The White Wolf's Son: The Albino Underground Read online

  “And the male twin?” asked my wife. “What became of him?”

  “He disappeared before his sister even remembered him. He was kidnapped.”

  “By von Minct and Klosterheim?”

  “As it happens, probably not. They found him later and bought him from his master.”

  “So what became of Elric? Did he ever contact the child? Or his own lost son?”

  “Why don’t I tell you the story from the beginning,” she said, “as best I can.”

  Over the next few days, as our guest in Texas, my old friend told me everything she knew of the events concerning Elric of Melniboné and the last months of his dream quest, when his body, suffering extreme pain, hung in the rigging of Jagreen Lern’s flagship moments before a mighty sea fight. The naval battle’s outcome would be a crucial factor in events which were to change the whole course of his world’s history. It would begin actions whose consequences would resonate throughout the multiverse.

  How Mrs. Persson knew so much concerning the private lives of some of those featured in this narrative, she would not at that time say. In many cases I have been unable to verify what she told me, and have set it down here without checking.

  According to Mrs. Persson this is what happened: Elric, St. Odhran, Fromental and Colonel Bastable, having conferred with the old Count and Countess von Bek, agreed that the countess should set off on her own. They then traveled together to Mirenburg by conventional means, from Heathrow, London, to Munich, Germany, and from there to Mirenburg, capital of the newly independent principality of Wäldenstein, where Germany, Austria and Bohemia came together.

  Though still beautiful, the city had yet to recover entirely from the poverty of her Communist past. German had been her official tongue before the Russian conquest, but her people still spoke a Slavic language akin to Polish. Her parliament, however, returned primarily to the German form, so that her seat of government was known as the Reikstagg, and the chief executive of her elected city council was called her majori, or mayor.

  The travelers went immediately to the Berghof and, thanks to letters from Count von Bek, received a swift audience with Mayor Pabli, who put his city’s law enforcers at their disposal on the assumption that young Oonagh von Bek would be found there.

  Meanwhile Elric, who was most familiar with the city’s secrets, set about on his own explorations, glad, he told my friend, to be back in his old haunts. In no time he found his familiar secret back alleys and explored the tunnels only he and a few others knew about, eventually emerging in the underground “looking glass” city which lay alongside their time and space (an area known in German as the Mittelmarch), close to the borders of that exquisitely beautiful land of Mu-Ooria. He found this manifestation of the city largely deserted and in ruins. The Off-Moo told of a terrible internal war where the people of the Deep City, the interior of Thieves’ Quarter, had clashed with the forces of the Byzantine Sebastocrater.

  Realizing he was not in a place where he was likely to find the girl, Elric returned to the Mirenburg of the early twenty-first century to report to his friends, only to find them gone, leaving him a message to let him know they were following other important clues.

  Modern Mirenburg, with its decaying industrial section and impoverished working class, was not to Elric’s taste, but he had come to love the old city, which still retained much of her beauty and quaintness. He decided, however, to waste no further time and employ what little sorcery was still available to him in a world where the Lords of Law and Chaos exhibited themselves in alien and rather prosaic ways and where the great elementals, his old traditional allies, had either disappeared or died.

  Unlike his daughter, Elric had only limited experience of the silver strands of the moonbeam roads, where adepts walked between the worlds, crossing from one level of the multiverse to another, from one alternative Earth to another; but he decided that if he was to find his daughter’s grandchild, he would have to explore more than one version of the World Below. Thus he gathered his strength, performed the necessary exercises and rituals, and found himself on the roads between the worlds.

  Mrs. Persson had described these roads in the past, but much as I longed to see them for myself, I never had the privilege of even so much as a glimpse. To the mortal eye, she said, they appeared like an infinite lattice of silver ribbons, wide enough to take a number of travelers, most of whom walked and all of whom represented an enormous variety of peoples and cultures, some extraordinarily different from our own and some very similar. The travelers reached the roads by several means and interpreted this experience in quite different ways. Most would readily exchange information, and few were antagonists.

