Elric was reminded of Old Melniboné, at the height of her power, when his people were proud enough to take the whole world for granted, when entire nations had been remoulded for their passing pleasure. As they emerged into a further cavern, so vast he did not at first realise they were still underground, he saw the spires and minarets of a city, glowing with the same warm green, which was as beautiful as his own beloved Imrryr, the Dreaming City, which he had explored throughout his boyhood.

"It is like Imrryr and yet it is not like Imrryr at all," he said in surprise.

"No," she said, "it is like London. It is like Tanelorn. It is like Ras-Paloom-Atai." And she did not speak sarcastically. She spoke as if she really did believe the city resembled those other cities, only one of which Elric recognised.

"But you have seen it before. What is it called?"

"It has no name," she said. "It has all names. It is called whatever you desire to call it." And she turned away, as if resting herself, before she led him onward down the road past the city.

"Should we not visit it? There may be people there who can help us find our way."

Gone gestured. "And there may be those who would hamper us. It is now clear, Prince Elric, that our mission is suspected and that certain forces could well have the intention of stopping us at any cost."

"You think the Sorcerer Adventurers have followed us?"

"Or preceded us. Leaving at least something of themselves here." She was peering cautiously towards the city.

"It seems such a peaceful place," said Elric. The more he looked at the city the more he was impressed by the architecture, all of the same greenish stone but varying from yellow to blue. There were vast buttresses and curving bridges between one tower and another; there were spires as delicate as cobwebs yet so tall they almost disappeared into the roofs of the cavern. It seemed to reflect some part of him which he could not at once recall. He longed to go there. He grew resentful of Oone's guidance, though he had sworn to follow it, and began to believe that she herself was lost, that she was no better suited to discover their goal than was he.

"We must continue," she said. She was speaking more urgently now.

"I know I would find something within that city which would make Imrryr great again. And in her greatness I could lead her to dominate the world. But this tune, instead of bringing cruelty and terror, we could bring beauty and good will."

"You are more prone to illusion than I thought, Prince Elric," said Oone.

He turned to her angrily. "What's wrong with such ambitions?"

"They are unrealistic. As unreal as that city."

"The city looks solid enough to me."

"Solid? Aye, in its way. Once you enter its gate it will embrace you as thoroughly as any long-lost lover! Come then, sir. Come!" She seemed seized by an equally poor temper and strode on up an obsidian road which twisted along the hill towards the city.

Startled by her sudden change, Elric followed. But now his own anger was dissipating. "I'll abide, madam, by your judgement. I am sorry..."

She was not listening to him. Moment by moment the city came closer until soon they were overshadowed by it, looking up at walls and domes and towers whose size was so tremendous it was almost impossible to guess at their true extent.

"There's a gate," she said. "There! Go through and I'll say farewell. I'll try to save the child myself and you can give yourself up to lost beliefs and so lose the beliefs you currently hold!"

And now Elric looked closer at the walls, which were like jade, and he saw dark shapes within the walls and he saw that the dark shapes were the figures of men, women and children. He gasped as he stepped forward to peer at them, observing living faces, eyes which were undying, lips frozen in expressions of terror, of anguish, of misery. They were like so many flies in amber.

"That's the unchanging past, Prince Elric," said Gone. "That's the fate of those who seek to reclaim their lost beliefs without first experiencing the search for new ones. This city has another name. Dreamthieves call it the City of Inventive Cowardice. You would not understand the twists of logic which brought so many to this pass! Which made them force those they loved to share their fate. Would you stay with them, Prince Elric, and nurse your lost beliefs?"

The albino turned away with a shudder. "But if they could see what had happened to earlier travellers, why did they continue into the city?"

"They blinded themselves to the obvious. That is the great triumph of mindless need over intelligence and the human spirit."

Together the two returned to the path below the city and Elric was relieved when the beautiful towers were far behind and they had passed through several more great caverns, each with its own city, though none as magnificent as the first. These he had felt no desire to visit, though he had detected movement in some and Oone had said she suspected not all were as dangerous as the City of Inventive Cowardice.

"You called this world the Dream Realm," he said, "and indeed it's well-named, madam, for it seems to contain a catalogue of dreams, and not a few nightmares. It's almost as if the place were born of a poet's brain, so strange are some of the sights."

"I told you," she said, speaking more warmly now that he had acknowledged the danger, "much of what you witness here is the semi-formed stuff of realities that other worlds, such as yours and mine, are yet to witness. To what extent they will come to exist elsewhere I do not know. These places have been fashioned over centuries by a succession of dreamthieves, imposing form on what is otherwise formless."

Elric was now beginning to understand better what he had been told by Oone. "Rather than making a map of what exists, you impose your own map upon it!"

"To a degree. We do not invent. We merely describe in a particular way. By that means we can make pathways through each of the myriad Dream Realms, for, in this alone, the realms comply one with the other."

"In reality there could be a thousand different lands in each realm?"

"If you would see it so. Or an infinity of lands. Or one with an infinity of aspects. Roads are made so that the traveller without a compass may not wander too far from their destination." She laughed almost gaily. "The fanciful names we give these places are not from any poetical impulse, nor from whim, but from a certain necessity. Our survival depends on accurate descriptions!"

"Your words have a profundity to them, madam. Though my survival has also tended to depend on a good, sharp blade!"

"While you depend upon your blade, Prince Elric, you condemn yourself to a singular fate."

"You predict my death, eh, madam?"

Oone shook her head, her beautiful lips forming an expression of utmost sympathy and tenderness. "Death is inevitable to almost all of us, in some shape or another. And I'll admit, if Chaos ever conquered Chaos, then you will be the instrument of that remarkable conquest. It would be sad, indeed, Prince Elric, if in taming Chaos you destroyed yourself and all you loved into the bargain!"

"I promise you, Lady Gone, to do my best to avoid such a fate." And Elric wondered at the look in the dreamthief's eyes and then chose not to speculate further.

They walked through a forest of stalagmites and stalactites now, all of the same glowing colours, dark greens and dark blues and rich reds, and there was a musical sound as water splashed from roof to floor. Every so often a huge drop would fall on one or the other of them but such was the nature of the caverns that they were soon dry again. They had begun to relax and walked arm in arm, almost merry, and it was only then that they saw the figures flitting between the upward-thrusting fangs of rock.

"Swordsmen," murmured Elric. He added ironically, "This is when a weapon would be useful..." His mind was half with the situation, half feeling its way out through the worlds of the elementals, seeking some kind of spell, some supernatural aid, but he was baffled. It seemed that the mental paths he was used to following were blocked to him.

The warriors were veiled. They were dressed in heavy flowing cloaks and their heads were protected by helms of metal and leather. Elric had the impression of cold, hard eyes with tattooed lids and knew at once that these were members of the Sorcerer Assassin guild from Quarzhasaat, left behind when their fellows had retreated from the Dream Realms. Doubtless they were trapped here. It was clear, however, that they did not intend to parley with Elric and Gone, but were closing in, following a familiar pattern of attack.

Elric was struck by a strangeness about these men. They lacked a certain fluidity of movement and, the closer they came, the more he realised that it was almost possible to see past their eyes and into the hollows of their skulls. These were not ordinary mortals. He had seen men like them in Imrryr once, when he had gone with his father on one of those rare times when Sadric chose to take him upon some local expedition, out to an old arena whose high walls imprisoned certain Melnibonéans who had lost their souls in pursuit of sorcerous knowledge, but whose bodies still lived. They, too, had seemed to be possessed by a cold, raging hatred against any not like themselves.

Oone cried out and moved rapidly, dropping to one knee as a sword struck at her, then clattered against one of the great pointed pillars. So close together were the stalagmites that it was difficult for the swordsmen to swing or to stab and for a while both the albino and the dreamthief ducked and dodged the blades until one cut Elric's arm and he saw, almost in surprise, that the man had drawn blood.

The Prince of Melniboné knew that it was just a matter of time before they were both killed and, as he fell back against one of the great rocky teeth, he felt the stalagmite move behind him. Some trick of the cavern had weakened the rock and it was loose. He flung all of his weight forward against it. It began to topple. Quickly he got his body in front of it, supporting the thing on his shoulder, then with all his energy he ran with the great rocky spear at his nearest assailant.

