Revenge of the Rose (18 page)

 
          
While,
at the same moment something within him warned him that what he saw might be an
illusion or worse: it could be someone whom illusion had consumed, who had
given themselves up wholly to Chaos and was nothing more than Gaynor’s
marionette.

 
          
Yet,
by her walk and the way she had of looking about her, alert and cheerful as she
seemed, Elric could hardly believe she was unwillingly in Gaynor’s service.

 
          
He
left the window and went to greet her as the door was opened by Ernest
Wheldrake, whose bright blue eyes went wide as he piped, with joyful surprise:

 
          
“Why,
Charion Phatt, disguised as a boy! I am in love! You have grown up!”

 
          
In
Which Old Acquaintanceships Are Resumed and New Agreements Reached
.

 
          
Charion
Phatt had reached womanhood since their last meeting and there was something
about her which suggested her air of confidence was founded on faith in
herself, rather than any artificial bravado. She was only a little surprised to
see Wheldrake and even as she grinned a greeting at him her eyes searched
inside the inn and found Elric.

 
          
“I
bring an invitation from the ship’s master for you—for you gentlemen—to join
him this evening,” she murmured.

 
          
“How
long have you been in Prince Gaynor’s service, Mistress Phatt?” asked Elric,
with proper care to keep his tone neutral.

 
          
“Long
enough, Prince Elric—more or less since I last saw you—that dawn on the gypsy
bridge …”

 
          
“And
your family?”

 
          
She
smoothed chestnut hair against the lace and silk of her shirt. Her lids for a
second hid her eyes. “They, sir? Why, I’m in alliance with Prince Gaynor on
account of them. We are seeking them and have been seeking them since that
great destruction.”

 
          
And
briefly she explained how Gaynor had found her imprisoned as a witch in a
distant realm and had told her that he, too, sought her uncle and grandmother,
since they alone, he believed, could tread with any certainty the pathways
between the dimensions and lead him to the three sisters.

 
          
“You
are certain they survived?” asked Wheldrake gently.

 
          
“Uncle
and Grandmama, at least,” she said, “of those I’m certain. And I think little
Koropith is further off—or veiled from me, perhaps. I’d guess something of him
continues to exist—somewhere …” Then she took her leave of them and walked
on into the town to buy, she said, a few luxuries.

 
          
“I
am truly, truly in love,” Wheldrake confided to his friend, who refrained from
suggesting that there was a certain unsuitability in their ages. Wheldrake was
approaching fifty, he would guess, and the young woman was not much more than
eighteen.

 
          
“Such
differences as exist between us mean nothing when two hearts beat in harmony,”
said Wheldrake rapturously, and it was not certain if he quoted himself or some
admired peer.

 
          
Elric
fell silent, ignoring his friend’s effusions, and wondering at the ways of the
multiverse, this environment which, as a sorcerer, he had until then only
understood in terms of symbols.

 
          
He considers the symbol of the Balance, of
that equilibrium which once all philosophers strove to achieve, until, by
expediency or by threats to their lives and souls, they began to strike
bargains, some with Law but mostly with Chaos, which is an element closer to
the natures of most sorcerers. And so they ensured that they could never reach
the goal for which they had been trained: For which some of them had been born:
For which a few of them were fated. These last were the ones who understood the
great perversion which had taken place, who understood all that they had given
up
.

 
          
Gaynor, ex-Prince of the Universal,
understood better than any other, for he had known perfection and lost it
.

 
          
It is at this moment, as he closes the door
to an ordinary inn, that Elric realizes his terror has turned to something
else, a kind of determination. A kind of cold insanity. He gambles not only
upon his own soul’s fate, not only upon his father’s—but far more. Rather than
continue to be baffled by events, controlled by them, he makes up his mind to
enter the game between the gods, and play it to the full, play it for himself
and his mortal friends, the remaining creatures that he loves—for Tanelorn.
This is no more than a promise he makes within himself, as yet scarcely
coherent—but it will become the foundation of his future actions, this refusal
to accept the Tyranny of Fate, to let his destiny be moved by every whim of
some half-bestial divinity, whose only right over him is due to the superior
power he wields. It is a reality his father accepted, even as he played the game,
subtly and carefully, with his life and soul as the main stake—it is a reality,
however, that Elric is beginning to refuse …

 
          
There is in him, too, another kind of
coldness, the coldness of anger at any creature that can casually have so many
of its fellows slain. It is an anger
not
only directed at Gaynor, but at himself. Perhaps that is why he fears Gaynor so
much, because they are almost the same creature. If some philosophies were to
be believed, they could indeed be aspects of a single creature. Deep memories
stir in him but are unwelcome. He drives them down to where they lurk again,
like the beasts of some impossible deep, terrifying all that encounter them,
but themselves terrified by the light …

 
          
That other part of Elric, the part that is
all Melnibonéan, chides him for a fool, wasting time with useless niceties of
conscience and suggests that an alliance with Gaynor might give them, together,
the power he desires to challenge—and perhaps even vanquish
.

 
          
Or, even a temporary truce between the two
would gain him, perhaps, his immediate needs—though what then? What would take
place when Arioch demanded everything he had enjoined Elric to find? Could a
Duke of Hell be tricked, even defeated, banished from a certain plane, by a
mortal?

 
          
Elric realizes that these are the ideas
which brought his father to his present dilemma and, with a sardonic smile, he
settles back behind his bench to enjoy his interrupted breakfast
.

