The Sailor on the Seas of Fate Read online

  The Four knew it must disconnect from Agak. The tubes and wires fell away from his body and were withdrawn into Gagak's.

  “What's this?” Agak's strange body trembled for a moment. “Sister?”

  The Four prepared itself. For all that it had absorbed Gagak's memories and instincts, it was still not confident that it would be able to attack Agak in her chosen form. And since the sorceress had possessed the power to change her form, the Four began to change, groaning greatly, experiencing dreadful pain, drawing all the materials of its stolen being together so that what had appeared to be a building now became pulpy, unformed flesh. And Agak, stunned, looked on.

  “Sister? Your sanity...”

  The building, the creature that was Gagak, threshed, melted and erupted. It screamed in agony.

  It attained its form.

  It laughed.

  Four faces laughed upon a gigantic head. Eight arms waved in triumph, eight legs began to move. And over that head it waved a single, massive sword.

  And it was running.

  It ran upon Agak while the alien sorcerer was still in his static form. Its sword was whirling and shards of ghastly golden light fell away from it as it moved, lashing the shadowed landscape. The Four was as large as Agak. And at this moment it was as strong.

  But Agak, realizing his danger, began to suck. No longer would this be a pleasurable ritual shared with his sister. He must suck at the energy of this universe if he was to find the strength to defend himself, to gain what he needed to destroy his attacker, the slayer of his sister. Worlds died as Agak sucked.

  But not enough. Agak tried cunning:

  “This is the centre of your universe. All its dimensions intersect here. Come, you can share the power. My sister is dead. I accept her death. You shall be my partner now. With this power we shall conquer a universe far richer than this!”

  “No!” said the Four, still advancing.

  “Very well, but be assured of your defeat.”

  The Four swung its sword. The sword fell upon the faceted eye within which Agak's intelligence-pool bubbled, just as his sister's had once bubbled. But Agak was stronger already and healed himself at once.

  Agak's tendrils emerged and lashed at the Four and the Four cut at the tendrils as they sought its body. And Agak sucked more energy to himself. His body, which the mortals had mistaken for a building, began to glow burning scarlet and to radiate an impossible heat.

  The sword roared and flared so that black light mingled with the gold and flowed against the scarlet. And all the while the Four could sense its own universe shrinking and dying.

  “Give back, Agak, what you have stolen!” said the Four.

  Planes and angles and curves, wires and tubes, flickered with deep red heat and Agak sighed. The universe whimpered.

  “I am stronger than you,” said Agak. “Now.”

  And Agak sucked again.

  The Four knew that Agak's attention was diverted for just that short while as he fed. And the Four knew that it, too, must draw energy from its own universe if Agak were to be defeated. So the sword was raised.

  The sword was flung back, its blade slicing through tens of thousands of dimensions and drawing their power to it. Then it began to swing back. It swung and black light bellowed from its blade. It swung and Agak became aware of it. His body began to alter. Down towards the sorcerer's great eye, down towards Agak's intelligence-pool swept the black blade.

  Agak's many tendrils rose to defend the sorcerer against the sword, but the sword cut through them as if they were not there and it struck the eight-sided chamber which was Agak's eye and it plunged on down into Agak's intelli­gence-pool, deep into the stuff of the sorcerer's sensibility, drawing up Agak's energy into itself and thence into its master, the Four Who Were One. And something screamed through the universe and something sent a tremor through the universe. And the universe was dead, even as Agak began to die.

  The Four did not dare wait to see if Agak were completely vanquished. It swept the sword out, back through the dimensions and everywhere the blade touched the energy was restored. The sword rang round and round, round and round, dispersing the energy. And the sword sang its triumph and its glee.

  And little shreds of black and golden light whispered away and were re-absorbed.

  For a moment the universe had been dead. Now it lived and Agak's energy had been added to it.

  Agak lived, too, but he was frozen. He had attempted to change his shape. Now he still half resembled the building Elric had seen when he first came to the island, but part of him resembled the Four Who Were One—here was part of Corum's face, here a leg, there a fragment of sword blade—as if Agak had believed, at the end, that the Four could only be defeated if its own form were assumed, just as the Four had assumed Gagak's form.

