Revenge of the Rose (24 page)

 
          
“Thus
did I achieve my end and Lord Nesvek found it impossible, of course, to refuse
a suitor who could build such a magnificent monument to God, and at monumental
cost, quite evidently.

 
          
“Meanwhile,
of course, the poor troll-wife, the source of my salvation, was beaten
regularly by her infuriated spouse and I began the building of our estate,
about a mile from Kallundborg, where I had built the church and would be able
to see the spire from my new house’s tower. The building went well, even
without trollish labour, and soon the hall was raised, with good outhouses and
cottages for the servants, on prime land, thanks to my Helva’s dowry. Thus were
we all accommodated, it seemed. Until the coming of the wolf to our land that
next winter, when we settled to enjoy the long nights with merriment and
stories and all manner of festivity, as well as the hard work of winter
stock-caring. Made harder, now, because of our wolf. A huge beast, twice the
weight and bulk of a tall man, the wolf had killed dogs, cattle, sheep and a
child in its search for food. Few bones had been found, and those gnawed
through for the marrow, as if the wolf fed cubs as well as itself. Which we
found strange for dead of winter, though it has been known for wolves to bear
more than one litter in a year, especially after a mild previous winter and an
early spring. Then the wolf killed the pregnant wife of my steward and carried
off what remains we did not find in the shallow hole it had rested in while it
devoured the flesh it needed to continue its rapid escape from us. For, of
course, we pursued it.

 
          
“One
by one the other men gave up, for a variety of reasons which the steward and I
accepted with good grace, and then there were only the two of us following the
wolf’s trail into a deep, wooded ravine, until one night the wolf leapt over
the fires we had built, believing ourselves safe, and took my steward—killing
him before he dragged him off through the fires as if they did not exist.

 
          
“I
will admit, Prince Elric, that I was near-frozen with terror! Though I had shot
arrows at the beast and cut at it with my sword, I had not harmed it. The
wounds I made healed immediately. I knew then—and only then, sir—that I was
dealing with no natural animal.”

 
          
For
a little while Esbern Snare inched his way along the path, to keep circulation
and in the hope of reaching a better thoroughfare before nightfall. When next
they took breath, he concluded his story.

 
          
“I
continued to track the beast, though I believe it thought itself free of
pursuit—perhaps deliberately killing my steward, not because it was hungry, but
because it wished to be rid of our company. Indeed, I found most of his remains
a day later and was surprised to discover that what I assumed to be some human
traveler had helped itself to the dead man’s effects, though the clothes, of
course, were too bloody and torn to be of use.

 
          
“I
grew so angry and greedy for revenge that I could no longer sleep. Unrested and
yet untired now, I kept up a steady pursuit until one night, under a
three-quarter moon, I came upon a human camp. It was a woman who camped there.
I watched her through the trees, too cautious to announce myself, yet ready to
defend her if the wolf attacked. Now, to my concern, I saw that she had two
small children with her, a boy and a girl, both clad in a mixture of animal
hides and a miscellany of other garments, who were eating soup from a pot she
had built over her fire. The woman looked weary and I assumed she was fleeing
from some brutish husband, or that her village had been destroyed by raiders—for
we were now on the borderland between the Northern people and the Easterners,
those cruel nomads who are without Christian religion nor any pagan honesty.
Yet something in me still kept me back. I realized at length that I was using
her as a lure—as bait for the wolf. Well, the wolf did not come, and as I
watched I took note of everything within that camp, until I saw the great
wolfskin which hung upon the tree under which she slept with her children, and
I took it for some kind of charm, some way in which the wolf could be resisted.
So I watched another day and another night, following the woman up towards the
far mountains, where the savage Eastern nomads roamed, and I thought to warn
her of her danger, yet it was becoming gradually clear to me that she was not
the one who was in danger. Her movements were sure, and she cared for her
children with the air of someone who had long lived a wild life beyond the very
outposts of civilization. I admired her. She was a good-looking woman and the
way she moved made me forget my marriage oath. Perhaps, too, I watched her for
that reason. I began to feel a sense of power in this observation, this secret
knowledge of her. I know now that I did, indeed, possess a kind of power which
only those of her like might possess and those were the only creatures whose
presence she could not detect. Had another been with me, she would have known
at once.

