The Skrayling Tree (43 page)

White Crow was immediately below. He had brought Bes to a stop. The patient mammoth paused, kneeling in the midst of all this
wild confusion.

Ayanawatta drew another extended breath and continued to play. Above me on the Phoorn’s shoulders, Elric raised the horn to
his lips again.

At this blast Gaynor ceased his ferocious hacking and glanced up, his mirrored helm catching the green-gold light of the dying
tree.

Guided by the horn and the flute in unison, the great round bier began to rise into the air, the white hide falling away beneath
it to reveal my own wife, Oona, seemingly dead, lying upon yet another version of the Kakatanawa
war-shield. This one was twice the size of the shield Elric had put between the Phoorn’s shoulders. Seeing it at last Gaynor
let out a frustrated shout and looked around him for his men. There was only Klosterheim. Gaynor beckoned to him. Rather reluctantly
the ex-priest came forward to join him, crying out in a peculiar singsong as the Kakatanawa attempted to tighten their circle
about the raging Lord of Winds.

Higher rose Oona, lifted on Ayanawatta’s and Elric’s music. I saw that she lay in the position of old knightly tomb figures,
her legs crossed at the ankles, a long black sword clasped between her breasts and a red sandstone bowl on her chest from
which rose a willowy plume of smoke.

White Crow dropped down from Bes’s neck and ran towards the Phoorn. He slung his lance over his back and began to climb up
the breathing scales as Oona’s floating platform, buoyed by the notes of the flute, drifted high over the Phoorn’s back, paused
and then began to descend as Elric and White Crow called out in unison. They were chanting a spell. They guided Oona’s flight
with their sorcery, bringing the great round shield, the third part of the missing skefla’a, down towards the faintly glowing
blue wound. The shield completed the membrane which all dragons must have if they are to fly between the worlds, and which
is in so many unknown ways their sustenance.

They had re-created the stolen skefla’a and brought it back to the dying Phoorn! Was it this which sustained my wife between
life and death?

At last the great disk covered the dragon’s back, and
Elric gently lifted Oona from it as I joined him. She seemed unusually at peace in his arms. But was it the peace of death?

I touched her. She was warm. Upon her chest the faintly smoking bowl, one of the great treasures of the Kakatanawa, their
Grail, rose and fell with her slow, even breathing.

Instantly now the Phoorn drew in a full breath. It took all our efforts to cling to those swelling quasi-metallic scales and
move towards one another.

The wind still shrieked and raged, but the Kakatanawa ring held. The warriors all called out the same strange, high-pitched
ululations, their actions and voices completely in unison. The spears ran in and out of the spinning darkness, containing
the howling thing but scarcely harming it.

The scales of the Phoorn steadily changed color. They deepened and ran with dozens of different shades, taking on a fire that
had not been there before. White Crow clambered towards me. He pointed to Oona, lying half held in the blue-grey membrane
where Elric had placed her, still unmoving, as if she lay in a womb. Elric was beside her on his knees. He took the large
ring from his finger and reached through the membrane to place it on Oona’s forehead. I tried to call out to him but failed.
Surely he could not mean her ill. He was her father. Even a Melnibonéan would not be so ruthless as to kill his own child.

I felt a light hand on my shoulder. White Crow had reached me. Clearly exhausted, his eyes gleamed with hope. “You must take
up the sword,” he said. “Oona has
brought it to you.” And he pointed to where the black blade still lay, clutched in her hands, but outside the peculiar organic
stuff of the Phoorn skefla’a.

“Take it!”
he commanded.

Crimson eyes locked onto mine as Elric looked up at me. He raised the sword in his fist and all but hurled it at me. “We have
no grace!”

“Fear not.” White Crow gasped. “He is of our blood and of our party. We three shall do what has to be done.”

At that moment it occurred to me again that Elric could be White Crow’s father, which meant that the young Indian was Oona’s
twin. The evident discrepancy in their ages added a further mystery to the conundrum.

Would it ever be explained? None of us was dead yet, but Gaynor, Klosterheim and Lord Shoashooan appeared to have the greater
power!

The Lord of Winds still screamed and raged in the Kakatanawa circle. It seemed the disciplined warriors could not hold much
longer. Already there were weaknesses showing as the giants used every ounce of mental and physical energy to contain him.