  “We had waited so long....” Agak sighed and then he was dead.

  And the Four sheathed its sword.

  Then there came a howling through the ruins of the many cities and a strong wind blustered against the body of the Four so that it was forced to kneel on its eight legs and bow its four-faced head before the gale. Then, gradually, it re-assumed the shape of Gagak, the sorceress, and then it lay within Gagak's stagnating intelligence-pool and it rose over it, hovered for a moment, withdrew its sword from the pool. Then four beings fled apart and Elric and Hawkmoon and Erekose and Corum stood with sword-blades touching over the centre of the dead brain.

  The Four men sheathed their swords. They stared for a second into each other's eyes and all saw terror and awe there. Elric turned away.

  He could find neither thoughts nor emotions in him which would relate to what had happened. There were no words he could use. He stood looking dumbly at Ashnar the Lynx and he wondered why Ashnar giggled and chewed at his beard and scraped at the flesh of his own face with his fingernails, his sword forgotten upon the floor of the grey chamber.

  “Now I have flesh again. Now I have flesh,” Ashnar kept saying.

  Elric wondered why Hown Serpent-tamer lay curled in a ball at Ashnar's feet and why, when Brut of Lashmar emerged from the passage he fell down and lay stretched upon the floor, stirring a little and moaning as if in disturbed slumber. Otto Blendker came into the chamber. His sword was in its scabbard. His eyes were tight shut and he hugged at himself, shivering

  Elric thought to himself: “I must forget all this or sanity will disappear forever.”

  He went to Brut and helped the blond warrior to his feet. “What did you see?”

  “More than I deserved, for all my sins. We were trapped—trapped in that skull...” Then Brut began to weep as a small child might weep and Elric took the tall warrior in his own arms and stroked his head and could not find words or sounds with which to comfort him.

  “We must go,” said Erekose. His eyes were glazed. He staggered as he walked.

  Thus, dragging those who had fainted, leading those who had gone mad, leaving those who had died behind, they fled through the dead passages of Gagak's body, no longer plagued by the things she had created in her attempt to rid that body of those she had experienced as an invading disease. The passages and chambers were cold and brittle and the men were glad when they stood outside and saw the ruins, the sourceless shadows, the red, static sun.

  Otto Blendker was the only one of the warriors who seemed to retain his sanity through the ordeal, when they had been absorbed, unknowingly, into the body of the Four Who Were One. He dragged his brand from his belt and he took out his tinder and ignited it. Soon the brand was flaming and the others lit theirs from his. Elric trudged to where Agak's remains still lay and he shuddered as he recognized in a monstrous stone face part of his own features. He felt that the stuff could not possibly burn, but it did. Behind him Gagak's body blazed, too. They were swiftly consumed and pillars of growling fire jutted into the sky, sending up a smoke of white and crimson which for a little while obscured the red disc of the sun.

  The men watched the corpses burn.

  “I w
onder,” said Corum, “if the Captain knew why he sent us here?”

  “Or if he suspected what would happen?” said Hawkmoon. Hawkmoon's tone was near to resentful.

  “Only we—only that being—could battle Agak and Gagak in anything resembling their own terms,” said Erekose. “Other means would not have been successful, no other creature could have the particular qualities, the enormous power needed to slay such strange sorcerers.”

  “So it seems,” said Elric, and he would talk no more of it.

  “Hopefully,” said Corum, “You will forget this experience as you forgot—or will forget—the other.”

  Elric offered him a hard stare. “Hopefully, brother,” he said.

  Erekose's chuckle was ironic. “Who could recall that?” And he, too, said no more.

  Ashnar the Lynx, who had ceased his gigglings as he watched the fire, shrieked suddenly and broke away from the main party. He ran towards the flickering column and then veered away, disappearing among the ruins and the shadows.

  Otto Blendker gave Elric a questioning stare, but Elric shook his head. “Why follow him? What can we do for him?” He looked down at Hown Serpent-tamer. He had particularly liked the man in the sea-green armour. He shrugged.