 
          
“It
was on the night of the full moon that I saw her take out the folded wolfskin
and drape it around her shoulders, saw her drop to all fours and in a
bewildering instant stand, growling faintly at the children to stay close to
the fire, looking out into the night, an enormous wolf. Yet still she did not
see me, did not scent me. I was invisible to her supernatural senses. She moved
off towards the mountains and was back at
noon
that next day with a kill, some nomad boy,
probably a herder, and two lambs, which she had dragged, using the boy’s body
as a kind of sledge. The human remains she left for herself, but assumed her
woman form once she had brought the lambs into camp. These she prepared for her
children. Later that evening, as they ate the rich-smelling stew she had cooked,
she returned to her human kill and devoured a good deal of him, almost
certainly in wolf shape. I was too cautious to get closer to her.

 
          
“By
now, of course, I understood that the woman was a werewolf. A werewolf of
special ferocity, since she had two human cubs to feed. These little creatures
were innocent children and had no lycanthropic taint. My guess was that she had
taken to this life from desperation, in order that her children should not
starve. Yet this had meant other children would starve and more would die,
merely to sustain her brood, so my sympathy was limited. As soon as she slept
that night, glutted with food, I gathered the courage to sneak into the camp,
tear the wolfskin from the tree and make my way back into the forest.

 
          
“She
awakened almost immediately, but now that I possessed the skin, with which she
transformed herself into an invincible beast, I knew I was safe. From the
shadows I spoke to her. ‘Madam, I have the frightful thing you have used to
kill my friends and their families. It will be burned outside the
church
of
Kallundborg
when I return! I would not kill a mother
before her own children, so while you are with them you are safe from my
vengeance. I bid thee farewell.’

 
          
“At
which the poor creature began to wail and scream—quite unlike the
self-possessed mother who had cared for her young in the wild. But I would not
listen to her. I knew she must be punished. What I did not know then, of
course, was how cruel her punishment would be. ‘Do you understand how I must
survive if you take away my skin?’ she asked. ‘Aye, madam, I do,’ said
I.
‘But you must suffer those consequences
now. There is meat enough for several days in your pot—and a little meat left
outside your camp, which I do not think you are too squeamish to use. So farewell
again, madam. This evil thing will be burning soon upon a Christian pyre.’

 
          
“ ‘You
must have pity,’ she said, ‘for you are of my blood. Few can change as I can
change—as you can change. Only you could steal that skin. I knew that I should
fear you more. Yet I spared you, for I recognized my kindred. Would you not,
sir, show loyalty to our common blood and spare my children their unthinkable
fate?’

 
          
“But
I listened no more and I left. As I went away she set up a terrible wailing and
howling—a screaming and begging—a bestial, horrible whining—as she called out
for her only means of any dignity, any vestige of humanity. That is the final
irony of the Undead—that they cling to such shreds of human pride—cling to the
memory of the very thing they have bartered in order to become what they have
become! Surely the worst fate, I thought, that a werewolf could know. But there
are worse fates than that, sir—or at least refinements on them. I left that
wolf-woman howling and slavering—already a maddened wretch. It was almost
impossible to imagine such agony as she already expressed, let alone imagine
the pain to come.

 
          
“Oh,
well, sir, the story’s the usual miserable tale of folly and expediency you
know so well. Trapped by the winter of the Eastern wastes, I resorted to using
the skin myself. By the time I returned to Kallundborg I was wedded to it more
powerfully than I was wedded to my sweetheart and my wife, Helva of Nesvek. I
sought religious help and found only horror at my tale. Thus I left to wander
the world, seeking some salvation, some means of returning to the past I had
known, of being reunited with my darling. More unearthly adventures befell me,
sir, from Sphere to Sphere, and then I learned that the troll itself sought
vengeance and tricked some cleric, some visiting bishop, into a bargain that
brought down the whole cathedral while the larger part of the population, my
wife among them, prayed for my lost soul …

 
          
“That
is what Gaynor promised to tell me—the fate of my wife. And that is why I weep now,
sir, so long after the event.”

