"No man can go back in Time, " said the Duke of Queens. "Ask Brannart Morphail."
"He, too, is a Lord of Chaos?"
"If you like. He is a colleague."
"Could he not return me to my realm? He sounds a clever being."
"He could not and he would not, " said Mistress Christia. "Haven't you enjoyed your experiences here so far?"
"Enjoyed?" Elric was astonished. "Madam, I think … Well, what has happened this day is not what we mortals would call 'enjoyment'! "
"But you seemed to be enjoying yourself, " said the Duke of Queens in some disappointment. "Didn't he, Werther?"
"You were much more cheerful through the whole episode, " agreed the Last Romantic. "Particularly when you were fighting the demons."
"As with many time travellers who suffer from anxieties, " said Mistress Christia, "you appeared to relax when you had something immediate to capture your attention…"
Elric refused to listen. This was clever Chaos talk, meant to deceive him and take his mind from his chief concern.
"If I was any help to you, " he began, "I am, of course…"
"He isn't very grateful, " Mistress Christia pouted.
Elric felt madness creeping nearer again. He calmed himself.
"I thank you for the food, madam. Now, I would sleep."
"Sleep?" she was disconcerted. "Oh! Of course. Yes. A bedroom?"
"If you have such a thing."
"As many as you like." She moved a stone on one of her rings. The walls seemed to draw back to show bedchamber after bedchamber, in all manner of styles, with beds of every shape and fashion. Elric controlled his temper. He bowed, thanked her, said goodnight to the two lords and made for the nearest bed.
As he closed the door behind him, he thought he heard Werther de Goethe say: "We must try to think of a better entertainment for him when he wakes up."
11 In which Mrs Persson Witnesses the First Sign of the Megaflow's Disintegration
In Castle Canaria Lord Jagged unrolled his antique charts. He had had them drawn for him by a baffled astrologer in 1950. They were one of his many affectations. At the moment, however, they were of considerably greater use than Alvarez's electronics.
While he used a wrist computer to check his figures, Una Persson looked out of the window of Castle Canaria and wondered who had invented this particular landscape. A green and orange sun cast sickening light over the herds of grazing beasts who resembled, from this distance at any rate, nothing so much as gigantic human hands. In the middle of the scene was raised some kind of building in the shape of a vast helmet, vaguely Greek in conception. Beyond that was a low, grey moon. She turned away.
"I must admit, " said Lord Jagged, "that I had not understood the extent…"
"Exactly, " she said.
"You must forgive me. A certain amount of amnesia — euphoria, perhaps? — always comes over one in these very remote periods."
"Quite."
He looked up from the charts. "We've a few hours at most."
Her smile was thin, her nod barely perceptible.
While she made the most of having told him so, Lord Jagged frowned, turned a power ring and produced an already lit pipe which he placed thoughtfully in his mouth, taking it out again almost immediately. "That wasn't Dunhill Standard Medium." He laid the pipe aside.
There came a loud buzzing noise from the window. The scene outside was disintegrating as if melting on glass. An eerie golden light spread everywhere, flooding from an apex of deeper gold, as if forming a funnel.
"That's a rupture, " said Lord Jagged. His voice was tense. He put his arm about her shoulders. "I've never seen anything of the size before."
Rushing towards them along the funnel of light there came an entire city of turrets and towers and minarets in a wide variety of pastel colours. It was set into a saucer-shaped base which was almost certainly several miles in circumference.
For a moment the city seemed to retreat. The golden light faded. The city remained, some distance away, swaying a little as if on a gentle tide, a couple of thousand feet above the ground, the grey moon below it.
"That's what I call megaflow distortion, " said Una Persson in that inappropriately facetious tone adopted by those who are deeply frightened.
"I recognize the period." Jagged drew a telescope from his robes. "Second Candlemaker's Empire, mainly based in Arcturus. This is a village by their standards. After all, Earth was merely a rural park during that time." He retreated into academe, his own response to fear.
Una craned her head. "Isn't that some sort of vehicle heading towards the city. From the moon — good heavens, they've spotted it already. Are they going to try to put the whole thing into a menagerie?"
Jagged had the advantage of the telescope. "I think not." He handed her the instrument.
Through it she saw a scarlet and black chariot borne by what seemed to be some form of flying fairground horses. In the chariot, armed to the teeth with lances, bows, spears, swords, axes, morningstars, maces and almost every other barbaric hand-weapon, clad in quasi-mythological armour, were Werther de Goethe, the Duke of Queens and Elric of Melnibone.
"They're attacking it! " she said faintly. "What will happen when the two groups intersect?"
"Three groups, " he pointed out. "Untangling that in a few hours is going to be even harder."
"And if we fail?"
He shrugged. "We might just as well give ourselves up to the biggest chronoquake the universe has ever experienced."
"You're exaggerating, " she said.
"Why not? Everyone else is."
12 The Attack on the Citadel of the Skies
"Melnibone! Melnibone! " cried the albino as the chariot circled over the spires and turrets of the city. They saw startled faces below. Strange engines were being dragged through the narrow streets.
"Surrender! " Elric demanded.
"I do not think they can understand us, " said the Duke of Queens. "What a find, eh? A whole city from the past! "
Werther had been reluctant to embark on an adventure not of his own creation, but Elric, realizing that here at last was a chance of escape, had been anxious to begin. The Duke of Queens had, in an instant, aided the albino by producing costumes, weapons, transport. Within minutes of the city's appearance, they had been on their way.
Exactly why Elric wished to attack the city, Werther could not make out, unless it was some test of the Melnibonean's to see if his companions were true allies or merely pretending to have befriended him. Werther was learning a great deal from Elric, much more than he had ever learned from Mongrove, whose ideas of angst were only marginally less notional than Werther's own.
A broad, flat blue ray beamed from the city. It singed one wheel of the chariot.
"Ha! They make sorcerous weapons, " said Elric. "Well, my friends. Let us see you counter with your own power."
Werther obediently imitated the blue ray and sent it back from his fingers, slicing the tops off several towers. The Duke of Queens typically let loose a different coloured ray from each of his extended ten fingers and bored a hole all the way through the bottom of the city so that fields could be seen below. He was pleased with the effect.
"This is the power of the Gods of Chaos! " cried Elric, a familiar elation filling him as the blood of old Melnibone was fired. "Surrender! "
"Why do you want them to surrender?" asked the Duke of Queens in some disappointment.
"Their city evidently has the power to fly through the dimensions. If I became its lord I could force it to return to my own plane, " said Elric reasonably.
"The Morphail Effect…" began Werther, but realized he was spoiling the spirit of the game. "Sorry."