Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [90]
“I knew that. I had to protect it. I thought I had failed.”
“You have not failed,” said Oone.
“The Sorcerer Adventurers will not attack again?”
“Never,” said Oone. “Not here, nor anywhere. Elric and I will make sure of it.”
And then Elric realized in admiration that it had been Oone, in the end, who had summoned the Sorcerer Adventurers, summoned those shades for the last time, summoned them so that she might demonstrate their defeat.
Oone looked at him and warned him with her eyes not to say too much. But now he realized that all that they had fought, save perhaps a little of the Pearl Warrior and the Sorcerer Adventurers, had been a child’s dreams. The hero of legend, Chamog Borm, could not save her because she knew he was not real. Similarly, the Pearl Warrior, chiefly her own invention, could not save her. But he and Oone were real. As real as the girl herself! In her deep dream, in which she had disguised herself as a queen, seeking power but failing to find it, just as she had described, she had known the truth. Unable to escape from the dream, she had yet recognized the difference between her own invention and that which she had not invented—herself, Oone and Elric. But Oone had had to show that she could defeat what remained of the original threat, and in demonstrating the defeat, she freed the child.
And yet they were still within the dream, all three of them. The great pearl pulsed as powerfully as before, the Fortress with all its mazes and intertwined passages and chambers was still their prison.
“You understood,” Elric said to Oone. “You knew what they spoke of. The language was a child’s language—a language seeking power and failing. A child’s understanding of power.”
But again Oone, with a glance, cautioned him to silence. “Varadia knows now that power is never discovered in retreat. All one can hope to do by retreating is to let one power destroy another or hide as one hides from a storm one cannot control, until the force has passed. One cannot gain anything, save one’s own self. And ultimately one must always confront the evil that would destroy one.” It was almost as if she herself were in a trance and Elric guessed that she repeated lessons learned in pursuit of her craft.
“You did not come to steal the Pearl but to save me from its prison,” said Varadia as Oone took her young hands and held them tightly. “My father sent you to help me?”
“He asked our help and we gave it willingly,” said Elric. At last he sheathed the silver sword. He felt slightly foolish in the armour of a fairy-tale hero.
Oone recognized his discomfort. “We shall give all this back to Chamog Borm, my lord. Is he permitted to return to the Fortress, Lady Varadia?”
The child grinned. “Of course!” She clapped her hands and through the doorway to the Court of the Pearl, walking proudly, still in the clothes of his banishment, came Chamog Borm, to kneel at the feet of his mistress.
“My queen,” he said. There was strong emotion in his wonderful voice.
“I return to you your armour and your weapons, your twin horses Tadia and Taron and all your honour, Chamog Borm.” Varadia spoke with warm pride.
Soon Elric and Oone had discarded the armour and again wore only their ordinary clothes. Chamog Borm was in his silver-and gold-chased breastplate and greaves, his helmet of gleaming silver, his swords and his spears in their sheaths at hip and on horse. His other armour he bound to the back of his Tadia. At last he was ready. Again he kneeled before his queen. “My lady. What task wouldst thou have me accomplish for thee?”
Varadia said deliberately, “You are free to travel where you will, great Chamog Borm. But know only this—you must continue to fight evil wherever you find it and you must never again allow the Sorcerer Adventurers to attack the Fortress of the Pearl.”
“I swear.”
With a bow to Oone and Elric, the legendary hero rode slowly from the Court, his head high with pride and noble purpose.
Varadia was content. “I have made him again what he was before I