 
          
Elric
could find no words of reply and none of consolation for this good man cursed
to rely for his only existence upon that horrible skin, forced to perform the
most inhuman acts of evil savagery or go forever into nothingness, never to be
united with his lost love, even in death.

 
          
Perhaps
it was not therefore surprising that Elric fingered the pommel of his hellsword
and thought deeply upon his own relationship with the blade and saw in poor
Esbern Snare a fate more terrible than his own.

 
          
The
next time he extended a generous hand to the grey man as he stumbled through
the twilight, there was a peculiar sense of kinship in the gesture. Slowly, the
two whose stories were so different, and whose fates were so similar, continued
their progress along that narrow ridge of rock above the sinister whisper of
water as it cut its way through the snows of the ravine.

 
          
Detecting
Certain Hints of the Higher Worlds; A Convention of the Patrons and the
Patronized; Sacrifice of the Sane and Good
.

 
          
Prince
Gaynor the Damned paused upon the rocky slopes of the last mountain and peered
across a waste of scrub grass towards a far distant range. “This land seems all
mountains,” he said. “Perhaps, however, that is the rim of the far shore? The
sisters must be close. We could scarcely miss them on this barren plain.”

 
          
They
had eaten the last of their food and still had seen no signs of animals on
earth or in the sky.

 
          
“It’s
as if it never had inhabitants,” said Esbern Snare. “As if life has been exiled
from this plain completely.”

 
          
“I’ve
seen such sights before,” Elric told him. “They make me uncomfortable—for it
can be a sign that Law has conquered everything or that Chaos rules, as yet
unmanifested …”

 
          
They
agreed that they had all shared such experiences, but now Gaynor grew even more
impatient, exhorting them to make better speed towards the mountains, “lest the
sisters take ship from the farther shore,” but Esbern Snare, sustained neither
by whatever hellish force fed Gaynor nor by the dragon venom which Elric used,
grew hungry and began to fall back, fingering the bundle he carried, and
sometimes Elric thought he heard him slavering and growling to himself and when
he turned once to enquire, he looked into eyes of purest suffering.

 
          
When
they broke camp next morning, Esbern Snare, the Northern Werewolf, was gone,
succumbing to the temptation which had already destroyed any hope that was ever
in him. Twice, Elric thought he heard a mournful howling which was echoed by
the mountains and so impossible to trace. Then, once more, there was nothing
but silence.

 
          
For
a day and a night, Elric and Gaynor exchanged not one word but marched in a
kind of dogged trance towards the mountains. With the following dawn, however,
they found that the plain was rising slightly, in a gentle hill, beyond which
they thought they could detect the faintest sounds of a settlement, perhaps
even a large town.

 
          
Gaynor,
in good spirits, clapped Elric upon the back and said, almost jauntily, “Soon,
friend Elric, we shall both have what we seek!”

 
          
And
Elric said nothing, wondering what Gaynor would do if, by some strange chance,
they both sought the same thing—or, at least, the same container. And this made
him think of the Rose again and he mourned the loss of her.

 
          
“Perhaps
we should determine the exact nature of our quest,” he said, “lest we are
unprepared when we eventually meet the sisters.”

 
          
Gaynor
shrugged. He turned his helm towards Elric and his eyes seemed less troubled
than they had been of late. “We do not seek the same thing, Elric of Melniboné,
of that you can be assured.”

 
          
“I
seek a rosewood box,” said Elric bluntly.

 
          
“And
I seek a flower,” said Gaynor carelessly, “that has bloomed since time began.”

 
          
They
were close to the brow of the hill now and had almost reached it when the earth
was suddenly shaken by an enormous booming which threatened to throw them off
their balance. Again came the great reverberant noise. Seemingly some vast gong
was being struck, and struck again, until Elric was covering his ears, while
Gaynor had fallen to one knee, as if pressed to the ground by a gigantic hand.