The point of the rock drove full into the veiled man's chest. The Sorcerer Assassin uttered a bleak, agonised shout, and strange, unnatural blood began to well up around the stone, gushing down and soaking into the warrior's bones, almost reabsorbed by him. Elric sprang forward and dragged the sabre and the poignard from his hands even as another of the attackers came upon him from the rear. All his battle cunning, all his war skills, returned to Elric. Long before he had come by Stormbringer he had learned the arts of the sword and the dagger, of the bow and the lance, and now he had no need of an enchanted blade to make short work of the second Sorcerer Assassin, then a third. Shouting to Oone to help herself to weapons, he darted from rock to rock, taking the warriors one at a time. They moved sluggishly, uncertainly now, yet none ran from him.

Soon Oone had joined him, showing that she was as accomplished a fighter as he. He admired the delicacy of her technique, the sureness of her hands as she parried and thrust, striking with the utmost efficiency and piling up her corpses with all the economy of a cat in a nest of rats.

Elric took time to grin over his shoulder. "For one who so recently extolled the virtues of words over the sword, you show yourself well-accomplished with a blade, madam!"

"It is often as well to have the experience of both before one makes the choice," she said. She despatched another of their assailants. "And there are times, Prince Elric, I'll admit, when a decent piece of steel has a certain advantage over a neatly turned phrase!"

They fought together like two old friends. Their techniques were complementary but not dissimilar. Both fought as the best soldiers fight, with neither cruelty nor pleasure in the killing, but with the intention of winning as quickly as possible, while causing as little pain to their opponents.

These opponents appeared to suffer no pain, as such, but every tune one died he offered up the same disturbing wail of anguish, and the blood which poured from the wounds was strange stuff indeed.

At last the man and woman were done and stood leaning on their borrowed blades panting and seeking to control that nausea which so often follows a battle.

Then, as Elric watched, the corpses around them swiftly faded, leaving only a few swords behind. The blood, too, disappeared. There was virtually nothing to say that a fight had taken place in the great cavern.

"Where have they gone?"

Oone picked up a sheath and fitted her new sabre into it. For all her words, she clearly had no intention of proceeding any further without arms. She placed two daggers in her belt. "Gone? Ah." She hesitated. "To whatever pool of half-living ectoplasm they came from." She shook her head. "They were almost phantasms, Prince Elric, but not quite. They were, as I told you, what the Sorcerer Adventurers left behind."

"You mean part of them returned to our own world, as part of Alnac returned?"

"Exactly." She drew a breath and made as if to continue.

"Then why shall we not find Alnac here? Still alive?"

"Because we do not seek him," she said. And she spoke with all her old firmness; enough to make Elric proceed only a degree further with the subject.

"And perhaps anyway we would not find him here, as we found the Sorcerer Adventurers, in the Land of Lost Beliefs," said the albino quietly.

"True," she said.

Then Elric took her in his arms for a moment and they remained, embracing, for a few seconds, until they were ready to continue forward seeking the Celador Gate.

Later, as Elric helped his ally across another natural bridge, below which flowed a river of dull brown stuff, Gone said to him: "This is no ordinary adventure for me, Prince Elric. That is why I needed you to come with me."

A little puzzled as to why she should, after all, say something which they had both taken for granted, Elric did not reply.

When the snout-faced women attacked them, with nets and spikes, it did not take them long to cut their way free and drive the cowardly creatures off, and neither were they greatly inconvenienced by the vulpine things which loped on their hindlegs and had claws like birds. They even joked together as they despatched packs of snapping beasts which resembled nothing so much as horses the size of dogs and spoke a few words of a human tongue, though without any sense of the meaning.

Now at least they were reaching the borders of Paranor and saw looming ahead of them two enormous towers of carved rock, with little balconies and windows and terraces and crenellations, all covered in old ivy and climbing brambles bearing light yellow fruit.

"It is the Celador Gate," said Gone. She seemed reluctant to approach it. Her hand on the hilt of her sword, her other arm linked with Elric's, she stopped and drew a deep, slow breath. "It is the land of forests."

"You called it the Land of Forgotten Love," said Elric.

"Aye. That's the dreamthieves' name." She laughed a little sardonically.

Elric, uncertain of her mood and not wishing to intrude upon her, held back also, looking from her to the gate and back again.

She reached a hand to his bone-white features. Her own skin was golden, still full of enormous vitality. She stared into his face. Then, with a sigh, she turned away and stepped towards the gate, taking his hand and pulling him after her.

They passed between the towers and here Elric's nostrils immediately were filled with the rich smells of leaf and turf. All around them were massive oak trees and elms and birches and every other kind of tree, yet all of them, though they formed a canopy, grew not beneath the light of the open sky but were nurtured by the oddly glowing rocks in the cavern ceilings. Elric had thought it impossible for trees to grow underground and he marvelled at the health, the very ordinariness, of everything.

It was therefore with some astonishment that he observed a creature emerge from the wood and plant itself firmly on the path along which they must move.

"Halt! I must know your business!" His face was covered in brown fur and his teeth were so prominent, his ears so large, his eyes so doelike, he resembled nothing so much as an overgrown rabbit, though he was armoured solidly in battered brass, with a brass cap upon his head, and his weapons, a sword and spear of workmanlike steel, were also bound in brass.

"We seek merely to pass through this land without doing harm or being harmed," said Oone.

The rabbit-warrior shook his head. "Too vague," he said, and suddenly he hefted his spear and plunged the point deep into the bole of an oak. The oak tree screamed. "That's what he told me. And many more of these."

"The trees were travellers?" said Elric.

"Your name, sir?"

"I am Elric of Melniboné and, like my lady Oone here, I mean you no disturbance. We travel on to Imador."

"I know no 'Elric' or 'Oone.' I am the Count of Magnes Doar and I hold this land as my own. By my conquest. By my ancient right. You must go back through the gate."

"We cannot," said Gone. "To retreat would mean our destruction."

"To proceed, madam, would mean the same thing. What? Shall you camp at the gates forever?"

"No, sir," she said. She put her hand to the hilt of her sword. "We will hack our way through your forest if need be. We are on urgent business and will accept no halt."

The rabbit-warrior pulled the spear from the oak, which ceased to scream, and flung it into another tree. This, in turn, set up a wailing and a moaning until even the Count of Magnes Doar shook his head in irritation and drew his weapon out of the trunk. "You must fight me, I think," he said.

It was then that they heard a yell from the other side of the right pillar and something white and rearing appeared there. It was another of the pale riders in armour of bone, tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, his horrible eyes slitted with hatred, his horse's hooves beating at a barrier which had not been there when Oone and Elric passed through.

Then it was down and the warrior was charging.

The albino and the dreamthief made to defend themselves, but it was the Count of Magnes Doar who moved ahead of them and jabbed his spear up at the warrior's body. Steel was deflected by an armour stronger than it looked and the sword rose and fell, almost contemptuously, slicing down through the brass helm into the brain of the rabbit-warrior. He staggered backward, his hands clutching at his head, his sword and spear abandoned. His round brown eyes seemed to grow still wider and he began to squeal. He turned slowly, round and round, then fell to his knees.

Elric and Oone had positioned themselves behind the bole of one of the oaks, ready to defend themselves when the rider attacked.

The horse reared again, snorting with the same mindless fury as its master, and Elric darted from his cover, seized the dropped spear and stabbed up to where the breastplate and gorget joined, sliding the spearhead expertly into the warrior's throat.

There came a choking sound which in turn grew to a familiar chuckling and the rider had turned his horse and was riding ahead of them again, along the path through the forest, his body swaying and jerking as if in its death agonies, yet still borne on by the horse.

They watched it disappear.

Elric was trembling. "If I had not already seen him die on the bridge from Sadanor I would swear that was the same man who attacked me there. He has a puzzling familiarity."

"You did not see him die," said Oone. "You saw him plunge into the river."

"Well, I think he is dead now, after that stroke. I almost severed his head."

"I doubt if he is," she said. "It's my belief he is our most powerful enemy and we shall not have to deal with him in any serious way until we near the Fortress of the Pearl itself."

"He protects the Fortress?"

