Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [6]
They dreamed of Tanelorn. They desired Tanelorn as some men desired women and others desired wealth. They longed for Tanelorn as a place they had lost, perhaps before they were born. As a place that, like Paradise, might not by definition exist at all.
Tanelorn. Some called it the City of Eternal Rest, beloved of those who welcome death. Some, of a simpler and perhaps more cynical disposition, say it is indeed no more than another name for the grave.
But I can tell you that Tanelorn is a powerful dream. It is what causes great heroes and heroines to perform great deeds. It is what raises us above the Lords of the Higher Worlds and makes us, poor mortals that we are, something nobler and more powerful than any who seek to control our destinies.
Dream Tanelorn might be to some of us, but to others it is a reality we have molded from the stuff of imagination and that stands for all our idealism, all our fine ambitions, all our yearnings, and all our nobler selves. Though we spend many lifetimes seeking Tanelorn, find her at last we shall. And there, as we are promised, we shall know not only peace, but wisdom and security.
But the building of that city shall take many great dreams and much courage, and you can be sure that not a single drop of savagely spilled blood will taint a single brick or stone of her.
So now begins another tale of the albino.
Forgetting as best he could his cousin Yyrkoon sitting as regent upon the Ruby Throne of Melnibone, suppressing all thoughts of his beautiful cousin Cymoril weeping for him and despairing of his ever returning, Elric went to seek an unknown goal in the worlds of the Young Kingdoms where Melniboneans were, at best, disliked.
And it would not be long before he found himself sailing upon the mysterious seas of fate. What he found upon those seas is the substance of this story.
THE SAILOR ON THE SEAS OF FATE
(1976)
For Bill Butler, Mike and Tony, and
all at Unicorn Books, Wales
BOOK ONE
SAILING TO THE FUTURE
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS AS IF the man stood in a vast cavern whose walls and roof were composed of gloomy, unstable colours which would occasionally break and admit rays of light from the moon. That these walls were mere clouds massed above mountains and ocean was hard to believe, for all that the moonlight pierced them, stained them and revealed the black and turbulent sea washing the shore on which the man now stood.
Distant thunder rolled; distant lightning nickered. A thin rain fell. And the clouds were never still. From dusky jet to deadly white they swirled slowly, like the cloaks of men and women engaged in a trancelike and formalistic minuet; the man standing on the shingle of the grim beach was reminded of giants dancing to the music of the faraway storm and felt as one must feel who walks unwittingly into a hall where the gods are at play. He turned his gaze from the clouds to the ocean.
The sea seemed weary. Great waves heaved themselves together with difficulty and collapsed as if in relief, gasping as they struck sharp rocks.
The man pulled his hood closer about his face and he looked over his leathern shoulder more than once as he trudged closer to the sea and let the surf spill upon the toes of his knee-length black boots. He tried to peer into the cavern formed by the clouds but could see only a short distance. There was no way of telling what lay on the other side of the ocean or, indeed, how far the water extended. He put his head on one side, listening carefully, but could hear nothing but the sounds of the sky and the sea. He sighed. For a moment a moonbeam touched him and from the white flesh of his face there glowed two crimson, tormented eyes; then darkness came back. Again the man turned, plainly fearing that the light had revealed him to some enemy. Making as little sound as possible, he headed towards the shelter of the rocks on his left.
Elric was tired. In the city of Ryfel in the land of Pikarayd he had naively sought acceptance by offering his services as a mercenary in the army of the governor of that place.