The Skrayling Tree

CHAPTER EIGHT

This is my Dream of a Thousand Years. In reality it lasted a single night, but I lived every moment of the dream, risked every kind of death in one last attempt to save myself. I describe it here, through Ulric's agency, because of its relevance to his tale. It was a dream I dreamed as I hung crucified on the yardarm of Jagreen Lern's triumphant flagship, the banner of my own defeat. I had lost my much-needed burden, the demon-blade Stormbringer. I was racking my memory for some means of recovering the sword to save myself and Moonglum and if possible stop the tide of Chaos which threatened the Cosmic Balance and would turn the whole of creation inchoate.

In this dream I was searching for the Nihrainian smith who had forged the original black blade. I had heard of one called Volnir. He lived close to the world's northern edge in what some called Cimmeria but which you know better as North America. If I found him, I should then be able to find Stormbringer. By such means I might save myself, my friend and even my world. I knew the price to be paid for following this dream path.

It would be the second time I had undertaken the Dream of a Thousand Years. To a youth of my genesis it is integral training. It must be done several times. You go alone into the wilderness. You fast. You meditate and seek the path to the world of long dreams. These are the worlds which determine and reveal the future. They offer the secrets of your past. In such worlds one serves more than one rules. Certain knowledge is gained by extended experience as well as study. The Dream of a Thousand Years provides that experience. The memory of those lifetimes fades, leaving the instinctive wisdom, the occasional nightmare.

One does not learn how to rule the Bright Empire of Melnibone without such service. Only in the extreme could I use my skills. I knew the danger involved, but I had no choice. The fate of my world depended upon my regaining, for a few moments, control of the black sword.

To attempt this desperate and unlikely magic, I had summoned all my remaining powers of sorcery. I had allowed myself to sink into a familiar trance. Jagreen Lern had already provided me with more than sufficient fasting and physical privations. I sought a supernatural gateway to the dream-worlds, some link to my own youthful past, where our many destinies are already recorded. And it brought me to your world in the year A.D. 900. I would leave it in the year 2001 upon the death of a relative.

Riding from Vienna, having but recently returned from a conquered Jerusalem, by October I found myself in the rocky Balkan mountains, where a tradition of banditry lived side by side with a tradition of hill farming to break the hearts and backs of most other peasants.

While wolf's-heads might covet my fine black steel helmet and armor, they had the sense not to test the great claymore I carried at my side. She was called Ravenbrand, sister to my own Stormbringer. How I came by Ravenbrand in that place is a tale yet to be told.

Until finding temporary peace with my wife, Zarozinia, I had been a mercenary outlaw in the Young Kingdoms. I had no difficulty making a good living here. Both the blade and I had reputations few were ready to challenge. Already I had served in Byzantium, in Egypt, fought Danes in England and Christians in Cadiz. In Jerusalem through a bizarre sequence of events, coveting a particular horse, I had helped create an order of the Knights Templar, founded by Christians, to ensure that no temporal master should ever claim the Holy Sepulchre. My interest was not in their religions, which are primitive, but in their politics, which are complicated. Their prophets constantly make false claims for themselves and their people.

Because their maps put Jerusalem at the heart of the world, I had hoped to find signs of my smith there, but I was following a fading song. The only smiths I found were shoeing crusader horses or repairing crusader arms. In Vienna I heard at last of a Norseman who had explored the farther reaches of the world's edge and might know where to find the Nihrainian smith.

My journey through the Balkans was rarely eventful. I was soon in the Dalmatian hinterland, where the blood feud was the only real law, and neither Roman, Greek nor Ottoman had much influence. The mountains continued to shelter tribes whose only concession to the Iron Age was to steal whatever they could from those who carried any kind of metal. They used old warped crossbows and spears chiefly and were inaccurate with both. But I had no trouble from them. Only one band of hunters attempted to take my sword from me. Their corpses served to enlighten the others.

I found warm and welcoming lodging at the famous Priory of the Sacred Egg in Dalmatia. Their matronly prioress told me how Gunnar the Norseman had anchored a month since to make minor repairs at the safe harbor of Isprit on the protected western coast. She had heard it from one of his homebound sailors. Gunnar, tired of slim pickings in the civilized ports, was determined to sail north to the colonies Ericsson and his followers had established there. He was obsessed with an idea about a city made entirely of gold. The sailor, a hardened sea-robber, swore never again to sail under a captain as evil as Gunnar. The man spent an unlikely amount of the time with the confessor and then left, saying he thought he would try his luck in the Holy Land.

The Wendish prioress was an educated woman. She said Isprit had known greater glory. The real center of power had shifted to Venice. The Norseman had made a good choice. Using the local name for the place, the prioress told me the old imperial port was little more than three days' ride on a good horse. Two, the buxom Wend offered with a hearty laugh, if I wished to risk trespassing in Satan's backyard. She hugged my shoulders in an embrace which might have snapped a less battle-hardened invalid. I relaxed in her uncomplicated warmth.

The sailor had said the Norseman was anxious to leave port as soon as possible. He feared they should be trapped there. The Vikings had already angered the Venetians with a raid on Pag, which was successful, and another on Rab, which was not. Those dreaming old Adriatic ports now relied upon Venice for their prosperity and security and were glad to be off the main crusader routes. The knights and their armies brought little benefit and much destruction. The pope had called the Crusade in 1148. He had infected the whole of Europe and Arabia with his own dementia, which he then proceeded to die of. He had invented the jihad. The Arabs learned his lesson well.

I had no quarrel with any of the warring sects, who all claimed to serve an identical God! Human madness was ever banal. Jerusalem commanded no more of my interest. I had all I needed from the city. I had my horse, some gold and the odd ring on my finger. I found myself dragged briefly into the civic business of the city, but it was of no interest to me now whether or not order had been restored. Jerusalem was the turbulent heart of all their sects and would no doubt remain so.

Meanwhile Venice expanded her influence wherever the Turk's attention was distracted. Venice had most reason to see a nuisance in the Norseman. Her navy had already tried to trap him at Nin, but he had escaped, damaging The Swan in the attempt. The Viking would not take the risk of his beloved Swan being captured. They said she was the last of her kind, as Gunnar was the

last of his. The other Vikings had made themselves kings and indulged in imperial expansion, missionaries of their Prince of Peace.

While the Crusades drew the world's attention, the man I sought was raiding through the winter months, taking the rather impoverished towns of the Adriatic, careful never to attract the wrath of Venice. Until recently neither Byzantines, Turks nor any other of the various local powers had will or men to send ships after a sea-raider. His skills and ferocity were infamous, his vessel so fast and lithe in the water many thought her possessed. The Swan was as lucky as she was beautiful. But previously neutral or disputed ports now came under the protection of Venice. Venice was rapidly expanding her trade. The Doge coveted Gunnar's legendary ship.

Gunnar, I was told, was not even a Viking by birth. He was a Rus. Outlawed from Kiev he'd returned to the reiving trade of his forefathers more from necessity than romance. Otherwise he was something of a mystery. Evidently neither Christian, Jew nor Moslem, he had never revealed his face, even to his women. Night and day he wore a reflective steel mask.

"Sounds a devilish wicked creature, eh?" the prioress said. "Not plague or leprosy, so I gather."

This matronly prioress, a woman of the world, had, until her retirement, run a brothel in Athens. She had a strong interest in the doings of the region. It was useful, pleasurable and politic to succumb to her charms, even if she found mine a little more supernatural than she bargained for. Before retiring, however, we were joined by another intelligent person of some experience, who was, by coincidence, lodging there for the night.

This guest had arrived a few hours ahead of me. A cheerful, wide-mouthed redheaded little man, he might have been a relative of my old friend Moonglum. My memory, as always in these dreams, was a little dim regarding any other life. This friar was a soldier-priest, with a mail shirt under his heavy homespun cassock, a useful-looking sword of Eastern pattern in an elaborate sheath and boots of fine quality that had seen better days.

He introduced himself in Greek, still the common tongue of the region. Friar Tristelunne had been a Heironymite hermit until his own natural garrulousness took him back, he said, to society. He now made ends meet as best he could, from marriages, deaths, funerals, letter writing, and selling the occasional small relic. Sadly there was often more work for his sword than his prayer book. The Crusade had been a disappointment to him. It no doubt satisfied the Christian appetites of the city's liberators, he said, but it wasn't man's work. He drew the line at skewering old Jewish women and babies in the name of the Lord of Light.

Friar Tristelunne knew the Norseman. "Some call him Earl Gunnar the Ill-famed, but he has a dozen worse names. A captain so cruel only the most desperate and depraved will sail with him."

A pagan, Gunnar's attempt to join and profit from the Crusade had been thwarted.

"Even the realistic, pious and opportunistic Saint Clair could not excuse the recruitment of an unreformed worshipper of Woden."

Gunnar was famous for his treachery, and there was no guarantee that once he reached the Holy Land he would not discover a better master in Saladin. The only good reason anyone would have to strike an alliance with Gunnar the Doomed was if they needed a good navigator. "His skills are greater than the Ericssons'. He uses magic lodestones. He takes wild risks and survives them, even if all his comrades do not. Not only has he reached the rim of the world, he has sailed completely around it."

Friar Tristelunne had met Earl Gunnar, he said, when the captain was a mercenary in Byzantine employ. The monk had been fascinated by his mixture of intelligence and rapacity. Indeed, Gunnar had tried to get him involved in a scheme for robbing a wealthy Irish abbey said to be the home of the graded sante. But his methods ultimately disgusted the Byzantines, who outlawed him. He had worked for the Turkish sultan for a while but was once again sailing on his own behalf, getting a new expedition ready. He was busy promising every man who would sail with him that even their fleas' shares would be worth a caliph's ransom.

Friar Tristelunne had considered joining the adventure, but he knew Gunnar to be notoriously treacherous. "The chances of returning alive to the civilized world would be slim indeed." He had a passage on a ship leaving Omis for the Peninsula in a few days' time. He had decided to strike out for Cordova, where he could get plenty of translation work and study to his heart's content at their great library, assuming the caliph was still well disposed towards unbelievers.

The friar, like so many in that region, knew me as Pielle d'Argent or 'the Silverskin', and my sword was called Dentanoir. Many avoided me for my sickly looks, but Friar Tristelunne seemed untroubled. He spoke to me with the easiness of an old, affectionate friend. "If, against the good prioress's advice, you choose the short route to the coast, it might be to your advantage to pause when you meet the Grandparents. They might have something to tell you. They speak briefly but very slowly. There is a trick to hearing them. Each deep note contains the wisdom of a book."

"The Grandparents? Your relatives?"

"They are the relatives of us all," said the redheaded monk. "They knew the world before God created it. They are the oldest and most intelligent stones in this part of the world. You will recognize them when you see them."

While I respected his beliefs and judgment, I did not pay a great deal of attention to his words. I was determined to take the shortest route I could through the mountains and down to the port, so was already prepared to ignore the nun's warning.

I thanked the warrior-monk and would have spent longer talking to him if he had not made an excuse and headed for his bed. He could stay here, he said, for only a short time. He had a dream of his own to follow. And I was already engaged for the evening.

In the morning, the prioress told me he had left before dawn, reminding me to pay attention to old stones. Again she warned me not to cross the Devil's Garden. "It's a place of ancient evil," she said. "Unnatural landscapes, touched by Chaos. Nothing grows there. This is God's sign to us not to go there. It is where the old pagan gods still lurk." She had stirred her own imagination; I could tell from her eyes. "Where Pan and his siblings still mock the message of Christ." She squeezed my hand almost conspiratorially.

I assured her that I was comfortable enough with most excesses of Chaos. I would, however, watch for treachery and cunning aggression along the way. She kissed me heartily on the lips. Pressing a bag of provisions and sustaining herbs into my hands, she wished me God's company in my madness. She also insisted on presenting me with a precious text, something from their holy books, which made some mention of the Valley of Death. With this reassuring parchment tucked into my shirt below my chain mail-which I had donned more as a means of quieting the prioress than of guarding against attack in the Devil's Garden-I kissed her farewell and told her that I was now invulnerable. She answered in Wendish, which I hardly understood. Then in Greek she said, "Fear the Crisis Maker." It was what she had told me last night when she had laid out the cards for us both to read.

The other nuns and novices had gathered on the walls of the priory to see me leave. They had, it seemed, all heard tales of the Silverskin. Had their prioress committed the saintly act of sharing her bed with a leper? I suspected those who believed it, believed she must have her place in their Heaven already reserved.

With respectful irony, I saluted them, bowed and then spurred my massive black stallion, Solomon, along a rocky road populated in those days by deer, bears, goats and boar, all of them hunted by local farmers and bandits, who were frequently one and the same. The road would take me through the Devil's Garden and down to the western coast.

The local Slavs were in the main a coarse, rather pale people. They had wiped out most of their best bloodstock through complicated and extended family feuding. When they had that romantic touch of Mongolian blood, Dalmatians achieved a stunning beauty.

Elsewhere powerful cultures had arisen and influenced the

world, but these rocks offered solace only to the troubled visionary. Along the coasts were a few pockets of civilization, but most of that was in decay, exhausted by tributes to a dozen powers.

Isprit itself had been the retirement palace of the Emperor Diocletian, who had famously divided the Roman Empire into three, then left its running to a triumvirate who quarreled and killed one another, as well as Diocletian's daughter. His confusing stamp on the politics of the region would last for millennia. The hapless ex-emperor, who had hoped to balance power between the various warring factions, was the last real inheritor of Caesar's authority. Now the old Empire was sustained chiefly by those who had rallied to Charlemagne after he had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope. Their translation of their greed for booty into a chivalric ideal created an extraordinary expansion whose conquests, frequently under the banner of religious reform, would not stop until they owned the Earth. Already the Normans had imposed their haughty and efficient feudalism onto much of France and England. They in turn would carry these methods across the world. Opinion in Rome agreed that the unruly Saxons and Angles needed the strong hand of the Dukes of Normandy to form them into a nation which might one day balance the power of the Holy Roman Emperor.

At the abbey, in exchange for their hospitality, I had retailed the gossip of the day. Of course, I had only so much curiosity about their world, and most of that related to my search. But much small talk is picked up in the taverns, which a wanderer like myself, largely shunned by all, is frequently forced to use. I had little interest in the details of these peoples' history. It was raw and unsophisticated compared to that of mine, and I was still Melni-bonean enough to feel a superiority to mortals of most persuasions.

Through my senses Count Ulric had the opportunity to witness the genesis of his clan into a nation, and in his dreams he experienced my dreams as if they were his own. He dreamed my dream as I dreamed his. But he did not live my dream as I did, and

I suspect he remembers even less. How much he chooses to remember is his own affair.

The late summer sun was surprisingly hot on my overarmored head when I became aware of the nature of the landscape changing. The crags were sharper, the cliffs more terraced, and little streams echoed through deep valleys, giving the place an unearthly music. Clearly I had entered the Devil's Garden. The shale became much harder for my horse to negotiate.

The stark landscape was astonishingly beautiful. Little grew here. The smell of the occasional fir invigorated me. The great limestone crags sparkled in the summer sunshine. All the trails were treacherous. Narrow rivers dancing with vivid life poured in falls from level to level among strangely shaped rocks.

The sun cast dense shadows, contrasting extremes of black and white, on the massive glittering cliffs which rose into the sky. Sudden lakes, icy blue beneath the sun, were turned by passing clouds into blinding sheets of reflective steel. Rock pools shone like coral in their delicacy of color. Groves of dark blue pines and fleshy oaks grew in the few spots of soil. Frequently I heard the rattle of loose rocks as a goat leaped for cover. Crumbling earth on worn stone. Ferns and willowherb growing in crevices. These were the familiar landscapes of a childhood when, as von Bek, I had holidayed here with my family, who kept a villa on the coast. It was also reminiscent of the hinterland of Melnibone, where the Phoorn, our dragon allies, had built their first magnificent city from fire and rock and little else.

As the day grew hotter still, the steady blue sky threw extremes of color everywhere. I began to feel an unlikely nostalgia. The experience was not entirely pleasant. All I understood was a sense of invasion, as if other intelligences attacked my own. Not merely my dream self intruded, but something older and heavier, something which reminded me again of Mu Ooria and invoked images, memories of events which perhaps had not yet even occurred in the history of this particular world.

Used to controlling myself in such circumstances, I was still very uneasy. My horse, Solomon, too, was growing nervous, perhaps reflecting my own mood. I wanted to get out of the place as soon as possible. Doggedly, we continued westward, the horse holding with uncanny ease to the path. Loose grey shale skittered and bounced steeply away from us. Sometimes it seemed we clung to the walls of the rock like lizards, staring down at the radically angled slopes, the glittering, weirdly colored waters far below.

That night I camped in a natural cave, having first made sure it was not the castle of an incumbent bear. It had not seen any kind of human settlement. Nothing in this landscape could sustain human life.

I rose early in the morning, watered, fed and saddled Solomon, set my war-gear about me, changed my helmet for a hood, and again was struck by the supernatural quality of the valley. At the far end in the distance was a wide, shimmering lake.

As I urged Solomon forward, I sensed other presences. I knew the smell of them, the weight of them. I had instinctive respect for them even though I was not really conscious of their identity. They were nearby and they were many. That was all I could be sure about. Beings seemingly older than the Off-Moo, who had seen every stage of the Earth's history. They remembered the moment when they had been expelled from the Sun's gassy Eden to begin the forming of this planet.

Even the stars of this world's firmament were subtly different from mine. I knew it would be better to learn what the Devil's Garden had to tell me rather than impose my own Melnibonean speculation on the place. I sensed that this had once been a great battlefield. Here Law and Chaos had warred as they had never warred until now. It was one of the oldest supernaturally inhabited regions in this realm. It was one of the most remote. It was one of the most enduring. I was at last recognizing it for what it was. Its denizens were unaffected by the major movements of human history. They were philosophical beings who had witnessed so much more than any others, and they had seen all human ideals brought low by human folly. Yet they were incapable of cynicism. I knew them, just as I knew their young cousins, still hiding goat-footed in the rocks, still sliding in and out of trees and streams, still asking favors of Nature rather than making demands on her, the old godlings whom the Greeks had known, half-mortals who sensed their own extinction. These ancient creatures had such old, slow thought processes they were all but undetectable, yet they were the Earth's memory.

Their name for themselves took several mortal lifetimes to pronounce. Adepts gave them considerable attention. Few consulted them, though more knew how. Their answers were usually slowly considered, and the one who had asked could be dead before they reached a conclusion. When they slept it was for millions of years. When they awoke it might be for a few seconds. And they never wasted words. I was beginning to understand what Friar Tristelunne had hinted at.

I had passed part of my apprenticeship among such ancients, but I was still uneasy. If Moonglum had been with me, he would have expressed reasonable fear and I should have mocked him for it, but now I was alone. I had survived a hundred great fights with less fear than now.

As I dismounted and led Solomon down to one of the deep valley streams to drink, I looked around me and saw that the sides had widened. I was effectively in a steep, white amphitheater, scarcely touched by vegetation. A few hardy wildflowers grew here and there, but otherwise the great glade was empty save for the carpet of soft green itself. It had that cultivated atmosphere about its lawns which I had noticed in other places where sheep and goats habitually grazed. Here the limestone crags had split away. Much of the rock stood like tall independent heads or figures. Fancifully I thought I detected expressions. Emotions, life of various kinds, stirred in those huge natural pillars. It was easy to see how the region was rife with tales of ogres.

