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

“Your father?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” she asked.

  I hadn’t quite put it all together. Of course, there was every chance she and Monsieur Zodiac were related, but I hadn’t realized how closely. I was starting to get a dim idea why some people didn’t seem as old (or as young) as they ought to be. We were all in danger of meeting grandchildren who looked older than we did! Not that it made complete sense. For instance, if there were millions of possible versions of my world, there were millions of possible versions of myself—or Oona, or Prince Lobkowitz, Klosterheim and, indeed, Elric! Or was that what set us apart from most other people? The fact that we were not reproduced on every “plane.” Was that why we could move so readily between the worlds, while others couldn’t?

  I would like to have explored this very different Mirenburg, but everyone else felt it was too dangerous for me to go out on my own. Our inn was called The Nun and Turtle. A very well known place, I was told. I was sure that if we had enemies hiding in the city, they would be bound to know that we had arrived. There was even a chance they were staying at the same inn!

  Even when they explained the old folk tale behind The Nun and Turtle’s name I didn’t understand it any better. But the inn was clean and comfortable, a bit like an English B and B. Eating at communal tables seemed the rule here. We all sat down to supper together in the dining room, and it was then I put my theory about time and the multiverse to Prince Lobkowitz.

  “Is that it, Prince?” I asked.

  He nodded seriously.

  “It’s something I’ve considered myself, Miss Oonagh. It could be that we are somehow separated in time as well as space. The Dark Empire of Granbretan, for instance, probably exists in our distant future. Lord Renyard’s Mirenburg seemed to be about two hundred years in your past. We might accidentally be meddling with, or even changing, history, or perhaps we are being changed by it. We know that time is by no means as simple as we were taught it was—neither linear nor cyclic. Some even argue that time is a field, acted on to produce a whole sequence of events occurring coincidentally and thus producing divisions, changing directions, new dimensions. Why does the multiverse have to be in a permanent sense of flux, for instance? What would be gained from a perfect and constant balance between Law and Chaos?” He went on a bit longer and rather lost me, but I understood the general drift.

  I was very sleepy, but when, before bedtime, Lord Renyard asked if I wanted to go for a walk, I agreed. He was fascinated by how like his own city the older buildings, the layout of streets and so on, were. However, the differences were what commanded his attention. He found most of it, especially the fashion for creating buildings which looked like grotesque creatures, absolutely vulgar and was relieved that next to a more modern building called The Oranesians, the old cathedral of St. Maria and St. Maria was still standing. We climbed twisting cobbled stairway streets to reach it. Once at the doors of the ancient Gothic church, Lord Renyard took off his hat and bowed his head as if in prayer while I looked around, seeing the whole city spread out below, its huge factory chimneys, with their glaring or tormented faces, like besieging giants.

  Mirenburg was clearly on a war footing. The city walls were lined with guns and ornithopters. They squatted on every available flat space, on roofs and in squares. People told us that Wäldenstein had successfully driven back the Dark Empire and that its armies were now in Frankonia and Iberia, trying to drive the Granbretanners back into the sea. Already—to serve a strategy, most suspected—the Empire troops had retreated back across the Silver Bridge that spanned thirty miles of sea, and were now massed in their land stronghold. But the enemy would not give up its empire easily. So far they had not begun to take stock of their old knowledge or set their sorcerer-scientists to work.

  Two names, Bous-Junge and Taragorm, were whispered. These were apparently the Empire’s greatest sorcerer-scientists, who both studied the old lore and added new.

  “This is a dark world, mademoiselle,” said Lord Ren-yard. “Darker, I think, than my own.”

  “You believe some worlds are darker than others?” I asked. “I mean naturally darker and more evil?”