  Elric had used these roads only in his youthful dream quests, through which his people gained wisdom and made compacts with supernaturals. He was scarcely aware of them in his waking world, where a great fight was brewing between Law and Chaos, waged for control of the Balance, and echoed in many different forms across the multiverse.

  After buying himself a horse, Elric made inquiries of his fellow travelers and soon discovered that young Oonagh was to be found in a particular place and had, in fact, not yet left Mirenburg. So he plunged again into the strange, almost limitless underground domain of the Middle Marches, through the infamous Gray Fees, unformed Chaos reacting unpredictably on the imagination. In his wisdom Elric feared his own mind more than he feared any being, mortal or supernatural. Only his need to ensure the safety of the little girl drove him on, and he hated himself for what he considered his own weakness.

  Yet in the familiar deep chasms and jagged peaks of Mu-Ooria, following the glowing silver river towards Mirenburg, he was surprised not to see the outlines so familiar to him in his numerous travels. The lake—actually a great widening of the river—had extended itself. The cries of birds, almost deafening, were baffling to him, for they were not the voices of waterfowl but rather were the anxious voices of birds finding what nesting space they could among the towers, eaves and taller trees of a recently flooded city.

  The city’s phosphorescent liquid had lost much of its luster. Elric felt a vague sense of alarm. When, after several hours’ ride, he came to a village of shacks and makeshift houses built from the rubble of more magnificent buildings, he recognized the spires and domes and roofs of that ancient, drowned metropolis, where, in cavernous shadows, naked men dived, disappearing into still deeper darkness, into the faintly glowing silver depths, and occasionally reappearing clutching sodden trophies. Sad, ill-fed women tended sputtering fires outside their dwellings. Elric dismounted beside one of them and asked her what this place was called and what the men were doing.

  They were surly creatures, ruined by work that was hard and hopeless. They asked him for any spare food he carried. He gave them what he could, a soldier’s rations meant to sustain him for several days, and the citizens fell upon it as if it were a feast. They were willing to help him if they could. Their watery city was all that was left of Mirenburg, where they had once lived under the secure rule of the Sebastocrater and his opposite number, Lord Renyard, until terrible misdirected magic, long banished from the city by ancient treaty, caused a great catastrophe, drawing in both the city and its mirror version in the World Above. Now men dived for whatever food had been preserved, be it in sealed jars or barrels, but the supply diminished daily. They had no way of appealing to any higher being, for they were all cursed.

  “How did this curse come about?” asked Elric.

  “We have told you,” said one grey crone, her black eyes catching faint reflected light from the lake. “Sorcery. The ancient compact made with the gods was broken. The Balance tipped. The result is what you see. A great cataclysm which shook the city to the core and brought the waters pouring in and down upon us. We are all that survived. Perhaps it would have been better had we also drowned with the folk of the Outer and Inner, Deep and Shallow Cities. I saw the towers crumble and collapse. I saw all the people engulfed. I saw the river rush into the craters. W
ithin the hour, this was all that was left of a great and ancient metropolis. Her centuries-old agreements destroyed within a few days, chiefly as the result of fear. Of unknown fear. Of fear of the unknown …” And she began to cackle to herself happily. “What destruction we bring upon ourselves, master!” She accepted a useless coin, which she hid in her clothes. “What insects we are! No more able to guard against the future than we can against the day. Time remains our lady, and death our lord, eh?”

  Elric, used to such views from the moment he could walk and talk, found her boring and ignored her. She spat at him and cursed him, almost affectionately. He smiled to himself, feeling no insult. She found the coin somewhere in her rags and threw it after him. To both of them the encounter had stirred life. In Klosterheim’s hell, he thought, this was what passed for affection. He felt safe enough to dismount and show that he offered them no violence.

  Then Elric asked after the child he sought. They told him she had almost certainly drowned.