"Many do." She embraced him again, swiftly, then sank to one knee to inspect the dead Count of Magnes Doar. In death he more resembled a man, for already the hair on his face and hands was fading to grey and even his flesh seemed on the point of disappearance. The brass helm, too, had turned an ugly shade of silver. Elric was reminded of Alnac's dying. He averted his eyes.

Oone, too, stood up quickly and there were tears in her eyes. The tears were not for the Count of Magnes Doar. Elric took her in his arms. He was suddenly full of longing for someone he barely remembered from old dreams, the dreams of his youth; someone who, perhaps, had never existed.

He thought he felt a slight shudder run through Oone as he embraced her. He reached out for a memory of a little boat, of a fair-haired girl sleeping at the bottom of the vessel as it drifted out to open sea, of himself sailing a skiff towards her, full of pride that he might be her rescuer. Yet he had never known such a girl, he was sure, though Oone reminded him of that girl grown up.

With a gasp Oone moved away from him. "I thought you were... It's as if I'd always known you..." She put her hands to her face. "Oh, this damned land is well-called, Elric!"

Elric could only agree.

"Yet what danger is there to us?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Who knows? Much or little. None? The dreamthieves say that it is in the Land of Forgotten Love that the most important decisions are made. Decisions which can have the most monumental consequences."

"So one should do nothing here? Make no decisions?"

She passed her fingers through her hair. "At least we should be aware that the consequences might not manifest themselves for a long while yet."

Together they left the dead rabbit-warrior behind them and continued down the tunnel of trees. Now from time to time Elric thought he saw faces peering at bun from the green shadows. Once he was sure he saw the figure of his dead father, Sadric, mourning for Elric's mother, the only creature he had ever truly loved. So strong was the image that Elric called out:

"Sadric! Father! Is this your Limbo?"

At this Oone cried urgently. "No! Do not address him. Do not bring him to you. Do not make him real! It is a trap, Elric. Another trap."

"My father?"

"Did you love him?"

"Aye. Though it was an unhappy land of love."

"Remember that. Do not bring him here. It would be obscene to recall him to this gallery of illusions."

Elric understood her and used all his habits of self-discipline to rid himself of his father's shade. "I tried to tell him, Oone, how much I grieved for him in his loss and his sorrow." He was weeping. His body was shaking with an emotion from which he believed he had long since freed himself. "Ah, Oone. I would have died myself to let him have his wife returned to him. Is there no way...?"

"Such sacrifices are meaningless," she said, gripping him hi both her hands and holding him to her. "Especially here. Remember your quest. We have already crossed three of the seven lands which will bring us to the Fortress of the Pearl. We have crossed half this. That means we have already accomplished more than most. Hold on to yourself, Prince of Melniboné. Remember who and what depends upon your success!"

"But if I have the opportunity to make something right that was so wrong...?"

"That is to do with your own feelings, not what is and what can be. Would you invent shadows and make them play out your dreams? Would that bring happiness to your tragic mother and father?"

Elric looked over his shoulder into the forest. There was no sign of his father now. "He seemed so real. Of such solid flesh!"

"You must believe that you and I are the only solid flesh in this entire land. And even we are-" She stopped herself. She reached up to his face and kissed it. "We will rest for a little, if only to restore our psychic strength."

And Oone drew Elric down into the soft leaves at the side of the path. And she kissed him and she moved her lovely hands over his body and slowly she became all that he had lost in his love of women and he knew that he, in turn, became everything she had ever refused to allow herself to desire hi a man. And he knew, without guilt or regret, that their love-making had no past and that its only future lay somewhere beyond their own lives, beyond any realm they would ever visit, and that neither would ever witness the consequences.

And in spite of this knowledge they were careless and they were happy and they gave each other the strength they would need if they ever hoped to fulfill their quest and reach the Fortress of the Pearl.

4 The Intervention of a Navigator

Surprised by his own lack of confusion, filled with an apparent clarity, Elric stepped, side by side with Gone, through the shimmering silver gateway into Imador, called mysteriously by the dreamthieves the Land of New Ambition, and found himself at the top of an heroic flight of steps which curved downward towards a plain which stretched towards a horizon turned a pale, misty blue and which he could almost have mistaken for the sky. For a moment he thought that he and Gone were alone on that vast stairway and then he saw that it was crowded with people. Some were engaged in hectic conversation, some bartering, some embracing, while others were gathered around holy men, speech-makers, priestesses, story-tellers, either listening avidly or arguing.

The steps down to the plain were alive with every manner of human intercourse. Elric saw snake-charmers, bear-baiters, jugglers and acrobats. They were dressed in costumes typical of the desert lands-enormous silk pantaloons of green, blue, gold, vermilion and amber; coats of brocade or velvet; turbans, burnooses and caps of the most intricate needlework; burnished metal and silver, gold, precious jewels of every kind. And there was an abundance of animals, stalls, baskets overflowing with produce, with fabrics, with goods of leather and copper and brass.

"How handsome they are!" he remarked. It was true that though they were of all shapes and sizes the people had a beauty which was not easily defined. Their skins were all healthy, their eyes bright, their movements dignified and easy. They bore themselves with confidence and good humour and while it was clear they noticed Oone and Elric walking down the steps, they acknowledged them without making any great effort to greet them or ask them their business. Dogs, cats and monkeys ran about in the crowd and children played the cryptic games all children play. The air was warm and balmy and full of the scents of fruit, flowers and the other goods being sold. "Would that all worlds were like this," Elric added, smiling at a young woman who offered him embroidered cloth.

Oone bought oranges from a boy who ran up to her. She handed one to Elric. "This is a sweet realm indeed. I had not expected it to be so pleasant." But when she bit into the fruit she spat it into her hand. "It has no taste!"

Elric tried his own orange and he, too, found it a dry, flavourless thing.

The disappointment he felt at this was out of all proportion to the occurrence. He threw the orange from him. It struck a step below and bounced until it was out of sight.

The grey-green plain appeared unpopulated. There was a road sweeping across it, wide and well-paved, but there was not a single traveller visible, in spite of the great crowd. "I wonder why the road is empty," he said to Oone. "Do all these people sleep at nights on these steps? Or do they disappear into another realm when then-business here is done?"

"Doubtless that question will be answered for us soon enough, my lord."

She linked her arm in his own. Since their love-making in the wood, a sense of considerable comradeship and mutual liking had grown up between them. He knew no guilt; he knew in his heart that he had betrayed no one and it was clear Oone was equally untroubled. In some strange way they had restored each other, making their combined energy something more than the sum. This was the kind of friendship he had never really known before and he was grateful for it. He believed that he had learned much from Oone and that the dreamthief would teach him more that would be valuable to him when he returned to Melniboné to claim his throne back from Yyrkoon.

As they descended the steps it seemed to Elric that the costumes became more and more elaborate, the jewels and headdresses and weapons richer and more exotic, while the stature of the people increased and they grew still more handsome.

From curiosity he stopped to listen to a story-teller who held a crowd entranced, but the man spoke in an unfamiliar language- high and flat-which meant nothing to him. He and Gone paused again, beside a bead-seller, whom he asked politely if those gathered on the steps were all of the same nation.

The woman frowned at him and shook her head, replying in still another language. There seemed few words in it. She repeated much. Only when they were stopped by a sherbet-seller, a young boy, could they ask their question and be understood.

The lad frowned, as if translating their words in his head. "Aye, we are the people of the steps. Each of us has a place here, one below the other."

"You grow richer and more important as you descend, eh?" asked Gone.

He was puzzled by this. "Each of us has a place here," he said again, and, as if alarmed by their questions, he ran off up into the dense crowd above. Here, too, there were fewer people and Elric could see that their numbers thinned increasingly as the steps neared the plain. "Is this an illusion?" he murmured to Oone. "It has the air of a dream."

"It is our sense of what should be that intrudes here," she said, "and it colours our perception of the place, I think."

"It is not an illusion?"

"It is not what you would call an illusion." She made an effort to find words but eventually shook her head. "The more it seems an illusion to us, the more it becomes one. Does that make sense?"

"I think so."

At last they were nearing the bottom of the stairway. They were on the last few steps when they looked up to see a horseman riding towards them across the plain, creating a huge pillar of dust as he came.