  “I suspect it. Where evil has had longer to take root, in soil more conducive to its growth. Surely only the first universe, the first world, where all the avatars of all our heroes dwell, was innocent. No new worlds begin afresh. They are developments of earlier worlds. So therefore it could be possible that some universes develop a kind of habit of evil …”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE INTERIOR OF the church was disappointing. Clearly it had been a thousand years or more since Christians had worshipped there. Now it was full of strange pictures and even stranger idols. I began to understand a little of what Lord Renyard said. Neither of us wanted to stay there. We both preferred the building’s familiar exterior. As we came back out into the fading sunlight I asked him if he thought this world had developed that habit of evil. It was possible, he said, but he hoped not. The forms people worshipped or used as channels to their own souls were not always what we would regard as beautiful or artistic. “Taste,” he said. “I had considered a scholarly discourse on the subject. Sartor Resartus?

  “Law and Chaos?” I said. “They’re not the same as good and evil, I’m told.”

  “Merciful heavens, no! Not at all. Not at all. Evil is a cruel and selfish thing. Chaos can be wild and generous, and just as some Lords of Law are self-sacrificing and concerned for others, so are some Lords of Chaos. Did you never hear of Lady Miggea of Law or Lord Arioch of Chaos? Both are selfish and calculating. Both would sacrifice anyone else to their ambition. Yet Armein of Chaos is jolly and openhanded by all accounts, as is Lord Arkyn of Law. They would be friends in other circumstances, I’m sure, those Lords of the Higher Worlds.”

  “Then why on earth are they at odds?” I asked.

  “Their duty demands it. We all serve Fate in some way. We all have loyalties and predispositions. We all have different remedies for the world’s pain.”

  “Do these lords and ladies fight all the time?”

  “Some do. Some do not. They do their duty. They are loyal to their cause. Only rarely do you hear of a renegade like Gaynor.”

  “And does anyone serve these lords and ladies from choice?”

  “Certainly. The Knights of the Balance. Born to struggle in perpetual battle.”

  “Have you met any of these knights?” I was beginning to wonder if Lord Renyard’s faith in the so-called Balance, which my mother had talked to me about as well, was as needy as that of the people who had filled St. Maria and St. Maria with such hideous idols.

  “I believe I have met some. I believe you have, also.”

  “My grandmother? Can women…?”

  “Absolutely. There are many great champions, I hear, who are women. There are some who are androgynous. All colors and tastes.” He uttered that strange, barking laugh. “Your grandmother, Oona, is a quasi-immortal. Her blood, of course, is that of champions.”

  “But she isn’t a champion herself?”

  “I do not know, and it is not my place, dear mademoiselle, to speculate. Her father, who calls himself Count Zodiac—”

  “Which would make him my great-grandfather. He seems immortal.”

  “By no means. Only in his dreams, from what my friend Lobkowitz tells me!”

  “Is Prince Lobkowitz a champion? Lieutenant Fromental?”

  “They carry the wisdom which sometimes helps a champion. Or so I’m told. Companions of the Order, perhaps? Like their friend and, I hope, mine, the Chevalier St. Odhran. But Colonel Bastable is almost certainly a knight, as well as a member of the League of Temporal Adventurers.”

  “And what’s Gaynor, then?”

  “Like Klosterheim, Gaynor allowed his selfish greed and egomania to possess his whole being. Both once served nobler causes. Both renounced those causes. You know, my dear, that I am a rationalist. I am of the Enlightenment. It is my whole being. Much of what you are asking should best be a
sked of Lobkowitz himself. Or your grandmother!”

  I knew I was pestering him as we walked back down the steps. It was dusk and he wanted to get back to the inn. He had my hand in his paw as we hurried along. But I had a lot of questions. “Herr Klosterheim was once a Companion of that Order?”

  “Yes, but not loyal to Chaos or Law. Now he embraces Evil, which is a much lesser thing. A petty thing, though dangerous and often powerful. Yet I suspect that he, if not Gaynor, serves the purposes of Law while not necessarily sharing its ideals.”

  “I heard someone mention the Lords of Hell, the Lords of Entropy. Who are they?”

  “Names, nothing else. Lords, like Arioch, who are greedy and cruel, are sometimes called the Dukes of Hell by humans, but they are a miscellaneous crew. Lady Miggea, though she be a corrupted servant of Law, is called by many who have confronted her a Duchess of Hell. And some of the great elementals are also mistakenly identified with Lucifer.”

  “So does Lucifer exist?” I asked.