Old maps referred to the place as Trollheim. Half the legendary giants of Europe were believed to originate here. Remembering the redheaded priest's words, I sought for inscriptions on the stones. I could read Greek, Latin, Arabic easily but had far more trouble with some other languages.

I found no inscriptions. As I ran my hands over the surface of

the rock, however, I felt a distinct but very deep vibration, a kind of grumbling, as if I had awakened a sluggish hive. I dropped my hand and stepped back, seeing faces everywhere in the high cliffs, feeling a certain panic. Should these rocks prove sentient and antagonistic, I knew I could not cut myself clear with my sword.

Though my senses were sharper than most mortals', the horse heard the sound before I did. Solomon snorted and whinnied. Then I detected it. A deep, even rumbling, as if from far underground. It rose rapidly to a heavy hum, and the whole valley swayed to it. All the hillsides shimmered with movement. The stones were dancing. They were singing. Then the note deepened again, and I felt a shock as tremendous vitality flooded up to fill the canyon, as if Mother Earth herself were coming awake.

Solomon, who had been unusually quiet, now voiced a huge snort. I could see that his huge back legs were trembling, and his eyes had begun to dilate badly. My brave beast was actually too terrified to move. His enemy seemed everywhere.

My own emotions were quieter. I still found it difficult to coordinate my actions. Then, quite suddenly, the whole vale became suffused with an extraordinary sense of benign good will.

A single enormous throb! The great slow heart of the world had given a beat. The vibrations filled my body with joy and meaning. My hand fell away from my sword, where it had remained from habit. Now with wizard's eyes I saw their faces. I was an actor on a stage. These stones were my audience. Rank upon rank of them, rising up the flanks of the vale, their eyes hidden in deep shadow, their mouths showing a kind of eternal irony that was not judgmental of humanity yet spoke of a wisdom born of their age. As gases they had been conscious. As molten lava they had been wise. As the still-animate crust of the planet they had been moral. And as mountains they were contemplative. That consciousness, old and slow as it was, carried their experience. Their lives had been devoted, down the millions of millennia, to observation and understanding.

Something of great importance to the fate of the multiverse,

to their world and my own, had stirred them to speak. Little of their words could be heard by any mortal ear.

They spoke four words, and those words took four days to utter; but that was not our only communication. The mighty heads looked down at me. They studied me and compared me and no doubt recalled all the many others who, seeking their wisdom, had come this way. My horse grew calm and cropped at the grass. I sat and listened to these Grandfathers and Grandmothers, the very spirits of our origin, who in their roaring youth had fled away from the parent Sun to form the planets.

Their love of life had slowed, but it had not faded. Their thoughts were as substantially concentrated as their physical forms. Each word translated became several lines in even the most laconic of languages. In comparison old Melnibonean was baroque and clumsy. Only a trained ear could detect the slight differences of tone. I was forced to recall an old spell and slow down my own perception of time. It was the only way to understand them.

With what they communicated supernaturally, I began to understand a little of what they told me. Why these first stone men and women of the world had chosen to speak to me I did not know. I understood, however, that this was an important part of my dream. I sat, and I immersed myself in a strange, but not unpleasant, communication. In those four days, heedless now of Gunnar's imminent leaving, I listened to the stones. The first word the Grandparents spoke was:

WHERE THE WINDS MEET A WOMAN'S HORNS DEFY THE DESTROYER OF DESTINY AND MAKE HER YOUR BEST ALLY

I had an image of a white beast, a lake, a glittering building, the whole lying in another natural amphitheater. I knew this must be my destination, where I would discover the meaning of my dream.

The second word the Grandparents spoke was:

THE BLADE PIVOTS THE BALANCE

THE BOWL SUSTAINS IT

THE DRAGON IS YOUR FRIEND

I had the impression of a sword blade without a hilt, its tip immersed in some kind of basin while in the shadows a great, yellow eye opened to regard me.

The third word the Grandparents spoke was:

ROOT AND BRANCH THE TREE SUSTAINS BALANCE AND ALL LIFE MAINTAINS

I saw an enormous tree, a spreading oak, whose branches seemed to shelter the world. Its roots went deep into the core of the Earth. Its branches covered another image, which was the same thing in a different form. I knew it was the Cosmic Balance.

And the fourth word the Grandparents spoke was:

GO MAKE TRUE

For a fleeting moment I received a glorious image: a great green oak tree against a sky of burnished silver. Then that special vibrancy faded, leaving only the natural grandeur of the stark cliffs and the soft grass below. The Grandparents were silent. Already they returned to sleep. With a sense of added burden rather than revelation I paid them my respects. I assured them I would think upon their words. I admitted to myself that they made little sense. Had the rocks reached a state of senility?

Suddenly I was struck by the stupidity of my excursion. I had crossed the Devil's Garden to save time. I had then lost a day rather than gained one. The Norseman might already be leaving Isprit. From the slowest of mortals, I became one of the fastest. I needed my stallion to do his best.

Solomon had carried me all the way from Acre. I had acquired him from a Lombardian knight who, like so many of my crusader comrades, had joined the expedition entirely for the land it

promised. Finding the promised land a little barren, he had joined the Templars, turned to disappointed drinking and gambling and from there to the inevitable duel. I had let him pick it. I had long coveted his horse. Being of a weakly disposition, I also needed a soul or two for my sustenance and preferred my food ripe.

The religious posturings of these brutes were as corruptly self-deceiving as anything I had witnessed. Religions so at odds with mankind's nature and its place in the natural order only produce a kind of madness, where the victims are constantly attempting to force reality to confirm their fantasies. The ultimate result must be the ultimate destruction of the realm itself. In their histories, wherever the banner of pious Law was raised, Chaos quickly followed.

Though their people were said to have visited Cimmeria, there was still every possibility that the Norseman would not be able to help me. I would soon know.

I had been to Isprit before, but from the sea. The mountains became greener and more forested and the ride to the port pleasant, if hurried. I arrived above the city just before sunset. The Adriatic stretched, tranquil pewter, beneath a golden sun. Protected by a huge promontory, the port had been chosen by Diocletian for its views and air. Parts of walls and columns along the harbor were clearly from Roman times. But where imperial sails had blossomed on bulky triremes, the ships were now traders, fishing craft. There was only one reefed sail on a tall, slender mast, her crow's nest decorated with vivid dragons curling around the tip, where a black flag flew. The sail was recognizable to anyone but an inlander. It was the typical scarlet-and-azure stripes on a white field of the old Norseman. Gunnar was still in port.

From this height the town looked unplanned and ramshackle, a sprawl of huts and badly thatched houses standing among the marble ruins of a vast Roman compound. As you drew closer, the real wonder of the place made itself evident, as did the rather pungent smell of the dust heaps and sewage dumps inland of the harbor. None of this was noticeable, however, when you looked out over a dark blue sea turning to a pool of blood in the dying

sunlight. I rode down the old trade trail from the mountains into that extraordinary port.

Several hundred years before, the emperor had built himself a palace here overlooking his private moorings and the Adriatic. An extensive complex of buildings, its entire purpose was to comfort the abdicated emperor and help him forget the troubles of the world, many of which were his own creation. The walls were high. There were cloisters and fountains; pleasant walks and groves; benches and tables of basalt, marble and agate; temples and chapels. The baths were exquisitely luxurious. When I had last been here the decay was less extensive.

When Rome's power faded, the barbarians' power over Isprit had grown. Byzantium lacked the resources to claim much in the way of sovereignty, so the port had filled with free fishermen, scrap-metal shippers, slavers, timbermen, traders, pirates, furriers and all the other honest and outlaw callings known to men. It was not an important port, strategically, but it was a lively one. The ostentatious palace was now the core of an entire community. They occupied its rooms and galleries, used its gardens for growing food, its halls for trading and meeting, its baths-those still in working order-for supplies of running water. Even to me this infestation of brawling, squabbling, embracing, praying, shrieking, giggling uninhibited human life had a certain charm.

The fountains had long since dried up. Some had been turned into the hubs of dwellings, their fanciful masonry in contrast to the simplicity of the people. Pigs, sheep and goats were kept in pens on the outskirts, so the stench increased as you approached but lessened as you reached the streets.

I rode through shacks and shanties of driftwood and stones which looked like the debris of a dozen sea-raids in which everything of wealth had been taken. Yet there was probably more life here now than when the emperor came. In those imperial ruins the fallen mighty had given way to the vital mob. This was one of the lessons I had tried to teach my countrymen. Their final lesson came when I demonstrated their weaknesses and the strength of the new, human folk who challenged them.

I had led those human reavers. I had destroyed the Dreamer's City. It was no wonder that I preferred this dream. Here I was merely a leprous wizard with a talent for warfare. There I was the prince who had betrayed his own people and left them scattered, homeless, dying from their world's memory. My actions had allowed Jagreen Lern, who always sought to emulate Melnibonean power, to raise the Lords of the Higher Worlds, to threaten the Cosmic Balance in the name of the Gods of Entropy.

The forces of Law and Chaos were not themselves good or evil. It was by their actions that I judged such Higher Lords. Some were more trustworthy than others. My own patron Lord of Chaos, Duke Arioch, was a consistent if ferocious being, but he had little power in this world.

The only lighting in the warren of cobbled streets and apart-ments came from the taverns and dwellings themselves. Behind the oiled vellum of windows, the candles and lamps gave the twilit town a sepia look. I searched for a seamen's hostelry Friar Triste-lunne had told me of. The smell of ozone was strong in my nostrils, as was the smell of fish. I was hungry for some fresh octopi, which Melniboneans had always eaten with great respect. The creatures possess intelligences greater than most mortals. Certainly their flavor is considered subtler.

My own Melnibonean appetites and impulses were forever at odds with the ideas I had inherited from my human companions. Cymoril, while she was alive, never knew that cannibalism disgusted me. She had taken her place at the ritual tables without a thought. I derived very little pleasure in the arts of torture cultivated by Melniboneans for thousands of years. For us there were formal methods of dying as well as of killing.

As a youth I began to doubt the wisdom of these pursuits. Cruelty was scarcely a trade, much less an art. My fears for Mel-nibone had been practical. I had lived and traveled in the lands of the Young Kingdoms. I understood how soon they must overwhelm us. Had that been the reason that I had joined the ranks of my enemies? I dismissed this guilt. I had no time for it now. I found the tumbledown, straw-roofed shingle building with a

dim fish-oil lamp illuminating a sign that read in old Cyrillic Odysseus's, which was either the name of the owner or of the hero with whom he wished to be associated. The tavern had declined a little since the Golden Age.

Not trusting the Dalmatians, I dismounted from Solomon to lead him into the tavern. It stank of stale wine and sour cheese. The straw on the floors had not been replaced in months. There was a dead dog in one corner. The dog offered the advantage of attracting most of the flies and covering up the worst of the smells. The majority of the other customers were collected at a bench playing backgammon. A couple of men who sat talking quietly in the corner farthest from the dog attracted me. They had the filthy fair hair of the typical Danish pirate, arranged in two greasy plaits which had enjoyed as much of their meat gravy as they had. But they seemed in good humor and spoke enough kitchen Greek to make themselves understood. Clearly they were not disliked, for the landlord's girl was relaxed with them and told a joke which had them all laughing until they saw me a little more clearly.

"Nice horse," said the taller, his eyes narrowing a little, though he tried to disguise his expression. I was familiar with the response. He had recognized me as the Silverskin. He was wondering if he was going to find out what it was like to contract leprosy. Or have his immortal soul turned to roughage.

"I'm looking for a boy to keep an eye on him," I said. "He might even be for sale." I held up a silver Constantine. Shadow rats appeared from everywhere. I selected one and told him the Constantine was his as long as the horse was safe and well groomed. If he knew of a likely customer he would get a commission. Then I stared into the unhappy faces of the Vikings and told them I was looking for a man named Gunnar the Luckless. The men understood this subtle snub. "He's called Earl Gunnar the Wald, and he has a liking for good manners," said the younger, clearly wishing he had not been put in this position. They were Leif the Shorter and Leif the Larger.

As the boy took away my horse to the ostler's, I turned to one of the serving women and ordered a skin of their best yellow wine.

I, too, I said, appreciated good manners and would feel snubbed if they did not join me. The group with the backgammon board, hearing us speaking Norse, displayed only a passing interest in me, having identified me as an outlander. I heard one of them refer to me as Auberoni and was amused. I was no king of the fairies. The men were Venetian fishermen who had settled here recently and clearly had never heard of II Pielle d'Argent or his sword, which was still known in Venice as II Corvo Noir after its legendary maker, who had not actually forged the sword but had made the fanciful hilt. A large body of opinion believed the sword had taken its first soul from Corvo.

I dusted off the crusader's surcoat I still wore and joined the wary lads, Leif and Leif, who typically had hands as carefully groomed as their hair was greasy. I supposed if they ate mostly with their fingers, there was a point to keeping them clean. Needing neither to shave nor, in the conventional sense, pass feces, few Melniboneans were familiar with beards or urinals. Many human habits remain deeply mysterious to us.

The Vikings probably thought me some effete Byzantine affecting Oriental manners. They had enough respect for my reputation, however, and showed me perfect courtesy. Renowned for their love of poetry and music and fine workmanship, Vikings enjoyed cultured living and hospitality. These two sea-

robbers, though they served under one of the most evil captains known, were well informed and told me they had discussed deserting Gunnar for crusading or working as mercenaries in Byzantium. But they had no real choice. Their fate was to sail with Gunnar until the Valkyries came to carry them to Valhalla. They found a boy to run to Gunnar.

By the time we finished the skin, there came a stirring and a chorus of greetings. Earl Gunnar had arrived.

He hated to show his face. They said his wounds were so hideous he could not bear to look on his own features. I was surprised at the baroque workmanship of his mask, fashioned like a gryphon's head with an open, threatening mouth, but where the gullet would be was a face of silvered steel. Of Eastern origin, the helmet's crest had been cleverly crafted in silver and pewter: gryphon ascendant. But it was my own face I saw when I first looked at him. He was coming towards me, striding with dangerous inelegance.

Gunnar the Doomed was a bear. He was twice my width and slightly taller. I could imagine this terrifying figure on the bridge of his ship. He wore fine-woven plaids and linens and, like all his kind, his hands were girlishly tended. Hanging down over his shoulders his hair showed a little grey. With his well-

trimmed, flowing locks, his rich clothing and knee-high doeskin boots, he could have been a Danish noble of the previous century. There was a generally archaic air about the man. It had been a hundred years since the last Vikings had gone on raiding expeditions.

The Norse sailors most reminded me of my old friend, the bluff, direct and solidly realistic Smiorgan Baldhead of the Purple Towns. As an individual Gunnar struck me as Smiorgan's opposite. There was something unwholesome about him. He affected the rough manners of a nobleman too long in the company of brutes. Yet he was a real diplomat. He knew enough not to threaten me. Instead he preferred to charm me. He ordered another skin of Bulgar wine and had it brought to the table where I still sat with his men. I could, of course, read nothing from the face, completely covered by the mirrored steel of the helmet. There were dark cavities in the mask. Through two of these he stared at me. Through another he fed himself tiny scraps of some kind of meat he carried in his hand. Otherwise he had the familiar manner of those who do not know me. He kept a little distance between us on the chance that I was actually a leper. Courteously I refused his wine. I had drunk my fill, I said. "I have some business with you, Earl Gunnar."

Gunnar shrugged. "I'm not a merchant, and my ship is not for hire."

"You are an adventurer, like myself, and your ship is your own. I'm not here to hire you, Earl Gunnar. A man like yourself does not strike me as one who would sing to another's tune no matter how sweet the melody."

"You've come overland, have you? Where from? Constantinople? Did you ride through the Devil's Garden?"

I told him that I had. He nodded. He sat back in his chair, that more-than-

enigma tic mask regarding me with some interest. "So you saw all those massive heads. You'd think they were alive, eh? I saw something like them when I sailed with the Rose on her twin-hulled ship The Either/Or. We passed an island which marked the boundaries of that people's empire. Huge eyes staring from these stone faces. An island of giants. We did not go closer." Gunnar had a certain witch-sight. No ordinary mortal would have seen those stones for what they were. I held my own counsel and let Gunnar continue.

"So you know me by my reputation, as I know thee, Sir Sil-verskin. And it pleases you to flatter my pride. Yet you know I do indeed work for hire on occasions. So, while I appreciate your courtesy, I'd be as happy to get down to business, if we have any, as not. I sail on the morning tide, and my crew is already aboard, save for these two, whom I came to find." He paused. Taking a reed from within his jerkin he placed one end in his wine cup and the other in the aperture in his mask. He sipped delicately. "My destination's already determined."

"I understand that also." I dropped my voice. "North and west to the World's Rim?"

He was too canny a captain to respond immediately. "You know more than I do, Sir Silverskin. We are merely setting sail for Las Cascadas to find fresh crewmen. Winter approaches, and at this time we normally go down to Zanzibar, where we take an interest in the slave trade. It's a poor business, but there are few other ways for an independent captain to make a living in these oversettled times."

I opened my palm and showed him what was there. "Give me a berth on your ship, Earl Gunnar, and I'll tell you more about this."

It was not in his nature to hesitate.

"The berth is yours," he said. "We sail on the first tide."

CHAPTER NINE Pielle d' Argent

A little before dawn I was down at the harbor looking over the long, slender ship lying against the dock. Solomon had been sold for a fair price to a Greek merchant who had some fancy to show himself off as a knight. I threw in the surcoat for good measure. At least he could pretend to fellow Christians to have been a crusader. Solomon would be making his way home to Lombardy shortly after we sailed. If he was lucky, the merchant would not be on the stallion's broad and cunning back.

Narrow, seemingly delicate, yet full of sinewy power even at anchor, The Swan pulled eagerly at her traces, haughty and confident as her namesake. I heard Gunnar had bought her from the impoverished Greenlanders who had made her but lacked the skills to sail her.

I admired the lines of the ship. Her fine, beaky figurehead might deliberately have been a cross between a swan and a wyvern. She had the swan's calm stateliness, but also an air of menace, which had something to do with the rake of her deck, the set of her mast.

In the old Viking manner there were shields strapped to the rail above the board which ran between the rowing benches and the shutbeds where men could store their goods and get sleep when utterly worn out. I knew that many Vikings preferred to sleep at their oars and had developed ways of hanging over the great, golden sweeps to find the total rest of the thoroughly exhausted. But half the shield spaces were empty. I suspected they were not filled by born Norsemen.

I waited patiently near the gangplank as the sea-raiders arrived. They represented most nations, from Iceland to Mongolia. "By Ishtar," murmured a Persian, seeing me, "Gunnar's more desperate for men than we knew." Some of the races I did not recognize at all, but there were tall, thin East Africans, a couple of burly Moors, three Mongols and a mixture of Greeks, Albanians and Arabs. All of them had the grim look of men who knew violence more thoroughly than peace. Settling in to the ship, some of them took places by shields they had clearly acquired from the dead. The two Ashanti had brought their own long shields. Others had no shields at all. There was a miscellaneous mixture of weaponry. If ever a crew was born to sail a ship into the realms of Chaos, it was The Swan's.

