Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [172]
Already she was leading her flock away from them, up the steep curve of the moonbeam and into a haze of blue-flecked light. “I thank you for your song, Prince Elric. For the singing of it you will, in time, be repaid a hundredfold. But I think you will not remember the singing of your song, which brought the Grail to us three, who are, perhaps, its guardians and its beneficiaries. It was the sword which found the Grail and the Grail which led us through. Thank you, sir. You say you are not of the Just, yet I think you are unknowingly of that company. Farewell.”
“Where do you go, Far-Seeing?” asked Melniboné’s lord.
“I seek a galaxy they call The Rose, whose planets form one mighty garden. I have seen it in a vision. We shall be the first human creatures to settle it, if it will accept us.”
“I wish you good fortune, my lady,” said Count Renark with a bow.
“And you, sir, as you play the great Game of Time. Good luck to you, also.” Then the child turned her back on them and led her weary flock towards its destiny.
“Can you not see the possibilities?” Von Bek still sought to tempt Elric to his Cause. “The variety—every curiosity satisfied—and new ones whetted? Friend Elric, I offer you the quasi-infinity of the multiverse, of the First and Second Ethers, and the thrilling life of a trained mukhamir, a player in the great Game.”
“I am a poor gambler, sir.” As if fearing he would not remember them, Elric drank in the wonders all about him: the crowded, constantly swirling, constantly changing multiverse; realm upon realm of reality, most of which knew only the merest hint of the great order in which they played a tiny, but never insignificant, part. He looked down at the misty stuff beneath his feet, which felt as firm as thrice-tempered Imrryrian steel, and he marveled at the paradoxes, the conflicts of logic. It was almost impossible for his mind to grasp anything but a hint of what this meant. He understood even so that every action taken in the mortal realms was repeated and echoed in the supernatural and vice versa. Every action of every creature in existence had meaning, significance and consequence.
“I once witnessed a fight between archangels and dragons,” von Bek was saying, leading the albino gently down the moonbeam to where it crossed another. “We will go this way.”
“How do you know where you are? How are time and distance measured here?” Elric was reduced to almost childlike questions. Now he understood what his grimoires had only ever hinted at, unable or unwilling to describe this super-reality. Yet he could not blame his predecessors for their failures. The multiverse defied description. It could, indeed, only be hinted at. There was no language, no logic, no experience which allowed this terrifying and rapturous reality.
“We travel by other means and other instincts,” von Bek assured him. “If you would join us, you will learn how to navigate not merely the First Ether, but also the Second.”
“You have agreed, Count Renark, to guide me back to my own realm.” Elric was flattered by this strange man’s attempts to recruit him.
Von Bek clapped his companion upon the back. “Fair enough.” They loped down the moonbeams at a soldier’s pace. Elric caught glimpses of worlds, of landscapes, hints of scenes, familiar scents and sounds, completely alien sights, seemingly all at random. For a while he felt his grasp on sanity weakening and, as he walked, the tears streamed down his face. He wept for a loss he could not remember. He wept for the mother he had never known and the father who had refused to know him. He wept for all those who suffered and who would suffer in the useless wars which swept his world and most others. He wept in a mixture of self-pity and a compassion which embraced the multiverse. And then a sense of peace blanketed him.
Stormbringer was still in his hand, unscabbarded. He did not wish to sheathe the blade until the last of that strange Law-light was gone from it. At this moment he understood how the conflict in him between his loyalty to Chaos and his yearning for