  When they moved on, they left the curled body of Hown Serpent-tamer where it lay, helping only Brut of Lashmar across the rubble and down to the shore.

  Soon they saw the white mist ahead and knew they neared the sea, though the ship was not in sight.

  At the edge of the mist both Hawkmoon and Erekose paused.

  “I will not rejoin the ship,” said Hawkmoon. “I feel I've served my passage now. If I can find Tanelorn, this, I suspect, is where I must look.”

  “My own feelings.” Erekose nodded his head.

  Elric looked to Corum. Corum smiled. “I have already found Tanelorn. I go back to the ship in the hope that soon it will deposit me upon a more familiar shore.”

  “That is my hope,” said Elric. His arm still supported Brut of Lashmar.

  Brut whispered: “What was it? What happened to us?”

  Elric increased his grip upon the warrior's shoulder. “Nothing,” he said.

  Then, as Elric tried to lead Brut into the mist, the blond warrior stepped back, breaking free. “I will stay,” he said. He moved away from Elric. “I am sorry.”

  Elric was puzzled. “Brut?”

  “I am sorry,” Brut said again. “I fear you. I fear that ship.”

  Elric made to follow the warrior, but Corum put a hard silver hand upon his shoulder. “Comrade, let us be gone from this place.” His smile was bleak. “It is what is back there that I fear more than the ship.”

  They stared over the ruins. In the distance they could see the remains of the fire and there were two shadows there now, the shadows of Gagak and Agak as they had first appeared to them.

  Elric drew a cold breath of air. “With that I agree,” he told Corum.

  Otto Blendker was the only warrior who chose to return to the ship with them. “If that is Tanelorn, it is not, after all, the place I sought,” he said.

  Soon they were waist-deep in the water. They saw again the outlines of the dark ship; they saw the Captain leaning on the rail, his arm raised as if in salute to someone or something upon the island.

  “Captain,” called Corum, “we come aboard.”

  “You are welcome,” said the Captain. “Yes, you are welcome.” The blind face turned towards them as Elric reached out for the rope ladder. “Would you care to sail for a while into the silent places, the restful places?”

  “I think so,” said Elric. He paused, halfway up the ladder, and he touched his head. “I have many wounds.”

  He reached the rail and with his own cool hands the Captain helped him over. “They will heal, Elric.”

  Elric moved closer to the mast. He leaned against it and watched the silent crew as they unfurled the sail. Corum and Otto Blendker came aboard. Elric listened to the sharp sound of the anchor as it was drawn up. The ship swayed a little.

  Otto Blendker looked at Elric then at the Captain, then he turned and went into his cabin, saying nothing at all as he closed the door.

  The sail filled, the ship began to move. The Captain reached out and found Elric's arm. He took Corum's arm, too, and led them towards his cabin. “The wine,” he said. “It will heal all the wounds.”

  At the door of the Captain's cabin Elric paused. “And does the wine have other properties?” he asked. “Does it cloud a man's reason? Was it that which made me accept your commission, Captain?”

  The Captain shrugged. “What is reason?”

  The ship was gathering speed. The white mist was thicker and a cold wind blew at the rags of cloth and metal Elric wore. He sniffed, thinking for a moment that he smelled smoke upon that wind.

  He put his two hands to his face and touched his flesh. His face was cold. He let his hands fall to his sides and he followed the Captain into the warmth of the cabin.

  The Captain poured wine into silver cups from his silver jug. He stretched out a hand to offer a cup to Elric and to Corum. They drank.

  A little later the Captain said: “How do you feel?”

  Elric said: “I feel nothing.”

  And that night he dreamed only of shadows and in the morning he could not understand his dream at all.

  Book Two

  Sailing To The Present

  Chapter 1

  His bone-white, long-fingered hand upon a carved demon's head in black-brown hardwood (one of the few such decorations to be found anywhere about the vessel), the tall man stood alone in the ship's fo'csle and stared through large, slanting crimson eyes at the mist into which they moved with a speed and sureness to make any mortal mariner marvel and become incredulous.

