The White Wolf, page 101
Oona got up, suddenly invigorated, and moved towards him.
“The rest of you must finish this,” Elric panted. “I’ve done what I must, and the Sword will serve me again, never fear. This is my bargain with it. But I will try to destroy the Balance. Erekosë—Hawkmoon—all that I am, was or will be…”
Those were the last words I would hear him say.
Oona had reached the great emerald stone. She took first one bowl and then the other and hung them by their chains from Stormbringer’s guard. They were in perfect balance. She smiled, her skin bathed in the light from each of the components. She looked towards her father.
Before our eyes, Elric fell stiffly backward through a circle of crystal pillars, whose tops formed into elongated icicles racing ahead of him as he fell up an infinitely growing circle, whose slopes became increasingly angular, turning from white to dark blue to deep, pulsing green. I myself desperately wanted to follow him, to go with him into his own vanishing dream. But he faded and disappeared, as if he had never existed.
I stumbled. A hand was on my shoulder. Refusing my wish to follow him, Oona held me back. “Let them go,” she said.
“Them?”
I looked up into her face. It was a mask of grief. Then I saw her grief change to alarm. To determination. I followed her gaze.
Two more men had appeared from nowhere. They were standing on either side of the Balance. One was black, handsome, massive. The other was white, wiry, grim. Yet both looked like brothers—twins, even! Were these the real siblings von Minct and Klosterheim had discovered in all their magical scrying? Both bore huge black broadswords like Elric’s. The white man had a black, pulsing jewel embedded in his forehead. Slowly they turned to regard the Balance. Then, as if for the first time, they saw each other!
With a terrible cry the black man lifted his sword. Not against the white man—but against the Balance itself!
“No!” cried Oona. “Erekosë! Now is not the time!” Staggering towards the ghostly pair, she lifted her hands. “No. The Balance is needed. Without it, Elric dies for nothing!”
For a second the black man turned, frowning.
This gave the white man his moment. He drove his own sword deep into the black man’s heart. Erekosë gasped. He struggled, trying to tug the sword from his body. The jewel in the white man’s skull blazed with dark fire as the black man died. But there was no joy or triumph in the victor’s face. Instead, he wept. And Oona wept with him.
Oona leaned back heavily against the sides of the amphitheatre, clearly relieved. I watched in astonishment as slowly the black man seemed to be drawn up the length of his enemy’s blade, drawn into the metal and then into his body until there was nothing of him left. Then the white man collapsed to the ground, the Black Jewel growing dull, as if it died with him.
St Odhran walked slowly and stiffly to look down on the corpse. Then he knelt, reaching for the white man’s clenched left hand. St Odhran prised the fingers open and took something from them. Whatever it was, he put it in his own pocket. Robbing the dead, I thought. But this was all over my head.
“It’s done,” said St Odhran. “For now, it’s done.”
“Who is he?” I whispered. “What is he?”
“Merely another fragment of the whole.” St Odhran sighed heavily, cradling the dead man in his arms. “He’s served his turn. As most of us have.” He looked down at the dead man. “Eh, Hawkmoon, old comrade?” And then, to my further amazement, the white man began to fade until St Odhran’s arms were empty. I felt I would never understand fully what had gone on here. The Balance pulsed, alive, it seemed to me, with the souls of those who had died in its restoration.
St Odhran stood up and went over to Jack. The look in his eyes seemed to be one of pity.
Turning her eyes from the Balance, Oona led me over to Jack and St Odhran. We were all exhausted, and I was aching horribly. She took St Odhran’s hand.
He bowed and kissed her fingers. “Madame.” They seemed to share a secret moment.
“What’s this about?” I said. I suppose I was showing my “usual impatience,” as Mum and Dad call it, with other people’s intimate moments.
“I’m sorry, little mademoiselle, if I appeared to disappoint you.” St Odhran drew a deep breath and smiled with all his old, sunny charm. “We told you, I think, that each and every one of us had a specific part to play if we were to succeed in restoring the Balance and defeat those who’d use it for evil.