 
          
Ten
times in all the great gong sounded, but its reverberations continued, almost
endlessly, to shake the crags of the surrounding mountains.

 
          
Able
to move forward again, Elric and Gaynor reached the top of the hill to stare
upwards at the enormous construction which, both could have sworn, had not been
there even a moment before. Yet here it was in all its solid and complicated
detail, a network of wooden gantries and monstrous cogs, all creaking and
groaning and turning with slow precision, while metal whirled and flashed
within—copper and bronze and silver wires and levers and balances, forming
impossible patterns, peculiar diffractions—revealing the thousands of human
figures toiling upon this vast framework, turning the handles, walking the
treadmills, carrying the sand or the pails of water up and down the walkways,
balancing between pegs which were carefully placed to maintain some delicate
internal equilibrium, and the whole thing shuddering as if it must fall at any
moment and send every naked man, woman and child who worked perpetually upon it
to their immediate destruction. At the very top of this tower was a large globe
which Elric thought at first must be of crystal but then he realized it
consisted entirely of the strongest ectoplasmic membrane he had ever seen—and
he guessed at once what the membrane imprisoned, for there was scarcely a
sorcerer on Earth who had not sought its secret …

 
          
Gaynor,
too, understood what the membrane contained and it was clear he feared what
must soon be revealed as that vast, unearthly skeleton-clock measured off the
moments and a humorous voice spoke casually from nowhere.

 
          
“See,
my little treasures, how Arioch brings time to a timeless world? Merely one of
the small benefits of Chaos. It is my homage to the Cosmic Balance.”

 
          
And
his laughter was hideous in its easy cruelty.

 
          
The
immense clock clicked and clattered, whirred and grunted, and the structure
trembled, shivering with every movement, while from within the globular
membrane at the very top, which turned and shook with the passing of each
second, an angry eye occasionally appeared, while a fanged mouth raged in
supernatural silence and claws, fiercer than any dragon’s, flashed and
scratched and tore, but never with effect, for the entity was trapped within
the most powerful prison known in, below or beyond the Higher Worlds. The only
entity Elric knew which required such bonds to hold it was a Lord of the Higher
Worlds!

 
          
Now
Gaynor, realizing the same thing at the same time, took steps backwards and
looked about him, as if he might find some sudden refuge, but there was none
and Arioch laughed the louder at his dismay. “Aye, little Gaynor, your silly
strategies have gained you nothing. When will you all learn that you have
neither the resources nor, indeed, the character required to gamble against the
gods, even such petty gods as myself and Count Mashabak here?” The laughter was
richer now.

 
          
This
was what Gaynor had feared. His master, the only creature capable of protecting
him against Arioch, had lost whatever engagement had taken place between them.
And this meant, too, that Sadric’s attempt to cheat his patrons of their
tribute might also have failed.

 
          
Yet
Gaynor had lost too much already, faced too much horror, contemplated too many
repellent fates, caused and observed too much suffering, to show any distress
of his own. He drew himself up, his hands folded before him, and lowered his helmeted
head in the slightest of acknowledgments. “Then I must call thee master now,
Lord Arioch,” he said.

 
          
“Aye.
Always thy true master. Always the master concerned for his slaves. I take a
great interest in the activities of my little humans, for in so many ways their
ambitions and dreams mirror those of the gods. Arioch was ever the Duke of Hell
most mortals turn to when they have need of Chaos’s ministrations. And I love
thee. But I love the folk of Melniboné most, and of these I love Sadric and
Elric most of all.”

 
          
And
Gaynor waited, his helm still slightly bowed, as if expecting some doom of
singular and exquisite savagery.

 
          
“See
how I protect my slaves,” Arioch continued, still invisible, his voice moving
from one part of the valley to the next, yet always intimate, always amused. “The
clock sustains their lives. Should any one of them, old or young, for a moment
fail in their specific function, the whole structure will collapse. Thus do my
creatures learn the true nature of interdependence. One peg in the wrong
socket, one pail of water in the wrong sluice, one false step upon a treadmill,
one hesitant hand upon a lever, and all are destroyed. To continue to live,
they must work the clock, and each creature is responsible for the lives of all
the rest. While my friend Count Mashabak up there would not, of course, be
greatly harmed, there would be a certain pleasure for me in watching his little
prison rolling about at random amongst the ruins. Do you see your ex-master,
Gaynor? What was it he told you to seek?”