 
          
He will decide nothing until this evening,
when he dines aboard Gaynor’s ship
.

 
          
Wheldrake looks once more after the
departing beauty, takes parchment from one pocket, pen from another, a
traveling inkwell from his top left waistcoat pocket, and begins first a
sestina,
next a
roundelay,
then a
villanelle,
until settling again upon the
sestina …

 
          
This was the measure of my soul’s delight;

 
          
It had no power of joy to fly by day
,

 
          
Nor part in the large lordship of the light;

 
          
But in a secret moon-beholden way

 
          
Had all its will of dreams and pleasant
night
,

 
          
And all the love and life that sleepers may
.

 
          
Whereupon the Prince of Ruins slips away,
back to his maps and his particular problems, as Wheldrake pauses, sighs, and
makes a stab this time at a sonnet …

 
          
“Or
I had thought, perhaps, after all, an Ode. Along the lines, perhaps, of
something I wrote in Putney.

 
          
“Golden
eastern waters rocked the cradle where she slept

 
          
Songless,
crowned with bays to be of sovereign song,

 
          
Breathed
upon with balm and calm of bounteous seas that kept

 
          
Secret
all the blessing of her birthright, strong,

 
          
Soft,
severe, and sweet as dawn when first it laughed and leapt

 
          
Forth
of heaven, and clove the clouds that
wrought it wrong!

 
          
“Good
evening, Prince Gaynor. I trust you have an explanation for your destruction of
a nation? Your sophistries should, at least, be entertaining.” The little poet
looked up at the mysterious helm, his knuckles upon his hips, his beak flaring
with disdain, unmoved by fear of Gaynor’s power, nor of any social stricture to
hold his tongue on the subject of his host’s genocide as he stepped aboard the
ship.

 
          
Elric,
for his part, said little, keeping a distance between himself and the others,
which he had once been taught to do as a matter of course, as a Melnibonéan
princeling. This coolness was new to Wheldrake but would have been very
familiar to Moonglum, were he here and not, perhaps, still in Tanelorn. Elric
adopted the manner when circumstances led him once more towards a kind of
cynicism, that cynicism oddly tinged with other qualities, harder to judge or
to define. The long-fingered bone-white hand hung upon the pommel of the
massive runesword and the head was set at a certain angle, as if further
withdrawn, while the brooding crimson eyes held a humour which, on occasions,
even the Lords of the Higher Worlds had considered dangerous. Yet he bowed. He
made a movement with his free hand. He looked steadily into the eyes behind the
helm, the eyes that smoked and glittered and writhed with the fires of hell.

 
          
“Good
evening, Prince Gaynor.” There was at once a softness and a steely sharpness to
Elric’s voice which reminded Wheldrake of a cat’s claws sheathed in downy fur.

 
          
The
ex-Prince of the Balance cocked his head a little to one side, perhaps in
irony, and spoke with that musical voice which had served Chaos as a lure for
so many centuries. “I am glad to see you, Master Wheldrake. I have only
recently learned we should experience the privilege of your company. Though I
was told by mutual friends that you, Elric, could be found in Ulshinir.” He
shrugged away the question. “We have, whatever you may call it, some kind of
fresh luck forming, it seems. Or are we mere ingredients? Eggs in some mad god’s
omelette? My chef is excellent, by the way. Or so I’m told.”

 
          
Then
here came Mistress Charion Phatt, in black and white velvet and lace, her
youthful beauty shining like a jewel from its box.

 
          
Half-swooning,
Master Wheldrake made his elaborate courtesies, which she received with amused
good will and drew him to her as they strolled towards the forward cabin where
the looming shadow of that peculiar cargo rocked and shifted on the roof above
and which Prince Gaynor and Charion Phatt both ignored as if they heard or saw
nothing out of place.

 
          
Then
came the dining. Elric, who frequently cared nothing for the refinements of
appetite, found the food as delicious as Gaynor had promised. The damned prince
told a tale of a voyage to Aramandy and the Mallow Country there to find
Xermenif Blüche, the Master Chef of Volofar. And they might have been dining
again amongst the wealthy intelligentsia of Trollon, heedless of any unusual
circumstances—of warring gods, of stolen souls and lost clairvoyants and so on—and
commenting on the delicacy of the mousse.

 
          
Prince
Gaynor, in a carved black chair at the head of his table, which was swathed with
a dark scarlet cloth, turned an enigmatic helm towards Elric and said that he
had always preserved certain standards, even when in battle or in command of
semi-brutes, as one so frequently was, these days. One had after all, he added
in some amusement, to control what one could, especially since one’s fate grew
so unmalleable as the Conjunction approached.

 
          
Elric
had heard little of this and he moved impatiently in his seat, pushing away the
plates and cutlery. “Will you tell us, Prince Gaynor, why you make us your
guests here?”

 
          
“
If you will tell me, Elric, why you fear me!
”
said Gaynor in a sudden whisper, the cold of limbo slicing into Elric’s soul.

 
          
But
Elric held his psychic ground, conscious of Gaynor’s testing him.

 
          
“I
fear you because you are prepared to go to any ends to achieve your own death.
And since life has no value to you, you are to be feared as all such animals
are feared. For you desire power only for that most selfish of all ends, and
therefore you know no boundaries in the seeking and the gaining of it. That is
why I fear you, Gaynor the Damned. And that is why you
are
damned.”