The White Wolf, page 78
“A cure?” repeated Oona and I in unison. “Cure for what?”
“For the disease you bring with you from your world.”
“Is this what Klosterheim and von Minct have told you?” Oona asked.
“Doctor Klosterheim explained how the child carries a deadly plague, which has wiped out Frankfurt, Nürnberg and Munich and left other great German cities almost without a population, without enough living people to bury their own dead. All those in proximity to her have almost certainly been infected.” The Sebastocrater now had the air of a man who faced his own inevitable end. “It is irresponsible of you to bring her here.”
“I’m not sick,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me, and I haven’t made any other people sick. I haven’t even given my white rat my cold this year!”
“They warned us you would say that. You have no signs of the plague yourself, but you have the power to infect others.”
I remembered the stories of Typhoid Mary I’d heard from a radio programme, and briefly wondered if perhaps I actually was the carrier of some deadly virus.
“That’s nonsense,” said Oona briskly. “The child’s as healthy as I am. As healthy as Lobkowitz and Fromental, who saw her days ago. As healthy as Lord Renyard, for that matter.”
“It would be irresponsible of me not to isolate them as I isolated your friends. This is an ancient city. I cannot have its citizens infected. That is why we had to act swiftly to occupy the Deep City. If we had not, who knows how swiftly the plague would have spread.”
“Then why haven’t any of my friends at Raspazian’s been infected?” I asked. “Not one of them’s ill!”
“It takes time to manifest itself.”
“This is ridiculous,” said Oona. “You have allowed yourselves to be tricked and panicked by a couple of wicked men. They’re responsible for untold deaths. They will kill this child if they need to and are given the chance.”
The Sebastocrater seemed only half-convinced. He looked back and forth from the bow-woman to me, to his subjects and musicians.
“Doctor Klosterheim assured me…”
“Doctor Klosterheim!” she snorted. “He is better qualified as a butcher than a doctor!”
“What do you know of this great medical man? He risked his own life to warn us of our danger.”
“Danger? From what?”
At that moment two men had entered the hall and stopped in the flickering shadows cast by the flambeaux on the walls. I recognised them immediately. I could see more of von Minct’s heavy, handsome Germanic face, its cold blue eyes and thin lips. Dressed in black, he wore a steel breastplate. Beside him was gaunt, gloomy old “Doctor” Klosterheim, his eyes glistening in their deep sockets. He had a head like a fleshless skull, narrow and vicious. I would certainly never have taken them for a couple of heroes.
“From that child.” Klosterheim raised one long, bony finger and pointed at me.
“And how can a little girl offer you danger?” said Oona, resettling the arrow on her bowstring.
“She offers the whole world grievous danger.” Gaynor von Minct’s voice was brutal, coarse.
“I wasn’t hurting anyone in Yorkshire.” I began to be annoyed. “I hadn’t hurt anyone in London. I was perfectly happy at home in Ingleton until you turned up and started laying siege to our house!”
“Trying to avert the danger we foresaw,” broke in Klosterheim. “The plague which has wiped out half your country.”
I was furious at these lies. “Plague? There was nothing wrong with England when I left.”
“You poor girl. After that terrible destruction of Londra, your own grandparents were taken with the plague. Did you not know that?”
A wave of horrified misery hit me. “What?” I looked at Oona.
“That’s a foul lie, Prince Gaynor. How low you stoop! And for what gain?” Oona drew her arrow back on the bow as she prepared to shoot him.
The Sebastocrater looked at me with some alarm and raised a kerchief smelling strongly of garlic to his face. Now I understood why the guards were wearing garlic necklaces. They thought garlic was a way of warding off the plague. And vampires, too, of course.
I believed that Oona and my imprisoned friends would have told me if the story were true. “I’m perfectly healthy,” I said, “and so are my grandparents.”
Oona, for reasons of her own, was grinning widely at the two villains. “They certainly are,” she said. “I can guarantee it.”
The Sebastocrater frowned. “Who am I to believe? My responsibility is to the people of Mirenburg. Why would Doctor Klosterheim and Prince Gaynor von Minct have come to tell me such a terrible lie?”