Out on the far horizon something moved. I glanced up. Mel-niboneans were also a seafaring people, and I had their way of scanning the ocean out of the corner of my eye. One of the Mongols ran up the mast like a rat to yell out his urgent fear.

"Venetian war galleys. Making good speed."

Gunnar came brawling down to the dock, half a dozen whores and hounds forming a living train behind him, shouting orders which were followed like thoughts by his obedient men. He took a moment to turn his faceless head to me and yell "We sail for Las Cascadas. We'll be safe there. Come aboard. If we can't strike a bargain, I'll set you off on the island." He swung his heavily cloaked body up over his rail and headed for the stern.

Las Cascadas was a notorious rock in the western Mediterranean with a single port. It was still some days' sail away, and we had the Venetians, possibly the Turks, perhaps the Byzantines, the Italians and the Caliphates to deal with, all of whom claimed authority over these seas. Gibr al Tairat itself was not so thoroughly untakable, but Las Cascadas's harbor was so well protected no enemy fleet could hope to enter. Any attempt to attack by land was thwarted by the steep, volcanic cliffs which rose sheer from the water. As a result the place had become a refuge for every corsair on the Red Coast and beyond and had its own queen, the infamous pirate known across the seafaring world as the Barbary Rose, whom Gunnar boasted of sailing with. Her strangely named twin-prowed ship was unmistakable and had been built apparently by shipwrights the Rose had brought with her from the South Sea Empire, which few European navigators even believed existed. Only the two tattooed giants, who still served the she-

captain, knew the secret of making such vessels.

The black-and-gold sails of Venice were slightly larger on the horizon now. The tide was beginning to run our way, and I squeezed into a space between the mast and the deckhouse, marveling at the efficiency of these seamen. With a single woollen sail, they could get a ship into battle order in moments.

The oars bit the water as Gunnar roared the beat. We leaped out of the harbor, oblivious of everything but escape. Dhows and wherries scattered as we shot through the outer walls and into open sea, oars and sail combining to bring the ship about as Gunnar himself stood at the steering sweep, making adjustments with the touch of his hand, the balance was so beautiful. The unshipped oars moved in amazing uniform, like a neatly choreographed dance, and The Swan darted like a live thing under our feet, thrusting out into the deep water long before the Venetians saw us. We were already running for the Mediterranean, and unless they had laid a real trap for us there, we might even leave them behind completely. Once we were seen to reach the safety of Las Cascadas, any other pursuers would give up. Earl Gunnar had always made a point of staying on good terms with the Caliphates.

Two-masted, slave-rowed, heavy in the water and clumsy fore and aft, built more for endurance and protection than attack, the Venetian ships needed good weather and great luck even to keep pace with us. We quickly saluted farewell as our glorious pursuers fell below the horizon. Then we ran down the Illyrian coast and, with oars at full speed, sail bellying with a powerful southwester, rounded the Italian peninsula with a strong wind for Sicilia and the Tyrrhenian Sea, where we ran into a small flotilla of black-sailed ships expectantly lying in wait for us. Two brigantines and a brig.

Gunnar stood on his own bridge holding his sides and jeering with laughter as we sped by the lumbering vessels. "Three!" he shouted. "Three ships! Only three to catch The Swan! Your wealth makes you stupid!" He then turned to me. "They insult us, eh, Sir Silverskin."

It was clear he felt a bond with me which I did not share. I was exhilarated by the ship's performance. Gunnar, however, continued to act as if being overtaken by the Venetians were imminent. Like me he had learned not to relax too soon.

Later that night he finally gave the order to slow oars. His men slept instantly over their sweeps. Almost at her own volition The Swan continued to glide through the water. Gunnar planned to hug the Numidian shore all the way to the Magreb. In the west, only a few miles of sea separated the coast from Las Cascadas.

Gunnar joined me in the prow, where I had found a little solitude and was looking up at the great splash of the Milky Way, staring at stars which were at once familiar and unfamiliar. I had wrapped myself in my deep indigo oilskin cloak. Golden autumn touched the ocean. I remembered the story told to Melnibonean children of the dead souls who walk the star-roads of the Milky Way, which we called the Land of the Dead. I was, for some reason, thinking of my father, the disappointed widower who blamed me for my mother's death.

Gunnar made no apology for interrupting me. He was in good spirits. "Those fat merchant bastards are still wallowing their way around Otranto!"

He clapped me on the back, almost as if feeling for a weakness. "So are you going to tell me how you think you know my plans? Or am I going to throw you overboard and put you out of my mind?"

"That would be ill-advised," I said. "But also impossible. You know I am effectively immortal and invulnerable."

"I won't know that until I put it to the test," he said. "But I do not believe you are any less mortal than myself."

"Indeed?" I saw no point in quarreling with him. He recognized the token I showed him. The ring which seemed fresh-minted.

"Aye, Elric Sadricsson, I know you from King Ethelred's time, when he paid you with that ring for your aid against the Danes. But the ring's far more ancient, eh. I thought the Templars had it now."

"Ethelred ruled a century and a half ago," I said. "Do I seem so old? I am, as you know, not a well man."

"I think you are much older than that, Sir Templar," Gunnar said. "I think you are ageless." There was a sinister note to his voice, a mocking quality which irritated me. "But not invulnerable."

"I think you mistake me for Luerabas, the Wandering Albanian, whom Jesus cursed from the tomb."

"I know for a fact that story's nonsense. Prince Elric of Mel-nibone, your story is far from being finished. And far from judgment."

He was trying to disturb me. I did not show him he had succeeded. "You know much for a mortal," I said.

"Oh, far too much for a mortal. It is my doom, Prince Elric, to remember everything of my past, my present and my future. I know, for instance, that I shall die in the full knowledge of the hopelessness and folly of existence. So dying will be a relief for me. And if I take a universe with me, so much the better. Oblivion is

my destiny but also my craving. You, on the other hand, are doomed to remember too little and so die still hoping, still loving life ..."

"I do not plan to die, but if I do, I doubt if it will be hoping," I said. "The reason I am in this world is because I search for life, even now."

"I search for death. Yet our quest takes us to the same place. We have common interests, Prince Elric, if not desires."

I could not answer him directly. "You have a place, no doubt, in this dream," I said. "You are some sort of dream-traveler. A dreamthief, perhaps."

"You seem determined to insult me."

I would not rise to this. I was beginning to get the man's measure. He did know a great deal more about me than anyone else in this world. True, when I first entered this realm I served King Ethelred, known as the Unready. I traveled with a woman I called my sister, and we were both betrayed in the end.

But my apparent longevity was only the stuff of dreams, not my own reality. Gunnar was enjoying my supposed bafflement. I had shown him the ring because I had thought it might have meaning for him. It clearly bore more significance for him than I had guessed. I had acquired the thing in Jerusalem, off the same knight from whom I had taken Solomon.

"Come," Gunnar said. "I've something to show you. It will be interesting to know if you recognize it." He led me amidships into the little deckhouse. Inside was a chest which he opened without hesitation, swinging the bronze oil lamp over it so that I could see inside. There was a sword, some armor, some gauntlets, but on top of these was a round shield whose painted design was elegantly finished in blues, whites and reds, the pattern suggesting an eight-rayed sun. Was it of African origin? Had he found it in that famous expedition to the South Seas with the Rose? It was not metal, but hide covering wood, and when Gunnar put it into my hands it was surprisingly light, though about the same size and proportions as a Viking shield. "Do you know this plate?" he asked, using the Norse meaning.

"I had a toy like it once perhaps. Something to do with my childhood? What is it?" I balanced it in my hands. It seemed vibrant, alive. I had a momentary image of a nonhuman friend, a dragon perhaps. But the workmanship was in no way Melni-bonean. "Some sort of talisman. Were you sold it as a magic shield? That could be the sign of Chaos as easily as it could be the points of the compass. I think you have placed too high a value on this thing, Earl Gunnar. Was it meant to enchant me? To persuade me to your cause?"

Gunnar frowned. He simply did not believe me. "I envy you your self-control. You know the nature of that ring! Or is it self-deception? Lack of memory?"

"I seem to have little else but memory. Far too much memory. Self-deception? I remember the price I pay for slaying my own betrothed . . ."

"Ah, well," said Gunnar, "at least I am not burdened by such depressing and useless emotions. You and I are each going to die. We both understand the inevitable. It is merely my ambition to achieve that fate for the whole of creation at the same time. For if Fate thinks she jokes with us, I must teach her the consequences of her delusion. Everything in the multiverse will die when I die. I cannot bear the idea of life continuing when I know only oblivion."

I thought he was joking. I laughed. "Kill all of us?" I said. "A hard task."

"Hard," he agreed, "but not impossible." He took the bright "plate" from my hands and placed it back on top of his war hoard. He was disgruntled, as if he had expected more from me. I almost apologized.

"You'll have a great desire for that shield one day," he said. "Perhaps not in this manifestation. But we can hope."

He expected no real response from me. It seemed he sought only to pull me down to his level of misery. My own was of a different order. I had no "memory" of the future, and it was true my memory of the past was often a little dim. My concern was with my own world and an ambitious theocrat who had summoned

forces of Chaos he could not now control. I needed to be free of him. I needed to be able to kill him slowly. I was still Melnibonean enough to need the satisfaction of a long and subtle revenge. To achieve this end I must find the Nihrainian smith who forged the archetype of the black blade. Why it should be here, in a world given over to brutality and hypocrisy, I did not know.

Having baffled me when he hoped to intrigue me, the faceless captain let an edge creep into his voice. I was reminded of his essential malevolence.

"I have always envied you your ability to forget," he said. "And it irks me not to know how you came by it."

I had never met the man before. His words seemed like the merest nonsense. Eventually I made an excuse, settled myself in the forward part of the boat and was soon asleep.

The next day, with a heavy sea mist at last beginning to burn off, we came in sight of the Tripolitanian coast. Gunnar sent a man up the mast to look for ships and obstacles. Few others would sail in such weather, but most of the ships in the region were coast-luggers, transporting trade goods from one part of the Moorish Confederacy to another. The richest and most cultured power in the region, the Arabs had brought unprecedented enlightenment. The Moors despised the Romans as uncouth and provincial and admired the Greeks as scholars and poets. It was to those oddly opposed forces that this world owed most of its creativity. The Romans were engineers, but the Moors were Chaos's thinkers. Romans had no real notion of balance, only of control. A pattern so at odds with the rhythms and pulses of the natural and supernatural worlds seemed destined to produce disaster.

Las Cascadas, called by the Moors Hara al Wadim, was a haven in a region too full of ships to be safe for us. I prayed that the Venetians or Turks had not taken their place in the meantime and were lying in wait for us. It was highly unlikely. Though nominally under the authority of the Caliphates, the strongest power in the region, Las Cascadas was a law unto herself, with one easily defended harbor. While the Mussulman Fatimids and their rivals continued to quarrel over stewardship of Mecca, as the

Byzantines quarreled over the stewardship of Rome, and so long as the Matter of Jerusalem was the focus of the world's attention, the island remained safe.

The Barbary Rose was prudent. She confined her activities to those waters not claimed by the Caliphates or Empire. First fortified by Carthage, Las Cascadas was considered safe, too, because she was ruled by a woman. I had sailed with that woman in my time. Gunnar told me her twin-hulled ship I greatly admired, The Either/Or, was wintering in North Africa, probably in Mirador with an old ally of hers and mine, the Welsh sea-robber and semi-mortal, Ap Kwelch, who had also been hired by King Ethelred. Ap Kwelch was known in English waters for a cunning foe but an awkward ally.

I was relieved I would not have to encounter Kwelch. We had an unresolved argument not best settled at Las Cascadas where all weaponry was collected and put under lock and key at the dock.

Before we ever saw the island, Gunnar ran up his flags, as if they would not recognize The Swan for who she was. Perhaps he had a code to let the defenders know he was still captain.

We sighted Las Cascadas at midday, approaching her from the harbor side. At first the island fortress was like a mirage, a series of silver veins twinkling in the sunlight. Then it became clear those veins ran down the sides of cliffs formed by the crater of an enormous volcano. There were no evident signs of a harbor entrance, only the still lagoon within. It seemed to me that this mysterious island could only be occupied from the air or from below, and such supernatural forces were no longer summonable.

I had seen the fate of those forces of nature and supernature, exiled to bleak parts of the world like the Devil's Garden and slowly dying. When all such souls died, it was thought by our folk, the Earth died also. This war had been going on for centuries between Law and Chaos. Soon Arabia might be the only region not conquered by thin-lipped puritans.

Gunnar again took the steering sweep. He wrapped his huge arm around one of the sail ropes, guiding his ship as if it were a skiff. Beyond the rocks which guarded the harbor, I saw a great

cluster of houses, churches, mosques, synagogues, public buildings, markets and all the dense richness of a thriving, almost vertical city. It was built up the sides of the harbor. The rivers and waterfalls which gave Las Cascadas its name sparkled and gushed between buildings and rocks. The whole island glinted like a raw silver ingot. Pastel-colored houses were dense with greenery and late-summer flowers. From their roofs and balconies, their gardens and vineyards, people raised up to look at us as we came about before the sea-gates of Las Cascadas. Two enormous doors of brass and steel could be drawn over a narrow gap between the rocks, just wide enough for a single ship to come or go. I was reminded vividly of Melnibone, though this place lacked the soaring towers of the Dreamers' City.

I heard shouted greetings. Figures moved about the stonework which housed the doors, levers turned, slaves hauled huge chains and the sea-gate opened.

Gunnar grunted and touched his steering sweep a little to port, then a little to starboard. Delicately he guided us through the narrow gaps, swift and smooth as an eel. The gates groaned closed again behind us. We rowed in slowly beneath the gaze of Las Cascadas's citizens. Everyone here lived off the proceeds of piracy. They were all devoted subjects of the pirate queen. The beautiful Barbary Rose had diplomatic skills which made her the equal of Cleopatra.

A great variety of ships already stood at anchor in the harbor. I recognized a Chinese junk, several large dhows, a round-hulled Egyptian ship, and the more sophisticated fighting galleys, most of modified Greek pattern, which were the favorite vessels of corsair captains. I had a feeling I might meet old friends here, but not recent acquaintances. Then, as I hauled my gear to the dock, I heard a name being called. "Pielle d'Argent, is it you?" I turned.

Laughing, the little redheaded Friar Tristelunne came bustling along a quayside already crowded with the riffraff of Las Cascadas turning out in hope of casual employment. But whatever booty Gunnar brought to Las Cascadas to pay for his security, it was not cargo. For a while Tristelunne disappeared in the crowd, then

bobbed up again nearby, still smiling. "So you took my advice," he said. "You spoke to the old ladies and gentlemen?"

"They spoke to me," I said. "I thought you headed for Cordova."

"I was about to disembark. Then I heard Christians and Jews were again out of favor with the caliph. He believes there has been a fresh conspiracy with the Empire. He's considering expelling all Franks. Indeed, he is wondering if expelling might not be too good for them. I thought it wise to wait out the winter here, administering to what faithful I can find. I'll see how the weather feels in spring. My alternative, at present, is the Lionheart's England, and quite honestly, it's no place for a gentleman. The forests are full of outlaws, the monasteries full of Benedictines and worse. Their divinely appointed king remains a prisoner in Austria, as I understand it, because his people have no particular interest in paying his ransom. John is an intellectual and therefore not trusted by anyone, especially the Church." Gossiping continually, Tristelunne guided me up steep, cobbled streets to the inn, which he insisted was the best on the island.

Behind me Gunnar roared a question. I told him I would see him at the inn.

I sensed his unease with my independence. He was used to control. It was second nature to him. He was baffled, I suspected, rather than angry.

Amused by all this, Friar Tristelunne led me into the inn's sunny garden. He sat me down at a bench and went inside, returning with two large shants of ale. I did my best with this hearty stuff, but yellow wine was the only drink that suited my perhaps overrefined palate. The fighting friar was not upset by this. He fetched me a cup of good wine and finished the ale himself. "You got advice, I hope, from the Grandparents?"

"They seemed more in a prophetic mood," I said. "Some mysterious visions."

"Follow them," he said firmly. "They'll bring you the thing you desire. You know already, in your heart, what the thing you desire will bring you." And he sighed.

"I have no interest in foreknowledge," I said. "My fate is my fate. That I understand. And understanding it releases me to drift wherever the tides of fate take me, for I trust in my own fortune, good or bad."

"A true gambler," he said. "A veritable mukhamir!" "I'd heard all that before," I told him. "I belong to no society nor guild. I practice no formal arts, save when necessary, and I believe in nothing but myself, my sword and my unchangeable destiny."

"Yet you struggle against it." "I am an optimist."

"We have that in common." He spoke without irony. He sat back against a post and stared around him at the flowers which flooded the entire courtyard. These blossoms vied with the bright colors worn by the customers, none of whom paid us much attention. I knew the people of Las Cascadas thought it ill mannered to show excessive attention to strangers.

On my first visit to Las Cascadas I had had status. The Rose and I were lovers then. On my second visit I had been a captive and something of her dupe. My ultimate turning of the tables had not made her any less aggrieved. But it was unlikely she had left any instructions about my fate, since she would hardly expect me to visit her stronghold again.

The friar confirmed that she was away until spring. She had sailed south again, he said. She always returned with exotic spices and jewels, and the occasional string of exquisite slaves. Ap Kwelch had gone with her. "That twin-prowed ship can sail faster and further than anything afloat," said Tristelunne. "She can sail to China and back in a single season. While we winter against the Atlantic, she's enjoying the sunshine and spoils of the Indies!" "I thought Gunnar had taken The Swan there?" "They both went in The Swan. She returned in The Either/Or after some dispute between them." He stopped suddenly and looked up. I knew Gunnar had come into the courtyard. The friar began to laugh, as if at his own joke. "And then the other dog said, 'No I only came in to get my claws trimmed.'"

Gunnar's hand fell on my shoulder. "We still have business to discuss," he said. "You, Sir Priest, have no business with me, I understand."

Pulling his worn cassock about him Friar Tristelunne got up. "I will never be desperate enough, sir, to seek the devil's employment."

"Then I was right," said Gunnar. "Is there no service in here?" He went inside. The friar seemed completely amused. He shrugged, winked at me, told me that our paths were bound to cross again and slipped out of the gate as Gunnar came back holding a boy by his ear. "All the girls are elsewhere, is it?"

"It is, sir," said the boy, dropped back to the paving of the yard. "I'm all that is left."

Gunnar cursed the urgency of his own men's drives and bellowed at the boy to bring ale. I told the lad to bring one more shant, tossed him a coin and got up. Gunnar's glittering mask looked at me in evident astonishment.

"You have the advantage of me, sir, and I cannot judge you for that," I said, "but it's clear you've no experience of partnership. I do not wish to hire your ship. I think you have some misunderstanding about me. You already told me that you know my blood and position. While I expect little from these kulaks and other rabble, I expect far more from one who claims to know my rank."

A sardonic bow. "Well, I apologize if that suits you. A breath of air and all is settled between us."

"Actions impress me more than words." I made to leave. I was, of course, playing a game, but I was playing it by following my own natural inclinations.

Gunnar, too, knew what was going on. He began to laugh. "Very well, Sir Silverskin. Let's talk as equals. It's true I'm used to bullying my way through this world, but you see the kind of company I'm forced to keep these days. I, too, was a Prince of the Balance. Now you find me a wretched corsair, clutching at legends for booty when once I crushed famous cities."

