The White Wolf's Son (36 page)

“Isn’t that a bit overambitious?”

“It seems so, doesn’t it, my dear? What is in such men that they must control so much?” She smoothed her dress over her legs.
“They say Hawkmoon or some avatar of his is destined to destroy the Balance. But if they control it, they will take control
of the Grey Fees …”

“The DNA of the multiverse?” Wasn’t that what someone had called it? I hardly knew what they were talking about.

“You are a well-educated child. They believe they can re-create the multiverse in their preferred image. When the mainlanders
Klosterheim and von Minct came to them with the plan, they were skeptical. However, they were at last convinced, partly by
the ease with which those two moved between the various realms of the multiverse.
Our people only had the vaguest of notions of such worlds, though they have been working on a means of traveling to them for
some time. In the
Signatura Rarum
there’s evidence our ancestors had this power and lost it. If Granbretan is able to pass between one world and another easily,
we will find and kill those who conspire against us. Until now, the ability to travel at will between the dimensions has belonged
only to others. That is why you and your brother are so valued, of course, as are your great-grandfather and your grandmother.
Not only does your blood possess the magical properties required to perform the ritual, but your physical capture will bring
the others to us at the right time. And they’ll reveal their secrets because we’ll be able to experiment on them in the optimum
conditions.”

Something nagged at the back of my mind. There was a flaw somewhere in her logic.

“So you want half my family in on this. Are we all going to die?”

“Your bleeding,” she said, “would not mean your dying in the conventional sense. But, of course, it will not be pleasant.
I almost feel sorry for you.”

I suddenly had an image of Mrs. Ackroyd, the farmer’s wife up at Chapel-le-Dale, hanging the pig and slitting its throat in
order to make black pudding. The poor thing squealed horribly while its blood poured into a big bucket. I remember her pushing
her hands down into the bucket, stirring the blood and pulling out strings of some impurity. Even my friends the Ackroyd girls
thought it was gross. I ran away. I didn’t wait for a lift. I ran almost three miles nonstop and was in a bit of a state when
I got to Tower House. My mum and dad were furious when
they heard I’d seen this. They very nearly refused to let me go and play with the Ackroyds after that.

I had this image of myself hung like Mrs. Ackroyd’s pig, and I suddenly felt sick. I asked where the toilet was. One of the
slaves took me to a similar cubicle to the one in Mirenburg, and I threw up some bile, but I wasn’t really that ill. I stayed
there for a bit, just trying to collect my thoughts and wondering how on earth I was going to escape. It might have seemed
hopeless, but it really never occurred to me that I really was in extreme danger. The image of that pig prepared me for it,
though.

I opened the cubicle grille to look out. The young slaves were waiting for me. I couldn’t see a way of escape at that stage,
but I was beginning to get an idea, based on these people’s psychology. The mysterious Jack had got away. He must be very
clever to have done it, considering they’d blinded him. Or did he have friends among the king-emperor’s lackeys?

For the time being, until I got a better idea of my surroundings and my chances of escape, I decided I’d better just go back.
When I returned to the courtyard, Countess Flana was wearing her silver, gold and platinum heron mask again. She had a visitor.
The man had his back to me but wore no mask. I recognized him at once.

She was saying, “The boy is lost again. Would the girl know where he is? If so …”

I heard him reply, “That’s what I came to warn you about. Don’t even break her skin, if you can avoid it. She must stay a
virgin or the blood’s no use to you. With luck, the albino and his bitch-whelp will lead us to the boy. The boy will bring
you the Staff. Without it, the other objects
are useless.” He turned as I came in. His eyes narrowed and hardened.

I looked into the handsome face of a man I had thought our friend, who had been so charming and delightful when we first met,
who had brought Elric to Ingleton and enjoyed our hospitality. A man I had liked and trusted. The balloonist bowed in that
exaggerated way of his, and his smile was hypocrisy itself.

“Good afternoon, young mademoiselle. So pleasant to see you again.” The Chevalier St. Odhran doffed his elaborate bonnet.