  There were sounds in the distance, incongruous with the sounds of even his nameless, timeless sea: thin sounds, agonized and terrible, for all that they remained remote—yet the ship followed them, as if drawn by them; they grew louder—pain and despair were there, but terror was predominant.

  Elric had heard such sounds echoing from his cousin Yyrkoon's sardonically named 'Pleasure Chambers' in the days before he had fled the responsibilities of ruling all that remained of the old Melnibonean Empire. These were the voices of men whose very souls were under siege; men to whom death meant not mere extinction, but a continuation of existence, forever in thrall to some cruel and supernatural master. He had heard men cry so when his salvation and his nemesis, his great black battle-blade Stormbringer, drank their souls.

  He did not savour the sound: he hated it, turned his back away from the source and was about to descend the ladder to the main deck when he realized that Otto Blendker had come up behind him. Now that Corum had been borne off by friends with chariots which could ride upon the surface of the water, Blendker was the last of those comrades to have fought at Elric's side against the two alien sorcerers Gagak and Agak.

  Blendker's black, scarred face was troubled. The ex-scholar, turned hireling sword, covered his ears with his huge palms.

  “Ach! By the Twelve Symbols of Reason, Elric, who makes that din? It's as though we sail close to the shores of Hell itself!”

  Prince Elric of Melnibone shrugged. “I'd be prepared to forego an answer and leave my curiosity unsatisfied, Master Blendker, if only our ship would change course. As it is, we sail closer and closer to the source.”

  Blendker grunted his agreement. “I've no wish to encounter whatever it is that causes those poor fellows to scream so! Perhaps we should inform the Captain.”

  “You think he does not know where his own ship sails?” Elric's smile had little humour.

  The tall black man rubbed at the inverted V-shaped scar which ran from his forehead to his jawbones. “I wonder if he plans to put us into battle again?”

  “I’ll not fight another for him.” Elric's hand moved from the carved rail to the pommel of his runesword. “I have business of my own to attend to, once I'm back on real land.”
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br />   A wind came from nowhere. There was a sudden rent in the mist. Now Elric could see that the ship sailed through rust-coloured water. Peculiar lights gleamed in that water, just below the surface. There was an impression of creatures moving ponderously in the depths of the ocean and, for a moment, Elric thought he glimpsed a white, bloated face not dissimilar to his own—a Melnibonean face. Impulsively he whirled, back to the rail, looking past Blendker as he strove to control the nausea in his throat.

  For the first time since he had come aboard the Dark Ship he was able clearly to see the length of the vessel. Here were the two great wheels, one beside him on the foredeck, one at the far end of the ship on the rear deck, tended now as always by the Steersman, the Captain's sighted twin. There was the great mast bearing the taut black sail, and fore and aft of this, the two deck cabins, one of which was entirely empty (its occupants having been killed during their last landfall) and one of which was occupied only by himself and Blendker. Elric's gaze was drawn back to the Steersman and not for the first time the albino wondered how much influence the Captain's twin had over the course of the Dark Ship. The man seemed tireless, rarely, to Elric's knowledge, going below to his quarters, which occupied the stern deck as the Captain's occupied the foredeck. Once or twice Elric or Blendker had tried to involve the Steersman in conversation, but he appeared to be as dumb as his brother was blind.

  The cryptographic, geometrical carvings covering all the ship's wood and most of its metal, from sternpost to figurehead, were picked out by the shreds of pale mist still clinging to them (and again Elric wondered if the ship actually generated the mist normally surrounding it) and, as he watched, the designs slowly turned to pale pink fire as the light from that red star, which forever followed them, permeated the overhead cloud.

  A noise from below. The Captain, his long red-gold hair drifting in a breeze which Elric could not feel, emerged from his cabin. The Captain's circlet of blue jade, worn like a diadem, had turned to something of a violet in the pink light, and even his buff-coloured hose and tunic reflected the hue—even the silver sandals with their silver lacing glittered with the rosy tint.