The White Wolf, page 95
“And what brought that disaster?”
“Who knows, child? Perhaps a similar sequence of events. What is done in one time and place repeats and repeats, yet with each repetition comes a subtle change. There is a legend of a sword, a stone, a cup, I understand, which no doubt dates from the same period. It would be ironic, would it not, if we repeated the same mistakes which brought that long, dark age from which we so recently emerged.” Her laughter was sweet and light but with an edge of weariness to it. “How boring if that turned out to be the truth.”
I must admit, a lot of this magic stuff went over my head. Countess Flana didn’t seem to notice.
“When does this ritual take place?” It seemed reasonable for me to ask a question about their plans for my death.
“When all the worlds are in conjunction,” she said. “Smaller conjunctions appear fairly regularly. A hundred spheres. A million spheres. Over the past two or three centuries there have been a series of such conjunctions. Repeating and repeating. And at every repetition, Taragorm tells me, an opportunity has been lost. On this occasion they intend to be certain. They will preserve the Balance, and they will control it.” She smiled almost tenderly at me and reached out her hand to me again. This time I avoided it. “They intend to gain control over both Law and Chaos.”
“Isn’t that a bit over-ambitious?”
“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 sceptical. 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 travelling 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 non-stop 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 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 recognised 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.
18
Now Hawkmoon, Count Brass and his daughter Yisselda, Oladahn of the Bulgar Mountains, all dressed in mirrored, flashing armour, 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…?
Meanwhile, as Lord 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 Munchein. 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 recognised 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 interpret and organise 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 acknowledgement, 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 epicureanism 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 lifestuff 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 outmanoeuvred 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.”
“And our time grows short,” said Prince Lobkowitz. “Now every Knight of the Balance, in every manifestation of our world, comes together to defeat those greedy forces, the combined power of the Dark Empire, Klosterheim, Gaynor and the rest. We must outwit them, as they have just outwitted us. They have a habit of cunning, which most of us lack. And that little girl’s well-being, her very life, depends upon what we do next.”
“I would give my life for the child,” said Lord Renyard simply.
“As we all would,” agreed Prince Lobkowitz. “But we do not wish Prince Elric, for instance, to give his life, for that would mean that he could not fulfil his destiny elsewhere. So you see, dear Lord Renyard, we act out of necessity, not sentiment, nor always decently, nor always courageously, in a highly complex conflict, full of subtle attack and counter-attack. Imagine a large orchestra, in which every instrument must be in perfect tune if a particular piece of music is to be played, also perfectly and at a specific moment. Yet each member of that orchestra can be separated by thousands of miles or even thousands of years, scattered across the multiverse, which, if not infinite, appears to be infinite. If only one of our heroes does not act as he is supposed to act, if events do not happen exactly when they are due to happen, if Elric and his avatars do not do what they must all do precisely at the right moment, then there is no hope for any of us. Life will be extinguished. The multiverse will collapse into inchoate primal matter, and there will be no intelligence, this time, to give it form.”
“You refer to the death of God. The death of an idea. Even so, it takes a certain courage to continue to live in such circumstances,” said Lieutenant Fromental, his open, friendly face graver than usual. “Any fool can throw up his arm with his fist around a sword and cry ‘Liberty or Death!’ but it takes a special kind of hero to know that it is not for him to choose the time of his death, or even choose his own weapons. You know that, I think, old friend.” He came up to the others, dusting his hands and smiling sympathetically at Elric. “But what I am seriously curious about is who betrayed us? Too often, it seems to me, our enemies have anticipated our moves, known where we were going and what we planned.”
Elric ran his pale hand through his milk-white hair. “Aye. As if we had a spy in our midst. Yet the idea is anathema. Everything we do and say is based on mutual trust and mutual hatred of a common enemy. Who would have either the motive or the means of betraying us?”
The albino paused and shrugged. He rubbed his chin. “I have come from a world where betrayal and lies are commonplace, where anything is said and done in order to win at all costs, where people have grown used to hypocrisy and deceit and regard them as natural, legitimate instruments of trade, politics and daily intercourse, unable to distinguish truth from falsehood. They embrace the sentimental lie with the enthusiasm others bring to religion. Indeed that habit of mind has become their religion. Yet those of us who came together so recently to avert this plot are all habitual enemies of Gaynor, Klosterheim and their kind. We must reject the Prince of Lies. It is in our self-interest to remain loyal to one another.” He sighed. “Well, there is nothing to do now but go to Granbretan and see if we can find the children before those creatures begin mingling their blood with those sacred objects.”