Now Hawkmoon, Count Brass and his daughter Isolda, Oladahn of the Bulgar Mountains, all dressed in mirrored, flashing armor,
again led their forces against the armies of Meliadus and his barons. Meliadus fumed. What power did these rebels have that
they could appear and disappear at will, forever choosing the place and time of the most crucial battles
…?

M
EANWHILE
,
AS
L
ORD
Taragorm and Baron Bous-Junge contemplated the ritual which was to end in Oonagh’s terrible death, Elric, searching the worlds
of the moonbeam roads, determined for himself that Klosterheim and von Minct had tricked him. He returned to the world in
which the Dark Empire forces were at bay, and learned from Yaroslaf Stredic that his daughter and the others had arrived and
headed for München. He arrived at the lakeside ruins and found his friends only a few hours after the Granbretanian ships
had left.

The stink of the ornithopters was still in the air. The party had been raided with poison-gas bombs; Elric recognized the
kind. The bolting horses had escaped the worst of
the gas. They now stood some distance away from the ruins, cropping the grass, carriages abandoned. Two of the party were
gone: Oona and Oonagh. The rest had been left to die. Using his own considerable skills in sorcerous alchemy, Elric quickly
revived his friends, learning from them the possible fate of the others.

Lord Renyard was the most agitated. He blamed himself for what had happened. Elric was able to reassure him. “Plots and counterplots,
Lord Renyard, are in the nature of this particular game, where even the loyalties of one’s closest friends are tested. We
have all been deceived by that pair and their allies. I understood Bastable tried to reach you and failed. This complicates
our game. Given the way in which all the realms of the multiverse now arrange themselves in conjunction, I would guess Granbretan
plans to begin their blood ritual very shortly.”

The great fox scratched himself behind his left ear. “Why is that so important to them? Do they serve Chaos or Law? What do
they want?”

“Oh, they’re playing for pretty high stakes, I think. They play for more than either Chaos
or
Law.”

“There’s something more than that?”

Elric turned for help to his friend, Prince Lobkowitz, who walked slapping at his clothing and wrinkling his nose against
the smell. “Something more indeed. They seek the ‘consanguine conduit,’ bringing together all the scattered manifestations
of the Balance itself.”

“The Cosmic Balance? It’s broken?” The fox found his hat and licked at the dusty felt until he was satisfied it was clean
enough to readjust on his head.

“The Cosmic Balance can’t be broken, though perhaps it can be destroyed. It is an idea. But those elements which represent
it only rarely come together. Frequently they take
unfamiliar forms.” Prince Lobkowitz watched as the Kakatanawa rather inexpertly rounded up the horses and, helped by Lieutenant
Fromental, harnessed them to their carriages. “Of course, the Balance itself
is
merely the symbol of the forces which work to control the multiverse, but it is a useful and powerful symbol. Control the
symbol, many believe, and you control both Law and Chaos. Since rational people have never wanted such control, and irrational
people were incapable of achieving it, the theory has still to be tested.”

“It has never been tested? Never? What is this Balance, then? How is it comprised?” Lord Renyard looked on intently as Elric
began to pick through the ruins where the ornithopter had landed, perhaps hoping to find concrete clues to where his daughter
and great-granddaughter had been taken. It seemed obvious that they had been carried off to Granbretan. Probably to Londra.
Few escaped that island, he guessed. He cocked his gloomy head to hear Prince Lobkowitz’s reply.

“Traditionally the Balance comprises a stem, a crosspiece and two bowls suspended on golden chains from the crosspiece. It
combines the essence of both Order and Entropy. The stem is rooted in a great rock sometimes popularly called the Rock of
Ages. Others merely call it ‘the Stone.’ In some parts of the multiverse these elements are themselves individually venerated,
even worshipped. One found its way into legend as Excalibur, Arthur’s sword, which was embedded in a rock before he pulled
it free. Other tales speak of the Stone as the Grail, a giant emerald—not always a magnificent cup—which has the power to
cure the world’s pain. Some believe it is the same thing as the Runestaff, which appears to have the Grail’s properties and
can reveal itself in many forms.”

