The Skrayling Tree (31 page)

“Only with the Balance. We serve whichever side needs us more. On some planes Chaos dominates; on others Law is in the ascendancy.
We work to keep the Balance as even as possible. That is all we do. And we do anything necessary to ensure that the Balance
thrives, for without it we are neither human nor beast, but whispering gases, insensate and soulless.”

“How is it that I feel we have met before?” I asked the black giant I stared at my surroundings, the strangely decorated ceiling,
the resting figures of my captors.

“We have a close association, Count Ulric, in another life. I am acquainted with your ancestor.”

“I have many ancestors, Lord Sepiriz.”

“Indeed you have, Count Ulric. But I refer to your alter ego. You recall, I hope, Elric of Melniboné…”

“I want no more to do with that poor, tortured creature.”

“You have no choice, I fear. There is only one path
you can follow, as I explained. If you follow any other, it will take you and yours to certain oblivion.”

My emotions were in turmoil. How did I know that this strange giant was not deceiving me? Yet, of course, I could not risk
destroying my beloved family. All I could do was keep my own peace, wait and learn. If I discovered Sepiriz was lying to me,
I vowed to take vengeance on him come what may. These were not typical thoughts for me. I wondered at the depths of my rage.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked at last.

“I want you to carry a sword to a certain city.”

“And what must I do there?”

“You will know what to do when you get to the city.”

I recalled the bleak chasm beyond these walls. “And how will I get there?”

“By horseback. Soon, I shall take you to the stables to meet your steed. Our horses are famous. They have unusual qualities.”

I was hardly listening to him. “What is your interest in this?”

“Believe me, Count Ulric, our self-interest is also the common interest. We have given up much to serve the Balance. We have
chosen a moral principle over our own comfort. You may wonder, as we sometimes do, if that choice was mere hubris, but it
scarcely matters now. We live to serve the Balance, and we serve the Balance to live. Our existence is dependent upon it,
as, of course, ultimately is everyone’s. Believe me, my friend; what we do, we do because we have no other choice. And while
you have choice, there is only one which will enable you and yours to live and thrive. We tend the tree
that is the multiverse, we guard the sword that is at the heart of the tree, and we serve the Cosmic Balance, which pivots
upon that tree.”

“You are telling me the universe is a tree?”

“No. I am offering a useful way of formalizing the multiverse. And in formalizing something, you control it to a degree. The
multiverse is organic. It is made up of circulating atoms but does not itself circulate in prefigured order. It is our chosen
work to tend that tree, to ensure that the roots and branches are healthy. If something threatens them, we must take whatever
drastic steps are necessary for their rescue.”

“Including kidnapping law-abiding citizens while they are on holiday!”

Sepiriz permitted himself another quiet smile. “If necessary,” he said.

“You are barking mad, sir!”

“Very likely,” replied the black giant. “It is madness, I think, to choose to serve a moral principle over one’s own immediate
interests, eh?”

“I rather think it is, sir.” Again, I had no way of challenging Sepiriz.

I turned to the pale giants Sepiriz had called “Kakatanawa.” I could not think of them in relation to the normal-sized native
population. These warriors rested in the attitudes of tired men who had worked well. One or two of them were already stretched
out on the stone benches and were close to sleep. I felt physically as if I had been pummeled all over, but my mind was alert.
If nothing else, adrenaline and anger were keeping me awake.

“Come,” said Sepiriz. “I will show you your weapon and your steed.” Clearly I had no real choice. Controlling my fury I strode
after him as he led the way deeper into that strange, hewn city.

I asked where the rest of the inhabitants were. He shook his head. “Either dead or in limbo,” he said. “I am still hoping
to find them. This war has been going on for a long time.”

I mentioned my past encounters with the Off-Moo,
^*
whose own way of life had been savagely disrupted by the coming of Gaynor and Klosterheim to their world. Lord Sepiriz nodded
with a certain sympathy and seemed merely to add that to a list that was already larger than any sentient creature could absorb.
Somehow, without his saying a word, I had the impression of battles being fought across a multitude of cosmic planes. And
in all those conflicts, Sepiriz and his people had involved themselves. A race which lived to serve the Balance? It did not
seem strange.