  Lord Renyard looked troubled at this. “We no longer know,” he said.

  The shadows were gathering. We had walked further than we realized, and it was a long way back.

  “So who’s the most powerful?” I wanted to know. “Law or Chaos?”

  “Neither,” he said after a little thought.

  “Okay. Then what single quality do you associate with them?”

  Perhaps to keep his mind off the potential dangers of the city at night, Lord Renyard gave my question some thought. At last he answered, “Love is one.”

  “And the other?”

  “Greed.”

  We had taken a wrong turn. Lord Renyard paused as we came out of an alley. Across from us was an old bridge. We were down where the river made a radical curve. Lord Renyard set out for the bridge.

  “But the inn’s on this side,” I said.

  “It will be quicker if we take this bridge, cross through the old factory quarter, and then cross again. A shortcut.”

  “How could you get lost in your own city, Lord Renyard?” We were both becoming nervous.

  “I thought I recognized landmarks, streets. I was wrong. I do apologize, dear mademoiselle. Sometimes I wish I were a mere fox and used my nose a little better.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Snobbery. I used to think such means uncivilized. I think I’m a little wiser now. Too late, you might say.”

  He was right about the shortcut. We were hardly in the industrial part of the city for a few minutes before he spotted another bridge. Below it and to the left and right along the embankment, presumably for the factory workers, was some sort of recreation park, with a menagerie and sideshows. I love fairs and carnivals, though I find it hard to enjoy old-fashioned circuses. There were even a few mechanical rides. A big Ferris wheel but no roller coasters, and some really funky steam-operated bumper cars made in the form of wild animals. A sinister-looking helter-skelter stood beside an oddly fashioned merry-go-round, whose riding beasts were totally fantastic and like nothing I’d ever seen. We had to traverse the park to reach the bridge. I didn’t complain. I knew I couldn’t ask to take some rides, but it was hard to pass them all by. The Ferris wheel overlooked the river and turned slowly to the music of a distant steam organ. It reminded me of the London Wheel, which I’d already ridden several times. If we were here for a while, I’d definitely ask someone to take me. But it wasn’t fair to ask Lord Renyard, who clearly found it very distasteful.

  More and more people came into the park, cackling and grinning and laughing themselves silly. Evidently they came to enjoy themselves after work. Dressed in their best finery, they looked as strange to me in those odd clothes as I did to them. The park’s lights had come on. The gas jets spread a warm, yellow aura.

  Suddenly I thought I saw Monsieur Zodiac disappearing into one of the sideshows. I remembered he had worked in the theater in England. Maybe he hadn’t left Mirenburg, after all. Maybe he had been waiting for me.

  With a quick word to a startled Lord Renyard, I broke free of his protective paw and ran into the booth. Pushing past the grubby white flap, I found myself in the gloom of the tent’s interior.

  I saw someone ahead of me. Someone with long white hair who could be Monsieur Zodiac, though he seemed too short as I got closer.

  I called out, “Monsieur Zodiac, is that you?”

  The figure looked up, as if he heard me. Then he was gone again. But there was a strangeness about his stance which alarmed me. Was it the blind boy? I became suddenly frightened, and when I heard Lord Renyard calling my name I went outside again and found him. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was worry that kindly beast. He was greatly relieved to see me and begged me not to do that again, especially in the dark park. I told him what I’d seen.

  “Could Monsieur Zodiac only have pretended to have left, to confuse Klosterheim and Gaynor, maybe?”

  Lord Renyard fingered his long muzzle. “I did not think he was in this realm. He traveled on, across the moonbeam roads. I thought his business was… elsewhere. Yet Fate could have sent him here as readily as we were sent. But would he not have sought us out by now?”

  “Only if he knew we were here. Maybe he didn’t want to be spotted.”

  “We are not close acquaintances, my dear girl. I know of him, of course. But our meeting was only brief and underground.”

  “He would have known me if he’d seen me. He’s looking for me.”

  “But you are rather small, mademoiselle, if I may say so.”

  “Well, you’re not likely to blend in with the crowd,” I pointed out. “He’d surely have remembered you.”