“I think they want to kidnap me,” I said. “They have already tried it once or twice. That’s why I’m so far from home—and so eager to get back there.”
“Don’t perjure yourself,” murmured Klosterheim. “It’s not becoming in one so young.”
“Agreed,” said Oona. “Though it’s a habit with you, Herr Klosterheim. You know me and you know my power. You seek what you think this girl possesses. I suspect you have the other half of your recipe already in your power. Fresh caught, eh? But half a spell is worse than none. Either way, the chances are, you’ll kill her.”
The Sebastocrater’s handsome features clouded, and he ran his fingers through his golden curls. He didn’t like the thought of being responsible for my death.
“I was already warned about them by my parents,” I said. “It’s true, your honour. They mean me no good.”
“Yet they are so convincing.”
“They are clever servants of the Master of Deceit himself,” said Oona. “They serve only the Prince of Lies.”
“You lie, not I!” cried Klosterheim. But she had struck home.
Oona threw back her head and laughed again. “Ah! Liar! Liar! You no longer know what is truth and what is falsehood!”
“What do you demand of me?” asked the Sebastocrater, rather more impressed.
“Release my friends and my warriors, and we shall all leave Mirenburg,” promised Oona. “Save for Lord Renyard, who will return to rule the Deep City by tradition, as he has always done.”
“And if we should then have an epidemic?”
“You will not. I have told you. Klosterheim and von Minct lie.”
“Perhaps you merely wish to rescue your friends. The girl does not show plague. We did not say she did. We know she carries it.” Prince Gaynor stepped towards me. “Doctor Klosterheim has explained all this. He was physician to more than one royal court.”
“And no doubt poisoned more than one round of royal cocoa,” I said, getting a glare of pure hatred from the “doctor” in question. “I’ve told you. He’s a liar.”
“Yet you could be the liar.”
Oona was getting pretty tired of this. She took her bowstring back another inch. “We have no motive. If you give this child up to Klosterheim and von Minct, you almost certainly sentence an innocent to a dreadful death.”
I believed her and felt slightly faint. I stared at the two villains. They stared back. They didn’t seem to be denying anything. Klosterheim’s cold eyes were angry. Von Minct’s face was hidden again in the depths of his cloak.
Were we at an impasse?
The Sebastocrater sighed. “It would seem that if I quarantined the child, and you, too, fräulein, until such time as we are certain of the truth, I would be exercising my duty.”
“And Klosterheim and von Minct?”
“They, too, shall be quarantined.”
Klosterheim hissed his disagreement with this decision, but he was unsure what to do next. They both glared at me. I felt like a steak being eyed by two famished men. I moved a little closer to Oona.
“No,” I said, “there’s nothing wrong with me, and I should be getting home. My parents will be worrying.”
“We’ll take you home,” growled Gaynor von Minct. Klosterheim drew a large pistol from within his cloak. “I believe this puts you all at a disadvantage,” he said.
Von Minct also had a pistol. He cocked it with a heavy click.
Oona did not release her bowstring. She kept her weapon levelled at them as I began slowly to back out of the concert room, out of the palace, with von Minct, Klosterheim and the Sebastocrater glaring at me, not daring to follow. I moved towards the summer house where, in the moonlit garden, the band of Kakatanawa stood frozen.
I hadn’t expected it to be dark again. Time was playing the most peculiar tricks. Once again I was convinced I experienced some kind of waking dream.
Oona wasn’t far behind me.
“Someone is already taking liberties with the machinery of the multiverse,” she murmured. She looked up to where the Autumn Stars, like blossoming dahlias in dozens of deep, rich colours, poured down their light. A light which had tangible warmth.
Then a wild, cold wind whipped through the streets of the city. I heard a wailing command which I was sure I recognised. Could it be the disgusting Clement Schnooke? He had been paid and was beginning his spell without waiting to co-ordinate with us.
The voice uttered an invocation, I was sure. It summoned up weather elementals. That was about all I knew. My mother hadn’t wanted me to know too much of such supernatural details.
Suddenly a great bolt of lightning cracked down. The light on top of the palace went out. Then came on again.