There was a cry from the people behind them. Elric looked back and saw them all rushing rapidly up the stairs and his impulse was to join them, but Oone stayed him. "Remember we cannot go back," she said. "We must meet this danger as best we can."

Gradually the figure on the horse became distinguishable. It was either the same warrior in the armour of mother-of-pearl, ivory and tortoiseshell or one who was identical. He bore a white lance tipped with a point of sharpened bone and the thing was aimed directly at Elric's heart.

The albino jumped forward in a manoeuvre designed to confuse his attacker. He was almost under the horse's hooves when he struck upward with his swiftly drawn sword and cut at the lance. The force of the blow sent him reeling to one side while Oone, reacting with almost telepathic coordination, almost as if they were controlled by a single brain, leapt and thrust beneath the raised left arm, seeking their assailant's heart.

Her thrust was parried by a sudden movement of the rider's gauntletted right hand and he kicked out at her. Now, for the first time, Elric saw his face clearly. It was thin, bloodless, with eyes like the flesh of long-dead fish and a sneering gash of a mouth, opening now in a grimace of contempt. Yet with a shock he saw, too, something of Alnac Kreb! The lance swung to strike Oone's shoulder and send her, too, to the ground.

Elric was up again before the lance could return, his sword slashing at the horse's girth-strap in an old trick learned from the Vilmirian bandits, but he was blocked by an armoured leg and the lance returned to thrust at him while he darted clear, giving Oone her opportunity.

Though Elric and Oone fought as a single entity, their attacker was almost prescient, seeming to guess their every move.

Elric began to believe the rider to be wholly supernatural hi origin and even as he feinted again he sent his mind out into the realms of the elementals, seeking any aid which might possibly be available to him. But there was none. It was as if every realm were deserted, as if, overnight, the entire world of elementals, demons and spirits, had been banished to Limbo. Arioch would not aid him. His sorcery was completely useless here.

Gone cried out sharply and Elric saw that she had been flung back against the lowest step. She tried to climb to her feet but something was paralysed. She could hardly move her limbs.

Again the pale rider chuckled and began to advance for the kill.

Elric roared out his old battle-shout and raced towards their opponent, trying to distract him. The albino was horrified at the possibility of harm coming to the woman for whom he felt both profound love and comradeship and was willing to die to save her.

"Arioch! Arioch! Blood and souls!"

But he had no runesword to aid him here. Nothing save his own wits and skills.

"Alnac Kreb. Is this what remains of you?"

The rider turned, almost impatiently, and flung the lance at the running man. His answer.

Elric had not anticipated this. He tried to throw, his body aside but the haft of the lance struck his shoulder and he fell heavily into the dust, losing his grip on the unfamiliar sabre. He began to scrabble towards it even as he saw the rider draw his own long blade and continue towards the helpless Gone. He raised himself to one knee and threw his poignard with desperate accuracy. The blade went true, between the plates of the rider's back armour, and the lifted sword fell suddenly.

Elric reached his sabre, got to his feet and saw to his horror that the rider was rearing over Gone, the sword again raised, ignoring the wound in his shoulder.

"Alnac?"

Again Elric tried to appeal to whatever part of Alnac Kreb was there, but this time he was completely ignored. That same hideous, inhuman chuckling filled the air, the horse snorted, its hooves pawing at the woman as she struggled on the step.

Scarcely aware of his own movement, Elric reached the rider and leapt upward, dragging at his back, trying to haul him from the horse. The rider growled and managed to turn. His whistling sword was parried by Elric's and the albino unseated him. Together the pair fell to the sand, a few inches from where Oone lay. Elric's sword-hand was crushed under his attacker's armoured back, but he managed to tug the poignard free with his left hand and would have struck at those hideous dead eyes had not the man's fingers closed on his wrist.

"You'll kill me before you harm her!" Elric's normally melodic voice was a snarl of hatred. But the warrior merely laughed again, the ghost of Alnac fading from his eyes.

They fought thus for several moments, neither gaining any true advantage. Elric could hear his own breathing, the grunting of the armoured man, the whinnying of the horse and Oone's gasp as she tried to get to her feet.

"Pearl Warrior!"

It was another voice. Not Oone's, but a woman's; and it carried considerable authority.

"Pearl Warrior! You must do no further violence to these travellers!"

The warrior grunted but ignored the woman. His teeth snapped at Elric's throat. He tried to turn the poignard towards the albino's heart. There were drops of foaming saliva on his lips now-beads of white rimming his mouth.

"Pearl Warrior!"

Suddenly the warrior began to speak, whispering to Elric as if to a fellow conspirator. "Don't listen to her. I can aid thee. Why do you not come with us and learn to explore the Great Steppe, where all the hunting is rich? And there are melons, tasting like the most delicate cherries. I can give thee such wonderful clothing. Do not listen. Do not listen. Yes, I am Alnac, thy friend. Yes!"

Elric was repelled by the insane babble, more than he had been by the creature's horrible appearance and his violence.

"Think of all the power there is. They fear thee. They fear me. Elric. I know thee. Let us not be rivals. Together we can succeed. I am not free, but thou couldst journey for us both. I am not free, but them wouldst never bear responsibilities. I am not free, but, Elric, I have so many slaves at my disposal. They are thine. I offer thee new wealth and new philosophies, new ways of fulfilling every desire. I fear thee and thou fearest me. So we will bind us together, one to the other. It is the only tie that ever means anything. They dream of thee, all of them. Even I, who do not dream. Thou are the only enemy..."

"Pearl Warrior!"

With a rattle of bone and ivory, of tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, the leprous-skinned warrior disentangled himself from Elric. 'Together we can defeat her," he mumbled urgently. "There would be no force to resist us. I will give thee my ferocity!"

Nauseated by all this, Elric climbed slowly to his feet, turning to stare in the same direction as Oone, who now sat on the step, nursing limbs to which life seemed to be restored.

A woman, taller than either Elric or Oone, stood there. She was veiled and hooded. Her eyes moved steadily from them to the one she called Pearl Warrior and then she raised the great staff she held in her right hand and struck at the ground with it.

"Pearl Warrior! You must obey me!"

The Pearl Warrior was furious. "I do not wish this!" He snarled and, clattering, brushed at his breastplate. "You anger me, Lady Sough."

"These are my charges and under my protection. Go, Pearl Warrior. Kill elsewhere. Kill the true enemies of the Pearl."

"I do not want you to order me!" He was surly, sulking like a child. "All are enemies of the Pearl. You, too, Lady Sough."

"You are a silly creature! Begone!" And she lifted the staff to point beyond the stairway, where hazy rock could be seen, rising up forever.

He spoke again, warningly. "You make me angry, Lady Sough. I am the Pearl Warrior. I have the strength from the Fortress." He turned to Elric as if to a comrade. "Ally yourself with me and we'll kill her now. Then we shall rule-thou in thine freedom, me in my slavery. All of this and many other realms beside, unknown to dreamthieves. Safety is there forever. Be mine. We shall be married. Yes, yes, yes..."

Elric shuddered and turned his back on the Pearl Warrior. He went to help Oone to her feet.

Oone was able to move all her limbs but she was still dazed. She looked back at the steps which disappeared above them. Not a single one of the people who had occupied that vast staircase was visible.

Troubled, Elric glanced at the newcomer. Her robes were of different shades of blue, with silver threads running through them, hemmed with gold and dark green. She carried herself with extraordinary grace and dignity and stared back at Oone and Elric with an air of amusement. Meanwhile the Pearl Warrior climbed to his feet and stood defiantly to one side, alternately glaring at Lady Sough and offering Elric a hideous conspiratorial smile.

"Where are all the folk of the steps gone?" Elric asked her.

"They have merely returned to their home, my lord," said Lady Sough. Her voice, when she addressed him, was warm and full, yet retained all the authority with which she had ordered the Pearl Warrior to stop his attack. "I am Lady Sough and I bid you welcome to this land."

"We are grateful for your intervention, my lady." Oone spoke for the first time, though with a degree of suspicion. "Are you the ruler here?"

"I am merely a guide and a navigator."

"That mad thing there accepts your command." Oone rose, rubbing at her arms and legs, glaring at the Pearl Warrior, who sneered, becoming shifty as Lady Sough gave him her attention.