“I elected to deceive our opponents by pretending to make a forgery of Elric’s sword, because a sword had to be introduced into their equation. But the black sword I brought here was Mournblade, the twin of Stormbringer. The other, the white blade, was the forgery. We had to make them think they were winning, or those four would never have gathered in this place for their ceremony. We might never have been able to forestall ’em as we did. It was a dangerous chance, of course, but we had to take it. Everything was done according to careful calculations, considering all the risks. I couldn’t let you know the risk, or you would not have responded in the genuine way needed. There’s been nothing that’s happened, nothing that’s been avoided, that wasn’t planned either by their side or ours. Our only grief was that while we tried to protect you at all times, we gambled with the lives of our children. A very hard decision.
“We are engaged in a momentous war, and this has been the subtlest part of our strategy. We needed to make them become self-assured and unguarded, to believe the real power was all theirs, before we could strike in unison. Hawkmoon’s advance, Colonel Bastable’s aerial voyage, your capture, our arriving in time—everything was planned. Everything but that final scene. Those men—”
But I didn’t want him to tell me any more. I just couldn’t take it.
“I told them I wasn’t Jack’s twin,” I said lamely. I wasn’t entirely happy to hear I’d been used as a cat’s-paw.
“That’s right, you’re not,” said my grandmother. “I am. But those fools never did discover the true nature of time. They would have done irreparable damage. Of course, I am not your father’s mother, as you doubtless know. Your father is one of our adopted children. Your grandfather and I wanted to lead normal lives as ordinary people. But I’m almost immortal, and your grandfather was not. He was, however, the most courageous man I ever knew, and the sanest. And I’m proud of your mother. We never planned to have our own children, because we hoped to lift the family curse.”
“And did you?”
“Not really,” she said. With the same grieving air, she reached towards Jack and embraced him. “You’re my brother, Jack, as you know. A near-immortal like our own mother and father. In time it will be impossible to tell us apart by our ages. Whatever curves we followed in the moonbeam roads brought us out at a time a shade different from our original birthplace at the edge of the Grey Fees.”
I saw then that Jack’s blind eyes were full of tears. I was so touched for him that I didn’t realise myself that I was beginning to fall in love.
“Now Gaynor’s soul is trapped in the Black Sword,” said St Odhran, “and the sword is more powerful, ready for the task it is to perform in Elric’s world. The rest of Gaynor’s physical substance is scattered and transformed. Yet it must be recognised that another Gaynor will come eventually, and another, to be first an idealist, a champion fighting for our great cause, and then a renegade, prepared to commit any savagery, any cruelty, any treachery to win power over that which he once served. But for the moment our business is done. Now only Elric lives on in his own world, to call upon his sword for that one final time, when he will bear it against the overwhelming forces of Chaos and seek, with the Horn of Fate, to herald in the dawn of another age.”
I was still wary of St Odhran. I’m not one to bear a grudge, but I do have a strong sense of justice when someone’s done me a wrong. “You pushed me,” I said. “Twice.”
He shook his head and straightened himself. “God love us, mademoiselle, but I’d relied upon you staying put. So then I had to come searching for you in the hope I’d find you before someone else did. Then, when I did discover you near one of the old elevator shafts which acts these days to ventilate this place, I had all those troops around me and was watched from afar by Taragorm as well. All I could do was push you into that shaft, knowing that at least I’d know where to find you. I was trying to buy time. I had not thought you’d escape the city, certainly not that you’d get across the river which runs overhead now. You showed more resilience and courage, the pair o’ you, than anything I credited you with. And that was a fair bit.”
“It’s true,” said Oona. She smiled, but she was still sad. Perhaps she missed her father. “We were in league. That, of course, was how I was able to rescue Jack and come and go from Countess Flana’s apartments.”
“Why was Flana involved with Klosterheim and the others?”