I felt fine mist in my face. The mist turned to rain, and I shivered with cold.
And then a shot rang out in the night. I looked back. This was definitely Schnooke’s work. Rain swept in with long scimitar strokes, and the light from the palace cut through the glinting silver. The effect was almost stroboscopic. I saw the Sebastocrater clutching a wounded arm, with a look of pure astonishment on his face, while von Minct placed a pistol at his head and Klosterheim reloaded.
“The advantage is ours, I believe,” snarled Prince Gaynor.
At that moment a huge splitting noise echoed through the garden, and golden light burned all around us, blinding me for a second. I heard a roar like a distant waterfall. A swift shadow moved, and the Sebastocrater went down. Instinctively I began to run.
Soon I heard water pounding on water. A great rush of water. Everything was flooding!
The Indians were suddenly coming to life. Behind them the fountain had flooded.
I had to get above the water. With relief, I felt the ground rising gradually beneath my feet. I was labouring up a slope. For the moment at least, there was a good chance I was safe.
But what of my friends? Were they also managing to escape from the drowning city?
PART TWO DIVERGING HISTORIES
’Twas moonlight when Sir Elrik rode
His mighty steed from Old Nihrain
With anger such a needless load
Upon his heart; a bane upon his brain;
Yet anger like a plague infected every vein.
—Wheldrake,
The Black Sword’s Song
INTERLUDE UNA PERSSON
Then, with joyous heart, Sir Elrik cried,
Why, this be Tanelorn, the Citadel of Peace;
And all the old man did desire and say is true.
—Wheldrake,
The Black Sword’s Song
It had been some years since I had received a visit from my old friend Mrs Persson. I had reconciled myself to the idea that I might never see her again. In the past her stories had generally involved Bastable, Cornelius or the denizens of the End of Time. Only once or twice had she told me anything concerning Elric of Melniboné, whose adventures I drew largely from other sources, especially from Mr John D—, that contemporary manifestation of the Eternal Champion, whom I knew best. Mr D—, as I might have mentioned elsewhere, married a distant relative of mine and eventually settled in the North. It wasn’t until a later occasion, when my wife and I spent a year or two in the English Lake District, that I had the pleasure of his company once more.
At the time I met Mrs Persson again, however, Linda and I had grown rather settled in our rural Texan life and had developed a pleasure in unexpected visitors, the way you hardly ever do in the city.
One late October evening we sat in rocking chairs on our screened porch, enjoying the warmth and watching the sun set over our property’s low hills and wide, shallow streams, when a car approached on the dirt road. The machine threw up a great “dust ghost” which rose into the darkening sky like a pale fairytale giant. It fell back as the car passed under the tall gateposts on which hung the sign of the Old Circle Squared. My great-uncle had named the ranch when he settled in the Lost Pines area and made his first fortune in timber, his second in cattle, his third in river trade, his fourth in oil and his fifth in real estate. Because of bad advice from accountants, we had made almost no money. Now most of our remaining land is part of the Lost Pines State Park, and for a small tax break we raise a modest herd of longhorns, as much a part of the family as any one of our other domestic animals. We name them all, as they pay their own way like true Texans. The balance of our land, not kept for grazing or in forest, we employ for organic gardening.
Because of the garden we were used to the occasional neighbour dropping by for a bunch of carrots or a pound or two of tomatoes, and so thought nothing of it until the car drew up at our porch steps and a slender, dark-haired woman got out. She had a boyish, startling beauty. She wore a long coat of the kind we call a “duster” in Texas, and her hair was cut in what used to be known as a pageboy. From underneath those Prince Valiant bangs two bright grey eyes smiled at us. I recognised her at once, of course. Mrs Persson strode up the steps of the porch as I rose to open the screen door for her. My wife let out an expression of pleasure. “My dear Una! What brings you to the back of beyond?”
Linda drew up another rocker for Mrs Persson while I went to fix her a drink. Still standing, she received it gratefully. Again I offered her a chair, but she said she’d been driving for some hours and preferred to remain standing for the time being. She was in Austin, she told us, to see a colleague at UT, and while she never knew our phone number, she found our address and decided to drive out to see if we were in.