"He is incomplete." Lady Sough was dismissive. "He guards the Pearl. But he has such an insubstantial intelligence, he cannot understand the nature of his task, nor who is friend or who foe. He can make only the most limited choices, poor corrupt thing. The ones who put him to this work had, themselves, only the faintest understanding of what was required in such a warrior."

"Bad! I will not!" The Pearl Warrior began to utter his chuckle again. "Never! It is why! It is why!"

"Go!" cried Lady Sough, gesturing once more with her staff, her eyes glaring above her veil. "You have no business with these."

"Dying is unwise, madam," said the Pearl Warrior, lifting his shoulder hi a gesture of defiant arrogance. "Beware thine own corruption. We may all dissolve if this achieves that resolution."

"Go, stupid brute!" She pointed at his horse. "And leave that spear behind you. Destructive, insensate grotesque that you are."

"Am I mistaken," said Elric, "or does he speak gibberish?"

"Possibly," murmured Gone. "But it could be he speaks more of the truth than those who would protect us."

"Anything will come and anything will have to be resisted!" said the Pearl Warrior darkly as he mounted. He began to ride to where his lance had fallen after he had thrown it at Elric. "This is why we are to be!"

"Begone! Begone!"

He leaned from his saddle, reaching towards the lance.

"No," she said firmly, as if to a silly child. "I told you that you should not have it. Look what you have done, Pearl Warrior! You are forbidden to attack these people again."

"No alliance, then. Not now! But soon this freedom will be exchanged and all shall come together!" Another appalling chuckle from the half-crazed rider and he was digging his spurs into his horse's flanks, going at a gallop in the direction he had come. "There shall be bonds! Oh, yes!"

"Do his words make sense to you, Lady Sough?" Elric asked politely, when the warrior had disappeared.

"Some of them," she said. It seemed that she was smiling behind her veil. "It is not his fault that his brain is malformed. There are few warriors in this world, you know. He is perhaps the best."

"Best?"

Oone's sardonic question went unanswered. Lady Sough reached out a hand on which delicately coloured jewels glowed and she beckoned to them. "I am a navigator here. I can bear you to sweet islands where two lovers could be happy forever. I have a place that is hidden and safe. Can I take you there?"

Elric glanced at Gone, wondering if perhaps she was attracted by Lady Sough's invitation. For a second he forgot their purpose here. It would be wonderful to spend a short idyll in Oone's company.

"This is Imador, is it not, Lady Sough?"

"It is the place the dreamthieves call Imador, aye. We do not call it by that name." She seemed disapproving.

"We are grateful for your help in this matter, my lady," said Elric, thinking Oone a little brusque and seeking to apologise for his friend's manner. "I am Elric of Melniboné and this is Lady Oone of the Dreamthieves' Guild. Do you know that we seek the Fortress of the Pearl?"

"Aye. And this road is a straight one for you. It can lead you forward to the Fortress. But it might not lead you by the best route. I will guide you by whatever route you wish." She sounded a little distant, almost as if she were half-asleep herself. Her tone had become dreamy and Elric guessed she was offended.

"We owe you much, Lady Sough, and your advice is of value to us. What would you suggest?"

"That you raise an army first, I think. For your own safety. There are such terrible defences at the Fortress of the Pearl. Why, and before that, too. You are brave, the both of you. There are several roads to success. Death lies at the end of many other paths. Of this, you are, I am sure, aware..."

"Where could we recruit such an army?" Elric ignored Oone's warning look. He felt that she was being obstinate, overly suspicious of this dignified woman.

"There is an ocean not far from here. There is an island in it. The people of that island long to fight. They will follow anyone who promises them danger. Will you come there? It is very good. There is warmth and secure walls. Gardens and much to eat."

"Your words have a strong degree of common-sense," said Elric. "It would be worth, perhaps, pausing in our quest to recruit those ; soldiers. And I was offered alliance by the Pearl Warrior. Will he help us? Can he be trusted?"

"For what you wish to do? Yes, I think." Her forehead furrowed. "Yes, I think."

"No, Lady Sough." Gone spoke suddenly and with considerable force. "We are grateful for your guidance. Will you take us to the Falador Gate? Do you know it?"

"I know what you call the Falador Gate, young woman. And whatever your questions or your desires, they are mine to answer and fulfill."

"What is your own name for this land?"

"None." She seemed confused by Oone's question. "There is not one. It is this place. It is here. But I can guide you through it."

"I believe you, my lady." Oone's voice softened. She took Elric by the arm. "Our other name for this land is the Land of New Ambition. But new ambitions can mislead. We invent them when the old ambition seems too hard to achieve, eh?"

Elric understood her. He felt foolish. "You offer a diversion, Lady Sough?"

"Not so." The veiled woman shook her head. The movement had all her gracefulness in it and she seemed a little wounded by the directness of his question. "A fresh goal is sometimes preferable when the road becomes impassable."

"But the road is not impassable, Lady Sough," said Oone. "Not yet."

"That is true." Lady Sough bowed her head a fraction. "I offer you all truth in this matter. Every aspect of it."

"We shall retain the aspect of which we are most sure," Oone continued softly, "and thank you greatly for your help."

"It is yours to take, Lady Oone. Come." The woman whirled, her draperies lifting like clouds in a gale, and led them away from the steps to a place where the ground dipped and revealed, when they were closer, a shallow river. There a boat was moored. The boat had a curling prow of gilded wood, not unlike the crook of Oone's dreamwand, and its sides were covered with a thin layer of beaten gold, and bronze, and silver. Brass gleamed on rails, on the single mast, and a sail, blue with threads of silver, like Lady Sough's robes, was furled upon the yardarm. There was no visible crew. Lady Sough pointed with her staff. "Here is the boat with which we shall find the gate you seek. I have a vocation, Lady Oone, Prince Elric, to protect you. Do not fear me."

"My lady, we do not," said Oone with great sincerity. Still, her voice was gentle. Elric was mystified by her manner but accepted that she had a clear notion of their situation.

"What does this mean?" Elric murmured as Lady Sough descended towards her boat.

"I think it means we are close to the Fortress of the Pearl," said Oone. "She tries to help us but is not altogether sure how best to do it."

"You trust her?"

"If we trust ourselves, we can trust her, I think. We must know what are the right questions to ask her."

"I'll trust you, Oone, to trust her." Elric smiled.

At Lady Sough's insistent beckoning they clambered into the beautiful boat, which rocked only slightly on the dark waters of what seemed to Elric an entirely artificial canal, straight and deep, moving in a sweeping curve until it disappeared from sight a mile or two from them. He peered upward, still not sure if he looked upon a strange sky or the roof of the largest cavern of all. He could just see the stairs stretching away in the distance and wondered again what had happened to the inhabitants when they had fled at the Pearl Warrior's attack.

Lady Sough took the great tiller of the boat. With a single movement she guided the craft onto the centre of the waterway. Almost at once the ground levelled out so that it was possible to see the grey desert on all sides, while ahead was foliage, greenery, the suggestion of hills. There was a quality about the light which reminded Elric of a September evening. He could almost smell the early autumn roses, the turning trees, the orchards of Imrryr. Seated near the front of the boat with Oone beside him, leaning on his shoulder, he sighed with pleasure, enjoying the moment. "If the rest of our quest is to be conducted in such a way, I shall be glad to accompany you on many such adventures, Lady Oone."

She, too, was in good humour. "Aye. Then all the world would desire to be dreamthieves."

The boat rounded a bend of the canal and they were alerted by figures standing on both banks. These sad, silent people, dressed in white and yellow, regarded the sailing barge with tear-filled eyes, as if they witnessed a funeral. Elric was sure they did'not weep for himself or Oone. He called out to them, but they did not seem to hear him. They were gone almost at once and they passed by gently rising terraces, cultivated for vines and figs and almonds. The air was sweet with ripening harvests and once a small, foxlike creature ran along beside them for a while before veering off into a clump of shrubs. A little later, naked, brown-skinned men prowled on all fours until they, too, grew bored and disappeared into the undergrowth. The canal began to twist more and more and Lady Sough was forced to throw all her weight upon the tiller to keep the boat on course.

"Why would a canal be built so?" Elric asked her when they were once more upon a straight stretch of water.

