"Well, Prince Elric. Our bargain and our duel are settled and you are free to return to Tanelorn. We'll not harm the city, have no fear. I have what we came for."
The knight then lifted the helm for the first time. A woman looked down at me. A woman with pale, radiant features, with blond hair and glaring black eyes. A woman whose teeth were pointed, whose lips were on fire.
I knew immediately how I had been deceived. "Lady Miggea, I presume." I could barely whisper. "You gave your word. The word of Law."
"You didn't listen carefully enough. It was the wolf who swore not to fight. Your blood is wise, " she said softly, "but it informs your heart, not your mind. These are urgent times. There is much at stake. Sometimes the old rules no longer sustain the reality."
"You'll not keep your word? You said you'd leave the city in peace! "
"Of course, I shall. I'll let it die of natural causes."
"What do you mean?" My words were a dry gasp. I was beginning to realize the folly of my decision. Moonglum was right. I had brought untold disaster both to myself and my world. All because I had followed wild "instinct" rather than logic. There are times when faith provides only further catastrophe.
"There's no more water in this realm. Only what you see. Nothing to sustain your gardens. Nothing for you to drink." She smiled to herself as she held up Stormbringer by the blade, clutching it in a fist which seemed to grow larger as she spoke. "Nothing to help you. No supernatural aid. You cannot return to your own realm. It took my power to bring you here and keep you here. Few are as powerful as Miggea of Law. No human aid will save you. In time you'll wither away and that will be the end of you and your stories. But I have been merciful. You'll know none of this, Prince Elric, for you will be asleep."
As my sight faded and the last of my strength went out of me, I made one last attempt to rise. "Sleep?"
Her horrid crazed face came close to mine. She pursed her lips and blew into my eyes.
And then I descended into dreaming darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
The Dreamthief's Daughter
I became dimly aware of my friends from the city carrying me back. I was entirely incapable of movement, drifting in and out of an enchanted sleep, only vaguely conscious of the surrounding world, sometimes completely oblivious to it. I knew my friends, especially Moonglum, were concerned. I tried to rouse myself, to speak, but every effort took me deeper into my dreamworld.
I did not want to go deeper. I feared something there. Something which Miggea had prepared for me.
The only course open to me was the interior. Incapable of movement or communication, yet aware of my own condition, I finally let myself slip slowly down, afraid that I might never emerge again from the pit of my own complex psyche. Drowning in my own dark dreams.
The last of my will deserted me. I began to fall. Away from Tanelorn. Away from all the fresh dangers of the future. Dangers I would not be able to face without my sword. And how would the sword be used? To destroy the Balance itself? My mind was in a turmoil. Falling at last into oblivion was a relief.
I was unconscious for seconds, and then I began to dream. In my dream I saw a man clothed in rags, standing with his face turned from his own house, a book in his hand and a great bundle on his back. I wanted to ask him his name, but his eyes were filled with tears and he could not see me. For a moment I thought when he turned towards me his face would be mine, but it was a plain, round human head. He hesitated and then began to return to his house where his wife and children waited for him, glad he had not left them. They had not seen how distressed he was. For one of my kind to feel sympathy for such ordinary souls was almost disgusting, yet I longed to help these people in their misery.
Time passed. At last I saw the man leave his house with his burden and walk away until he was out of sight. I began to follow him, but when I reached the crest of the hill he had gone. I saw a valley and in that valley a number of different battles were being fought. Men burned castles, villages and towns. They slaughtered women and children. They killed everything that lived, and then they turned on one another and began to kill again. The only road took me through this valley. Reconciled, I began my descent.
I had not gone very far, however, before a small, hunched figure jumped from a rock onto the path in front of me and, grinning, offered me an elaborate bow. He spoke to me, but I could not hear him. He became frustrated, signing and gesturing, but still I could not understand him. Eventually he took me by the hand and led me around a corner of the rock. There ahead was what seemed like an ocean, rising vertically to form a wall in front of me. Through the ocean ran a gleaming road of dappled light, like one ray of sunshine falling on water.
So strange was the perspective that I felt almost ill. Yet the crooked little man continued to lead me until we had stepped onto that dappled road and were walking up its steep surface. I had the strong smell of ozone in my nostrils. The road then straightened and became a silver moonbeam in a complex lattice of moonbeams, like the roadways through the realms. My guide was gone.
I was alarmed. At the same time I realized I had a feeling of physical wellbeing. I had never known it before. I had only ever experienced pain or relief from pain, but never a body that did not know pain at all. All my life I had had to deal with some weakness, either physical or moral. Now I began to feel fresh, elated, even relaxed. Yet I knew that in reality I had no physical body at all, that it was only my dreaming soul which wandered these worlds of enchantment.
The conflicting emotions within me did nothing to help my condition. I did not know if this was part of Miggea's trap. I did not know which path to choose. I looked up into all that vast complexity and I saw a million roads, each one like a ray of light, on which creatures of every kind walked. I knew that there was no such thing as a multiversal vacuum, that every apparently empty space was populated. I saw the roadways as branches of a great silver tree, whose roots somehow went deep down into my own brain. I knew that this was the fundamental structure of the multiverse. I decided, in spite of recent experience, to trust my instincts and to follow a small branch running off a more substantial limb. I set foot on the pale road and it gave slightly to my step. It made walking a pleasure. In no time I had passed half a dozen branches, heading for my chosen path. But as I did so, I realized that the weave of the branches was more complicated than I had originally seen. I found myself in a tangle of minor brambles, which blocked my way and which I could not easily push aside. My body felt so light, so insubstantial that there was no danger of my breaking the branches. It seemed to me that tiny figures moved along other branches, just as I moved along mine.
Eventually I found ways of passing through the branches so that I disturbed very little. I had the impression that somewhere up there might be another creature, far bigger than myself, perhaps a version of myself, who was carefully trying to avoid knocking me from my branch.
At one point I paused. I was no longer dressed in my ordinary clothes but wore full Melnibonean war armor. Not the elaborate baroque of ceremonial plate, but the efficient, blade-turning protection a man needed in battle. I had no sense of weight to the armor, any more than there was to my body. I half assumed I had died and become some kind of wandering ghost. If I remained here for a long time, I would gradually grow amorphous and merge with the atmosphere, breathed in like dust by the living.
Having lost my original direction, I found myself wandering down increasingly narrow and twisting branches. I thought I must soon step upon the last twig at the farthest edge of the multiver' sal tree. I was beginning to despair when I saw that the track led through a tunnel formed of willow boughs. On the other side of that tunnel was a weirdly shaped cottage, thatched with the straw of centuries, its bricks apparently borrowed from every source in existence, its windows at peculiar angles and of odd sizes, its door narrow and tall, its chimneys fantastically curled. From the roof of the small porch hung several baskets of blooming flowers and a birdcage. Under the birdcage sat a black and white sheepdog, her tongue lolling as if she had just come in from a day's work. The pleasant pastoral scene made me oddly wary. I had become used to traps and delusions. My enemies seemed to enjoy making promises they had no intention of keeping, as if they had just discovered the power of the lie. If this image were a lie, it was a clever one. Everything looked perfect, including the plume of smoke coming from the chimney, the smell of baking, the domestic clatter from within.