I sat down again. "While I am certain you have no intention of telling me your whole story, I suggest you let me know when you intend to sail for Vinland. Only the god-touched would venture into those seas in winter."

"Or the damned. Sir Silverskin, the course I propose to sail is directly through the realms of Hel. The entrance is on the other side of Greenland. Through the Underworld, through the moving rocks and the sucking whirlpools, through the monstrous darkness, to a land of eternal summer where riches are for the taking. The land is lush, growing wild what we cultivate with the sweat of our brows. And for wealth, there is legendary gold. A great zig-gurat made entirely of gold and mysteriously abandoned by her people. So since we venture into the supernatural world, I suspect it makes little difference whether the season be summer or winter. We sail to Nifelheim itself."

"You sail to the north and the west," I told him. "I have useful experience and something you value."

He sucked thoughtfully through one of his straws. "And what would you gain from this voyage?"

"I seek a certain famous immortal smith. A Norseman maybe."

The noise from within the helm might have been laughter. "Is his name Volund? For Volund and his brothers guard that city called Ilia Paglia della Oro by the Venetians. It stands in the center of a lake at the place where the edge of the world meets Polaris. That is where I am bound."

Gunnar was not telling me the whole truth. He wanted me to think a city of gold his goal. I guessed he sought something else at the World's Rim. Something he could destroy.

For the moment, however, I was content. The Swan was going where I wished to go. Whether the realm of Hel was supernatural or natural scarcely mattered if we sailed the North Sea in December or January. "You trust your boat completely," I observed. "I have to," he said. "Our fates are intertwined now. The ship will survive as long as I survive. I have magic, as I promised, and not the mere alchemical nonsense you hear in Nurnberg. I follow a vision."

"I suspect I do, also," I said.

CHAPTER TEN The Mouth of Hel

When we left port a few days later, the seas were still calm. Gunnar hoped to make headway through a good autumn. We might even reach Greenland before the ice settled in.

I asked him if, beyond Nifelheim, he did not expect to find empires and soldiers as powerful as any in this sphere. He looked at me as if I were mad. "I've heard the story from a dozen sources. It's virgin land, free for the taking. The only defenders are wretched savages whose ancestors built the city before they offended the gods. It's all written down."

I was amused. "So that makes it true?"

We were in his tiny deckhouse. Stooping, he opened a small chest and took out a parchment. "If not, we'll make it true!" The parchment was written in Latin, but there was runic scattered through the text. I glanced over it. The account of some Irish monk who had been the secretary of a Danish king, it told the story, in bare details, of a certain Eric the White. He had gone with five ships to Vinland and there established a colony, building a fortified town against those whom they called variously skredlinj,

1 53

skraelings or skrayling. This was the Viking name for the local people. As far as I could tell it meant 'whiner' or 'moaner', and the Vikings considered them wretches and outlaws.

On this evidence Gunnar was prepared to sail through Nifel-heim. I had heard similar stories from every Norseman I had known. Moorish philosophers proposed that the world was the shape of an elongated egg with the barbarian, godless races some' how clinging to the underside in perpetual darkness. In all such matters, as one is taught to do in the Dream of a Thousand Years, I remained silent. This was a dream I could not afford to have truncated. This was the last possible dream I could occupy before Jagreen Lern destroyed our fleet and then destroyed Moonglum and myself.

"So we will have only a land full of savages to conquer," I said sardonically. "And, say, thirty of us?"

"Exactly," said Gunnar. "With your sword and mine, it will take us a couple of months at most."

"Your sword?"

"You have Ravenbrand"-the faceless man tapped the swaddled blade at his side-

"and I have Angurvadel."

He pulled away some of the covering to reveal a red-gold hilt hammered with the most intricate designs. "You'll take my word that the blade has runes embedded in it which flame red in war and that if it be drawn it must be blooded ..."

I was, of course, curious. Did Gunnar carry a faux-glaive? Or did his sword have genuine magic? Was Angurvadel just another cursed sword of which the Norse folktales abounded? I had heard the name, of course, but it was an archetype I sought. Even if it were not false, Angurvadel was only one of the black sword's many brothers.

As Gunnar had hoped, the sailing was fair into the Atlantic. We stopped to take in provisions at a British settlement far from the protection of Norman law. There were only a few villagers left alive after Gunnar's men had finished their slaughter. These were forced to help kill their own animals and haul their own grain to our ship before they were in turn disposed of. Gunnar had an old-

fashioned efficiency and attention to detail in his work. Like mine, his own sword was not drawn during this time.

We sailed on, knowing it would be some while before anyone considered pursuing us. Gunnar had a lodestone compass and various other Moorish instruments, which was probably what his men considered his magic. This made it far easier to risk quicker routes. As it happens, the sea was extraordinarily calm and the pale blue skies almost cloudless. Gunnar's men ascribed the weather to a damned man's luck. Gunnar himself had the air of a man thoroughly satisfied with his own good judgment.

During the few hours we had, I talked to some of the crew. They were friendly enough in a generally uncouth manner. Few of these reavers had much in the way of imagination, which was perhaps why they were prepared to follow Gunnar's standard.

One of the Ashanti, whom we called Asolingas, was by now wrapped in thick wool. He spoke good Moorish and told me how he and ten others had been captured after a battle and taken down the coast to be sold. Bought to row a Syrian trader, they had overwhelmed the rest of the ship within an hour of being at sea and, with the few other slaves who had joined them, managed to get themselves to Las Cascadas where, he said, they had been cheated out of the boat. The others had all been killed in later raiding expeditions.

Asolingas said he was homesick for Africa. Since his soul had already died and returned there, he supposed it would not be long before he followed it. He knew he would be killed sometime after we made our final landfall.

"Then why do you go?" I asked.

"Because I believe that my soul awaits me on the other side," he said.

A sigh came from starboard as the wind rose. I heard a gull. It would not be long before we made landfall.

In Greenland the colonists were so poor that the best we could get for ourselves was their water, a little sour beer and a weary goat that seemed glad to be slaughtered. Greenland settlements were notoriously impoverished, the settlers inbred and in-

sular, forever at odds with the native tribes over their small resources. I said to Gunnar how I hoped that the entrance into Nifelheim was close. We had provisions for two weeks at most. He reassured me. "Where we're going, there won't be time for eating and drinking."

When we put out from Greenland, heading west, the weather was already growling. A sea which had been slightly more than choppy began sending massive waves against the bleak beaches. We had considerable trouble getting into open water. We left behind perhaps the last European colony, struggling no more in that harsh world. Gunnar often joked that he was God's kindest angel. "Do you know what they call this blade in Lombardy? Saint Michael's Justice." He began telling me a story which rambled off into nothing. He seemed to absorb himself psychically in the mountainous waves. There was a massive, slow repetition to the sea, even as it howled and thrashed and tossed us a hundred feet into the air, even as the wind and rain whistled in the rigging, and we dived another hundred feet into a white-tipped, swirling valley of water.

I grew used to the larger rhythm to which the ship moved. I sensed the security and strength which lay beneath all that unruly ocean. Now I knew what Gunnar and his men knew, why the ship was thought to be a magic one. She slipped through all that weather like a barracuda, virtually oblivious and scarcely touched by it. She was so beautifully constructed that she never held water between waves and almost always rose up as another wave came down. The exhilaration of sailing on such an astonishingly well-made vessel, trusting her more than one trusted oneself, was something I had never experienced before. The nearest experience I knew was flying on a Phoorn dragon. I began to understand Gunnar's reckless confidence. As I stood wrapped in my blue sea-cloak and stared into the face of the gale, I looked at the ship's figurehead in a new light. Was this some memory of flight?

Gunnar began swinging his way along the running ropes, a great bellow of glee issuing from within his faceless helm. Clearly

he was almost drunk on the experience. His head flung back, his laughter did not stop. At length he turned to me and gripped my arm. "By God, Prince Elric, we are going to be heroes, you and I."

Any pleasure I had felt up to that moment immediately dissipated. 1 could think of nothing worse than being remembered for my association with Gunnar the Doomed.

The Viking moved his head, like a scenting beast. "She is there," he said. "I know she is there. And you and I will find her. But only one of us will keep her. Whoever it is shall be the final martyr."

His hand fell on my back. Then he returned to the stern and his tiller.

I was, for a moment, reminded of my mother's death, of my father's hatred. I recalled my cousin's bloody end, weeping as the soul was sucked from her. Who was "she"? Who did he mean?

The waves crashed down again, and up we rose on the next, constantly moving ahead of the turbulence so that sometimes it really did seem we flew over the water. The ship's half-reefed sail would catch the wind and act like a wing, allowing Gunnar to touch the tiller this way and that rapidly, and swing her with the water. I have never seen a captain before or since who could handle his ship with his fingertips, who could issue a command and have it instantly followed in any weather. Gunnar boasted that however many he lost on land, he almost never lost a man at sea.

Foam drenched the decks, settled on the shoulders and thighs of the oarsmen. Foam flecked the troubled air. Black, red, brown and yellow backs bent and straightened like so many identical cogs, water and sweat pouring over them. Above, the sky was torn with wet, ragged clouds, boiling and black. I shivered in my cloak. I longed to be able to call Mishashaaa or any of the other elementals, to calm this storm by magic means. But I was already using my magic to inhabit this dream! The power of Ravenbrand was potent only in battle. To attempt anything else might result in uncontrollable consequences.

All day and all night we plunged on through the wild Atlantic waters. We used oars, tiller and sails to answer every change of the wind and, with the help of Gunnar's Moorish lodestone, now ran like an arrow due north until Gunnar called me into his deckhouse and showed me the instrument. "There's sorcery here," he insisted. "Some bastard's bewitched the thing!"

The stone was spinning in its glass, completely erratic.

"There's no other explanation," Gunnar said. "The place has a protector. Some Lord of the Higher Worlds..."

A howl came from the deck, and we both burst out of the deerskin deckhouse to see Leif the Larger, his face a frozen mask, staring at a vast head erupting from the wild water, glaring with apparent malevolence at our vulnerable little ship. It was human, and it filled the horizon. Gunnar grasped the Norseman by the shoulder and slapped him viciously. "Fool! It's a score of miles away. It's stone! It's on the shore!" But at the same time Gunnar was lifting his head to look upward. . . and then upward again. There was no question that what we saw was a gigantic face, the eyes staring sightlessly down from under the cloud which covered its forehead. We were too small for it to see. We were specks of dust in comparison. What Gunnar had noted was true. The thing did not seem to be alive. Presumably, therefore, we had nothing to fear from it. It was not a sentient human or god, rather an extraordinarily detailed sculpture in textured and delicately colored granite.

Leif the Larger drew in a breath and mumbled something into his golden beard. Then he went to the side and threw up. The ship was still tossing about in the ocean, was still on top of the waves. She continued the course we had set before our lodestar was enchanted. A course which took us directly towards that gigantic head.

When I pointed this out to Gunnar he shrugged. "Perhaps it's your giant who lives at the North Pole? We must trust the fates," he said. "You must have faith, Elric, to tread your path, to follow your myth."

And then, in an instant, the head opened its vast, black

mouth and the sea poured down into it, taking us relentlessly towards a horizon which was dark, glistening and thoroughly organic.

Gunnar roared his frustration and his despair. He made every effort to turn the ship. His men back-rowed heroically. But we were being drawn down into that fleshy pit.

Gunnar shook his fist against the fates. He seemed more affronted than terrified. "Damn you!" Then he began laughing. "Can't you see what's happening to us, Elric? We're being swalbwedl"

It was true. We might have been the contents of a cup of water with which some monstrous ogre refreshed himself. I found that I, too, was laughing. The situation seemed irredeemably comical to me. And yet there was every chance I was about to perish. If I did so, I would perish in both realities.

All at once we were totally engulfed. The boat banged and buffeted, as if against the banks of a river. From somewhere amidships rose the sound of a deep, chanting song, its melody older than the world. Asolingas, the Ashanti, clearly believed his own particular moment had come.

Then he, too, fell silent.

I gasped and coughed at the foulness of the air. It was as if a street cur had breathed in my face. A whole series of fables I had heard about men being swallowed by gigantic fish came to mind. I could not recall a story about a ship being swallowed by a giant. Or was it a giant? Had we simply let ourselves see a configuration of rocks and made it into a face? Or was this some ancient sea-

monster, large enough to swallow ships and drink seas?

The stink grew worse, but since it was the only air to breathe, we breathed it. With every breath, I filled my lungs with the dust of death.

And then we were in Nifelheim.

Leif the Shorter, from somewhere in the middle of the ship, cried out in frustration. "I should not be here. I have done nothing wrong. I killed my share. Is it my fault that I should be punished simply because I did not die in battle?"

I wrapped my sea-cloak more closely about me. It had become profoundly cold. The icy air was hard against my skin, threatening to strip it off. Breathing became painful. I felt I inhaled a thousand shards of glass.

There was no wind-just cold, pitch darkness, utter silence. I heard the sound of our oars dipping and rising, dipping and rising with almost unnatural regularity. A brand flared suddenly. I saw Gunnar's glittering mask, illuminated by the rush torch. I caught a faint impression of the rowers as he came back up the central board. "Where are we, Prince Elric? Do you know? Is this Nifelheim?"

"It might as well be," I said. The deck then slanted again, and we ran downwards for a short while before righting ourselves.

As soon as we were back into still water, the oars began to dip and rise, dip and rise. All around us was the sound of running water, like glaciers melting-a thousand rivers running from both sides of the narrow watercourse on which we now rowed.

Gunnar was jubilant. "Hel's rivers!"

The rest of us did not respond to his joy. We became aware of deep, despairing groans which were not quite human, of bubbling noises which might have been the last moments of drowning children. There was clashing and sibilant shushing, which could have been the sound of whispering voices. We concentrated on the dip and rise, dip and rise of our oars. This familiar slap was our only hold on logic as our senses screamed to escape.

Leif the Shorter's rasp came again. He was raving. "Elivagar, the Leipter and the Slid," he shouted. "Can you all hear them? They are the rivers of Nifelheim. The river of glaciers, the river of oaths, the river of naked swords. Can't you hear them? We are abandoned in the Underworld. That is the sound of Hvergelmir, the great cauldron, boiling eternally, dragging ships whole into her maw." He began to mumble something about wishing he had been braver and more reckless in his youth and how he hoped this death counted as a violent one. How he had never been a religious man but had done his best to follow the rules. Again he wailed that it was scarcely his fault he had not been killed in bat-

tie. Leif the Larger economically silenced his cousin. Yet even Leif the Shorter's wailings had not interrupted the steady rise and fall of our oars. Every man aboard clung to this effortful repetition, hoping it would somehow redeem him in the eyes of Fate and allow him entry into Paradise.

Now imploring voices called out to us. We heard the sound of hands on the sides of the ship, attempts to grasp our oars. Yet still the men rowed on at the same pace, Gunnar's voice rising over all the other sounds as he called out the rhythm. His voice was aggressive and bold and commanded absolute obedience.

Down dipped the oars and up again they rose. Gunnar cursed the darkness and defied the Queen of the Dead. "Know this, Lady Hel, that I am already dead. I live neither in Nifelheim nor in Valhalla. I die again and again, for I am Gunnar the Doomed. I have already been to the brink of oblivion and know my fate. You cannot frighten me, Hel, for I have more to fear than thee! When I die, life and death die with me!" His defiant laughter echoed through those bleak halls. And if, somewhere, there was a pale goddess whose knife was called Greed and whose dish was named Hunger, she heard that laughter and would think Ragnarok had come, that the Horn of Fate had blown and summoned the end of the world. It would not occur to her that a mere man voiced that laughter. Courage of Gunnar's order was rewarded in Valhalla, not Nifelheim.

Gunnar's defiance further heartened his men. We heard no more of Leif the Shorter's discovery of religion.

The sound of clashing metal grew louder, as if in response to Gunnar. The human voices became more coherent. They formed words, but in a language none of us knew. From out of that chilled darkness there emerged other, less easily identified sounds, including a gasping, bubbling, sucking noise like an old woman's death rattle. Yet still The Swan rowed on, straight and steady, to Gunnar's beating fist and rhythmic song.

Then he stopped singing.

A great silence fell again, save for the steady thrust of the oars. We felt a tug at the ship as if a great hand had seized it from

below and was lifting it upward. A howling voice. A whirlwind. Yet we were being dragged into rather than out of the water.

I gasped as salt filled my mouth. I clung to whatever rigging I could find in the darkness while behind me Gunnar's laughter roared. He began to sing again as it seemed that he steered us directly into the drowning current. The ship creaked and complained as I had never heard before. She tilted violently, and at last the rhythm of her oars no longer matched the rhythm of Gunnar's song.

There was a tearing sound. I was convinced we were breaking up. Then came a great thrumming chord, as if the strings of an instrument had been struck. The chord consumed me, set every nerve singing to its tune and lifted me, as it lifted the entire ship, until we were driving upwards as rapidly as we had gone down. A white, blinding light dominated the horizon. My lungs filled entirely with water. I knew that I had failed in my quest, that in a few moments my only grasp on life was what was left to me as I hung in Jagreen Lern's rigging.

The ship began to yaw and spin in the water until I lost what little sense of direction I had. Suddenly the light faded to a pale grey. The noise became a steady shout, and again I heard Gunnar's laughter as he bawled to his men to return to their oars. "Row, lads. Hel's not far behind!"

And row they did, with the same extraordinary precision, their muscles bulging to bursting from the effort of it, while Gunnar lifted his gleaming helm towards heaven and pointed. Here was proof that we had left the supernatural world.

The bright light faded. Above us was a grey, darkening sky. Behind us some kind of maelstrom danced and sucked, but we had escaped it and were even now rowing steadily away from it.

Ahead of us lay a high, wooded coastline with a number of small islands standing off it. The cloud cover was heavy, but from the nature of the light sunset was not far off.

The sounds of the maelstrom fell away. I wondered at the extraordinary sorcery it had taken to achieve such a strange transition. Gunnar presented the coast to me with a proprietorial hand.

"Behold," he said with sardonic triumph, "the lost continent of Vinland!" He leaned forward, drinking it in. "The Greeks called it Atlantis and the Romans called it Thule. All races have their own name for it. Many have died seeking it. Few ever made the pacts I made to get here . . ."

A mist was rising. The coast vanished into it, as if the gods had grown tired of Gunnar's posturings. As we slowed oars and came in on a long, cold surf, we began to make out the darkening outlines of a fir-crowded coast edged by dark rock and small, unwelcoming beaches. Gunnar steered us between rocky, fir-clad islands as if he knew where he wanted to go. By the nature of the waves we had entered a bay and must be nearing a mooring of some sort, but there were still many small islands to negotiate.

I began to smell the land. It was rich with pine and ferny undergrowth, verdant with life. Gunnar's sense of that had been right, at least.

Asolingas saw the house first. He pointed and yelled to get Gunnar's attention.

Gunnar cursed loudly. "I'll swear to you, Elric-and I paid heavily in gold and souls for this information-I was told Vinland held nothing but savages."

"Who says they are not?" After all these years I was still confused by the fine distinctions.

"That manor could have been built in Norway last week! These aren't like the wretches we dealt with in Greenland." Gunnar was furious. "Leif's damned colonies were supposed to have perished! And now we're sailing into a port that probably has a dozen Viking ships in it and knows exactly what we're here for!"