"What was above us is now ahead and what was below is now behind," she replied. "That is the nature of this. I am the navigator and I know. But ahead, where it grows darker, the river is unbending. This is made to help understanding, I think."

Her words were almost as confusing as the Pearl Warrior's, and Elric tried to make sense by asking her further questions. "The river helps us understand what, Lady Sough?"

"Their nature-her nature-what you must encounter-ah, look!"

The river was widening rapidly into a lake. There were reeds growing on the banks now, silver herons flying against the soft sky.

"It is no great distance to the island I spoke of," said Lady Sough. "I fear for you."

"No," said Oone with determined kindness. "Take the boat across the lake towards the Falador Gate. I thank you."

"This thanks is ..." Lady Sough shook her head. "I would not have you die."

"We shall not. We are here to save her."

"She is afraid."

"We know."

"Those others said they would save her. But they made her-they made it dark and she was trapped..."

"We know," said Oone, and laid a comforting hand on Lady Sough's arm as the veiled woman guided the boat out onto the open lake.

Elric said: "Do you speak of the Holy Girl and the Sorcerer Adventurers? What imprisons her, Lady Sough? How can we release her? Bring her back to her father and her people?"

"Oh, it is a lie!" Lady Sough almost shouted, pointing to where, swimming directly towards them, came a child. But the boy's skin was metallic, of glaring silver, and his silver eyes were begging them for help. Then the child grinned, reached to pull off its own head and submerged. "We near the Falador Gate," said Oone grimly.

"Those who would possess her also guard her," said Lady Sough suddenly. "But she is not theirs."

"I know," said Oone. Her gaze was fixed on what lay ahead of them. There was a mist on the lake. It was like the finest haze which forms on water in an autumn morning. There was an air of tranquilly which, clearly, she mistrusted. Elric looked back at Lady Sough but the navigator's eyes were expressionless, offering no clue to what dangers they might soon be facing.

The boat turned a little and there was land just visible through the mist. Elric saw tall trees rising above a tumble of rocks. There were white pillars of limestone, shimmering faintly in that lovely light. He saw hummocks of grass and below them little coves. He wondered if Lady Sough had, after all, brought them to the island she had mentioned and was about to question her when he saw what appeared to be a massive door of carved stone and intricate mosaic bearing an air of considerable age.

"The Falador Gate," said Lady Sough, not without a hint of trepidation.

Then the gate had opened and a horrible wind rushed out of it, tearing at their hair and clothing, clawing at their skins, shrieking and wailing in their ears. The boat rocked and Elric feared it must capsize. He ran to the stern to help Lady Sough with the tiller. Her veil had been ripped from her face. She was not a young woman, but she bore an astonishing resemblance to the little girl they had left in the Bronze Tent, the Holy Girl of the Bauradim. And Elric, taking the tiller while Lady Sough replaced her veil, remembered that no mention had ever been made of Varadia's mother.

Oone was lowering the sail. The wind's initial strength had died and it was possible to tack gradually towards the dark, strangely smelling entrance which had been revealed as the mosaic door had blown down.

Three horses appeared there. Hooves flailed at the air. Tails lashed. Then they were galloping across the water in the direction of the boat. Then they had passed it and vanished into the mist. Not one of the beasts had possessed a head.

Now Elric knew terror. But it was a familiar terror and within seconds he had regained control of himself. He knew that, whatever its name, he was about to enter a land where Chaos ruled.

It was only as the boat sailed under the carved rocks and into the grotto beyond that he recalled he had none of his familiar spells and enchantments; not one of his allies, nor his patron Duke of Hell, was available to him here. He had only experience and courage and his ordinary sensibilities. And at that moment he doubted if they were enough.

5 The Sadness of a Queen Who Cannot Rule

The mighty barrier of obsidian rock suddenly started to flow. A mass of glassy green flooded down into the water which hissed and began to stink and mountains of steam rose ahead of them. As the steam gradually dissipated, another river was revealed. This one, flowing through the narrow walls of a deep canyon, appeared of natural origin and Elric, his mind now keyed to interpretation, wondered if it was not the same river they had crossed earlier, when he had fought the Pearl Warrior on the bridge.

Then the barge, which had seemed so sturdy, appeared all at once fragile as the waters tossed it, roaring steadily downward until Elric thought they must eventually reach the very core of the world.

Standing with Lady Sough in the prow of the boat, Oone and Elric helped her use the tiller to hold a course that was almost steady. And then, ahead, the river ended without warning and they had tipped over a waterfall and before they knew it were landing heavily in calmer water, the barge bobbing like a scrap of bread on a pond, and overhead they could see a sky like diseased pewter in which dark, leathery things flew and communicated with desolate cries above palms whose leaves resembled nothing so much as viridian skins stretched out to await a sun which never rose. There was a rich, rotten smell about the place and the constant splashing and distant roaring of the water filled a silence broken only by the flying creatures above the rocks and the foliage which surrounded them.

It was warm, yet Elric shivered. Oone drew up the collar of her doublet and even Lady Sough gathered her robes more tightly about herself.

"Are you familiar with this land, Lady Oone?" Elric asked. "You have visited this realm before, I know, but you seem as surprised as I."

"There are always new aspects. It is in the nature of the realm. Perhaps Lady Sough can tell us more." And Oone turned courteously to their navigator.

Lady Sough had secured her veils more firmly. She seemed unhappy that Elric had seen her face. "I am the Queen of this land," she said, exhibiting no pride or any other emotion.

"Then you have minions who can assist us?"

"It was a Queen for me, so that I had no power over it, only the land's protection. This is where you call Falador."

"And is it mad?" is

"It has many defences."

"They keep out what might also wish to leave," said Oone, almost to herself. "Are you afraid of those who protect Falador, Lady Sough?"

"I am Queen Sough now." A drawing up of the graceful body, but whether hi parody or in earnest Elric could not tell. "I am protected. You are not. Even I am not so able to guard you here."

The barge continued to float slowly along the water-course. The slime of the rocks appeared to shift and move as if alive and there were shapes in the water which disturbed Elric. He would have drawn his sword if it had not seemed ill-mannered.

"What must we fear here?" he asked the Queen.

Now they floated below a great spur of rock on which a horseman had positioned himself. It was the Pearl Warrior, glaring down with the same mixture of mockery and mindlessness. He lifted a long stick to which he had tied some animal's sharp, twisted horn.

Queen Sough shook her hand at him. "Pearl Warrior shall not do this! Pearl Warrior cannot defy, even here!"

The warrior let out his hideous chuckle and turned his horse back from the rock. Then he was gone.

"Will he attack us?" Oone asked the Queen.

Queen Sough was concentrating on her tiller, steering the boat subtly along a smaller water-course, away from the main river. Perhaps she already aimed to avoid any conflict. "He is unpermitted," she said. "Ah!"

The water had turned a ruby red and there were now banks of glistening brown moss, gently rising towards the walls of rock. Elric was convinced he saw ancient faces staring at him both from the banks and from the cliffs, but he did not feel threatened. The red liquid looked like wine and there was a heady sweetness here. Did Queen Sough know all the secret, tranquil places of this world and was she guiding them through so as to avoid its dangers?

"Here my friend Edif has influence," she told them. "He is a ruler whose chief interest is poetry. Will it be now? I do not know."

They had quickly become used to her strange speech forms and were finding her more easily understood, though they had no idea who Edif might be and had passed through his land into a place where the desert appeared suddenly on both sides of them, beyond flanking lines of palms, as if they moved towards an oasis. Yet no oasis materialised.

Soon the sky was the colour of bad liver again and the rocky walls had risen around them and there was the sticky, oppressive odour which reminded Elric of some decadent court's anterooms. Perfume which had once been sweet but had now grown stale; food which had once made the mouth water but which was now too old; flowers which no longer enhanced but reminded one only of death.

The walls on either side now had great jagged caves in them where the water echoed and tumbled. Queen Sough seemed nervous of these and kept the barge carefully in the centre of the river. Elric saw shadows moving within the caves, both above and below the water. He saw red mouths opening and closing and saw pale, unblinking eyes staring. They bad the air of Chaos-born creatures and he wished mightily then for his runesword, for his patron Duke of Hell, for his repertoire of spells and incantations.

The albino was not altogether surprised when at last a voice spoke from one of the caverns.

