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could, at some future date, use his character. I still hope to do so. The last time we met was on a long-distance train, on the way, as I recall, to New Orleans, far too many years ago. I’m so pleased he’s found time to write a foreword to this last volume. He’s one of the best and most influential writers of modern fantasy and a good man, as well as a great cat lover. His foreword augments a volume which closes with the work of my old friend, near neighbour and sometime collaborator, John Picacio, one of the most generous men in the business as well as one of the most talented, who published his own tribute to Jim on his website (http://picacio.blogspot.com) shortly after we learned of the tragedy. While thanking all the people (especially Betsy Mitchell) who helped put these editions together, I’d like to repeat how they would not have been possible if it had not been for general editor John Davey, whose work on the series has been outstanding and whose Reader’s Guide is derived from his own excellent longer bibliography of my work, Michael Moorcock: A Reader’s Guide. He, too, was a friend of Jim Cawthorn’s and will be actively engaged in helping organize and take care of Jim’s extensive archive. Longtime Cawthorn fan and supporter, the bookseller and writer (and old friend) George Locke has published a tribute to Jim as part of a hard-copy only catalogue listing the items from his personal collection. Fifteen to twenty unpublished Cawthorn drawings were printed. This catalogue is available from Ferret Fantasy, 27 Beechcroft Road, Upper Tooting, London SW17 7BX, England; email address: george_locke@hotmail.com. More of Jim’s work can be found in the archive sections of my own website (www.multiverse.org).

Michael Moorcock

Rue St. Maur

Paris

July 2010

THE REVENGE OF THE ROSE

THE REVENGE OF THE ROSE (1991)

For Christopher Lee—

Arioch awaits thee!

For Johnny and Edgar Winter—

rock on!

For Anthony Skene—

in gratitude.

Elric could enjoy the tranquility of Tanelorn only briefly and then must begin his restless journeyings again. This time he headed eastward, into the lands known as the Valederian Directorates, where he had heard of a certain globe said to display the nations of the future. In that globe he hoped to learn something of his own fate, but in seeking it he earned the enmity of that ferocious horde known as the Haghan’iin Host, who captured and tortured him a little before he escaped and joined forces with the nobles of Anakhazhan to do battle with them …

—The Chronicle of the Black Sword

BOOK ONE

CONCERNING THE FATE OF EMPIRES

“What? Do you call us decadent, and our whole nation, too?

My friend, you are too stern-hearted for these times. These times are new.

Should you discern in us a selfish introspection; a powerless pride:

In actuality, self-mockery and old age’s wisdom is all that you descry!”

—Wheldrake,

Byzantine Conversations

CHAPTER ONE

Of Love, Death, Battle & Exile; The White Wolf Encounters a Not Entirely Unwelcome Echo of the Past.

FROM THE UNLIKELY peace of Tanelorn, out of Bas’lk and Nishvalni-Oss, from Valederia, ever eastward runs the White Wolf of Melniboné, howling his red and hideous song, to relish the sweetness of a bloodletting …

… It is over. The albino prince sits bowed upon his horse, as if beneath the weight of his own exaggerated battle-lust; as if ashamed to look upon such profoundly unholy butchery.

Of the mighty Haghan’iin Host not a single soul survived an hour beyond the certain victory they had earlier celebrated. (How could they not win, when Lord Elric’s army was a fragment of their own strength?)

Elric feels no further malice towards them, but he knows little pity, either. In their puissant arrogance, their blindness to the wealth of sorcery Elric commanded, they had been unimaginative. They had guffawed at his warnings. They had jeered at their former prisoner for a weakling freak of nature. Such violent, silly creatures deserved only the general grief reserved for all misshaped souls.

Now the White Wolf stretches