The Skrayling Tree (44 page)

Once more I heard the clear note of the flute. Oona heard it, too. The Phoorn began to bank through the dirty light, sweeping
through the edges of the whirlwind, down through the green-gold haze of the tree, down past the slender black shaft which
glowed at the center of the trunk. Down towards the greedy Lord of Winds.

I had done everything I could do. I prepared myself for the death Lord Shoashooan undoubtedly planned for us. If I could have
thrown myself into his center and saved Oona I would have done so, but the membrane prevented any dramatic movement.

This was how my ancestors had traveled with the Phoorn, protected by the skefla’a which allowed the monsters to sweep like
butterflies so delicately between the realms of reality. Few Melnibonéans had made such flights, though my father Sadric was
said to have voyaged longest and furthest of any of us, after my mother had died giving birth to me.

It was only now that the realization came. My shame was coupled with a sudden rush of relief. The Kakatanawa Grail had done
its holy work! The wounds I had inflicted upon Oona were thoroughly healed.

With decreasing energy, the Phoorn fought valiantly against the sucking wind drawing us to it. His massive wings beat upon
the ether as he strained to escape. Oona became increasingly alarmed. Filling the entire world before us was the spreading
bulk of the Skrayling Oak framing the pulsing black sword. Its crosspieces formed the Cosmic Balance, which again began to
sway wildly. The conflict was by no means decided.

Looming behind us was the ever-growing presence of Lord Shoashooan. The Kakatanawa warriors were nowhere to be seen. Lord
Sepiriz, Ayanawatta and Prince Lobkowitz had disappeared. Neither was there any sign of Gaynor or Klosterheim.

Then I heard the flute’s refrain. Ayanawatta’s clear, pure tones cut through all the raging turmoil.

The Phoorn lurched this way and that in the force of the tornado. The air grew colder and colder. We were slowly freezing
into immobility. I became drowsy with the cold.

Again the flute piped.

The Phoorn’s wings could no longer beat against the thinning ether. His breath began to stream like gaseous ivory from his
nostrils. Slowly we were losing height, being pulled deeper and deeper into the heart of the whirlwind.

The voice of the Phoorn sounded again in my mind.
We have no strength to escape him
…

I prayed that I could die with Oona in my arms. I pushed with all my strength against the clinging membrane, too weak now
to reach her. She was holding tight to the scales as the freezing wind sought to dislodge her from the Phoorn.

I was now convinced that Sepiriz, Lobkowitz and the Kakatanawa had all perished. Somehow Ayanawatta continued to play his
flute, but I guessed he could not survive for long.

I love you. Father—Ulric—I love you both.

Oona’s voice. I saw her turn, seeking me, yearning towards me with her eyes. She could not loose her grip, or she would be
torn from the back of the Phoorn. Again I strained against the membrane. It flickered with scarlet and turquoise and a soft
pewter brilliance. It did not resist me, but neither did it allow me to break free.

Oona!

From below something roared and spat at us. The whole of the surface erupted, fragmenting into millions
of spores which spun away past us into the infinite cosmos. Scarlet and black streamed up at us, as if the whole world exploded.
Searing hot air was a sudden wall against the cold. Silence fell.

I heard a distant rumbling. A roaring. I knew what this meant. What shot upwards towards us was magma. Rock as swift and lively
as a roaring river and far more deadly. We were directly above an erupting volcano. We would burn to death before the whirlwind
destroyed us!

But Oona was pointing excitedly up towards the distant Balance, clearly visible now on the staff that had replaced the black
sword. I knew then that this was the original iron which Sepiriz and his people had stolen to make Stormbringer. This was
the metal the Kakatanawa had told the Pukawatchi to fashion. She was what whole nations had died to possess. Her magic was
the magic of the Cosmic Balance itself. Her power was strong enough to challenge that Balance. Those who mastered her, mastered
Fate. Those who did not master her, were mastered by her.

What Oona showed me was not significant at first, but then I realized why she was elated. The bowls that formed the twin weights
of the Balance were gradually finding equilibrium.

The boiling air struck hard against Lord Shoashooan’s cold turbulence. I saw his face, closer this time, as his teeth snapped
at us and his flailing claws grasped and held the Phoorn. The beast beat his wonderful wings helplessly and would surely perish.

But the hot air was consuming Lord Shoashooan. He was collapsing in it. Slowly his grip loosened, and he
began to wail. I felt my head would burst with the volume. What I had taken for another aspect of Lord Shoashooan’s strength
had been his opposite, conjured from the benign Underworld whose denizens had helped us in the past. A counterforce as powerful
as the Lord of Winds, which could only be rising from the core of the Grey Fees.

Shoashooan had weakened himself in his pursuit of us. At last we felt his grip relax, and we were free. And he in turn was
now pursued. One great Lord of Winds gave chase to another! We watched the turquoise-and-crimson air, foamy masses of creamy
smoke roiling in its wake, as it enclosed and absorbed its filthy opposite. It purified the Lord of Winds with its grace alone
and brought at last, against Lord Shoashooan’s will, a kind of uneasy harmony. With the tornado still grumbling from within,
the flute’s simple tune faded into one single note of resolution.

We stood looking up at the Skrayling Tree, looking up at the great black staff of the Balance, at the cups which must surely
be the Grail, which had restored Oona to life. At the central pivot of the Balance Oona had placed the blue jewel of Jerusalem,
my ring. The same Templar ring which Elric had carried from Jerusalem. The ring which resembled our small, ordinary planet,
seen from space. The ring which had helped us restore the Balance.

The Kakatanawa resumed their watch, again immobile. The great Phoorn settled near the roots of the tree, and my wife and I
dismounted and embraced at last. Almost at once the huge beast curled himself about the
base of the tree. He returned peacefully to his stewardship. The roots were already restoring themselves.

At the moment of our embrace, we stood beneath a sharp, blue sky, with a sweet wind blowing surrounded by ruins. The tree
grew larger and larger as the Balance grew stronger, until it filled the entire firmament, and the roots were green and fresh
again, winding out from the ruined Kakatanawa city, out through the deep, deep ice—

Where the surviving avatars of Gaynor, Klosterheim and their men still moved with weary determination towards us.

The Vikings’ eyes stared sightlessly. Their lips moved wordlessly. They held their weapons tightly, the only reality the Vikings
could be certain of. It was clear they longed for the release of a slaughtering. They no longer cared how they died.

It was still not over. I looked around for a sword but found nothing. Instead I saw the prone bodies of Elric and White Crow.
I saw Prince Lobkowitz, Lord Sepiriz and Ayanawatta, all unarmed, standing together around Bes, the mammoth. The great Phoorn
seemed to have immersed himself in the trunk of the tree.

We did not have a weapon among us, and Gaynor and his men were still armed to the teeth. They understood their advantage,
because their pace quickened. Like hungry dogs scenting blood, they hurried towards us. Elric and White Crow slowly revived
only to become aware of their threatened destruction.

Had I survived so much to see my wife cut down before my eyes? I dug around among the rubble for a
sword. There was nothing. Lord Shoashooan had reduced the entire great city to dust.

They were almost on our island. I urged Oona to flee, but she held her ground. Ayanawatta had come to stand with us. His handsome,
tattooed features were calm, resolute. He slipped his bone flute from his bag in one fluid movement and placed it to his lips.
We watched Gaynor and his men advance across the ice.

As Ayanawatta played, no note issued from the flute itself, but I began to hear a strange, subterranean sound. Groaning, creaking
and cracking. A distant rushing. And another eruption of warm air at our feet. Things burst upwards through the shattering
ice. They glistened with fresh life.

Gaynor saw them, too. He yelled to his men, instantly understanding the danger, and began to dash towards us, sword drawn.
But the fresh, green roots of the Skrayling Oak spread everywhere, smashing up through the ice, overturning great blocks and
collapsing back into what was rapidly becoming water once more.

Desperate now, Gaynor persevered. He labored to the edge of the ice, our island shore only a few paces away.

And there he stopped.

Bes the mammoth stood facing him. She shook her tusks, menacing him, all the while her mild eyes regarding him with a terrifying
calm.

He turned. Hesitated.