“What is your relationship with the men who seized me?” I asked him. “Are they your servants?”

“We are allies in the same cause.” Sepiriz let out a massive sigh. “Just as you are, Count Ulric.”

“It is not a cause I volunteered for.”

Sepiriz turned, and again I thought he seemed strangely amused. “Few of us volunteered, Sir Champion. The war is endless.
The best we can hope for are periods of tranquillity.”

We reached a great slab of rock decorated with elaborate
scenes carved in miniature from top to bottom. The whole formed a half-familiar shape which hinted at something in my memory.

Lord Sepiriz turned, opened his arms and began to chant. The sound found an echo somewhere, like a string resonating to its
perfect pitch.

The great slab quivered. The scenes on it writhed and for a second were alive. I saw great battles being fought. I saw bucolic
harvesters. I saw horror and joy. Then the song was over and the slab was motionless—

Except that it had moved closer to us, revealing a dark aperture behind. A door! Sepiriz had evidently opened it with the
power of his voice alone! Again this struck a distant chord in me, but I could attach no specific memory, only the same sense
of déjà vu. No doubt that peculiar duality I had with my half-human alter ego, Elric of Melniboné, caused these sensations.
It was no comfort to know that I searched for the memory of another man, a man with whom I had shared a mind and a soul and
from whom I knew now I would never be entirely free.

Taking a flickering brand from the bracket on the wall, the black giant signaled me to follow him.

Crimson light splashed over the stones, revealing a multitude of realistic carvings. The entire history of the multiverse
might be depicted here. I asked Sepiriz if this was the work of his ancestors, and he inclined his head. “There was a time,”
he said, “when we had more leisure.”

From being uncomfortably warm, the air now turned very cold. I shivered in spite of myself. I half expected
to find this was a tomb full of preserved corpses. The figures looming over me, however, were of the same carved obsidian
as the others I had seen. We seemed to spend hours beneath them until we came to an archway only just high enough to permit
Lord Sepiriz to pass under it. Here he raised the brand in the air, making the faces writhe and change their expressions from
serenity to twisted mockery. I could not rid myself of the idea that they were watching me. I remembered how the Off-Moo were
capable of suspending their life functions so successfully that they effectively became stone. Was this quality shared with
Lord Sepiriz and his people?

But my attention was quickly drawn from the carved faces to the far wall and what appeared to be a background of rippling
copper. Framed against it was a familiar object. It was our old family sword, which I thought in the hands of the Communists.

It hung against the living copper which reflected the erratic light of the torch. That black iron, so full of an alien vitality,
was caught as if by a magnet. Within the blade I was sure I detected moving runes. Then I thought they might have been mere
reflected light from the brand. I shuddered again, this time not from cold but from memory. Ravenbrand was a family heirloom,
but I knew little of its history, save that it was somehow the same sword as Elric’s Stormbringer. In my own realm of the
multiverse the blade had supernatural qualities, but in its own realm I knew it was infinitely more powerful.

Some deep strain within me yearned to hold that blade the moment I saw it. I remembered the wild bloodletting, the exhilarating
horror of battle, the joy of
testing your mettle against all the terrors of natural and supernatural worlds. I could almost taste the pleasure. I reached
for the hilt before I had formed a single, conscious thought to do so. Then I reminded myself of my manners, if nothing else,
and withdrew my hand.

Lord Sepiriz looked down on me with that same half-humorous expression, and this time there was a distinct sorrow in his voice
when he spoke. “You will take it. It is your destiny to carry Stormbringer.”

“My destiny! You confuse me with Elric. Why does he not claim this sword?”

“He believes he seeks it.”

“And will he find it?”

“When you find him…”

I was sure that he was deliberately mystifying me. “I never entertained ambitions to act as your courier…”

“Of course not. That is why I have your horse ready. Nihrainian horses are famous. Come, leave the sword for the moment, and
we will hurry to the stables. If we are in luck, someone is waiting there to meet you.”