I assured her that we had become lazy; I was pretty much retired and had absolutely nothing to do. I asked after old friends as well as some of those I regarded as friends from her stories.
She said she saw little of anyone except her cousin and someone whose adventures she knew would interest me. “Elric of Melniboné?” She made the words sound delicious, like exotic food. There might have been a hint of irony, the kind a woman gains from living too long in Paris.
“Really? You’ve been enjoying more adventures in space and time?”
“Not at all. He has only recently returned to his own era. That is, whatever physical manifestation we take with us between one plane of the multiverse and another. What his people know, I understand, as ‘dream-quests.’ ”
“You are not now embarked upon any such quest, are you?” my wife asked gently.
Una Persson bowed her head a fraction and winked.
“We are all embarked upon dream-quests,” she said. “Those of us who are not wholly dead. Wholly dead.”
“But your time on the stage, and so on—that wasn’t a dream-quest,” said Linda. “That was a dream come true.”
I laughed.
“I wasn’t raised to know the difference,” said Una, settling at last into the rocking chair beside Linda. “Dreams and identities are there, like the multiverse, to be negotiated, to be tested and tried and sometimes adopted.”
“I think I would prefer not to have that choice,” I said.
“I know I would prefer not to have it,” she agreed vehemently.
“You didn’t enjoy your time on stage?” Linda was implacable. She was a huge fan of musical comedy, and Una had for a while a very successful career both in the West End and on Broadway.
“I think I enjoyed it most of all,” she said. “It was a long career, because of my peculiar circumstances. I came in with the great dowager halls, the massive palaces of variety like the Empire, Leicester Square. I went out with revue and the sophisticated topical songs of the 1960s. It was rock-and-roll and satire ruined me, my dear.” And she laughed. She had enjoyed it while it was fun, but never seemed to care that it was over. She had done so much more with her life, in political terms, since the mid-1960s. Her main association then, of course, was with Jerry Cornelius and his odd assortment of travelling players, who had been so typical of the situationalist theatre which had grown up on the Continent but which had never really caught on in the United States or UK. I had heard that the theatre had been a cover for other kinds of more serious activity, but I was never curious about so-called secret-service stories.
Una had, in fact, a new Elric tale—or at least part of one—to tell us. Most of the facts, she promised, came from Elric himself. Others had been verified beyond doubt by various people she had met on the moonbeam roads in recent months.
I mixed her a fresh drink while Linda went into the house to see about dinner. Then, when Linda had returned, Una began her tale.
7
Elric of Melniboné, Una told us, had embarked involuntarily on what he called the Dream of a Thousand Years. Having arrived in England some years before the Battle of Hastings, in the reign of Ethelred the Unready, he served as a seagoing mercenary against the encroaching Danes until Ethelred, impoverished as a result of his own poor planning, failed to pay him. Therefore the albino took what was his and left for the Middle Sea, where for a while he fell in with a female pirate known as the Barbary Rose, striking merchant ships from the security of her island stronghold of Las Cascadas. Later he went adventuring into the wildern lands of the Moors, beyond the High Atlas into the desert, where, it was said, he came upon a country ruled by intelligent dragons. Little was then heard of him until he turned up as a crusader, becoming the ally of Gunnar the Doomed and sailing with him to America.
Elric, who had used a variety of names, founded a nation. He carved it from the old German and Slavic lands in a place called Wäldenstein, whose capital was the city of Mirenburg. There he and what seemed to be his progeny ruled by virtue of dark magic and a fabulous black sword said to drink souls as readily as it drank blood. Terrible legends surrounded the princes of Mirenburg until the nineteenth century, when the city appeared to have been abandoned by the crimson-eyed albinos who occupied it. At the early part of the twentieth century, though a few stories still existed in Mirenburg concerning a soul-eating demon called Karmesinaugen, the old tales of the vampire prince and his vampire sword continued to circulate. They soon merged with those of Nosferatu and the hero-villains of German cinema. Meanwhile an albino resembling Elric began to entertain with a magic act on the English stage. Monsieur Zodiac, as he was called, was a very popular attraction, and his son, who might have been his twin, later took over the act as well as the name.