He gave the order to back water and up oars. We drifted close in to the island and the house. The lower windows were already lit against the twilight and cast a mottled pattern on the surrounding shrubs. These windows were typically of lightly woven branches which admitted light and afforded privacy during the day but could be covered against the night. I wondered if the

place was some sort of inn. There was thin smoke rising from its chimneys. It looked a good solid place, of big oak beams and white daub, such as any rich peasant might build from Normandy to Norway. If it was a little taller, perhaps a little more circular in shape than average, that was probably explained by local materials and conditions.

The manor's existence, of course, suggested exactly what Gunnar feared-that the Ericsson colonies had not only survived but prospered and produced an independent culture as typically Scandinavian as Iceland's. A house of these proportions and materials meant something else to Gunnar. It meant there were stone fortifications and sophisticated defenses. It meant fierce men who were conditioned to fighting the native skraylings and had a code of honor which demanded they die in battle. It meant that one ship, even ours, could not take the harbor, let alone the continent.

I was not, of course, disappointed. I had no quarrel with this folk and no eye on their possessions. Gunnar, however, had been promised a kingdom only to discover that apparently it already had a king.

As we passed the house we looked in vain for the city which we now expected to see. The shoreline was virgin woodland or harsh, pebble beach, with occasional slabs of rock rising up directly from the water. When night at last fell it was very clear there was no thriving harbor nearby. Gunnar was careful. He did not relax his guard. There were a dozen headlands which could be hiding a fair-sized fortified town. His position as a leader was threatened. He had promised an abandoned city of gold, not a city of stone crammed with warriors. The politics of our ship were beginning to shift radically.

The only light gleaming through all that watery, pine-drenched darkness was from the house on the island. At least we were not immediately threatened. If challenged, Gunnar would greet the Vikings as a brother, I knew. He would bide his time, search for their weaknesses, while he praised and flattered and told exotic stories.

Gunnar sighed with relief. He gave the order to row towards the island. I found myself hoping that the inhabitants were capable of defending themselves. Just as we began to look for an anchoring place, the lights in the house went out.

I looked up at the stars. They were far more familiar in their configuration than those I had most recently left behind. Had I somehow returned to the world of Melnibone? Instinctively I felt that my dreams and my realities had never been closer.

CHAPTER ELEVEN Klosterneim

Apart from the lamp which burned in the front windows, there was no evidence that the house was occupied at all. Our men were by now totally exhausted. Gunnar knew this and told them to stop rowing. The Persian was sent forward with the plumb line. The water seemed shallow enough, but when we dropped anchor it would not hold. We were touching rock. The big millstone we used was slipping. Eventually we were able to get some sort of purchase in what was probably organic tangle. The ship drifted about before settling slowly with her dragon bird prow staring imperiously inward at the mysterious continent. Had Gunnar really thought it could be taken by thirty men commanded by a faceless madman?

I had no need of sleep the way the others had. I told them I would take first watch. I spent it in the little buckskin shelter we had made in the prow, which gave me a view of the water ahead. I heard what I thought were seals and checked the ship for swimmers. By the time my watch was up the night had been uneventful.

When I awoke just after dawn I heard birdsong, smelled wood smoke and forest and was filled with a sense of quite inappropriate well-being. From within the house, some sort of animal croaked, and I heard a human voice that was faintly familiar to me.

We drew anchor and rowed slowly around the island looking for a better landing place. Eventually we found a slab of rock jutting directly into the sea. A lightly clad man could stand on the rock and wade up easily to get a rope positioned for the rest of us. We would drown in our war-gear if we slipped.

At length, having left a small guard, we stood on the bank of the island. Out to sea, gulls and gannets fished on grey, white-flecked water. They flew low against a sky of windswept iron, with tall firs and mixed woodlands rising inland as far as we could see. Nowhere, save from the house, was there any smoke.

With a habitual curse, Gunnar began to march forward through the undergrowth leading his men. We were approaching the back of the house. There was no sign we had been detected until, as we came close, a bird inside began to screech in the most urgent and agitated manner. Then there was silence. Gunnar stopped.

The Viking led us in a wide circle until we could see the front of the house with its solid oaken door, heavy iron hinges and locks, the bars at the windows in front of the lattice. A well-maintained and defendable manor house. Again the bird made a noise. Were they hoping we would go away? Were they expecting us to attack.7

Gunnar next told half the party to stay with me at the front while he circled the house. He was looking for something in particular now, I could tell. He murmured under his breath and counted something off on his fingers. He had recognized the place and feared it.

Certainly his manner changed radically. He yelled for us to get back, to get down to the ship immediately.

His men were used to obeying him. Their own superstition did the rest. Within seconds they were all stumbling back through the undergrowth, catching their hasty feet and cursing, using their

swords to hack their way clear, thoroughly infected by their master's panic.

And panic it was! Gunnar was clearly terrified.

I would have followed had not the door opened and a rather gaunt, black-clad individual whom I did not recall greeted me with cold familiarity.

"Good morning, Prince Elric. Perhaps you'd take a little breakfast with me?"

He spoke High Melnibonean, though he was a human. His face was almost fleshless, a cadaverous skull. His eyes were set so deep in their sockets it seemed a vacuum regarded you. His thin, pale lips forced a partial smile as he saw my surprise.

"I think my former master, Lord Gunnar, knows the nature of this place, but do not fear, my lord. It cannot do you harm. You do not recall me? I understand. You lead so many and such varied lives. You meet people far more remarkable than myself. You don't remember Johannes Klosterheim? I have been waiting here for Earl Gunnar to arrive for some fifty years. We were once partners in sorcery. My own satanic powers are used elsewhere. But here I am."

"This house was brought here by sorcery?" I asked.

"No, sir. The house was built by my own and others' honest sweat. Only the stone posts were already in place. We erected the beams, the walls and floors. Each corner of the house is stone, as are many of the interior supports. We found the circle already here when I arrived."

"We? You and your pet?"

"I must apologize for the bird, sir. My only protection against the savages. But I was not referring to him. No, sir, I am lucky enough to be chief of a small tribe of native skraylings. Travelers like myself. We found this land already settled. It was the settlers helped me build my house."

"We saw no other lights, sir. Where would those settlers be?"

"Sadly, sir, they are all dead. Of old age. We fell out, I fear, myself and the Norsemen. My tribe triumphed. Apart from the women and children adopted to make up our numbers, the rest

are now enjoying the rewards of Valhalla." He uttered a barking caw. "All mongrels now, eh, sir?"

"So settlers built this place for you?"

"They did most of the necessary work, yes. It's essentially circular, like their own houses. The island itself was a holy place locally. The natives were frightened of it when we arrived. I knew it would be a long while before you got here, so I needed somewhere comfortable to wait. But my tribesmen will not live here. A few remain with me but make their own camp in the mountains over on the other side of that ridge." He pointed inland at a distant, pine-covered terrace. "They bring me my food and my fuel. I am, these days, a kind of household god. Not very important, but worth placating. They've waited years, I suspect, for a more suitable Easterner. Gunnar could well be what they want, if he does not kill them before they have a chance to talk. You had better take me to him. I place myself under your protection, Prince Elric."

Without locking the house, Johannes Klosterheim closed his front door, left his jabbering bird inside and followed me. Some Vikings had already reached the gang-rope. The Swan rocked and bobbed under the weight as they pulled on the rope, hauling themselves through the water and up the side.

"Earl Gunnar," I called. "The master of the house is with me. He says he means us no harm. He can explain these paradoxes." Gunnar was still half-panicked, raving. "Paradoxes? What paradoxes? There are no paradoxes here, merely dark danger. I will not risk my men's lives against it."

His men paused. They were not as impressed or terrified as he was. Gunnar gathered himself. He spoke with a slightly forced authority. He could not afford to show any further failures of judgment, or he would not last long.

"The master of the house is captured?" "He comes as a friend. He says he awaits us. He is glad we have arrived."

Gunnar wanted no more of this in public. He grunted and

shrugged. "He can come aboard with us, if he likes. We need fresh water, and there's none I can see here."

Smiling faintly to himself Klosterheim held his own counsel. He bowed. "I am much obliged, Earl Gunnar."

Gunnar pushed back through his men to take a better look at the newcomer. "Do you know this realm?"

Klosterheim changed his language to Greek. "As well as anyone," he said. "I would imagine you are hoping for a guide."

Gunnar snorted. "As if I'd trust you!"

"I know why you fear this place, Gunnar the Doomed, and I know you have reason to fear it." Klosterheim spoke in a low, cold voice. "But I have no particular cause to fear it, and neither has any other man here, save you."

"You know my dream?" said Gunnar.

"I can guess what it must be, for I know what happened at that place. But you have nothing to fear in the house now."

"Aye," said Gunnar. "Call me a cautious old man, but I see no reason to trust my fortunes to you or that place."

"You had best trust me, Gunnar the Doomed, since we have goals in common."

"How can you know so much living at the World's Rim? Do vessels come and go every week from here to the Middle Sea?"

"Not as many as there used to be," said Klosterheim. "The Phoenician trade at its height was thriving on other shores than these. I have been to a country far from here where the folk speak Breton and are Christians. Slowly the land will change them. They will become as the others here. Men change not as they would, but as nature demands. The Norse and Roman trade was minimal. The Phoenicians and their Celtic allies fled here after the fall of Carthage. This continent has always absorbed its settlers. And made them its own."

Gunnar had lost interest. "So you say there's no big Norse settlement here? No major defenses? No fleet?"

"Just myself and the Pukawatchi now," said Klosterheim, almost humorously. "Patiently expecting your coming. I know what

you carry with you here. How came you so swiftly to Vinland?" He spoke knowingly.

Gunnar saw the last of his men into the ship, then came back to talk further. "You mean that war plate?" he asked. "That skrayling shield?"

"It was more than luck brought you here before the winter snows," said Klosterheim. "It was more than one thing allowed you to take a shortcut through Hell!" He spoke with unusual force. "You need me, Earl Gunnar the Doomed, just as you do Prince Elric, if you are ever to see the Golden City and look upon the wonder of the Skrayling Tree."

"Do you know what I seek?" Gunnar demanded.

"Might it have something to do with the ring worn by our pale friend?"

"That's enough," said Gunnar. He lapsed into uncharacteristic, brooding silence. "And why am I here?" I asked. I held up the ring. "You are not here, as you well know," said Johannes Klosterheim with narrowed eyes. "You are in peril in some other realm. Only desperation brings your dream self here." "And you know what I seek?"

"I know what you would do. I cannot see how it can be done whether you serve Law or Chaos." He interrupted himself, looking to Gunnar. "Come back with me to the house. Leave your men to guard the ship. You can sleep, and we can talk further. I need your strength as you need my wisdom."

But Gunnar shook his head again. "Instinct tells me to avoid that house at all costs. It is associated with my doom. If you have warriors and would join forces, we'll improve our security. So I'll agree provisionally to an alliance. Until I see the mettle of your men. Should you reveal to me tomorrow that your tribe's no more visible than the average elf or dwarf, you'll have waited fifty years just to lose your head. Do you too claim to be a demi-mortal like our leprous friend here? The world is filling up with us. The best of these die bloodily at forty or so. Few live to sixty, let alone two hundred."

"I was born out of my time," Klosterheim offered by way of explanation. "I am an adventurer, like yourself, who seeks a certain revenge and recompense. I cannot die until Time herself dies. A young dreamthief's apprentice has tried to steal something from me and has paid a price for it. Now I travel as you do, with the help of sorcery. Why Time should accommodate us so thoroughly, I cannot tell, but we might learn one day."

"You're of a scientific disposition?" I asked.

"I have been acquainted with natural scientists and students of the Khemir and the Gibra for many years. All grope for wisdom as greedily as their lords and kings grope for power. To protect their wisdom from abuse by the temporal forces of this world, various brotherhoods have been formed down the centuries. The most recent is the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher. All understand that the sum of human wisdom, the secret of human peace, resides in a certain magical object. It can take the form of a cup, a staff or a stone. It is known by the Franks as the Gray Dale, which is a name they give to a ceremonial bowl used to greet and feast visitors. Some say it is a bowl of blood. Some say the heads of enemies swim in that bowl and speak of secret, unnatural things. Or it is a staff, such as Holy Roman Emperors carry to symbolize that they rule justly and with balance under the law. The Gauls and Moors are convinced it is a stone, and not a small one. Yet all agree the Gray Dale could take any of these forms and still be what it is, for sight of it is hidden from all but the most heroic and virtuous."

Again Gunnar was laughing. "Then that is why I am the Doomed. I am doomed to seek the cup but never see it, for I cannot claim to be a virtuous man. Yet only that cup could avert my fate. Since I'll never see it, I intend to ensure that no others shall ever set eyes on it ..."

"Then let us hope," Klosterheim interrupted dryly, "that we are able to help you avert your fate."

"And you, Master Klosterheim," I said. "Do you, too, seek this staff, stone or cup?"

"To be honest," said Johannes Klosterheim with thin, terrify-

ing piety, "I seek only one thing, and that is the cure for the World's Pain. I have one ambition. To bring harmony back to the world. I seek to serve my master, the Prince-"

"-of Peace?" Gunnar was feeling confident again now, and as usual this came out in a form of aggression. "I mistook you for a soldier or a merchant, sir, not a priest."

"My master inspires in me the greatest devotion." "Aye. That devotion evaporates when you are forced to eat your own private parts," said Gunnar with a reminiscent chuckle. He had regained whatever he had momentarily lost in his terror to get away from the house. Such weaknesses in one who was usually as courageous as he was ruthless! It made me curious. No doubt this curiosity was shared by his men, who trusted him only while his judgment remained impeccable. He knew, as well as anyone, that if he began to falter, there were thirty souls ready to challenge him for the captaincy of The Swan.

He had fired them with dreams of kingdoms. Now Kloster-heim promised to take them to the Golden City. But Gunnar had by now seen the sense of that. He was no longer disputing our need for the skullface and others.

"And I must admit," added Klosterheim, "to have had some real trouble from the one who calls himself White Crow. One of your people, Prince Elric?"

"It is not a familiar name in Melnibone," I said. These humans believed anyone who was "fey" to be of Faery or some other imagined supernatural elfland.

I looked across at the shore with its great, wooded hills, its deep, ancient forest rolling like green waves back into the interior. Was this truly Atlantis, and did the continent surround the World's Pole? If so, would I find what I sought at the center, as I predicted?

"Tomorrow," Klosterheim continued, "we shall meet with my tribe, and together we shall find the Shining Path to the Golden City. Now we have allies, and all the prophecies combine to say the same thing. White Crow will give us no more trouble now.

He'll soon vanish from this realm forever. That which he stole shall be mine. This is what the oracle says."

"Aye, well," grumbled the faceless earl, "I have a habit of mistrusting oracles as well as gods."

Again Klosterheim offered us the hospitality of his home, and again Gunnar declined it. He repeated that Klosterheim should accept a place in the ship. Klosterheim hesitated before refusing. He had matters he must settle before joining us in the morning. He stated that his hall was our hall, and he had good venison and a full vegetable cellar if we cared to join him. My own appetite not being hearty and it being politic to keep my alliance with Gunnar in place, I refused. Accepting this with a baffled shrug, Klosterheim turned and made his way through the tangled undergrowth. There were no well-trodden paths to his house. From within came the agitated cackling of a bird.

It was now noon. The sun blazed through the gold and green of the late-autumn trees from a sky the color of rust and tarnished silver. I followed Klosterheim with my eyes as far as I could, but he was soon hidden in the brushy shadows.

Who was the young skrayling? A local leader, no doubt. Clearly Klosterheim hated the man. Yet what had he meant? White Crow was of my people? Was this land occupied by descendants of Melniboneans?

The place being no longer occupied by Norse settlements, Gunnar was reassured. Once we were back aboard he gave the order to row towards the shore. He saw a good, low-rising beach with easy anchorage. We could easily wade from the boat to the shingle now. Soon Gunnar had men cutting down branches and setting up camp while the ship was secured and the guard determined.

At supper he asked me what I thought of Klosterheim. Was he a magician? I shook my head. Klosterheim was not himself a sorcerer but was employing sorcery. I did not know where he got this power or if he had other powers. "He's waited as long as he has and built that house for himself knowing he might have to wait for us even longer. Such patience must be respected. His need for

an alliance might be of mutual benefit. He won't, of course, keep any bargain he might make with us."

Gunnar chuckled at this. The sound echoed in his helm and ended suddenly. "We'll keep no bargain we make with him. Who wins has the quickest wits and anticipates the others' moves best. This is the kind of game I like to play, Elric. With life and death to win as the only stake." Having escaped the terrors of that house, he was in unnaturally good spirits. I suspected an element of hysteria under his repeated reassurances that the future looked better than ever. With a larger fighting force, our chances of taking the City of Gold were immeasurably improved.

His ambitions were beyond me. I was prepared to bide my time and see what transpired. I, too, had my own ambitions and goals and did not intend to let either these or some mysterious dreamthief's apprentice stand in my way.

Next morning we roasted and ate a doe Asolingas and his friend killed. A little canoe rounded the island and slid rapidly towards us. The black-clad Klosterheim paddled it. I went down to the beach to greet him. Not a natural oarsman, he was out of breath. He let me help him beach the craft, gasping that the Pukawatchi were now assembled and awaiting us above the ridge, where they had built a peace camp. He pointed. Smoke puffed into the dawn sky.

The Pukawatchi, he explained, were not from these forests. Originally they had come with him from the south in search of their sacred treasures stolen by White Crow the trickster. The tribe had linked its destiny with his. Now they felt ready to ally with us and attack their ancient enemies.

We dragged The Swan ashore and disguised her deep in the forest. We removed all our war-gear, which included the great blue, red and white shield Gunnar had shown me that first night. As I had no shield, he loaned me that one. But there was a strict condition. Before we left the deckhouse, Gunnar flung me a cover. He helped me tie it over the outside of the shield. We would need that shield later, he said, and he did not want the Pukawatchi to see it. If I showed it, under any circumstances, it

could be the end of us. I suspect Gunnar also thought the shield stolen. If it were discovered, he would rather I be thought the thief. It made no difference to me. Even with its cover, the thing was light, useful if attacked by spears and arrows, and practical if I needed something to throw at a horse to bring it down. Not that Klosterheim had said anything about horses when I asked him how long we had to go. He described everything in terms of marches. As one who hated to walk, who had ridden the wild dragons of Melnibone, I was not used to marching. Nor did I enjoy the prospect.

Following what appeared to be deer trails, we lumbered through the forest in our war-shirts and our iron helmets like so many ancient reptiles. I was impressed by the Viking hardiness. They had scarcely rested before they were again on the move, their legs doing the same kind of work their arms had done earlier. Gunnar knew the Norseman's secret of the loping march, which they had learned from the Romans.

We went uphill and down, through the heavy, loose soil, the root-tangled undergrowth of an endless green-gold forest. Hawks circled above us. Unfamiliar birds called from the trees. Our rhythmic tramping was relieved by what we saw. Rivers dammed by beaver, curious raccoons, the nests of squirrels and crows, the spoor of deer, bear and geese.

