Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [51]
“As you perhaps have already realized, the child holds in trust the history and the aspirations of the Bauradim—their collected wisdom. Everything they know to be true and of value is contained within her. She is the living representation of her people’s learning—what is the essence of their history—of a time before they became desert dwellers even. If they lose her there is every chance, they believe, that they must begin their history all over again—relearn hard-won lessons, relive experience and make the mistakes and blunders which so painfully informed their people’s understanding down the centuries. She is Time, if you like—their library, museum, religion and culture personified in a single human being. Can you imagine, Prince Elric, what her loss means to them? She is the very soul of the Bauradim. And that soul is imprisoned where only those of a certain skill can even find her, let alone free her.”
Elric fingered the dreamwand which now replaced his runesword at his hip. “If she were only an ordinary child, bringing sorrow to her family through her condition, I would be inclined to help if I could,” he said. “For I like this people and their leader.”
“Her fate and yours are intertwined,” said Oone. “Whatever your sentiments, my lord, you probably have little real choice in the matter.”
He did not wish to hear this. “It seems to me, madam, that you dreamthieves are altogether too familiar with myself, my family, my people and my destiny. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Yet I cannot deny you know more than anyone, save my betrothed, about my inner conflicts. How come you by this power of divination and prophecy?”
She spoke almost casually. “There is a land all dreamthieves have visited. It is a place where all dreams intersect, where all that we have in common meets. And we call that land The Birthplace of the Bone, where mankind first assumed reality.”
“This is legend! And primitive legend at that!”
“Legend to you. Truth to us. As one day you’ll discover.”
“If Alnac could foretell the future, why did he not wait for you to come to help him?”
“We rarely know our own destiny, only the general movements of the tides and of the figures who stand out in their world’s histories. All dreamthieves, it is true, know the future, for half their lives are spent without Time. For us there is no past or future, only a changing present. We are free of those particular chains while bound as strongly by others.”
“I have read of such ideas, but they mean very little to me.”
“Because you lack experience to make sense of them.”
“You have already spoken of the Land of Dreams-in-Common. Is that the same as the Birthplace of the Bone?”
“Perhaps. Our people are undecided on the point.”
Temporarily invigorated by the drug, Elric began to enjoy the conversation, much of which he saw as mere pleasant abstraction. Free of his runesword he knew a kind of lightness of spirit which he had not experienced since the first months of his courtship of Cymoril in those relatively untroubled years before Yyrkoon’s growing ambition had begun to contaminate life at the Melnibonéan court.
He recalled something from one of his own people’s histories. “I have seen it said that the world is no more than what its denizens agree it is. I remember reading something to that effect in The Gabbling Sphere which said: ‘For who is to say which is the inner world and which the outer? What we make reality may be what will alone decides and what we define as dreams may be the greater truth.’ Is that a philosophy close to your own, Lady Oone?”
“Close enough,” she said. “Though it seems a little airy.”
They rode like this, almost like two children on a picnic until they reached the Bronze Tent when the sun was setting and were led, once more, into the place where men and women sat or lay around the great raised bed on which rested the little girl who symbolized their entire existence.
It seemed to Elric that the illuminating braziers