  “As she deserved,” continued the crone, “if it’s the one I think you seek, master. A little blue-eyed diddicoy, she was. All innocence and winsome manners. It was my guess she was the one what brought this here disaster. Before she came, and those who followed her, we had not known any serious change for two hundred years.”

  I’m told, said Mrs. Persson, that Elric returned to the more familiar Mirenburg, desperately hoping he had taken the wrong route and that the child he thought of as his own flesh and blood had survived. Perhaps in this aspect of the multiverse, he insisted to himself, she had survived Mirenburg at the time of the city’s drowning. He needed expert help.

  Where he would find her, where he should begin looking for her, was a mystery. At least he knew that sorcery, though banned, worked on this plane. Should he stay here or attempt to find a world where magic was even more potent? Did he have enough time?

  As before, he was welcomed in Mu-Ooria. What language differences they had, what problems were thus created, they accepted in good faith, no matter how outrageous the other seemed. Elric, however, knew no way of asking a direct question of the Off-Moo, or they might have helped him better. Not that it would have made an improvement to the story.

  His oldest acquaintance among this people was Scholar Ree, the most widely traveled of the Off-Moo, and his people’s spiritual leader. Ree felt something like affection for the albino. With his delicate, elongated lips fluttering, his deep-set eyes glowing with faint phosphorescence, he embraced Elric. It was the strangest experience, like being hugged by hesitant tissue paper.

  That wise old creature agreed to help Elric, and together they consulted books and charts while the albino did all he could to curb his impatience, fearing irrationally that time was wasting, that in the meantime the former Knight of the Balance and Satan’s ex-servant might be subjecting the girl to horrors he would rather not imagine.

  Why they wanted her, Elric was not sure. Perhaps she was a pawn in a much larger game. Perhaps she had been abducted in order to distract him and his allies while some other plot was hatched, but none of this affected his determination to find her. His bone-white features were tense, his crimson eyes narrowed in concentration, as he bent over Scholar Ree’s documents, seeking a road to Mirenburg which would have him arrive before disaster visited the city, where he might consult his own sorcerous allies, most of whom were denied to him by the nature of his existing dream quest.

  In his whispering voice like the rustling of long-dead leaves, Scholar Ree debated in High Melnibonéan with the albino. It was difficult for the Mu-Oorian to engage with equal passion in pursuit of an answer to his friend’s problem, but he devoted his whole attention to it.

  At last the two determined the coordinates required for the exercise.

  “It will be dangerous for you, Elric, considering your situation,” said Scholar Ree. “These worlds have much in common. There is the likelihood of your encountering an avatar of yourself. Moreover, that avatar could be serving Law and you Chaos, and you’ll find him your enemy. Such mighty power does not always work for the common good. These are unstable times, old friend. The Balance tips this way and that; a great Conjunction of the Worlds takes place over and over again as if Creation awaits a final, single action. You could come to great physical harm, or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “You could cause great harm. The fate of millions of worlds is being decided, and you and yours could be lost, unnoticed in such a struggle.”

  “But I must find her, Scholar Ree.”

  “I understand that. Pray she is not the catalyst for limitless destruction. That’s all I mean to imply.”

  Elric sighed. “Well, I’ll rest a little, then make my way to this other Wäldenstein, this other Mirenburg, where this other empire rules! I heard you give it a name …?”

  “The Empire of Granbretan, like your own, is an island nation which has conquered whole continents. Like yours, it’s feral yet overcivilized. Like yours, its supernatural compacts are chiefly with Chaos. And, like yours, it is thoroughly hated, ruling by force and threat of bloody violence.”

  Elric laughed at this.

  “Then I shall feel thoroughly at home,” he said.

  Very shortly he again took his heavy steed in rein and set off through the Middle March.

  A rare rain was falling, silver tears against the black fangs of the rock. He held his face up to receive it. It smelled like all the spices and flowers of the world. Just for a moment it reminded him of a garden where he had walked with a child. They had both remarked on it. An extraordinary concentration of scents. And then it was gone.