  It was now completely dark. Flares and lamps were burning orange-yellow against the night. Lord Renyard grew agitated, his long whiskers quivering.

  “We must hurry,” he said. It was hard for him to tug me. “We must rejoin the others.” He led me back through the thick press of the evening. There was a peculiar vibrancy to the busy crowd as we made our way to The Nun and Turtle. Lord Renyard sensed it, too. He had noted how, in wartime, people were inclined to make the most of their leisure. He might even call it a kind of madness, a lust for life and its pleasures because they could be taken away forever at any moment. The atmosphere actually made me slightly uncomfortable. I was glad to get into the warmth and relative peace of the Nun, where old Herr Morhaim busily took orders for supper, apologizing in his thick Turkish accent that his menu was limited somewhat by the exigencies of war.

  For all that, we ate very well. We had another audience scheduled with Prince Yaroslaf the next day. We hoped he would allow us to remain in the city and pursue our own quest. We were a little afraid he might decide to enlist us for the war effort.

  I had a lot on my mind and was surprised I slept soundly and peacefully. Once again my friends had thrown a great invisible shield around me. Lord Renyard came to his bed at some point. He didn’t wake me in the process. Then, in the early part of the morning, I had some alarming dreams which did wake me. I’d seen the white-haired man again, only this time he wasn’t a man but the youth who looked so much like my great-grandfather, and he smiled, beckoning me towards him. I wasn’t frightened by the boy, but I was suddenly filled with a sense of dread—a sense that he was in great danger and that only I could save him. Then I felt both Lord Renyard and Oona standing nearby.

  The dream faded. It was dawn. I could see Lord Renyard fast asleep, his long legs sticking off his bed at an angle. Observing him more closely, I realized he was sleeping perfectly comfortably, like a large dog. He had drawn the quilt over him for the sake of propriety. His clothes were all neatly folded or hung on hangers near him, and his dandy pole lay alongside the bed. Very occasionally he snored and his whiskers twitched. Affection for him welled up in me to see him there, so vulnerable and peaceful.

  Though the fox’s presence was reassuring, I could not go back to sleep.

  I saw that someone had left a set of clean clothes for me. This was luxury. I got out
of bed and went along the passage to the bathroom to use it first. I pulled the cord which would bring up a maid with some hot water, and though the water was cool by the time it arrived, I had a delicious and uninterrupted bath. I got into my fresh clothes and went down to breakfast on my own. I knew we had to be ready to meet the protector at his palace, and I felt an obscure pride in not having to be hassled along, as usually happened at home when we were going out early for some reason.

  I had the satisfaction of seeing the look of surprise on Oona’s face when she came down. She laughed. “I was giving you a few more minutes. I thought you were still in bed. Did you sleep well?”

  “Mostly,” I said.

  Our carriages arrived while we were still eating. We tried to hurry, straightened ourselves as best we could and got into the waiting four-wheelers, which set off at a clip over the cobbled streets, threatening to bounce the life out of us.

  It was the kind of grey, drizzling morning for which I’d always had a perverse taste. I enjoyed the ride through streets now packed with vendors and soldiers. The soldiers had the grim, staring look you saw on the news where they showed people who had been fighting too long in places like the Middle East. Quite a lot wore the masks and goggles of airmen, while others carried huge, thick-hafted, platinum-tipped flame lances on their armored shoulders. A few wore the baroque animal armor identified with the clans and societies of Granbretan. It felt very odd for your own country to be the enemy; it was hard to get my head around the idea. I’m not saying Britain always behaved herself properly, and I knew a fair bit about empire, but these people seemed to have come up with the ideas and methods of Adolf Hitler combined with the imperial instincts of Cecil Rhodes.

  I shared a carriage with Lord Renyard, Prince Lobkowitz and Lieutenant Fromental. Oona followed with some of her Kakatanawa, who, of course, hadn’t been able to fit into one carriage. My companions weren’t very talkative this morning. They explained the normal protocol for visiting Mirenburg’s royal leader at an audience rather than at a meal. It was quite different, they said, to how one would behave, for instance, in the presence of the perhaps now drowned Sebastocrater.