But I was reluctant to accept the sword. Perhaps I feared I would use it to kill Oona again? I shuddered. A coldness filled
me. I was consumed by guilty memory.

“Take it!” Elric shouted again. He rose to his feet, his eyes still fixed on his daughter. “Come. We must do this now. Lobkowitz
and Sepiriz say it is the only way.” He thrust the sword towards me again.

How had Lobkowitz communicated with Elric? Had they been in league all along? Lobkowitz had explained nothing to me, and I
might never understand now.

I accepted the sword. I knew I could not deny the inevitable. There was time only for action now.

As my hand closed on the silk-bound hilt I felt a sudden shock of energy. I looked down on my wife. Her face was tranquil.
On her breast the red sandstone bowl glowed and smoked. On her forehead the deep blue stone swirled with a life of its own.
Somehow I knew it was the bowl that sustained her life.

Elric’s face was shadowy. He moved closer to stand with his body pressed against mine. White Crow came nearer from the other
side until both men were almost crushing me. I could not resist. The blade demanded it. All three blades were in our hands
now. All three were touching. All three were beginning to sigh and murmur, their black fire mingling, their runes leaping
back and forth from one to the other. They conferred.

Oona opened her eyes, looked at us calmly and smiled. She sat up, the silvery web of membrane falling away to merge with the
Phoorn skefla’a. She took the red sandstone bowl and blew gently into it. White smoke poured upwards and surrounded us. I
breathed it in. It was sweet and delicate, the stuff of heaven. With every breath we took in unison, White Crow, Elric and
I moved closer together. The swords merged until there was only one massive blade, and I knew, as I grew in both size and
strength, wisdom and psychic power, that the swords were reunited with their archetype as we were reunited with ours. Three
in one.

“Now!” It was Sepiriz. He, too, was as enormous as the single creature I had become. “Now you must climb. Now you must restore
the tree and return the Balance.”

I could see Lord Shoashooan whirling wildly below me. The Kakatanawa could no longer hold him. I heard Lobkowitz’s voice.
“Go!
We will do all we can here. But if you do not go, nothing will be worth it. Gaynor will win.”

Once again Elric’s familiar personality was absorbing my own. I had no sense of White Crow’s individuality. For me it was
exactly as it had been before when only Elric and I had combined. But now I felt even more powerful. The black sword had become
a monstrous and beautiful object, far more ornate and intricate in design than anything I had ever wielded in battle. Her
voice was melodic, yet still as cold as justice, and her metal blazed with life. I had no doubt that I held the
first
sword, from which all others had come. I looked up at the flaking bark, the decaying pulp that now blotched the base of the
Skrayling Oak. Gaynor’s work had been well done.

I flung my arm forward towards the oak, and the sword did the rest, carrying me deep towards the core of the trunk. The closer
I came, the larger I grew, until the tree, though tall, was of more familiar size.

I scabbarded the sword and climbed. I knew what this ascent meant. I knew what I had to do. Elric’s blood and soul informed
my own as mine informed his. While Lobkowitz had given me only hints, he had told Elric everything he needed to know. Since
the time they first saw White Buffalo Woman and Kakatanawa city, Elric had schemed against Gaynor while pretending to serve
his cause. And now, too, I knew who White Crow was.

On my belt was Elric’s horn, and I moved with the
agility of White Crow. The outer bark of the supernatural tree was very thick and layered, forming deep fissures and overhangs
which afforded me handholds on my route upwards.

I heard a sound below and looked down. Far away the Kakatanawa were being pressed back by the power of the Lord of Winds.
Lord Shoashooan had widened their circle until it must surely break. I knew in my bones that unless the Phoorn had more time
to heal and recover he would still perish. Oona was doing her best for the great beast, but if Lord Shoashooan were to break
free now, the Phoorn would not yet be strong enough to destroy him.

I thought I glimpsed Ayanawatta, Sepiriz and Lobkowitz on the edge of my vision, but then I could not look away any longer.
I needed all my faculties to climb the constantly changing organic fissures in the tree.