“In her case, a certain ambition to be queen, but mainly nothing more than boredom. She found solace in intrigue, since she never found it in human company. She paid a high price for her distractions. Don’t grieve for her, young lady. She’d never known love and had seen twelve husbands come and go. Some of them went painfully and reluctantly. She would never have known what love was, I’m sure.” Oona looked up, shrugging. “She might well have welcomed her death as another adventure.”
It sounded a bit morbid to me. I had liked poor Countess Flana in spite of her part in my imprisonment.
From out of the shadows came a familiar and welcome figure. Lord Renyard looked flustered but highly delighted. His dandy pole clutched under one arm, he put his paws around me in an awkward, strong, and entirely affectionate embrace. His expression changed, however, as he addressed the others. His tone became urgent.
“We must leave here,” he said. “We have only a few hours at best.”
“But Londra’s defeated,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
Lord Renyard shook his shaggy head. “Far from defeated. The diversion we created here allowed Londra’s troops to re-marshal against their enemy. Seeking you proved a useful distraction, which is another reason I didn’t want you to be found. The death of this lot and of King Huon allowed the soldiers to rally under fresh leadership. Lobkowitz and Fromental are gone, vanished from a world they helped create. We can only hope they’re safe. Hawkmoon’s dead, and his dimension-shifting crystal lost. A badly wounded Count Brass has fallen back across the Silver Bridge.
“The Dark Empire controls the city again and will defeat us if we cannot give the Balance time to restore itself. Huon may be dead, but Meliadus, it now seems, has merely disappeared. Some believe he’ll return and try to make himself king again. Count Brass is content to leave the empire confined within her island home and reach an armistice. Like most old soldiers, he wants as little bloodshed as possible. He was always given to seeing the empire as a bringer of order and justice to disparate nations.”
“But that’s a mistake,” I said.
“That’s what Colonel Bastable thinks,” declared Lord Renyard with a frown.
“He still means to bomb the city?” St Odhran demanded urgently.
“I believe so, sir. That’s why he let me and the Kakatanawa off the ship. So we could tell you and help you get away if necessary. A mighty infernal machine, I gather.”
“Oh, mighty indeed,” said Oona, suddenly alert again. “He’s going to drop an atom bomb on Londra.”
“There has to be a way of stopping him,” I said reasonably as my mind reeled. Sorcery and atom bombs? How were they able to accept all this at the same time? “Can’t you get an ornithopter up there to signal to Colonel Bastable?”
“It would take too long,” said Oona. “Besides, they’ll be at a far greater altitude than any ornithopter could reach.” She frowned. “That’s what he was building in Mirenburg. In case our other plans failed. As Count Brass retreats, he believes we face defeat. We can’t contact that airship…”
“The HMAS Victoria,” said St Odhran softly to himself, and shook his head.
“A nuclear blast will stop them for ever,” I murmured, overawed.
“I doubt it,” said St Odhran, “but by Bastable’s logic it will give Europe time to recover thoroughly and ensure the Dark Empire does not threaten others for many centuries to come. You’ll recall what brought about the Tragic Millennium? And it was after that the empire emerged…”
“Come, my dear friends. Colonel Bastable was adamant. We have to leave at once.” Lord Renyard’s yap was shrill with anxiety. “He insists we couldn’t possibly survive such a blast. If nothing else happened to us, the river would flood in and drown us. Hurry, my friends. Hurry!”
“What about the Balance?” I asked. “Who’s going to look after it?”
“The Balance has gathered all its elements together,” said Oona. “And they are, anyway, primarily symbolic. The blast will only facilitate its restorative powers. He’s right, young lady; we’d better get moving.”
“But it hasn’t got all its elements,” I pointed out. “They never had the right twins, and there’s still the Runestaff! Am I the only one to see that? What about our blood? Taragorm and Bous-Junge would have won if they’d had everything properly sorted.”