Then Klosterheim slowed us, lifting both hands in reassurance. We came out of the trees into a deep autumn meadow beside a narrow, silver stream where some forty lodges had been erected, their cooking smoke moving lazily in the air. The people reminded me very much of the Lapps I had encountered in the service of the Swedish king. They had much the same features, being rather short, stocky and square. They had dogs with them and all the other signs of an established camp. Yet something was slightly awry about the scene. They had posted no guards and so were surprised when we came into their village, Klosterheim leading the way.

There was an immediate cacophony when they saw me. It was something I was used to, but these people seemed to have some

special animosity towards me. I remembered Klosterheim's reference. I could see he was trying to reassure them that I was neither their enemy nor one of their enemy's tribe.

He said something else I did not hear which cheered them. They began to sing, to raise their spears and bows in greeting. All were fairly short, though one or two of them were almost as tall as Klosterheim. They had certainly not gone soft during their wait. Displaying the physiques of men who lived by hunting, they wore jerkins and leggings of buckskin, softened and tightly sewn and decorated with all kinds of pictograms. The shoulders and sleeves of the jackets, the back and bottom edges of the leggings, were sewn with fringes of buckskin, handsome costumes on a somewhat unlovely people. The clothing all looked as if it had been cut down to fit. I asked Klosterheim how his tribe had learned to make such fine cold-weather garments.

The gaunt man smiled. "They discovered in the usual way. These lodges and most of these tools and weapons are what were left after the Pukawatchi came upon the original owners. The Pukawatchi have a policy of taking no long-term prisoners unless they need to replace their own dead. In this case the attack thoroughly surprised the tribe, whom my people wiped out to a child. So there are no more Minkipipsee, as I believe the indigenous folk termed themselves. You have no cause to feel insecure. Nobody cares to avenge them, even for the sport of it."

We entered the camp proper, a large public area encircled by the lodges. The tribe sent up a great wail of greeting. They seemed to be waiting for something or someone, and meanwhile they were painting for the war trail, Klosterheim told me. Something about their square, stern faces reminded me of Dalmatia. Daubed with white, scarlet and blue clay on their bodies, they smeared yellow clay on their hands and foreheads. Some wore eagle feathers. The men's weapons were elaborate, carved lances tipped with bone, obsidian and found metal. Both men and women raised their voices in this strange ululation, which sounded to my unpracticed ear more like a funeral lament. We responded as best we could and were made welcome.

These woods were not lacking in game. There were patches of vegetables where the Pukawatchi had made gardens. Again our party ate well. The men relaxed. They asked the skraylings if perhaps they could spare a little beer or wine, as they did not know what to make of the proffered pipes. They had the sense, however, to note that none of our hosts was drinking anything but water and a rather unpleasant tea made from spearmint and yarrow. Eventually, after trying the pipe, they resorted to explaining in some detail how beer was brewed.

With due ceremony we were introduced to the rather sour-faced individual whom Klosterheim called Young Two Tongues or Ipkaptam. With a scar across his cheek and lip, as if from a sword cut, his was a handsome, ungiving face. He had become the sachem, or speaker, of these people on his father's death. "Not because heredity demanded it," said Klosterheim in Greek, "but because he was known to have medicine sight and be lucky."

The local language was largely impossible for the Vikings to understand. The Pukawatchi thus tended to focus their attention on Gunnar and myself. We must have seemed demigods or, more likely, demons to them. They had a name for us which was impossible to translate.

But there was plenty to eat. The women and girls brought us dish after dish to enjoy, and soon a convivial atmosphere developed.

Klosterheim quelled the uncertainties of the still grim Ipkaptam, who had added more paint to his face. When Klosterheim suggested we retire to the speaking lodge to discuss our expedition, Ipkaptam shook his head and pointed first at my sword and then at my face, uttered the word "Kakatanawa" more than once and was adamant that I not be allowed into their councils. Klosterheim reasoned with him, but Ipkaptam stood up and walked away, throwing down an elaborate bag, which had been attached to his belt. I took this to mean he did not intend to share his wisdom with us.

Kakatanawa! The same word, spat as an oath and directed at me. Klosterheim spoke to him, brutally, urgently, no doubt encouraging some sort of common sense, for gradually Young Two Tongues glowered and listened. Then he glowered and nodded. Then he glowered and came back, fingering his scars. He picked up his bag and pointed to a large tepee set aside from the others near a stand of trees and a tumble of rocks. He spoke seriously and at some length, gesticulating, pointing, emphatic.

He grumbled something again and called to some women standing nearby. He gave orders to a group of warriors. Then he signaled that we should follow him as, still sour-faced, he walked grudgingly towards the big lodge.

"The talking lodge," said Klosterheim, and with a crooked grimace, "their town hall."

Gunnar and I followed Klosterheim and his friend towards the talking lodge. I gathered we were to prepare our assault on the City of Gold. Our weapons were left in the safekeeping of our men. Their own war-tools were so superior, they had little to fear from any "skraylings."

Nonetheless I entered the shaman's lodge with a rather uneasy sense of privilege.

CHAPTER TWELVE The Vision in the Lodge

It was already very hot inside the large lodge, and it took a while for my somewhat weak eyes to clear. Slowly I made out a central charcoal fire around which were arranged rich piles of animal hides. On the far side of the fire was a larger heap of furs. Those had a white skin thrown over them. I guessed this to be Ipkaptam's seat. Willow branches had been woven around it to make a kind of throne. I did not rec-ognize several of the pelts used. Some must come from indigenous beasts. The air was thick with various herbal scents. A smoldering fire in which several round rocks were heated gave off heavy smoke, sluggishly rising to the top of the tepee. A strong smell of curing hides, of animal fat and what might have been wet fur per' meated the room. I was also reminded of the smell of worked iron. I asked Klosterheim the purpose of this discomfort. He assured me that I would find the experience engrossing and illuminating. Gunnar complained that if he had known it was going to be this sort of thing he would have hacked cooperation out of the bastards. Recognizing his tone, Ipkaptam smiled secretly. For a moment his knowing eyes met mine.

Once inside, the flaps of the lodge were tied tight, and the heat began to rise considerably. Knowing my tendency to lose my senses in such temperatures, I did my best to keep control, but I was already feeling a little dizzy.

Klosterheim was on my left, Gunnar on my right and the

Pukawatchi shaman directly ahead of me. We made a very strange gathering in that buffalo-hide wigwam. The lodgepoles were strung with all kinds of dried vermin and evil-smelling herbs. While I had known far worse ways of seeking wisdom in the dream-worlds, I have known better-scented ones. Yet I was struck by a strong sense of familiarity. My brain would not or could not recall where I had experienced a similar conference. Decorated as he now was with a white feather crown, turquoise and malachite necklaces and copper armbands, together with his medicine bag and its contents, Ipkaptam looked even more striking. He reminded me vaguely of the old Grandparents, the gods who had talked to me in Satan's Garden. I tried desperately to remember what they had told me. Would it be of use here?

The shaman produced a big, shallow drum. He beat on it with long, slow, regular strokes. From deep within his chest, a song grew. The song was not for us to hear but for the spirits who would help him in performing this seance. Half its words and cadences were outside the range of even my own rather sensitive ears.

Klosterheim leaned forward over the fire to splash water on the heated stones. They hissed and steamed, and Ipkaptam's chanting grew louder. I struggled to keep my breathing deep and regular. The scar on his face, which I had seen as an irregular wound, now took on shape. Another face lurked beneath the first, something baleful and insectlike. I tried to remember what I knew. I felt nauseated and dizzy. Were the Pukawatchi human? Or did their race merely take on human characteristics? According to Klosterheim such ambiguous creatures were quite common here.

As I came close to losing consciousness, I was alerted by Klosterheim's changing voice. He sounded like a monk. He was chanting in Greek, telling the tale of the Pukawatchi and their treasures. He threw fuel on the fire, blowing until the stones were red-hot and then splashing on more water. The fire danced up again, casting shadows, increasing the heat until it was impossible to think clearly. All my energies were largely devoted to remaining conscious.

The beating drum, the rhythmic chanting, the strange words,

all began to take me over. I was losing control of my own will. It was not pleasant to feel that somewhere I had experienced all this before, yet I was also somewhat heartened by the thought. I hoped a higher purpose was being served by my discomfort.

During my youthful training I had been absorbed into many such rituals. I, therefore, made no particular effort to hold on to individual identity but let myself be drawn into the dark security of the heat and the shadows, the chanting and the drumming. I say security because it is like a kind of death. All worldly and material cares begin to disappear. One is confronted with one's own cruelties and appetites, experienced as a victim might experience them. There is remorse and self-forgiveness, an incisive glance into the reality of one's own soul, as if we stand in judgment on ourselves. This creates a peculiar psychic spiral in which one is redeemed or reborn into a kind of purity of being, a state which enables one to be open to the visions or revelations which are almost always the result of such formalities.

Apologizing to us that he no longer possessed the tribe's traditional redstone pipe bowl, Ipkaptam produced a large ceremonial pipe and lit it with a taper from the fire. He turned to the four points of the compass, beginning in the east, chanting something I could not understand, puffing the smoke as he did so. He held the pipe aloft. Again he chanted and puffed. Then he passed the pipe to Klosterheim, who knew what to do with it.

Now Ipkaptam began to speak of the tribe's great past. In rolling tones he described the Great Spirit's creation of his people deep below the ground. The very first people had been made of stone, and they were slow and sleepy. They had in turn made men to run their errands for them, and then made giants to protect them against rebellion. The men ran away from the giants to another land, which was the land of the Pukawatchi.

The smaller Pukawatchi were too weak to fight so many; thus they fled underground. The giants had not pursued the men. The tall men had not pursued the Pukawatchi, and soon they were at one with men and giants.

All had been equal, and all had gifts the others could use.

Warmed in the womb of Mother Earth herself, they had no need of fire. Food was plentiful. They were at peace. Every year the great Eternal Pipe, the redstone smoking bowl of the Pukawatchi, which they had won in war against the green people, was produced and presented to the Spirit. The pipe was smoked by every tribe and every people in creation. It was always full of the finest herbs and aromatic bark, and it never needed to be lit. Even the bear people and the badger people and the eagle people and all the other peoples of the plains and forests and mountains were invited to the great powwow, to confirm their bond. All lived in mutual harmony and respect. Only in the world of spirits was there conflict, and their wars did not touch on the lands of the Pukawatchi, nor of the tall men, nor of the giants.

I realized I was no longer hearing Klosterheim's Greek but Ip-kaptam's own language in his own voice. Ipkaptam easily made the mental links necessary for me to understand their language. At last the words had found their way directly to my mind.

With the words came pictures and narratives, crowding one upon the other. All were sufficiently familiar. I absorbed and understood them quickly. I was learning the whole history of a people, its rise and fall and rise again. I was hearing its own legends. Would I learn about a lost sword with a habit of escaping or killing those who possessed it?

More water was poured on the stones. The pipe was passed again and again. As I learned to inhale its strange smoke, my sense of reality grew even dimmer.

Ipkaptam's insectoid features seemed those of a great ant and his crown of feathers antennae. I refused to lose either my life or my sanity. I pretended his disguise was all that was visible to me. I remembered the teachings of a people I had lived among briefly, who spoke of a god they called the Original Insect. He was supposed to be the first created being. A locust. The story was told how the locust could not eat, so the spirits made it a forest where it might graze. But the locust was so hungry he ate the whole forest, and now he cannot do anything else. Unless stopped, he will attempt to eat the whole world and then eat himself.

I found nothing sinister in the tale the shaman told of his people's history. Perhaps there was nothing sinister in the tale itself, only in the teller. What Two Tongues had learned might not have been from his fathers. Nonetheless, I listened.

The steam and the smoke continued to make me very faint. My heart sank when the great red sandstone peace pipe was passed again. Once more it was offered to the spirits of the four winds. Klosterheim took a small, mean puff and passed it to me. I inhaled the fragrant barks and leaves and came suddenly alive. It was as if the smoke curled through every vein and bone in my body, inhabiting all of me and filling me with a sense of well-being, leaving none of the effects of my usual desperate drug-supported state. Those drugs fed off my spirit as I fed off their energy. These were natural plants, dried but not cured. I felt as if I inhaled all nature's benefits in one long pull on the pipe. I was hugely invigorated.

Ipkaptam took back the pipe with reverence. Again he offered it to the sky, then to the earth, then to the four winds, and only then replaced it on the stone before him. His widening lizard eyes glowed huge in the firelight.

"Many times," he said, "the spirits tried to involve us in their wars. We would fight neither for one side nor the other. These were not our wars. We did not even have the means to fight them. We did not have the will to kill our fellows." He seemed to grow in stature as he spoke with reminiscent pride. "Once all peoples, giants and men, came peacefully to trade with the Pukawatchi in their underground realm. We traded the metal we chipped from the rocks. With this metal the whole world tipped its arrows and lances and made fine ornaments." Iron was more highly prized than gold, said Ipkaptam, for with iron a man might win himself gold, but with gold he was always vulnerable to the man with iron. Metal was even more highly prized than agate and quartz for the edge it would take.

Men were cunning, had fire, but they did not know where to look for the metals and stones. Their tools and ornaments, their weapons, were made of flint and bone, so they traded furs and

cooked meat for the Pukawatchi iron. Giants had sorcerous powers and ancient wisdom, for they were the folk of the rock. They had the secret of fire, and they knew how to burn metal and twist it into shapes. All had to come to the Pukawatchi for their metal, and the most prized of all the metals was the sentient iron mined at the heart of the world.

The Pukawatchi were small and clever. They could find the crevices where the metals and the precious stones lay and prize them out. They had the patience to mine them and the patience to work them. They made hammers and other tools strong enough to flatten the iron, the copper, the gold. Striking them over and over again, they made beautiful objects and impressive weapons.

They lived in their great, dark realm for untold eons until massive upheavals occurred below the ground and all around them people went to war. The Pukawatchi were forced to the surface. Terrified of the sun, they became night dwellers, hiding from all other peoples and keeping their own council. Sometimes they were forced to steal food from villages they found. At other times the villages left food for them, and they in turn repaired pots and the like.

So the Pukawatchi wandered until they came to a place far from the lands of other men. Here they built their first great city. Now they were no longer brothers with their fellows. Now all were at war. Yet the Pukawatchi brought their skills with them when they fled, and they still had knowledge of the earth and what was to be found there. After a while they built a great city deep into the rock face of the land they had reached. The city was fashioned like the dark tunnels and chambers they had known below the ground. Now it was above the ground, but inside it was as it had always been. And the people were safe and the people prospered, living in their cool, dark cities. At last, against all sane instinct, against the very will of the spirits, they began to work with fire.

Soon the giants heard that the Pukawatchi had survived and could be traded with. The Pukawatchi learned the secret of fire

and began to deal again with everyone except the spirits, who remained mindlessly at war. The war spread to men. The Pukawatchi made weapons for all peoples and grew rich as a result. The men were exhausted by war. The Pukawatchi cities had prospered and proliferated until the whole of the south and west became their empire.

The Pukawatchi grew rich with all things men valued. They had extended their rule further and further across the surface- the Realm of Light, as they called it. They conquered other tribes and made them subject to the Pukawatchi, and in the conquering they won great treasures, among them the famous Four Treasures of the Pukawatchi.

Each treasure had been won by a different hero, then lost in a series of complicated epics, then won again. All these stories were told to us in such a way that we absorbed them as we sat smoking and sweating in the lodge, our ordinary human senses completely lost to us.

The Four Treasures of the Pukawatchi were the Shield of Flight, the Lance of Invulnerability, the Perpetual Peace Pipe which never required filling, and the Flute of Reason, which, if the right three notes were played upon it, could restore a mortally wounded creature to life.

These treasures they kept in their city, deep within the complex of caves, in chambers they had hewn and elaborately decorated from the living rock. Pukawatchi cities could be defended easily against attack by abandoning the lower levels and defending the upper. No other tribe had ever defeated the Pukawatchi, who had gloried in their treasures, celebrating them each year with the stories of how they came to be won by the heroes of the tribe in deeds of extraordinary warfare.

Ipkaptam began to draw in the air. He painted pictures there for us to see. He showed us the perpetually filled redstone pipe, which had belonged to the green people who lived along the lakes in stilt huts and who refused to pay the Pukawatchi a tribute of fish. So the Pukawatchi hero Nagtani went against the green people and destroyed their villages and took their pipe as a trophy. The green people were driven from the land.

Next the Kakatanawa, far in the north, asked the Pukawatchi to fashion a great lance of magical iron which the Kakatanawa had cut from the mother metal. This was the first great treasure of the Pukawatchi, for they had made it themselves. The Kakatanawa sent the magic metal to be made into a lance, but they refused to pay the higher price the Pukawatchi asked. The blade was more valuable, so the Pukawatchi kept it.

He showed us a vision of the lance, its shaft carved and decorated, its black blade running with scarlet letters. I was shocked. It was my sword, but turned into a spear! Then he showed us the Flute of Reason, and it seemed to me that Klosterheim responded with surprised recognition. I, too, experienced a flash of memory. And then Two Tongues showed us the Shield of Flight, the shield which allowed its owner to travel through the air. It was identical to the one I carried. I knew that the stolen artifact was only a few hundred yards from us at most, in the safekeeping of Asolingas.

Ipkaptam continued. "All these were our treasures and our history. Then White Crow came, and he was smiling. White Crow came, and he told us he was our friend. White Crow promised to teach us all his secrets and because he did not seem a Kakatanawa and therefore not our enemy, we accepted him. His medicine was brought to us, and he was our good luck. Because he was not of our people, he could not take a wife among us, but he had many friends in the great men of our tribe, and their daughters admired him. Our people welcomed him, for he said he came only to learn our wisdom. We understood that he followed his dream-journey, and we wished him well.

"And White Crow went away. We said: It is true. White Crow desires nothing from us. He is a good man. He is a noble man. He is a man who follows his way. He runs his own path. And we said that some great man was lucky indeed to have such a son.

"Then the next year and the year after that, White Crow returned. And still he was a model guest. He helped with the hunting, and he lived among us. What was difficult for us to do was easy for him. His strength and his height and his cleverness were such that we were glad of his company.

"Then the fourth spring White Crow came again and was welcome among us and shared our food and lived in our city and told tales of all the places he had visited. But this time he asked to see our sacred treasures, the Black Lance of Manawata, the only spear which can kill spirits; the Shield of the Alkonka, the only defense against the spirits; the Cherooki Pipe, the great redstone pipe which brings peace wherever it is smoked, even with the spirits. And the Flute of Ayanawatta, which, if the right notes are blown on it, will confer on the owner the power to change his ordained spirit path, even from death to life. It will heal the sick and bring harmony where there is strife.

"And White Crow tricked us and stole our treasures and took them away with him. An evil spirit seized him. He journeyed to the great wilderness, where there are no trees. There, at the foot of the mountains, White Crow called a great gathering of the Winds. He planned to make the Winds his friends. So he called to the South Wind. And the South Wind came. He called to the West Wind. And the West Wind came to his calling. And to each spirit of the wind he gave a gift to take back to their people. Even before we knew he had stolen them, he had given the Perpetual Pipe to the People of the South; the Shield of Flight he gave to the People of the West. He himself took the Flute of Reason to the People of the East. And each of them gave him a gift in return.