Noise from the tornado crashed and wailed. Every part of the tree began to shake. I had to exert even more effort to cling
to the weird bark. Often pieces crumbled away in my hands. I feared I would soon weaken and lose my grip completely.

An inch at a time I climbed. The air grew thinner and colder and the sounds of the Lord of Winds more shrill. Then something
grabbed at my body. It felt as if a giant skeletal hand seized me about the waist. The cold went deep into my guts, and I
knew Lord Shoashooan was free.

I fought to keep my grip on the tree. Being held so, I could not climb any further. It was all I could do to hang on.

The Lord of Winds’ voice trumpeted a vainglorious note now. Once I thought I glimpsed the Kakatanawa below as they were flung
backwards, their ring broken. Lord Shoashooan attacked me and the Phoorn with all his strength.

I heard the pure whistle of Ayanawatta’s flute cutting through the roar and bluster. Again I was gripped by the tendrils of
wind as Lord Shoashooan tried to pry me loose. Without the strength of my avatars, I should surely have been lost.

But the sound of the flute came clearer and sweeter through all that cacophony and joined with another sound coming from far
below, equally high but by no means sweet. This sound writhed around the tree’s roots. The sound was the other Lord of Winds.
If the Lords succeeded in joining, there would be no overwhelming their combined strength.

With that thought came the energy to force myself up the trunk. At last I stood in the swaying upper branches looking out
across a world at night, at the frozen lake, at the rubble to which the great city had been reduced. At my will the sword
sprang into my hand. I held the blade high above my head as power flooded into it. I offered myself as a conduit for this
huge, supernatural force.

Then I reversed the sword and aimed it at the topmost tip of the tree, plunging it down, down into the soul of all-time, the
heart of all-space, down into the center of the Skrayling Tree.

Immediately the sword left my hand and remained in the tree, its point driving deep through the inner wood to the soul of
the Skrayling Oak. As it moved down the
tree, it did not split but rather expanded the trunk until sword and tree had merged, and a great, black blade lay at the
core of the ancient oak.

Then I lurched backwards, grabbing frantically at boughs to stop myself falling towards the faraway ice and the inevitable
death of all my avatars. If I fell, we might never know if our sacrifice had been worth anything. Even now I heard the wind
rising, higher and higher, ever more vicious. I was losing my grip on the bough. I was surely about to fall, and I had given
up my weapon.

A shadow passed fleetingly through the whirlwind’s dusty crown. It was Oona, and she was riding the Phoorn.

The great white-gold spread of a Phoorn rising on his wide peacock wings into the air above a storm was a breathtaking sight!
On my reptilian relative’s broad back, merged with his gleaming iridescent skefla’a but clearly visible, was my wife Oona,
vibrantly alive, her head thrown forward in the sheer pleasure of the flight, a bowstave clutched in her right hand and the
redstone smoking bowl balanced in her left.

When I fell, the Phoorn fell beside me, almost playfully. His soft breath slowed my descent, and he slid underneath me. I
landed gently, painlessly, in his skefla’a. I lay prone just behind my wife. I could see the tree outlined in a golden glare.
Within the spreading oak was the deep black of the sword blade, the guard stretching out across the branches, the pommel pulsing
like a star. The black blade had completely merged with the oak and become part of the tree’s life force.

I was held within the membrane, only able to watch as Oona put down her box, took the redstone pipe bowl and spread her hands
in a magical gesture that produced two bowls, one on each palm. I saw her reach out and put a smoking redstone bowl at each
end of the black sword’s guard. They hung suspended there as she lifted both hands to her head and took something from it.
She then placed this object on the sword hilt between the bowls. The ritual was done, and I looked upon the Cosmic Balance.

Oona began to laugh with joy as Shoashooan redoubled his attack. The storm raged on and shot up cold tendrils wrapping around
us, still trying to draw us back. Yet she turned towards me, laughed again, and embraced me.

The Balance still swung erratically. It could destroy itself if its movement back and forth became too violent. Nothing seemed
to have even the promise of stability as yet.

Below us, seemingly even more powerful, the great plume of the tornado fanned out, gathering stronger and stronger substance.
The limbs of the tree began to thrash uncontrollably again as Lord Shoashooan unleashed a desperate anger.