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And there was something in the proud Prince of Ruins that yearned, as he waved farewell, for the less dramatic adventures of the hearth.

Then he turned towards the Rose, that mysterious manipulator of destinies, and he bowed. “Come, madam,” he said, “we have a dragon to summon and a journey to make! My father is doubtless a trifle concerned for the well-being of his much-bartered soul.”

EPILOGUE

In Which the Prince of Ruins Honours a Vow.

Against the full heat of a harvest moon, Lady Scarsnout lifted her magnificent head to taste the wind, flapped her wings once to set her course and lifted away from that perpetuity of night where Sadric’s ghost had hidden.

Elric had put the living rose into his father’s pale hand. He had watched as the rose faded and died at last, no longer kept alive by the thing which had been hidden in it. And then Sadric had sighed. “I can hate thee no longer, son of thy mother,” he said. “I had not hoped for so much as the gifts thou broughtest me.”

And his father had kissed him with lips suddenly warm upon his cheek, with a momentary gesture of affection such as he had never made in life. “I will await thee, my son, where thy mother awaits me now, in the Forest of Souls.”

Elric had watched the ghost fade away, like a whisper on the wind, and, looking up, he had realized that time was no longer stilled, and that Melniboné’s bloody history, her ten thousand years of dominance, of cruelty and heartless conquest, was at the point of its beginning.

For a brief instant he had considered taking some new action—some action to change the course of the Bright Empire’s progress down the centuries—to make of his race a gentler, nobler people—but then he had shaken his head and turned his back on H’hui’shan, on his past and on all brooding about what might have been, and he had settled himself into that natural saddle behind the dragon’s shoulders and was calling confidently, with a new hope in his voice, for his mount to bear him skyward.

Then up they went together, dragon-leather slapping against the swirling clouds, up into the starry languor of a Melnibonéan night, into a future where, by a certain crossroads at the edge of time, the Rose awaited him.

For he had promised her that, when she first saw Tanelorn, she would be riding upon a dragon.

STORMBRINGER: FIRST DRAFT SCREENPLAY

STORMBRINGER:

FIRST DRAFT SCREENPLAY

(1976)

The screen is dark:

URLIK (voiceover, echoing, melancholy):

“I AM

DOOMED

TO

LIVE …”

Shot 1. Exterior. Sahara Desert. Day.

The endless dunes of the Sahara at noon. We hear hoofbeats before we see mounted Arabs, swathed in flowing black robes, their faces hidden save for the occasional glitter of dark eyes, suddenly reining in their magnificently caparisoned horses. They stare in wonder at the sky. These Arabs are not armed—there is not a sword, dagger or rifle amongst them. The Arab leader is distinguished by a scarlet headband. The Arabs stare in silence but we hear a hint of sound, a faint rushing and fluttering from the sky which comes from—

2. Ext. Sky above desert. Day.

—a damaged airship drifting crazily towards the ground. Although its basic design is of a familiar pattern—gasbag above, gondola below—it is otherwise thoroughly bizarre. The gasbag is decorated in complex pictograms very vaguely reminiscent of Sumerian or Babylonian styles, with many vivid colours. The gondola is of carved polished wood—the carvings equally complex and alien—though now much blackened from the effects of an explosion. The rails of the gondola, which is open, like the deck of a ship, are smashed and splintered in places. Fire flutters from the stern, where the twisted and useless propellers can be seen. Fire and black smoke boil from a section of the equally battered gasbag. We see a human arm dangling through a damaged section of the rail.

URLIK (voiceover, booming and fading with a prolonged echo):

“… FOR EVER!”

Titles now begin to appear over the following sequences: