'Trade was ever War's superior," said Raik Na Seem, and looked suddenly back over his shoulder at Alnac's withered body. The golden outline of the dreamwand was glowing again and throbbing, as it had done from time to time since Alnac had first lain down beside the girl.
"Tis a strange organ," said Raik Na Seem softly. "Almost a second spine."
He was about to say more when there was a faint movement in Alnac's features and a dreadful, desolate groan escaped the bloodless lips.
They turned and went to kneel beside him. Alnac's eyes still blazed blue and Varadia's were still black.
"He is dying," whispered the First Elder. "Is it so, Prince Elric?"
Elric knew no more than the Bauradi.
"What can we do for him?" asked Raik Na Seem.
Elric touched the cold, leathery carcass. He lifted an almost weightless wrist and could hear no pulse beating. It was at this moment, startlingly, that Alnac's eyes turned from blue to black and looked at Elric with all their old intelligence. "Ah, you have come to help me. I have learned where the Pearl lies. But it is too well protected."
The voice was a whisper from the dust-dry mouth.
Elric cradled the dreamthief in his arms. "I will help you, Alnac. Tell me how."
"You cannot. There are caverns... These dreams are defeating me. They are drowning me. They are drawing me in. I am doomed to join those already doomed. Poor company for one such as me, Prince Elric. Poor company..."
The dreamwand pulsed and glowed white as bleached bones. The dreamthief's eyes turned to blue again, then back to black. The thin air stirred in the leathery remains of his throat. Suddenly there was horror in his face. "Ah, no! I must find the will!"
The dreamwand moved like a snake through his body, then slithered into Varadia, then returned. "Oh, Elric," said the tiny voice, "help me if you can. Oh, I am trapped. This is the worst I have ever known..."
His words seemed to Elric to call to him directly from the grave, as if his friend were already dead. "Elric, if there is some way..."
Then the body shuddered, filled as if with a single huge breath, while the dreamwand flickered and writhed again and then grew still, lying as it had first done with the crook upon the two clasped hands.
"Ah, my friend, I was a fool even to consider myself able to survive this..." The tiny voice faded. "Would that I had understood the nature of her mind. It is so strong! So strong!"
"Who does he speak of?" asked Raik Na Seem. "My child? That which holds her? My daughter is of the Sarangli women. Her grandmother could charm whole tribes to believe they died of disease. I told him as much. What does he not understand?"
"Oh, Elric, she has destroyed me!" There was a tremor in the frail hand as it reached towards the albino.
Then, suddenly, all the colour and life came flooding back into Alnac's body. It seemed to expand to its former size and vitality. The hooked staff became nothing more than the artefact Elric had originally seen at Alnac's belt.
The handsome dreamthief grinned. He was surprised. "I live! Elric, I live!"
He took a firmer grip on his staff and made to rise. Then he coughed and something disgusting oozed from his lips, like a gigantic, half-digested worm. It was as if he regurgitated his own rotten organs. He wiped the stuff away. For a moment he was bewildered, the terror returning to his eyes.
"No." Abac seemed reconciled suddenly. "I was too proud. I die, of course." He collapsed backward onto the sheet as Elric again tried to hold him. With his old irony the dreamthief shook his head. "A little too late, I think. It's not my fate, after all, to be your companion, Sir Champion, in this plane."
Elric, to whom the words made no sense, believed Alnac to be raving and sought to quieten him.
Then the staff fell from the dreamthief's grasp and he rolled onto his side before a wavering, sickly scream came out of him, then a stink which threatened to drive Elric and Raik Na Seem from the Bronze Tent. It was as if his body putrefied before their eyes even as the dreamthief tried to speak again and failed.
And then Alnac Kreb was dead.
Elric, mourning a brave, good man, felt then that his own doom and that of Anigh had been determined. The dreamthief's death suggested forces at work of which the albino understood nothing, for all his sorcerous wisdom. He had come across no grimoire which even hinted of such a fate. He had seen worse befall those who meddled with sorcery, but here was a sorcery which he could not begin to interpret.
"He is gone, then," said Raik Na Seem.
"Aye." Elric's own breath shuddered in his throat. "Aye. His courage was greater than any of us suspected. Including, I think, himself."
The First Elder walked slowly to where his child still slept in her terrible trance. He looked down into her blue eyes as if he almost hoped to see the black eyes somewhere there within her.
"Varadia?"
She did not respond.
Solemnly Raik Na Seem took the Holy Girl and placed her back upon the raised block, settling her into the cushions as if she merely slept a natural sleep and he, her father, laid her down for her nightly rest.
Elric stared at the remains of the dreamthief. He had doubtless understood the cost of failure and perhaps that was the secret he had refused to share.
"It is over," said Raik Na Seem gently. "Now I can think of nothing to do for her. He gave too much." He was fighting not to lose himself in either self-mortification or despair. "We must try to think what to do. Will you help me in this, friend of my son?"
"If I can."
As Elric rose, shaking, to his feet he heard a sound behind him. He thought at first it was some Bauradi woman come to mourn. He looked back at the light which streamed in through the tent and saw only her outline.
It was a young woman, but she was not of the Bauradim. She entered the tent slowly and there were tears in her eyes as she stared down at Alnac Kreb's ruined body.
"I am too late, then?"
Her musical voice was full of the most intense sorrow. She reached a hand to her face. "He should not have attempted such a task. They told me at the Silver Flower Oasis that you had come here. Why could you not have waited a little longer? Just a day more?"
It was with great effort that she controlled her grief and Elric felt a sudden, obscure kinship with her.
She took another step towards the body. She was an inch or so shorter than Elric, with a heart-shaped face framed by thick, brown hair. Slender and well-muscled, she wore a padded jerkin slashed to show its red silk lining. She had soft velvet breeches, embroidered felt riding boots and over all this an almost transparent cotton dust-cloak pushed back from her shoulders. At her belt was a sword, and cradled above her left shoulder was a hooked staff of gold and ebony, a more elaborate version of the one which lay on the carpet beside Alnac's corpse.
"I taught him all he knew of his craft," she said. "But it was not enough for this. How could he ever have thought that it would be! He could never have achieved such a goal. He had not the character for it." She turned away, brushing at her face. When she looked back her tears had gone and she stared directly back into Elric's eyes.
"I am Oone," she said. She bowed briefly to Raik Na Seem. "I am the dreamthief you sent for."
PART TWO