"Now he has set violent events in motion. There are prophecies, omens, portents. It is the end or the beginning for the Pukawatchi. So much is confused. But there is hope that we can recover our treasures. To the Kakatanawa themselves in the north, White Crow planned to carry the Black Lance. They are his most powerful friends, and his folk have always been allies of their folk, since the beginning of things. His people also made their great obscene pact with the Phoorn and so began the rule of ten thousand years. But if White Crow fails to take the Black Lance back to the Kakatanawa, then all our destinies can be changed. Thus we do everything we can to stop him and his allies. Already they stand on the final part of the path to the city of the Kakatanawa ..."

"Where," Klosterheim told us, in more normal tones, "our magic defeats them. White Crow is prisoner, but his brother and sister carry the lance. We must stop them! They are held captive on the Shining Path by a great ally of mine, who makes it impossible for them to continue on the last part of the Shining Path. Time does not pass there. They are unaware of it, but they have remained under that spell for half a century, allowing us to grow strong again. They have tried all their sorcery against my ally, but he is too powerful for them. Only White Crow escaped, but I was too clever for him. Yet even my pact with Lord Shoashooan is finite, and that busy elemental will soon grow hungry. He must have his promised reward. So we must reach Kakatanawa as soon as possible. Alone we might not defeat White Crow and his talented friends, but together we will make their end inevitable."

"What of your other lost treasures?" I said. "How will you get those back?"

"It will be easier once we have the Black Lance," said Klosterheim. He added softly to me in Greek, "The treasures of the Pukawatchi are as nothing to the prize to be found in the city of the Kakatanawa."

"I am only interested in one damned treasure," said Gunnar, to Ipkaptam's disapproval. "And that's a jeweled cup I've been seeking for some centuries. Failing that, I have some business with Death."

I had sudden insight. "You call it the Holy Grail! The Templars were obsessed with it. Supposed to contain some god's blood or head? The Welsh also have a magic bowl. My erstwhile comrade Ap Kwelch told me he once discovered it. There are too many of these magic objects loose in a world so ambivalent towards sorcery! Your learned priests say it's a myth, a will-o'-the-

wisp;

"I know that it is not, sir," said Klosterheim disapprovingly.

"There are many legends but only one Grail. And that is what I expect to find in Kakatanawa."

Again the shaman was singing. He sang to apologize for our behavior to whatever spirits he had summoned. As we became quiet he spoke of his own destiny, the dream he had dreamed in his youth: to revenge his grandfather, who had died in the summoning of Lord Shoashooan. In that dream he had sought his people's treasures and he had led his people home.

"That is my destiny," he said. "To redeem my father's house. To reclaim our treasures and our honor. For too long we have followed a false dream."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Trail or Honor

Gunnar the Doomed was in good spirits as we stumbled from the heat of the lodge out into the cold slap of a northern autumn evening. "By Odin," he said, "we are lucky men this day!" But I hardly heard him. I was still stupefied by the smoke and the heat of the lodge. I felt I was on the verge of understanding some great truth.

I looked up and almost reeled at the sight which met us. It took me a moment to realize that the Pukawatchi were decorated for battle. They looked like a hive of human-sized insects. They buzzed faintly. In all my travels I had never seen a people quite like this.

A sudden wilder buzzing-an ululation went up from the gathered warriors. Layers of different-colored paint in this light gave their faces the same quality I had noticed in that of their sachem, Ipkaptam the Two Tongues, as we sat in the lodge. Their eerie, insectlike quality was given further substance by a translucent black sheen which spread over the surface of the other colors. They had the dark iridescence of a beetle's wing. Some wore insectlike headdresses. The black overlay was symbolic. It meant they were prepared to fight to the death. The red-rimmed eyes announced they would show no mercy. Ipkaptam told me with some pride that they had named their path the Trail of Honor and would return with the nation's treasures or die nobly in the attempt.

Again something nagged at the million memories which shadowed those of my immediate incarnation. Who did these people remind me of? Was there a Melnibonean folktale I had read? About machines become fish who became insects who became human? Who had followed a Trail of Honor to establish a city in the south? I was unsure of all I could recall. With somewhat sentimental notions of intelligence, sensibility and virtue, the story did not feel like a Melnibonean tale. Perhaps I had heard it in the

Young Kingdoms or in another dream of baroque life and rococo death spent in a realm far less familiar to me than this?

In my youth I performed the five journeys and dreamed the Dream of Twenty Years, then the Dream of Fifty Years and then the Dream of a Hundred Years. Each of those dreams I had to dream at least three times. I had dreamed some several more times than that. But this was only the second time I had dreamed the Dream of a Thousand Years, and this was no longer the quest of an education but the hope of saving my own life, and that of most of surviving humanity, from unchecked Chaos.

Perhaps this moment was what one trained for? It seemed I was born and reborn for crisis. It was what the nun had told me at the Priory of the Sacred Egg in the Dalmatian highlands. She had read my fortune that night in the light of a tallow candle while we sat naked in the bed. Fetching the cards had been her response, as passion was satisfied, to her first real sight of my physique, of its scars and marks. She asked in some seriousness if she had shared herself with a demon. I told her that I had been a mercenary for some time. "Then perhaps you yourself have slept with a demon," she joked.

Fear the Crisis Maker, she had warned, by which I had decided she meant that I should fear myself. What was worse in a fully sentient universe than one who refused thought, who feared it, who was sickened by it? Who inevitably chose violence and the way of the sword, though he yearned for peace and tranquillity?

Fear the child, she had said. Again, the child was myself- jealous, greedy, demanding, selfish. Why should her God choose such a man for his service?

I had asked the matronly prioress this question, and she had laughed at me. All soldiers she met seemed to be soul-searching in one way or another. She supposed it was inevitable. "In some eras," she said, "the sword and the intellect must be as one. Those are our Silver Ages. That is how we create those periods we call Golden Ages, when the sword can be forgotten. But until the sword is fully forgotten, no longer part of the cycle, and men no longer speak in its language of gods and heroes and battles, every

Golden Age will inevitably be followed by an age of Iron and Blood." She had spoken of the Prince of Peace as if he might actually exist. I asked her about this. "He is my soul's salvation," she had said. I told her without irony that I envied her. But it was hard for me to understand the kind of man who was prepared to die on the chance that it might save others. In my experience, such sacrifices were rarely worth making. She had laughed aloud at this.

Her kind of Christianity, of course, was almost the apotheosis of what we Melniboneans see as weakness. Yet I had also seen ideas growing from the common soil which, when examined, actually had the hope of becoming reality. It was not for me to denigrate their softness and their tolerance. My father frequently argued that where you exalted the weak above the strong, thus you turned your nation from predator into prey. However much the thinking of the Young Kingdoms influenced me, it had never occurred to me to choose to become a victim!

A Melnibonean of my caste is expected to put himself through at least most of the tortures he will in the course of a long life bestow on others. This produces a taste, an intimacy, a conspiracy of cruelty which can give a culture its own special piquancy but in the end brings it to collapse. Imagination rather than inventive sensation will always be a nation's ultimate salvation. I had tried to convince my own people of this. And now the Pukawatchi faced a similar dilemma.

Indeed, as I came to know them, I discovered I had more in common with the Pukawatchi than with some of the crew of The Swan.

Preparations made, routes discussed, plans laid, we helped the Pukawatchi strike camp. Our somewhat ragged army slowly made ready for its long trek north. More pipes were smoked. More talks talked. The Vikings and the skraylings, as they still called their new allies, developed a reasonable camaraderie-good enough for the expedition, at least. Morally they shared much. The Pukawatchi understood the need to make a good death, just as the Vikings did. The warriors prayed for the right circumstances and the courage to display their virtues while they died.

These ideas were far closer to those of my immediate ancestors. Among the rest of what I still considered the Young Kingdoms, there had been developing a tradition which was as mysterious and as attractive to me as my own was familiar and repellent. It was that culture, not my own, I fought to save. It was those people whose fate would be decided by my success or failure in this long dream. I had no love for the millennia-old culture which had borne me. I rejected it more than once in preference to the simpler ways of the human mercenary. There was a certain comfort in taking this path. It demanded little thought from me.

There was some urgency to my situation, of course, as I hung in Jagreen Lern's rigging waiting to die. But there are no significant correspondences between the passage of time in one realm and another. I had elected, after all, to dream of a thousand years, and now the full thousand must be endured even if my object were achieved sooner. It is why I am able to tell you this story in this way. What I achieved in this dream would reflect through all the other worlds of the multiverse, including my own. How I conducted myself in this dream was of deep importance. A certain path had to be followed. When the trail was left it had to be left knowingly.

The path had already taken on a certain relentless momentum. From being a group of raiders or explorers, we were now an army on the march. Egyptians and Norsemen tramped side by side with the same extraordinary stamina they showed at the oars. Asolingas and the Bomendando jogged ahead with the Pukawatchi scouts.

Ipkaptam, Gunnar, Klosterheim and I marched at the center of the main group. The Pukawatchi went to war in finger-bone armor, with lances, bows and shields. They had jackets of bone and helmets fashioned from huge mammoth tusks decorated with eagle feathers and beads. The bone armor was decorated with turquoise and other semiprecious stones and was lighter than the chain mail most of our crew favored. Some warriors wore the carapaces of huge turtles and helmets made from massive conch shells. Braids were protected by beads and otter fur.

Just as I had noted the size of some of the huge pelts within the wigwam, I wondered at the size of the sea-life which supplied the Pukawatchi with so much. Klosterheim said somewhat dis-missively that sizes were unstable in these parts, something to do with the conjunction of various scales. We were too close to "the tree," he said.

None of this made much sense to me. But as long as our journey took us forward to where I hoped to find the original of the black sword, I scarcely cared what rationales he presented.

We were now an army of about a hundred and fifty experienced warriors. Some of the women and youths and old people were also armed. At the far end of this mixed force of pirates and Pukawatchi came the unarmed women, the infirm, children and animals who would follow us until we began to fight. From what I had seen thus far, I expected the city to be a primitive affair, probably a stockade of some kind surrounding a dozen or so long-houses.

The Pukawatchi had no real beasts of burden, unless you counted their coyote dogs that pulled the travois on which they carried their folded lodges. Women and children did most of the work. The warriors rarely did anything except, like the rest of us, march at a steady, dogged pace. Those women who had what they called "men's medicine" dressed and armed themselves like the men and marched with the men, just as one or two of the men with "women's medicine" walked with the group at the back. Klosterheim told me such practices were common among many of the peoples of this vast land. But not all tribes shared values and ideas.

Ipkaptam, joining in, spoke of certain tribes who were beneath contempt, who ate insects or who tortured animals, but even those peoples they had exterminated he spoke well of, as people of honor. We Melniboneans had never experienced noble feelings for people we sent to oblivion. Melniboneans never questioned their own ruthless law, which they imposed on all they conquered. Other cultures were not of interest to us. If the people refused to accept our scheme of things, we simply slaughtered

them. But we had become too soft, my father complained, looking always at me, and allowed the Young Kingdoms to grow arrogant. There had been a time when the world never dared question Melnibone. What we defined as the truth was the truth! But because it suited us to have fat cattle at our disposal, we allowed the people of the Young Kingdoms to proliferate and gain power.

Not so, the Pukawatchi! They believed in the law of the blood feud, so gave their enemies no chance to retaliate. Every member of the rival tribe had to be eliminated or the babies taken to substitute for any Pukawatchi killed. Once they had been so few they had stolen infants from stronger tribes. Now they needed no foreign babies.

Yesterday the Pukawatchi had been despised, said Ipkaptam, both for their stature and their intelligence. Today all took them seriously. Their story would survive. And when the Kakatanawa were conquered, the Pukawatchi would dominate all worlds. They had grown strong, he said, until they were the strongest of all.

They were certainly sturdy. When walking and water were the only two means of traveling long distances, the calves and the arms became capable of enormous endurance and power. Their means of transport ensured them success in battle.

The Pukawatchi would have preferred the greater speed of water, but we were moving north and upstream of a small river which was too narrow to take any kind of craft. Klosterheim said there was a mooring rendezvous about two days ahead of us where we would acquire canoes so that the war party could make better progress. He seemed to have a greater sense of urgency than the rest of us. Of course, it was his magic, his energy, which was holding our rivals at bay. He suggested that soon the army should move on at a trot to the rendezvous, leaving the armed women and children with a small guard of warriors. I elected to command this guard. The idea of trotting did not appeal to me.

For the time being, we all continued at our regular pace.

Again I was impressed by the size to which everything in the region grew. Plants were far larger than anything I had seen before. I should have liked to have stopped and examined more. The terrain we were crossing was wooded and mountainous, and we traveled through a series of valleys, still following the winding course of the river, as we drove deeper and deeper into country nobody was familiar with. It had been deserted of people, Ipkaptam told me, since a great disaster had struck here. He believed that the whole country around the Kakatanawa land was dead, like this. As you got closer, even the game began to disappear. But he had only heard this.

Before the beginnings of this war, no Pukawatchi had ever been allowed to cross the human lands, let alone visit the land of the Kakatanawa. They had come east in his grandfather's time. Equally, the Kakatanawa were forbidden to leave their own land. Until recently they, too, had kept to their pact. But others, such as the Phoorn, had done their work for them. Some of these Phoorn adopted human form and bore a resemblance to me, though my physique was different. Others were monstrous reptiles. Now that he knew me, said the sachem, he realized I was more like a Pukawatchi, yet it was still difficult, he said, to trust me. His instinct was to kill me. He could not be sure this was my natural form.

The Pukawatchi had never been this far north, and Ipkaptam worried that he did wrong. But wrongdoing had become the order of the day. Once the people of the south, north, west and east had respected one another's laws and hunting grounds. They had a saying: The West Wind does not fight the East Wind. But since White Crow had come to the world, Chaos threatened on all sides. In their fighting the Lords of the Air produced the hawk-winds which destroyed whole peoples and created demons who ruled in their place. These demons were called Sho-ah Sho-an and could only be defeated by the lost Pukawatchi treasures.

Ipkaptam also admitted that he was nervous of being sucked off the back of the world. At some point you must tumble into the bottomless void, fall forever, eternally living the sharp, despairing moment when you realize your death is inevitable. Far better to die the warrior's death. The clean death, as some called it. To

Pukawatchi and Viking alike a noble death remained more important than longevity. Those who died bravely and with their death songs on their lips could live the simple, joyous warrior's life for eternity.

My own responses to these notions were rather more complex. I shared their idea that it was better to make a noble death than lead an ignoble life. There was not one among us, save Klosterheim, who did not think that. The Ashanti, the Mongols, the Norsemen knew the indignities and humiliations of old age and preferred to avoid them, just as a promise of inevitable defeat made them anxious to take as many of their enemies with them as they could.

The Pukawatchi, so provincially self-important and so certain of their imperial rights, had a shared sense of afterlife which favored those who had died bloody deaths and sent as many others as possible to equally bloody deaths. The fate of women and children in these cosmologies was vague, but I suspect the women had their own more favorable versions which they told among themselves. For all their domestic power, they were more frequently the unwilling victims of the warrior code. Certain warriors prided themselves on their skill at dispatching women and children as painlessly as possible.

As we began to speak the same language I learned more about the skraylings, as Gunnar still insisted on calling them. The supernatural understanding of these natives was sophisticated, though their powers of sorcery were limited and usually restricted to needs of planting and hunting. Only the great line of shamans, of whom Ipkaptam was the latest, understood and explored the world of the spirits. This was where he drew his power.

Ipkaptam's was not an especially popular family. They had often abused their privileges. But the Pukawatchi believed in the family's famous luck. When that luck failed, I suspected, Ipkaptam would no longer be revered, tolerated or perhaps even alive. Gunnar walked by himself much of the way. Few sought him out. The Pukawatchi suspected him to be some kind of minor

demon. They displayed an instinctive dislike of me as well. Some were still convinced I was a renegade Kakatanawa.

Our alliance could break down at any moment. Gunnar and Klosterheim had common goals, but there would come a day when they would be at odds. Equally, no doubt, Gunnar was scheming how he would dispatch me when I had served my turn. Like my late cousin Yyrkoon, Gunnar spent a great deal of time planning how to gain the upper hand. Those of us who did not think competitively were always surprised by those who did. For my own part I responded with appropriate cunning or ferocity to whatever situation I found myself in. When one has had the training of a Melnibonean adept, one rarely needs to anticipate another's actions. Or so I thought. Such thinking might well have led to our extinction as a people.

Yet Gunnar's weakness was also typical, as he believed me to be scheming as hard as he was. This might have been true of Klosterheim and Ipkaptam, but it was certainly not true of me. I was still prepared to believe that I could easily be following a chimera. The black blade's maker was my only interest.

The Vikings remained fairly cheerful. They had seen enough to know that there might be a city somewhere which could be looted, even if it was not made of gold. They knew the superiority of their iron weapons and had a fair idea of the way back to the sea and their ship. They probably believed a longer sailing would avoid the more terrifying aspects of the journey here. So most of them saw this as a standard inland expedition from which they might emerge with wealth and knowledge. They knew the value of the Pukawatchi furs and quickly understood how the Pukawatchi valued iron. The only iron the Pukawatchi worked was moon metal or ingots chipped from the rock. Somehow they had lost their legendary power to mine and smelt metal. As a result, a small iron dagger would buy a lot of valuable furs.

In my company, at least, the Vikings also had the sense that they carried secret power. I was surprised that my shield, the Pukawatchi stolen Shield of Flight tight under its cover, had not been sensed by their shaman, seemingly so sensitive to the supernatural. It remained to be seen whether it would give the gift of flight to anyone who carried it or whether spells and chants were involved to invoke the spirits associated with the shield.

Experience shows most magic objects depend far more upon the gullibility of the purchaser than on any blessing by the spirits. The shield could have no particular properties at all, except those of superstition and antiquity. How Gunnar found it in Europe, he refused to explain, but I had the impression he had come by it in trade some while ago, perhaps from one of the People of the West to whom, Ipkaptam said, it had been given. But here the People of the West would live far away from the sea, unless we were on a large island. If we were on an island, then it was possible the People of the West had somehow sailed around the rim of the world, as Gunnar would have it, from the China Seas, as he himself had done with the Rose. Or was this a treasure Gunnar had brought back from the expedition they made, when he had returned in The Swan while the Barbary Rose captained her own twin-prowed ship, The Either/Or?

There was some dispute among us as to whether we should make the quick march at all or keep to our present pace, so that we remained together. Klosterheim spoke of the gathering winter. It was becoming noticeably colder by the day. We were marching north. Normally, both Pukawatchi and Vikings reserved raiding expeditions for the spring. Winter made movement almost impossible. Ice would form on the rivers soon, and they would not be able to use the canoes.

So we called a further conference. Eventually it was decided that the two Ashanti, Asolingas and the Bomendando, who were our fastest runners, together with a Pukawatchi called Nagatche, would go ahead for a few miles to get the lie of the land. Then we could make a better-informed decision.

The three runners set off as the evening sky grew black overhead. An east wind began to blow steadily, biting through layers of clothing. I felt the lash of sleet against my cheeks.

Night fell. Ipkaptam, Klosterheim, Earl Gunnar and I again conferred around an uncertain fire in a small temporary lodge.