The fox opened his mouth in a puzzled grin. “I fear, sir, that as a rational creature, ‘tis hard for me to understand such
strange logic …”

Prince Lobkowitz nodded slowly, watching the others and mopping at his neck. Like them he was sweating, probably as a result
of Elric’s potions. “Throughout the multiverse, intelligent, imaginative beings ascribe differing powers and forms to these
symbols,” he said. “The cups, the swords, the rocks, are merely the more familiar forms we choose. Manipulation through representation
is the quest of every alchemist, for instance. That’s the peculiar logic by which we control the elements, which some condemn
as sorcery. Represented by elementals—sentient beings with the power of the tornado or the forest fire, the earthquake or
the storming heavens—these forces are far stronger than anything we can invent or hope to control. Even those above the elementals,
the Lords of the Higher Worlds, who represent our vices and virtues as well as our ambitions and temperaments, our intellect,
our courage, even our morality, would not challenge the power of the Balance. They, too, understand how they must perpetually
struggle, Law against Chaos, in order to maintain the life of the multiverse, to ensure that it grows neither moribund nor
too fecund. Either state is antipathetic to our existence. What’s more, we are ourselves manifestations of those conditions.
That’s perhaps why we exist at all. Through our stories, which are formed from our desires and fears, we create order and
ensure our own existence. The multiverse protects her own security and her own continuing growth by creating those forces
which will, in balance, sustain her. We represent such forces in symbols which we use to interpet and organize that small
part of the multiverse we inhabit and understand.”

Elric came back, having found nothing. “And then,” he said, by way of augmenting Prince Lobkowitz’s explanation, “there are
the Grey Fees.” He allowed himself a thin smile, to which, by way of acknowledgment, Lobkowitz responded.

“The Grey Fees, it’s believed, is the primordial matter which can be given shape entirely by thought and desire,” he said.
“Some who have studied the magical arts are convinced that control of all other elements is as nothing if you control the
Grey Fees. The Balance is the regulator. Destroy that regulator and you personally become regulator, with control of all creation.”

“Aha!” The fox was at last enlightened. “You become God!”

“And that, we are convinced, is the obscenity which the Dark Empire and their allies, von Minct and Klosterheim among them,
wish to manifest, believing that both God and Satan, in their reconciliation, no longer have interest nor the power to manipulate
and control.”

Lord Renyard found this easy to understand. He murmured something about epicurianism and stoicism. “And there will always
be those, too, who by creating conflict manage to take advantage of all sides.”

“This began some centuries ago,” Prince Lobkowitz concluded, “when Prince Elric’s distant relative, Ulric von Bek, was commissioned
by Satan to seek the Holy Grail and thus cure the world’s pain. Your friend, Manfred von Bek, got himself involved in a plot
by the Duchess of Crete and her associates, who wished to find the ultimate alchemical power over nature, which involves,
of course, the ability to control the elements, thus turning lead into gold and so forth. Still later, the present old Count
Ulric forestalled a Nazi plot to gain that power. But Klosterheim and
Gaynor, who cannot easily die, because of their own experiments and skills, continued to seek control of the Grail. That is
what they believe they are doing now, but I suspect Bous-Junge, Taragorm and all those other brilliant, poisoned minds of
Granbretan have even more ambitious plans.”

“If they gain that control—”

“Then we all cease to exist, I fear. However, they are more likely to fail and bring catastrophe down upon themselves. But
even that prospect does not greatly concern our friend Klosterheim. It is
oblivion
he desires, I suspect, and this is his means of finding it.
Annihilation.
Even Gaynor has decided that he would rather die than lose his chance at controlling the very life-stuff of existence. Not
that he fully comprehends what that death will mean for him: an agony of ‘now’ in which he relives the moment before his death
for eternity. For if you would abolish time, you abolish all that makes you a living creature, as opposed to an atomic particle,
which has no history but is re-created over and over again.” Prince Lobkowitz let out a melancholy sigh. He could tell that
not all the assembled party followed his reference to physics. But the expedition was reassembled at last. He looked to Elric.
“What now, old friend?”

Elric was troubled. “Apparently, we’ve been outmaneuvered by our enemies. Granbretan and her allies now possess at least two
of the elements they seek, and will do everything they can to gather the rest. Even the Black Sword isn’t safe from them.
We gamble everything on this game—as, I suspect, do they.”