  Elric was careful to follow Scholar Ree’s map to the letter.

  As it happened, the albino easily found his way to Wäldenstein in the age of the Dark Empire of Granbretan, a world I myself know something about. Of course, there are a million versions of the same era, most of which vary only by the faintest degree, but evidently the world in which Elric found himself did not vary much from those of which I had already heard. In it the oppressive Empire of Granbretan—Britain in our world—had emerged from a Dark Age known as the Tragic Millennium, brought about by conflicts in which terrible, mysterious weapons had been employed. Using a mixture of sorcery and science, Granbretan had conquered Europe and set her sights on the rest of the world. In many aspects of the multiverse she had been opposed by a few heroes, chiefly Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln, and Count Brass, Lord Guardian of Kamarg. In some they had succeeded in their challenge. In others they had failed.

  Elric emerged from the Mittelmarch into a huge cave deep in a mossy forest of old oaks, elms and ash trees. The foliage was so thick, it had almost knitted together to form a canopy, through which the sun managed to cast a green, hazy light, cut occasionally by bright, golden rays through which birds and small mammals moved. The air was filled with a constant fluttering and whistling, an indication of rich life. The colors glowed and gave the canopy itself the appearance of stained glass. Elric found his surroundings restful. He was reminded of the deep Shazaarian woods of his native world. For a moment he almost fancied himself home, until he remembered that the armies of Chaos, guided by his blood enemy Jagreen Lern, had laid that nation waste. Jagreen Lern must soon destroy the lands of the eastern continent unless Elric could summon Storm-bringer back and defeat the theocrat.

  Mrs. Persson thinks so many shadowy concerns filled Elric’s mind in those days, when a thousand realities and the memories of so many men crowded his brain, that only one rigorously trained in the arts of Melniboné, who had undertaken so many dream quests, could remain even remotely sane. I believe that it is less arduous than she thinks, for most readers can keep a multitude of stories in their heads. I grew up reading and watching a score or so of serials a week, at least, and had no trouble separating the threads of my favorite detective tale from a historical yarn, or a story about a trip to Mars and another involving people fighting some evil genius’s attempt at world domination. We are complex and robust creature
s, we humans, able to give our attention to a thousand concerns.

  To Elric the forest offered a welcome tranquility after the vicissitudes and setbacks of his journey, and he was tempted to take his time, but he could not dawdle while the child remained in danger. At last he found a path, well trodden by horses and vehicles, and followed it until it led him to a tall, moated castle, all steep-pitched towers and crenellations, flying half a dozen unfamiliar standards, its granite walls almost white against the deep blue of the sky and the rich greens of the woods.

  Elric went forward with his usual arrogant lack of caution, calling out to the gatekeepers to show that he did not come as a stealthy enemy.

  A rattle of armor and a head appeared in a narrow window at ground level.

  “Who comes?” The language was Old Slavonic, which Elric knew.

  “Elric, Prince of Melniboné, seeking your master’s hospitality.”

  More sounds as guards ran to receive instructions; then, in a few moments, the drawbridge above the moat creaked, chains tightened and a groaning winch let down the wide wooden bridge across to the far bank, revealing an ornate portcullis with just enough room for a mounted man to pass under.

  Elric looked down at the dark, unpleasant waters of the moat as he dismounted and crossed. From the bubbles rising to the weedy surface, there were creatures of some size swimming there; he saw dark shapes darting through the reflective gloom.

  A man in somewhat bulky, almost medieval garb stood to greet him in the cobbled bailey. Clearly an important personage, he had a rippling scarlet surcoat, chain mail, glinting greaves and a helmet completely covering his face. The helmet was wonderfully molded in the features of a snarling wolf, every detail perfect, utterly belligerent as if about to charge. Such a helm had been designed to frighten whoever saw it, but the albino scarcely noted it. He only wondered what kind of creature was insecure enough to require such a mask.