“I doubt that, dear.” Oona sighed and reached out her hand to me. “The Runestaff doesn’t exist, you see. It’s a myth, that’s all. A myth common to many of the worlds where the Dark Empire has had an influence. Just another image and a word to describe the Grail, which takes many forms. We were hoping to delay them a little further by letting them think they needed it, but my guess is they knew instinctively they could go ahead without it.” She smiled at me. “You were in even greater danger than you ever knew! Most of us were.”
“Look,” murmured St Odhran. “Will you look?”
There, growing before our eyes, hung the Cosmic Balance, the sword embedded in the great emerald, the cups suspended from the sword’s wide crosspieces, an aura of pale blue-green fire flickering around it. A sight so profound, so awesome, I almost felt I should kneel in front of it, the way you do in a church.
Oona interrupted this reverie. “Quickly,” she said, “I promise you the Balance is now beyond harm. We have done our work. Come.”
Then, with Jack’s help, Oona led us back the way she and Elric had come: a series of winding tunnels, below Londra. But we didn’t go back into Londra. Eventually we entered another system of caverns, untouched by the artistry of the Dark Empire, where the walls were entirely illuminated by moss and slender streams of phosphorescent water running between high banks. Jack had an instinct for the best places to ford, listening carefully and then leading us forward. Patches of pastel moss glowed here and there in the distant roof, giving the impression of ancient stars.
Soon we had left that awful amphitheatre far, far behind. I, for one, was relieved it was going to be destroyed.
“This is beginning to look familiar,” I said as we stopped to rest and eat.
Oona nodded. “You have been in Mu-Ooria before, haven’t you? We’ve reached the borders of their land. They are not the only folk who live under ground, but for the most part they exist in peace with the other inhabitants. Peace, they find, ensures their longevity. Generally speaking, it seems fair to argue that those who live by the sword generally do die by it as well.” And she sighed. She seemed to be recollecting her earlier sorrow.
Lord Renyard hadn’t noticed any change in her expression. He came and stood beside us, looking out over the eery planes of that extraordinarily beautiful nightscape. “I will lead you from here,” he said. He pointed with his pole. “That way lies Mirenburg, drowned beneath a lake of mercury, where once I studied the French.” He pointed in another direction. “There lies the road I took when I was a cub, seeking a route to Paris, where I might discourse with my heroes. And this way”—again he pointed in a new direction—“lies Ingleton.”
So I was going home. At last! I could hardly believe it. In fact I would not completely believe it for a while!
As I babbled my thanks to Lord Renyard and to Jack, Anayanka, one of the Kakatanawa, stepped forward and spoke to Oona. It was clear they had decided to leave us. “They know the way home from here,” she told us. After a dignified and affectionate leave-taking, they made their way across a glowing field of moss and disappeared into darkness.
A little later we saw a herd of white buffalo being stalked by a pack of equally white panthers. I thought I caught Oona casting a wistful glance towards the panthers. What had happened to her own companion? Had she been left behind? I asked.
“No.” Oona smiled. “She’s perfectly safe.”
Led by Lord Renyard and Jack, who was well adapted for the World Below, we travelled on foot for at least a couple of days, when suddenly the big cavern we were in shook with a long tremor which I feared must be another earthquake. Was I really never going to reach Ingleton?
A spear of rock detached itself from overhead and, whistling like a shell, landed ahead of us. More rock crashed from the impact. We dived for any cover we could find. Another huge fragment fell, and another, but none too close to us. I was relieved when at long last the shaking stopped.
“Bloody hell,” said Jack. “What was that?”
“Bastable’s bomb.” Oona paused. “So he’s done it at last! Targeted the seat of Empire and blown it to bits. Whether he survived or not, I guess we’ll find out later.”
“How do you mean? Wouldn’t a blast like that just wipe an airship out?” said Jack.
“Not if it’s Bastable’s,” she replied mysteriously. “He has a habit of being blown sideways, away from the result of his actions.”
This made St Odhran smile, but it only baffled me and Jack. “This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this,” said the Scottish aeronaut.