If you tell me what my name is,

Should you tell me what my station,

I will speak of the Pukwatchis,

I will lead you to their nation.

I will show you what to steal.

W. S. H
ARTE
,

“The Starry Trail”

T
hough I grew familiar with this city’s grotesque and fantastic sights, I was unprepared for the Nihrainian stables. Little
of that intricately hewn city lay outside the great caverns into which it was carved. We made our way through miles of impossibly
complicated corridors and tunnels, every inch of which was etched with the same disturbing scenes.

The muggy air tasted heavily of sulphur, and I had difficulty breathing. Lord Sepiriz did not slacken his
steady gait and was hard to pace. Gradually the roofs grew higher and the galleries wider. I had the impression we were entering
the core of the original city. What we had passed through up to now was a kind of suburb. Here the carvings seemed older.
There was greater decay in the rock, some of which seemed almost rotten. Everywhere volcanic fires flared through windows
and doorways and fissures in the ground, illuminating what seemed to me an astonishing desolation. Here was not the tranquillity
of the Off-Moo chambers, but the stink of death so violent that its ancient memory permeated this living rock. I could almost
hear the screams and shouts of those who had died terrible deaths, almost see their reflections trapped in the obsidian and
basalt of the walls, writhing in perpetual torment. Once again I wondered if I was in Hell.

Lord Sepiriz touched his brand to another. This in turn lit the next until in a flash of light I saw we stood at the entrance
of a huge amphitheater, like a massive Spanish bullring with tiers of empty stone benches stretching up into a darkness, heavy
and threatening. Yellow flames lit the scene from without while from within came an unstable scarlet glow. I felt I stood
on the threshold of some strange necropolis. Our very life seemed an insult to the place, as if we intruded on every kind
of agony. Even Lord Sepiriz seemed borne down by the sadness and horror. We could have been in the killing fields of the universe.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“Ah.” The black giant lowered his head. He was lost for words, so I did not press the question.

My foot stirred dark dust. It eddied like water. I imagined the blood which had been spilled in this arena, yet could not
easily imagine how it had happened. There was no sense it had ever been used for gladiatorial fights or displays of wild beasts.

“What was this place?” I spoke with some hesitation, perhaps not wishing to hear the answer.

“At the end, it was a kind of court,” said Lord Sepiriz. He drew in a deep, melancholy breath, like the soughing of a distant
wind. “A court where all the judges were mad and all the accused were innocent…” He began to walk across the arena, towards
an archway. “A place of judgment which sentenced both court and defendants to a terrible death. This is why there are only
ten of us now. Our fate was as preordained as yours as soon as we forged the swords.”

“You made them? You mined the metal here… ?

“We took the original metal from a master blade. War raged as always between Law and Chaos. We thought to make a powerful
agent against one of them. The swords were forged to fight against whichever power threatened to tilt the Balance. Law against
Chaos or Chaos against Law. We drew on all our many powers to make them, and when they were finished we knew we had found
the means to save worlds and perhaps destroy them at the same time. A mysterious power entered one of the blades. While they
were otherwise identical and could feed great vitality to those who wielded them, Storm-bringer was subtly different. Those
who made that particular blade and summoned the magic required to enliven it knew they had created something that was
oddly, independently evil. Somehow, though Mourn-blade, the sister sword, had little such power, those who handled Stormbringer
developed a craving for killing. Honest blacksmiths became mass murderers. Women killed their own children with the blade.
Ultimately it was decided to put both the handlers and Stormbringer on trial…”

“Here?”

Sepiriz lowered his head in assent. “Here, in the stables. This is where the horses were exercised and exhibited. We loved
our beautiful horses. But it seemed the only suitable place. Originally this ring was used for equestrian displays. Our Nihrainian
horses are very unusual in that while they exist on this plane, they simultaneously exist on another. This gives them some
useful qualities. And some entertaining ones.” Sepiriz smiled as a happy memory intruded on the sadness.