 
          
“A
flower, master. A flower that has lived for thousands of years, since it was
first plucked.”

 
          
“I
wonder why Mashabak would not tell me that himself. I am pleased with thee,
Gaynor. Wouldst thou serve me?”

 
          
“As
thou wishest, master.”

 
          
“Sweet
slave, I love thee again! Sweet, sweet, obedient slave! Oh, how I love thee!”

 
          
“And
I love thee, master,” came Gaynor’s bitter response—a voice that had known
millennia of defeat and frustrated longing. “I am thy slave.”

 
          
“My
slave! My lovely slave! Wouldst thou not remove thine helm and reveal thy face
to me?”

 
          
“I
cannot, master. There is nothing to reveal.”

 
          
“As
thou art nothing, Gaynor, save for the life I permit in thee. Save for the
forces of the pit which empower thee. Save for the all-consuming greed which
informs thee. Wouldst thou have me destroy thee, Gaynor?”

 
          
“If
it pleases thee, master.”

 
          
“I
think you should work for a while upon the clock. Would you serve me there,
Gaynor? Or would you continue your quest?”

 
          
“As
it pleases thee, Lord Arioch.”

 
          
Elric,
sickened by this, found himself full of a peculiar self-loathing. Was it his
fate, also, to serve Chaos as thoroughly as Gaynor served it—without even the
remains of self-respect or will? Was this the final price one paid for all
bargains with Chaos? And yet he knew his own doom was not the same, that he was
still cursed with a degree of free will. Or was that merely an illusion with
which Arioch softened the truth? He shuddered.

 
          
“And
Elric, would you work upon the clock?”

 
          
“I
would destroy thee first, Lord Arioch,” said the albino coolly, his hand upon
the hilt of his hellsword. “My compacts with thee are of blood and ancient
inheritance. I made no special bargain of my soul. ’Tis others’ souls, my lord,
I dedicate to thee.”

 
          
He
sensed within himself now some strength which even the Duke of Hell could not
annihilate—some small part of his soul which remained his own. Yet, also, he
saw a future where that tiny fragment of integrity could dissipate and leave
him as empty of hope and self-respect as Gaynor the Damned …

 
          
His
glance at the ex-Prince of the Universal held no contempt—only a certain
understanding and affinity with the wretched creature Gaynor had become. He was
but a step away from that ultimate indignity.

 
          
There
came a kind of thin screech from the ectoplasmic prison and Count Mashabak
seemed to take some small pleasure in his rival’s discomfort.

 
          
“Thou
art my slave, Elric, make no mistake,” purred the Chaos Lord. “And will ever
remain so, as all your ancestors were mine …”

 
          
“Save
one before me,” Elric said firmly. “The bargain was broken by another, Lord
Arioch. I have inherited no such thing. I told thee, my lord—when thou aidest
me, I giveth thee the immortal plundering to thyself—souls like these, who
worketh thine clock. These, great Duke of Hell, I do not begrudge thee, neither
am I sparing in the numbers I allot thee. Without my summoning, as thou
knowest, it is all but impossible for any Lord of the Higher Worlds to get to
my
world and upon that world I am the
most powerful of all mortal sorcerers. Only I have the native powers to call to
thee across the dimensions of the multiverse and provide a psychic path which
thou canst follow. That thou knowest. That is why I live. That is why thou
aideth me. I am the key which one day Chaos hopes to turn and open wide all the
doors throughout the unconquered multiverse. That is my greatest power. And,
Lord Arioch, it is mine to use as I desire, to bargain with as I choose and
with whom I choose. It is my strength and my shield against all supernatural
fierceness and threatening demands. I accept thee as my patron, Noble Demon,
but not as my master.”