"I am Balis Jamon, Lord of the Blood, and I wish to have some kidneys."

"We sail on!" cried Queen Sough in response. "I am not your food nor shall I ever be."

"Their kidneys! Theirs!" the voice demanded implacably. "I have fed on no true grub for so long. Some kidneys! Some kidneys!"

Elric drew his sword and his dagger. Oone did the same.

"You'll not have mine, sir," said the albino.

"Nor mine," said Oone, seeking the source of the voice. They could not be sure which of the many caves sheltered the speaker.

"I am Balis Jamon, Lord of the Blood. You'll pay a toll here in my land. Two kidneys for me!"

"I'll take yours instead, sir, if you like!" said Elric defiantly.

"Will you, now?"

There was a great movement from the furthest cave and water foamed in and out. Then something stooped and came wading into midstream, its fleshy body festooned with half-decayed plants and ruined blooms, its horned snout lifted so that it could stare at them from two tiny black eyes. The fangs in the snout were broken, yellow and black, and a red tongue licked at them, flicking little pieces of rotten meat into the water. It held one great paw over its chest and when the paw was lowered it revealed a dark, gaping hole where the heart would have been.

"I am Balis Jamon, Lord of the Blood. Look what I must fill for me to live! Have mercy, little creatures. A kidney or two and I'll let you pass. I have nothing here, while you are complete. You must make justice and share with me."

"This is my only justice for you, Lord Balis," said Elric, gesturing with a sword, which seemed a feeble thing even to him.

"You will never be complete, Balis Jamon!" called out Queen Sough. "Not until you know more of mercy!"

"I am fair! One kidney will do!" The paw began to reach towards Elric, who cut at it but missed, then cut again and felt the sword strike the creature's hide, which scarcely showed a mark. The paw grabbed at the sword. Elric withdrew it. Balis Jamon growled with a mixture of frustration and self-pity and reached both paws towards the albino.

"Stop! Here's your kidney!" Oone held up something which dripped. "Here it is, Balis Jamon. Now let us pass. We are agreed."

"Agreed." He turned, evidently mollified, delicately took what she handed up to him and popped it into the hole in his chest. "Good. Go!" And he waded passively back towards his cave, honour and hunger both satisfied.

Elric was baffled, though grateful that she had saved his life. "What did you do, Lady Oone?"

She smiled. "A large bean. Some of the provisions I still carried in my purse. It looked similar to a kidney, especially when dipped in water. And I doubt if he knows the difference. He seemed a simple creature."

Queen Sough's eyes were lifted upward even as she steered the barge past the caves and into a wider stretch of water where buffalo lifted their heads from where they drank and stared at them with wary curiosity.

Elric followed the navigator's gaze but saw only the same lead-coloured sky. He sheathed his sword. "These creatures of Chaos seem simple enough. Less intelligent in some ways than others I've encountered."

"Aye." Oone was unsurprised. "That's likely, I think. She would be-"

The boat was lifted suddenly and for a second Elric thought Lord Balis had returned to take vengeance on them for tricking him. But they appeared to be on the crest of a huge wave. The water level rose rapidly between the slimy walls and now, on the cliffs' edges figures appeared. They were of every kind of distorted shape and unlikely size and Elric was reminded a little of the beggar populace of Nadsokor, for these, too, were dressed in rags and bore the evidence of self-mutilation, as well as disease, wounding and ordinary neglect. They were filthy. They moaned. They looked greedily at the boat and they licked their lips.

Now, more than ever before, Elric wished he had Stormbringer with him. The runesword and a little elemental aid would have driven this rabble away in terror. But he had only the blades captured from the Sorcerer Adventurers. He must rely upon those, his alliance with Oone and their naturally complementary fighting skills. There came a juddering from the bottom of the barge and the wave receded as suddenly as it had risen, but now they were stranded on the very top of the cliff, with the misshapen horde all around them, panting and grunting and sniffing at their prey.

Elric wasted no time with parleying but jumped at once from the boat's prow and cut at the first two who grabbed for him. The blade, still sharp enough, severed their heads and he stood over their bodies grinning at them like the wolf he was sometimes called. "I want you all," he said. He used the battle bravado he had learned from the pirates of the Vilmirian Straits. He moved forward again and thrust, catching still another Chaos-creature in the chest. "I must kill every one of you before I am satisfied!"

They had not expected this. They shuffled. They looked at each other. They turned their weapons in their hands, they adjusted their rags and tugged at their limbs.

Now Oone was beside Elric. "I want my fair share of these," she cried. "Save them for me, Elric." Then she, too, darted forward and cut down an ape-faced thing which carried a jewelled axe of beautiful workmanship, clearly stolen from an earlier victim.

Queen Sough called from behind them. "They have not attacked you. They only threaten. Is this the true thing you must do?"

"It's our only choice, Queen Sough!" cried Elric over his shoulder, and feinted at two more of the half-human things.

"No! No! It is not heroic. What can the guardian do, who is no longer a hero?"

Even Oone could not follow this and when Elric met her eye in a question she shook her head.

The rabble was gaining some confidence now, closing in. Snouts sniffed at them. Tongues licked saliva from slack lips. Hot, duly eyes full of blood and pus squinted their hatred.

Then they had begun to close and Elric felt his blade meet resistance, for he had already blunted it on the first two creatures. Yet still the neck split and the head fell to one side, glaring the while, hands clutching. Oone had her back to his and together they moved so that they were protected from one side by the boat, which the rabble did not seem to wish to touch. Queen Sough, in obvious distress, wept as she watched but clearly had no authority over the Chaos-creatures. "No! No! This does not help her to sleep! No! No! She is in need of them, I know!"

It was at that point that Elric heard the sound of hooves and saw, over the heads of the closing crowd, the white armour of the Pearl Warrior.

"They are his creatures!" he said in sudden understanding. "This is his own army and he is to be revenged on us!"

"No!" Queen Sough's voice was distant now, as if very far away. "This cannot be useful! It is your army. They'll be loyal. Yes."

Hearing her, Elric knew unexpected clarity. Was it that she was not really human? Were all of these creatures merely shape-changers of some kind, disguising themselves as humans? It would explain their strange cast of mind, the peculiar logic, the strange phrasing.

But there was no time for speculation, for now the creatures were hard about him and Oone, so that it was hardly possible to swing their blades to keep them back. Blood flowed, sticky and foetid, splashing on blades and arms and making them gag. Elric felt he might be overwhelmed by the stench before he was defeated by their weapons.

It was clear they could not resist the mob and Elric was bitter, feeling that they had come very close to the object of their quest only to be cut down by the most wretched of the denizens of Chaos.

Then more bodies fell at his feet and he realised that he had not killed them. Oone, too, was astonished by this turn of events.

They looked up. They could not understand what was happening.

The Pearl Warrior was riding through the ranks of the rabble cutting this way and that, jabbing with his makeshift spear, slicing with his sword, cackling and crowing at every fresh life he took. His horrible eyes were alight with some sort of amusement and even his horse was slashing at the rabble with its hooves, nipping at them with its teeth.

"This is the proper thing!" Queen Sough clapped her hands. "This is true. This is to ensure honour for you!"

Gradually driven back by the Pearl Warrior, by Elric and Gone as they resumed their attack, the rabble began to break up.

Soon the whole awful mob was running for the cliff edge, leaping into the abyss rather than die by the Pearl Warrior's bone spear and his silver sword.

His laughter continued as he herded the remainder to their doom. He screamed his mockery at them. He raved at them for cowards and fools. "Ugly things. Ugly! Ugly! Go! Perish! Go! Go! Go! Banished now, they are. Banished to that! Yes!"

Elric and Gone leaned against the barge trying to catch their breaths.

"I am grateful to you, Pearl Warrior," said the albino as the armoured rider approached. "You have saved our lives."

"Yes." The Pearl Warrior nodded gravely, his eyes unusually thoughtful. "That is so. Now we shall be equal. Then we shall know the truth. I am not free, as you. You believe this?" His last question was addressed to Oone.

She nodded. "I believe that, Pearl Warrior. I, too, am glad you helped us."

"I am the one who protects. This must be done. You go on? I was your friend."

Oone looked back to where Queen Sough was nodding, her arms outstretched in some kind of offering.