Ipkaptam believed that the season was coming unusually early. He would have expected another month before the snows arrived. Again he spoke anxiously about offending the winds. It would be best to reach the water as soon as possible. With snow, our jour-ney to Kakatanawa would be far more difficult. With ice it might be impossible, and we would have to wait until the next year. He turned to Klosterheim for suggestions. Were there any other magical allies he could summon? Was there some way to placate the wind so that it blew the snow away from them? What if he were to offer the Snow Wind his most valuable possessions? His children's lives?

Klosterheim pointed out in Greek that most of his powers were already being used to sustain his supernatural ally Lord Shoashooan threatening our enemies. He had only been able to summon the demon in the first place because of the strange nature of this realm's semisentient winds, which Ipkaptam had already remarked on. It was even possible that Lord Shoashooan was drawing the bad weather to them. But if White Crow was allowed to take the Black Lance back to Kakatanawa, then the Pukawatchi would never defeat their ancient enemies, never redeem their honor. As for summoning powerful spirits, that was now entirely beyond him. With all his experience of the supernatural, he had never been able to control two such forces. Gun-nar mumbled something about having made too many bargains already and said he was thinking on the problem. I-whose powers were virtually nonexistent here, but needed fewer drugs and sorcery to survive-was equally helpless.

"Then we must do our best with our natural brains," said Klosterheim with some humor.

The next morning one of the Ashanti returned. The Bomen-dando was glad of the camp. He stood by the fire shivering, his lanky body wrapped in a buffalo robe. He was uneasy and seemed frightened. He said he had left the other two guarding their find while he came to tell us what it was. They also would return if it became too dangerous. They had remained in case they should catch a glimpse of what they guessed was occupying the hills.

I had never seen such a disturbed look on the Bomendando's face. Clearly, he thought he might not be believed.

"Come on, man," demanded Gunnar, reaching a threatening hand toward him. "What have you seen out there?"

"It's a footprint," said the Bomendando. "A footprint."

"So there are other men here. How many?"

"This was not a man's footprint." The Bomendando shivered. "It was fresh, and we found others, fainter, when we looked. It is the footprint of a giant. We are in the realm of the giants, Earl Gunnar. This was not part of our agreement. You told us nothing of giants, nothing of the Stone Men. You spoke only of a poorly defended city. You said how the giants had been driven from this land by men and half-lings. You said giants were forbidden to go outside their city. Why did you not tell us of these other giants? These roaming giants?"

"Giants!" Gunnar was contemptuous. "A trick of the eye. The track had spread, that was all. I've heard tales of giants all my life and have yet to see one."

But the Bomendando shook his head. He held out his spear. With his hand he measured off another half-length again. "It was that wide and more than twice as long. A giant."

Ipkaptam became agitated. "They are not supposed to leave their city. They cannot leave it. They are forbidden. The giants have always guarded what they are sworn to guard. If they left, the world would end. It must have been a human you saw."

The Ashanti was adamant, tired of talk. "There is a giant out there, in those hills," he said. "And where there is one giant, there are often others."

There came a shout from the margins of the camp. Warriors ran towards us, pointing over their shoulders.

In the slanting sleet I saw a figure emerging. He was indeed very tall and broad. My head would scarcely have reached his chest, but he was a third the size of any giants I had previously encountered.

He was dressed in a heavy black coat, covered by a fur-lined cloak. On his head was an oddly shaped hat, its brim turned up at

three corners, sporting a couple of plumes. His white hair was tied back with a loose, black bow.

I heard Klosterheim curse behind me.

"Is that our giant?" I asked.

Ipkaptam was shaking his head. "That's no giant," he said. "That's a human."

The newcomer took off his hat by way of a peace sign. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said, "my name is Lobkowitz. I was traveling in these parts and seem to have lost my way. Is there any chance, do you think, that I could warm my bones a little at your fire?"

He loomed over us, almost as tall as our tepees. I felt like a ten-year-old boy in the presence of a very burly man.

Klosterheim came forward and bowed. "Good evening, Prince Lobkowitz," he said. "I had not expected to see you here."

"It's a turning multiverse, my dear captain." The broad-faced, genial nobleman peered hard at Klosterheim. He frowned in apparent surprise. "Forgive me if I seem rude," he said, "but is it my impression, sir, or have you shrunk a foot or two since last we met?"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Gentleman at Large

Klosterheim and Lobkowitz had been acquainted in Christendom. They were not friends. Klosterheim was deeply suspicious of every word the newcomer uttered. Lobkowitz, while more affable, seemed equally wary of Klosterheim. Gunnar said something about two peoples forever at odds. He believed the races must be natural enemies.

As Prince Lobkowitz stood with his back to our fire, Gunnar asked him what brought him to the region.

"Very little, sir. My business was with another party, but you know how it is, this close to a node on the great tree of time. Although it makes travel between the worlds a little easier, it also makes it confusing. Variances of scale, which would be so vast as to be unnoticed elsewhere, are not so great here. The closer to where worlds connect, the less we are, as it were, divided. We do our best, sir; but the Balance must be served, and the Balance determines everything in the end, eh?" The huge fellow had a rather quiet manner. It seemed odd to find delicacy in one of his size.

His apparent diffidence put a swagger into Gunnar the Doomed. He was the only one of us to be amused. "My men described your footprint. To hear them talk you were at least ten feet tall, though I must admit you're the biggest human being I've ever met. You're even bigger than Angris the Frank, and he is still a legend. Are they all your size where you come from?"

"Pretty much," said Prince Lobkowitz. Gunnar did not miss the sardonic tone. His faceless helm turned to regard the huge man with some curiosity. I, too, felt I was missing what might have been a joke.

The sleet continued to fall. It was not settling as snow. Ipkap-tam decided it was too warm for bad snow, that what we had was no more than an autumn squall. In a couple of days it might even seem like summer again. He had experienced the phenomenon many times.

Now that we thought Lobkowitz was our giant, Ipkaptam was far more at ease. It was decided we would indeed send the main warriors ahead at a rapid trot while I would bring up the rear. Prince Lobkowitz, who knew the terrain no better than I did, elected to stay behind with us. "At least until it becomes possible to rejoin my party!"

While the prince went off to relieve himself, I was warned secretly by Gunnar to keep an eye on Lobkowitz and to kill him if he acted at all suspiciously. Klosterheim was especially uneasy. He said that the man was not necessarily malign but that his presence

suggested there were other, possibly dangerous, elements involved in this adventure.

I asked him to be more specific. What did he know about Lobkowitz? Had the newcomer followed us here? Was he in league with the Kakatanawa?

"He has no more right to enter the Kakatanawa stronghold than I," said Klosterheim. "But he has friends who also seek what I seek and what Gunnar seeks. I believe he shares a mutual interest. It will do no harm to make an ally of him now. It's best he's kept in the rear, at least until we know what we are facing. He might be a spy, for instance, sent to learn our secrets. If not, we could use someone of his size."

Gunnar was unhappy. "There are too many unknown elements in this. My idea was to come here, take what I needed, and leave. I had not expected Klosterheim, the Pukawatchi-nor giants ..."

"That man is not a giant," insisted Ipkaptam. "He is human. You would know if he was a giant."

With a scowl, Klosterheim agreed. "This is a strange area of the multiverse," he confirmed. "It is, as Lobkowitz says, a node. Where the branch joins the tree, eh? Usually we are too far away from a node to experience this phenomenon, but here I would guess it is common."

I accepted this oddness was familiar to them and trusted their judgment. Only Gunnar continued to be ill at ease. He kept muttering about superstition and repeating what was clearly a simplification if not a lie-that he was here for one reason only, and he had promised his fighters the loot of the City of Gold.

Ipkaptam signaled for Gunnar, Klosterheim and the others to follow and set off at a lope. The main war party fell in behind him, and all were soon lost in the mists of the deep valleys. I was glad to keep a slower pace. It gave me a chance to speak to the gigantic man, to ask him how he had found himself here. He said he was traveling with a friend and they had become separated. The next thing he knew, he said, he spotted our camp. His friend was clearly nowhere in the area.

"And is this friend similar in size to you?" I asked. Prince Lobkowitz sighed. "These are not my natural surroundings, Prince Elric, any more than they are yours."

I agreed with some feeling that they were not mine. If I discovered I was on a wild-goose chase, then Gunnar should pay with interest for all my wasted hours. While I had once sought the seclusion and isolation of the countryside, nowadays I again preferred the alleys, the noisy streets and crowded public places of urban life. Nonetheless, events had curious resonances, I said. It made me think that perhaps this adventure had parallels with a life I could not quite remember.

As Ipkaptam predicted, the snow held off and the sleet continued to fall. The Pukawatchi boys and women were not loquacious. Lobkowitz and I were thrown together as a result. He was oddly closemouthed on some subjects, and when I accused him, half joking, of talking like an oracle, he laughed loudly. "I think that's because I am talking like an oracle," he said.

He explained that this age was not his own. He was something of an interloper. But this realm, or one like it, was similar to his own past. As he was sure I understood, he did not dare inadvertently reveal anything of the future, yet he was constantly tempted to use his knowledge.

It was the reason, he said, for prophecies and omens to be so obscure. A directly related account of coming events automatically changed those events. Knowledge of them meant that some could act to avoid what they disliked. This not only made prophecy dangerous, it added to the multiplicity of the worlds. A few ill-judged words could create branch after branch of additional alternatives. It served no general purpose, he said. Few such branches survived for long.

I remembered the Stone Giants and their meaningless prophecies, but I said nothing to Lobkowitz, even though we were together, tending to walk behind the main party, following tracks the Pukawatchi and Vikings had made.

Then as we began to approach the foothills of the mountains, the sleet changed to snow. By the following morning it had settled

and the sky had cleared. It was a blue day. Snow lay before us all the way to the mountains, and tracks were rare. Where a buffalo had passed, you could see immediately. Also hare and birds had used the land ahead, but of the Pukawatchi trail there was nothing.

Prince Lobkowitz seemed both amused by and sympathetic to this turn of events. He suggested that with his extra height he could go on ahead and see if he could find the Pukawatchi camp. Not entirely trusting him I said that we could travel together. That way I could stand on his shoulders, perhaps, and get a longer view. Thus we could make the best use of each other's relative size.

This seemed to amuse him even further. I said I thought my suggestion perfectly reasonable. He was recalling another event, he said, which had nothing to do with me directly, and he apologized.

He agreed; so we increased our pace. When the going became difficult for me, I was able to ride his mighty shoulder or otherwise make use of his unusual size and strength. It was the strangest riding I have ever done and was something of a change for me, though again I was troubled by vague memories of distant incarnations. Yet as far as I know I have always been Elric of Melni-bone, for all that various seers and sorcerers insist otherwise. Some people relish the numinous the way others value the practical. I have had enough experience of the numinous to place great value on what is familiar and substantial.

When Lobkowitz raised the subject, I told him what I knew for certain. While I hung in some distant realm facing the death of everything I loved, I also dreamed the Dream of a Thousand Years, which had brought me here. He would probably think I was mad.

He did not. He said that he was familiar with such phenomena. Many he knew took them for granted. He had traveled widely, and there was little that was especially novel to him.

As it happened, we did not go far before the snow began to melt, revealing enough of a trail for our trackers to follow again.

But a certain valuable camaraderie had developed between Prince Lobkowitz and myself. I had the impression he, too, had more in common with me than with the others, even Klosterheim. I asked him about that gaunt-faced individual.

"He is an eternal," Lobkowicz said, "but he is not reincarnated, simply reborn over and over again at the point of his death. This is a gift he received from his master. It is a terrible gift. His master is called in these realms 'Lucifer.' As I understand it, this Lord of the Lower Worlds has charged Klosterheim with finding the Holy Grail. This was the pivot, the regulator of the Great Balance itself. But Klosterheim also seeks some sort of alliance with the Grail's traditional guardian."

I asked who that was. He said that I was distantly related to the family who would become its guardians. The Grail had disappeared more than once, however, and when that happened, it must be sought wherever the path leads. The stolen artifact had a habit of disguising itself even from its protectors. He had never been directly involved in this Grail-quest, he said-not, at any rate, as far as he could recall-but the quest continued through a multiplicity of pasts, presents and futures. He envied me, he said, my lack of memory. He was the second to make that remark. I told him with some feeling that if my condition was what he called a lack of memory, I was more than glad to have nothing else to remember. He made an apology of sorts.

Soon we reached the rendezvous with the rest of our party. They had little to report. The original owners of the canoes had fled, leaving most of their camp intact, so we spent a good night. In the morning we began to load the canoes when the blizzard hit us. It howled through the camp for hours, heaping up snow in huge banks. A wild east wind. By the time we were able to go out again, we found three feet of snow and ice already forming on the river. Up ahead the snow was bound to be thicker. We would either have to winter here or go on by foot. Ipkaptam said we could load the canoes and use them as sleds. That would keep the tribe together, as it would be foolish to leave the women and children. And so we set off, first carrying the canoes and then, as it became possible to drag them, pulling them behind us until we had reached the mountains proper. The sharp crags rose darkly above us, threatening the evening sky.

"They're evil-looking peaks," said Gunnar the Doomed, bending to pick up a handful of snow and rub it with relish into his neck. "But at least the weather's improving." I had forgotten how much Norsemen love snow. They yearn for it the way Moors yearn for rain.

Klosterheim pointed out the pass through the mountains. A dark gash ran between peaks glinting like black ice, probably basalt. Already the mountainsides were heavy with snow, and more snow weighed down the pines and firs of the flanks. There was no moving water. Game was rarely seen. Occasionally I glimpsed a winter hare running across the snow, leaving black tracks in a white flurry. Hawks hung high in the sky, seeing no prey below. I do not think I had ever seen such a winter wasteland. In its own grandeur, its uncompromising bleakness, it was impressive. But unless some magical paradise lay within those mountains, protected from the weather, we were none of us likely to survive. All common sense told us to turn back while we could and spend the winter in more agreeable conditions.

Klosterheim and Gunnar were for going on. Ipkaptam pointed out that it would be stupid to continue. We would lose all our men and be no closer to what we sought. Prince Lobkowitz also advised prudence. I, who had the better part of a thousand years still to dream, said that I had no special thoughts, one way or another, but if Vikings could not survive a little cold weather, I would be surprised.

This spurred a general growling and posturing and, of course, we were on our way, leaving the weaker members of our band to keep camp if they could. If they could not, they were advised to rejoin the others and wait until we returned.

I do not know what happened to those Pukawatchi. It was the last I ever saw of them, the boys and the girls with their bows and lances, the women and old people giving us the sign of good

journeying. Yet even as we left them behind, they still had something of the look of insects. I would never understand it.

I voiced my disquiet to Lobkowitz. He took me seriously. He said he believed they were in some kind of transition, and this was what gave them their insectlike appearance. Further generations might develop different characteristics. It would be interesting to see what they became. My guess was that most of these would soon be meat for the coyotes and bears. For all my aversion to their appearance, I felt a twinge of sympathy for them.

Ipkaptam's own wives and daughters were among those we left behind. He said that he had now given everything he valued most to the spirits, to use or treat as they wished. The spirits could be generous, but they always required payment.

My own instinctive belief, of course, was that the situation had driven him mad. All he could do now was go forward until he died or was killed. Or did Klosterheim have a special use for him? I had a sense that the journey itself would require more sacrifice. Both Gunnar and Klosterheim swore that Kakatanawa was on the far side of the range. Once it was reached, the city was theirs for the taking. Klosterheim asked Prince Lobkowitz directly, "Do you want a share of the loot? You'd be useful to us because of your size. And we'd give you a full warrior's portion."

Lobkowitz said he would think over the proposition. Meanwhile he would march with us in the hope of catching a glimpse of his missing friend.

I asked him about the friend, whom I had gathered was of his size. Had they traveled here together?

Yes, he said. The situation demanded it. He added mysteriously that this was not what he had chosen. He had become disoriented. He would not forgive himself if he had to leave without his friend. He hoped they would find some sign of him in the mountains.

At last our mixed force of well-wrapped Pukawatchi and Vikings reached the opening of the pass. The sides, high and narrow, had the effect of keeping the worst of the weather out, and little snow had fallen here. We were even able to find easily

melted water, but there was still no game. We relied on dried meat and grains to sustain ourselves. But then, one afternoon, as we set about making camp, a Pukawatchi scout came running down the canyon towards us. He was trembling with news, the horror still on his face.

An avalanche had come down on them. Many Pukawatchi and two Vikings who had lagged behind were buried. It was unlikely they would survive.

Even as the man told his story, there came a rumbling sound from above. The earth quaked and trembled, and a huge rush of snow began to course down the flanks of the canyon. In the aurora of this second avalanche I could have sworn that I saw a great, shadowy figure step from one mountain flank to another. The avalanche had been directed at us, and it seemed, indeed, to have been started by a giant. Then I saw that Prince Lobkowitz had begun to run in the opposite direction to everyone else.

Without thinking, I followed him.

I was running upwards through deep snow. In order to keep up I stepped in his tracks where I could. I heard him calling a name, but the whipping wind took it away. Then the clouds opened, and blue sky filled the horizon and broke over me like a wave. Suddenly everything was in stark contrast to the white of the snow, the deep blue of the sky and the red globe of the falling sun sending golden shadows everywhere. The avalanche was behind us, and I heard nothing of my companions, though every so often the voice of Lobkowitz came back to me as he stumbled on through the snow, sometimes falling, sometimes sliding, in pursuit of the giant.

It was almost sunset by the time I caught up with him. He had stopped on a ridge and was looking down, presumably into a valley, when I joined him.

I saw that the mountains surrounded a vast lake. The ice was turning a pale pink in the light. From the shore a glinting silvery road ran to the center of the lake, to what might have been an island in summertime, and there stood one of the most magnificent buildings I had ever seen. It rivaled the slender towers of Melnibone, the strange pinnacles of the Off-Moo. It rivaled all the other wonders I have ever seen.

A single mighty ziggurat rose tier upon tier into the evening sky, blazing like gold against the setting sun. With walls and walkways and steps, busy with the daily life of any great city. With men, women and children clearly visible as they continued their habitual lives. They were apparently unaware that a black whirlwind shivered and shrieked at the beginning of the silver road to the city. Perhaps it protected the city.

There was a sudden crack, a flap of white wings, and suddenly a large winter crow sat on Lobkowitz's shoulder. He smiled slightly in acknowledgment, but he did not speak.

I turned to ask Prince Lobkowitz a question. His huge hand reached to point out the warrior armed with a bow, who sat upon the back of a black mammoth seemingly frozen in midstride. Was this the enemy Klosterheim kept in check? He was too far away for me to see in any detail. The threatening whirlwind, however, was an old acquaintance, the demon spirit Lord Shoashooan.

Then from behind them I caught another movement and saw something emerging out of the snow. A magnificent white buffalo with huge, curving horns and glaring, red-rimmed blue eyes, which I could see even from here, shook snow from her flanks and trotted past the mammoth and its riders. I could see how big the buffalo was in relation to the mammoth. Her hump almost reached the mammoth's shoulder.

The white buffalo's speed increased to a gallop. Head down, the creature thundered full tilt at the roaring black tornado. From behind me Prince Lobkowitz began to laugh in spontaneous admiration. It was impossible not to applaud the sheer audacity of an animal with the courage to challenge a tornado, the undisputed tyrant of the prairie.

"She is magnificent," he said proudly. "She is everything I ever hoped she would become! How proud you must be, Prince Elric!"