Further up the shore Klosterheim and several of his men leaped to our island as the last of the ice around them melted. Sheets
of clear, pale water appeared beneath the winter sky. A great fissure had torn apart the
remaining ice sheets and was widening rapidly as Gaynor, trapped between two dangers, still hesitated, not knowing how to
avoid defeat. Bes stomped relentlessly towards him, and he was forced back onto the ice. He began to run, slipping and sliding,
towards a nearby spur of rock jutting out from the beach.

He almost reached the rock, but his armor and his sword became too heavy for him. He sank as quickly as the ice vanished.
He stood up to his waist in black water, raging to survive, roaring out his anger and frustration even as he slipped suddenly
beneath the waves and was gone.

Gone. A warm, gentle breeze blew from the south.

I could not believe that angry immortal had simply disappeared. I knew by now that he would never die. Not, at least, until
I, too, died.

Oona tugged at my arm. “We must go home now,” she said. “Prince Lobkowitz will take us.”

Klosterheim and the other survivors looked listlessly at the spot of water where their leader had vanished. Then, turning
towards us, the leading Viking shrugged and sheathed his sword. “We have no fight with you. Take our word on it. Let us make
our way back to our ship, and we will return to where we belong.”

Elric had affection for some of these men. He accepted their offer. “You can sail
The Swan
back to Las Cascadas. And take that disappointed wretch with you.” Smiling he indicated a gloomy Klosterheim. “You can tell
them what you witnessed here.”

One of the tall black warriors laughed aloud. “To spend the rest of our days as reviled madmen? I have
seen others cursed with such reminiscences. They die friendless. You’ll not come with us, Duke Elric? To captain us?”

Elric shook his head. “I will help you get back to the mainland. Then I have a mind to go with Ayanawatta when he returns
to take the Law to his people and fulfill the rest of his destiny. We are old friends, you see. I have some eight hundred
years until my dream is ended, and only then shall I know if I had power enough to summon Stormbringer to me in that other
world. My curiosity takes me further into this land.” He lifted a gloved hand in farewell.

Sepiriz shrugged and spread his hands in gentle acquiescence. “I will find you,” he said, “when I need you.”

White Crow came close to look directly into Elric’s face. “My future does not seem to hold much joy,” he said.

“Some,” said Elric, staring back. He sighed and looked up at the snowcapped mountains, the silver sky, the few birds which
flew in the warm, clean air. “But most of that is in slaughter.” He turned away from White Crow as if he could no longer bear
to look at him. At that I finally understood that White Crow was neither son nor brother nor nephew nor twin. White Crow was
completing his own long dream-journey, part of his apprenticeship, his training as an adept, his preparation for his destiny,
to become Sorcerer Emperor of Melniboné. White Crow was Elric himself, in his youth! Each had been moved in his own way by
what he saw in the face of the other. Without another word, White Crow
returned to stand with Bes. He would be the last Melnibonéan of noble blood to be sent to Kakatanawa for his training. Their
city gone, the giants had only one duty, to guard the tree forever.

“It is done at last,” said White Crow. “Fate is served. The multiverse will survive. The treasures of the tree have been restored,
and the great oak blooms again. I look upon the end of all our histories, I think.” He clambered up into the big wooden saddle
and goaded Bes towards the lapping water.

None of us tried to stop him as White Crow guided the noble old mammoth into the waves and began to descend until Bes had
submerged completely. He turned in the saddle once and raised his bow above his head before he, too, disappeared back into
his particular dream, as we all began to return slowly to our own.

“Come,” said Lobkowitz. “You’ll want to see your children.”

A
nd so another episode in the eternal struggle for the Balance was completed and resolution achieved. How human endeavor has
the power to create and make real its most significant symbols I do not know, but I do know that a logical creator might build
such a self-sustaining system. In spite of my adventures, my belief in a supreme spirit remains.

Ayanawatta believed strongly in his dream, somehow reinforced rather than contradicted by the Longfellow account, and went
on to found the Iroquois Confederacy, a model for the federal system of the United States. Ulric and I worked first for the
UN and later for Womankind Worldwide, whose work becomes increasingly important.

Passing without incident from one realm to another, Ulric, Prince Lobkowitz and I returned, traveling chiefly by rail, from
Lake Huron to the Nova Scotian coast.