"Here I am not your enemy," said the Pearl Warrior, as if instructing the simple-minded. "If I were complete, we three would be a trinity of greatness! Aye! Thou knowest it! I have not the personal. These words are hers, you see. I think."

And with that particularly mystifying pronouncement he wheeled his horse and rode away over the grassy milestone.

"Too many defenders, not enough protectors, perhaps." Gone sounded as odd as the others. Before Elric could quiz her on this she had given her attention back to Queen Sough. "My lady? Did you summon the Pearl Warrior to our aid?"

"She called him to you, I think." Queen Sough seemed almost in a trance. It was odd to hear her speaking of herself in the third person. Elric wondered if this was the normal mode here and again it occurred to him that all the people of this realm were not human but had assumed human shape.

They were now stranded high above the river. Going to the edge of the abyss, Elric stared down. He saw only some bodies which had been caught on the rocks, others drifting downstream. He was glad then that their boat was not having to negotiate waters clogged with so many corpses.

"How can we continue?" he asked Oone. He had a vision of himself and her in the Bronze Tent, of the child between them. All were dying. He knew a pang of need, as if the drug were calling to him, reminding him of his addiction. He remembered Anigh in Quarzhasaat and Cymoril, his betrothed, waiting in Imrryr. Had he been right to let Yyrkoon rule in his place? Every one of his decisions seemed now to be foolish. His self-esteem, never high, was lower than he could remember. His lack of forethought, his failures, his follies, all reminded him that not only was he physically deficient, he was also lacking hi ordinary common-sense.

"It is in the nature of the hero," said Queen Sough in relation to nothing. Then she looked at them and her eyes were maternal, kindly. "You are safe!"

"I think there is some urgency," said Oone. "I sense it. Do you?"

"Aye. Is there danger in the realm we left?"

"Perhaps. Queen Sough, are we far from the Nameless Gate? How can we continue?"

"By means of the moth-steeds," she said. "The waters always rise here and I have my moths. We have only to wait for them. They are on their way." Her tone was matter-of-fact. "It was that rabble which could have been yours. No more. But I cannot anticipate, you see. Every new trap is mysterious to me, as it is to you. I can navigate, as you navigate. This is together, you know."

Against the horizon there were rainbow lights winking and shimmering, like an aurora. Queen Sough sighed when she saw them. She was content.

"Good. Good. That is not late! Just the other."

The colours filled the sky now. As they came closer Elric realised that they belonged to huge, filmy wings supporting slender bodies, more butterfly than moth, of enormous size. Without hesitation the beasts began to descend until the three of them as well as the barge were engulfed by soft wings.

"Into the boat!" cried Queen Sough. "Quickly. We fly."

They hurried to obey her and at once the barge was rising into the air, apparently carried on the backs of the great moths who flew beside the canyon for a while before plunging down into the abyss.

"I watched but there was nothing," said Queen Sough by way of explanation to Elric and Gone. "Now we shall resume."

With astonishing gentleness the creatures had deposited the barge on the river and were flying back up between the walls of the canyon again, filling the whole gloomy place with brilliant multi-coloured light before they vanished. Elric rubbed at his brow. "This is truly the Land of Madness," he said. "I believe it is I who am mad, Lady Oone."

"You are losing confidence in yourself, Prince Elric." She spoke firmly. "That is the particular trap of this land. You come to believe that it is yourself, not what surrounds you, that has little logic. Already we have imposed our sanity on Falador. Do not despair. It cannot be much longer before we reach the final gate."

"And what is there?" He was sardonic. "Sublime reason?" He felt the same strange sense of exhaustion. Physically he was still capable of continuing, but his mind and his spirit were depleted.

"I cannot begin to anticipate what we shall find in the Nameless Land," she said. "Dreamthieves have little power over what occurs beyond the seventh gate."

"I've noticed your considerable influence here!" But he did not mean to hurt her. He smiled to show that he joked.

From ahead they beard a howling, so painful that even Queen Sough covered her ears. It was like the baying of some monstrous hound, echoing up and down the abyss and threatening to shake the very boulders loose from the walls. As the river bore them round the bend they saw the beast standing there, a great shaggy wolflike beast, its head lifted as it howled again. The water rushed around its huge legs, foamed against its body. As it turned its gaze upon them the beast vanished completely. They heard only the echo of its howling. The speed of the water increased. Queen Sough had removed her hands from the tiller to block her ears. The boat swung in the water and bounced as it struck a rock. She made no attempt to steer it Elric seized the long arm but in spite of using all his strength he could do nothing with the boat. Eventually he, too, gave up.

Down and down the river ran. Down into a gorge growing so deep that soon there was scarcely any light at all. They saw faces grinning at them. They felt hands reach out to touch them. Elric became convinced that every mortal creature who had ever died had come here to haunt him. In the dark rock he saw his own face many times, and that of Cymoril and Yyrkoon. Old battles were fought as he watched. And old, agonising emotions came back to him. He felt the loss of all he had ever loved, the despair of death and desertion, and soon his own voice joined the general babble and he howled as loudly as the hound had howled until Oone shook him and yelled at him and brought him back from the madness which had threatened to engulf him.

"Elric! The last gate! We are almost there! Hold on, Prince of Melniboné. You have been courageous and resourceful until now. This will require still more of you, and you must be ready!"

And Elric began to laugh. He laughed at his own fate, at the fate of the Holy Girl, at Anigh's fate and at Oone's. He laughed when he thought of Cymoril waiting for him on the Dragon Isle, not knowing even now if he lived or died, if he was free or a slave.

When Oone shouted at him again, he laughed in her face.

"Elric! You betray us all!"

He paused in his laughter long enough to say softly, almost in triumph, "Aye, madam, that is so. I betray you all. Have you not heard? It is my destiny to betray!"

"You shall not betray me, sir!" She slapped at his face. She punched him. She kicked his legs. "You shall not betray me and you shall not betray the Holy Girl!"

He knew intense pain, not from her blows but from his own mind. He cried out and then he began to sob. "Oh, Oone. What is happening to me?"

"This is Falador," she said simply. "Are you recovered, Prince Elric?"

The faces still gibbered at him from the rock. The air was still alive with all he feared, all he most misliked in himself.

He was trembling. He could not meet her gaze. He realised he was weeping. "I am Elric, last of Melniboné's royal line," he said. "I have looked upon horror and I have courted the Dukes of Hell. Why should I know fear now?"

She did not answer and he expected no answer from her.

The boat surged, swung again, lifted and dipped.

Suddenly he was calm. He took hold of Oone's hand in a gesture of simple affection.

"I am myself again, I think," he said.

"There is the gateway," said Queen Sough from behind them. She had her grip on the tiller again and with her other hand was pointing ahead.

"There is the land you call the Nameless Land," she said. She spoke plainly now, not in the cryptic phrasing she had used since they had met her. "There you will find the Fortress of the Pearl. She cannot welcome you."

"Who?" said Elric. The waters were calm again. They ran slowly towards a great archway of alabaster, its edges trimmed by soft leaves and shrubs. "The Holy Girl?"

"She can be saved," said Queen Sough. "Only by you two, I think. I have helped her remain here, awaiting rescue. But it is all I can do. I am afraid, you see."

"We are all that, madam," said Elric feelingly.

The boat was caught by new currents and travelled still more slowly, as if reluctant to enter the last gate of the Dream Realm.

"But I am of no help," said Queen Sough. "I might even have conspired. It was those men. They came. Then more came. There was only retreat thereafter. I wish I could know such words. You would understand them if I had them. Ah, it is hard here!"

Elric, looking into her agonised eyes, realised that she was probably more of a prisoner in this world than he and Gone. It seemed to him that she longed to escape and was only kept here by her love of the Holy Girl, her protective emotions. Yet surely she had been here long before Varadia had come?

The boat had begun to pass under the alabaster arch now. There was a salty, pleasant taste to the air, as if they approached the ocean.

Elric decided he must ask the question which was on his mind.

"Queen Sough," he said. "Are you Varadia's mother?"

The pain in the eyes grew even more intense as the veiled woman turned away from him. Her voice was a sob of anguish and he was shocked by it.

"Oh, who knows?" she cried. "Who knows?"