"I have read of such ideas, but they mean very little to me." "Because you lack experience to make sense of them." "You have already spoken of the Land of Dreams-in-Common. Is that the same as the Birthplace of the Bone?" "Perhaps. Our people are undecided on the point." Temporarily invigorated by the drug, Elric began to enjoy the conversation, much of which he saw as mere pleasant abstraction. Free of his runesword he knew a kind of lightness of spirit which he had not experienced since the first months of his courtship of Cymoril in those relatively untroubled years before Yyrkoon's growing ambition had begun to contaminate life at the Melnibonéan Court.
He recalled something from one of his own people's histories. "I have seen it said that the world is no more than what its denizens agree it is. I remember reading something to that effect in The Gabbling Sphere which said, 'For who is to say which is the inner world and which the outer? What we make reality may be what will alone decides, and what we define as dreams may be the greater truth.' Is that a philosophy close to your own, Lady Gone?" "Close enough," she said. "Though it seems a little airy." They rode like this, almost like two children on a picnic, until they reached the Bronze Tent when the sun was setting and were led, once more, into the place where men and women sat or lay around the great raised bed on which rested the little girl who symbolised their entire existence.
It seemed to Elric that the illuminating braziers and lamps were burning lower than when last he was here, and that the child looked even paler than before, but he forced an expression of confidence when he turned to Raik Na Seem. "This time we shall not fail her," he said.
Oone appeared to approve of Elric's words and watched carefully as, on her instructions, Varadia's frail body was lifted from the bed and placed this time upon a huge cushion which, in its turn, was set between two other cushions, also of great size. She signed to the albino to lay his body down on the far side of the child while she herself took up her position on the girl's left.
"Grasp her hand, my lord Emperor," said Oone ironically, "and place the crook of the dreamwand over both yours and hers, as you saw Alnac do."
Elric felt some trepidation as he obeyed her, but he knew no fear for himself, only for the child and her people, for Cymoril waiting for him in Melniboné, for the boy who prayed in Quarzhasaat that he would return with the jewel his jailer had demanded. His hand locked to the girl's by the dreamwand, he knew a sense of fusion that was not unpleasant, yet seemed to burn as hot as any flame. He watched as Oone did the same thing.
Immediately Elric felt a power possess him and for a moment it was as if his body grew lighter and lighter until it threatened to drift away on the slightest breeze. His vision faded, yet dimly he could still see Oone. She seemed to be concentrating.
He looked into the face of the Holy Girl and for a second thought he saw her skin turn still whiter, her eyes glow as crimson as his own, and a strange thought came and went in his mind: If I had a daughter she would look thus...
And then it was as if his bones were melting, his flesh dissolving, his whole mind and spirit dissipating. He gave himself up to this sensation as he had determined he must, since he now served Oone's purpose, and now the flesh became flowing water, the veins and blood were coloured strands of air, his skeleton flowed like molten silver, mingling with the Holy Girl's, becoming hers, then flowing on beyond her, into caverns and tunnels and dark places, into places where whole worlds existed in hollowed rock, where voices called to him and knew bun and sought to comfort him or frighten him or tell him truths he did not wish to learn; and then the air grew bright again and he felt Oone beside him, guiding him, her hand on his, her body almost his body, her voice confident and even cheerful, like one who moves towards familiar danger; danger which she had overcome many times. Yet there was an edge to her voice which made him believe she had never faced a danger as great as this one and that there was every chance neither of them would return to the Bronze Tent or the Silver Flower Oasis.
And there was music which he understood was the very soul of this child turned into sound. Sweet, sad, lonely music. Music so beautiful he would have wept had he anything more than the airiest substance.
Then he saw blue sky before him, a red desert stretching away towards red mountains on the horizon, and he had the strangest of sensations, as if he were coming home to a land he had somehow lost in his childhood and then forgotten.
2 In the Marches at the Heart's Edge
As Elric felt his bones re-form and the flesh resume its familiar weight and contour he saw that the land they had entered seemed scarcely any different from that which they had left. Red desert stretched before them, red mountains lay beyond. So familiar was the landscape that Elric looked back, expecting to see the Bronze Tent, but immediately behind him now yawned a chasm so vast that no further side could be seen. He knew sudden vertigo and checked his balance, somewhat to Oone's amusement
The dreamthief was dressed in her same functional velvets and silks and seemed a little amused by his response. "Aye, Prince Elric! Now we are indeed at the very edge of the world! We have only certain choices here and they do not include retreat!"
"I had not considered it, madam." Looking more closely, he realised that the mountains were considerably taller and were all leaning in the same direction, as if bent by a tremendous wind.
"They are like the teeth of some ancient predator," said Oone with a shudder of one who might actually have stared into such a maw at some time in their career. "Doubtless the first stage of our journey takes us there. This is the land we dreamtnieves call Sadanor. The Land of Dreams-in-Common."
"Yet you seem unfamiliar with the scenery."
"The scenery varies. We know only the nature of the land. It may change in its details. But where we travel is frequently dangerous not because it is unfamiliar but because of its familiarity. That is the second rule of the dreamthief."
"Beware the familiar."
"You learn well." She seemed unduly pleased by his response, as if she had doubted her own description of his qualities and was glad to have them confirmed. Elric began to realise the degree of desperation involved in this adventure and was seized by that wild carelessness, that willingness to give himself up to the moment, to any experience, which so set him apart from the other lords of Melniboné, whose lives were ruled by tradition and a desire to maintain their power at any cost.
Smiling, his eyes alight with all their old vitality, he bowed ironically. "Then lead on, madam! Let us begin our journey towards the mountains."
Gone, a little startled by his mood, frowned. But she began to walk through sand so light it stirred like water around her feet. And the albino followed.
"I must admit," he said, after they had walked for perhaps an hour, without noting any shift in the position of the light, "the more I am in this place, the more it begins to disturb me. I thought the sun obscured, but now I realise there is no sun hi the sky at all."
"Such normalities come and go in the Land of Dreams-in-Common," said Gone.
"I would feel more secure with my sword at my side."
"Swords are easily come by here," she said.
"Drinkers of souls?"
"Perhaps. But do you feel the need for that peculiar form of sustenance? Do you crave Lord Gho's drug?"
Elric admitted to his own surprise that he had lost no energy. For perhaps the first time in his adult life he had the sense that he was physically as other people, able to sustain himself without calling on any form of artifice. "It occurs to me," he said, "that I might be well-advised to make my home here."