Book TWO

SAILING TO THE PRESENT

I

His bone-white, long-fingered hand upon a carved demon’s head in black-brown hardwood (one of the few such decorations to be found anywhere about the vessel), the tall man stood alone in the ship’s fo’c’sle and stared through large, slanting crimson eyes at the mist into which they moved with a speed and sureness to make any mortal mariner marvel and become incredulous.

There were sounds in the distance, incongruent with the sounds of even this nameless, tuneless sea: thin sounds, agonized and terrible, for all that they remained remote-yet the ship followed them, as if drawn by them; they grew louder-pain and despair were there, but terror was predominant.

Elric had heard such sounds echoing from his cousin Yyrkoon’s sardonically named “Pleasure Chambers” in the days before he had fled the responsibilities of ruling all that remained of the old Melnibonèan Empire. These were the voices of men whose very souls were under siege; men to whom death meant not mere extinction, but a continuation of existence, forever in thrall to some cruel and supernatural master. He had heard men cry so when his salvation and his nemesis, his great black battle-blade Stormbringer, drank their souls.

He did not savor the sound: he hated it, turned his back away from the source and was about to descend the ladder to the main deck when he realized that Otto Blendker had come up behind him. Now that Corum had been borne off by friends with chariots which could ride upon the surface of the water, Blendker was the last of those comrades to have fought at Elric’s side against the two alien sorcerers Gagak and Agak.

Blendker’s black, scarred face was troubled. The ex-scholar, turned hireling sword, covered his ears with his huge palms.

“Ach! By the Twelve Symbols of Reason, Elric, who makes that din? It’s as though we sail close to the shores of Hell itself!”

Prince Elric of Melnibonè shrugged. “I’d be prepared to forego an answer and leave my curiosity unsatisfied, Master Blendker, if only our ship would change course. As it is, we sail closer and closer to the source.”

Blendker grunted his agreement. “I’ve no wish to encounter whatever it is that causes those poor fellows to scream so! Perhaps we should inform the captain.”

“You think he does not know where his own ship sails?” Elric’s smile had little humor.

The tall black man rubbed at the inverted V-shaped scar which ran from his forehead to his jawbones. “I wonder if he plans to put us into battle again.”

“I’ll not fight another for him.” Elric’s hand moved from the carved rail to the pommel of his runesword. “I have business of my own to attend to, once I’m back on real land.”

A wind came from nowhere. There was a sudden rent in the mist. Now Elric could see that the ship sailed through rust-colored water. Peculiar lights gleamed in that water, just below the surface. There was an impression of creatures moving ponderously in the depths of the ocean and, for a moment, Elric thought he glimpsed a white, bloated face not dissimilar to his own-a Melnibonèan face. Impulsively he whirled, back to the rail, looking past Blendker as he strove to control the nausea in his throat.

For the first time since he had come aboard the Dark Ship he was able clearly to see the length of the vessel. Here were the two great wheels, one beside him on the foredeck, one at the far end of the ship on the reardeck, tended now as always by the steersman, the captain’s sighted twin. There was the great mast bearing the taut black sail, and fore and aft of this, the two deck cabins, one of which was entirely empty (its occupants having been killed during their last landfall) and one of which was occupied only by himself and Blendker. Elric’s gaze was drawn back to the steersman and not for the first time the albino wondered how much influence the captain’s twin had over the course of the Dark Ship. The man seemed tireless, rarely, to Elric’s knowledge, going below to his quarters, which occupied the stern deck as the captain’s occupied the foredeck. Once or twice Elric or Blendker had tried to involve the steersman in conversation, but he appeared to be as dumb as his brother was blind.

The cryptographic, geometrical carvings covering all the ship’s wood and most of its metal, from sternpost to figurehead, were picked out by the shreds of pale mist still clinging to them (and again Elric wondered if the ship actually generated the mist normally surrounding it) and, as he watched, the designs slowly turned to pale pink fire as the light from that red star, which forever followed them, permeated the overhead cloud.

A noise from below. The captain, his long red-gold hair drifting in a breeze which Elric could not feel, emerged from his cabin. The captain’s circlet of blue jade, worn like a diadem, had turned to something of a violet shade in the pink light, and even his buff-colored hose and tunic reflected the hue-even the silver sandals with their silver lacing glittered with the rosy tint.

Again Elric looked upon that mysterious blind face, as unhuman, in the accepted sense, as his own, and puzzled upon the origin of the one who would allow himself to be called nothing but “Captain.”

As if at the captain’s summons, the mist drew itself about the ship again, as a woman might draw a froth of furs about her body. The red star’s light faded, but the distant screams continued.

Did the captain notice the screams now for the first time, or was this a pantomime of surprise? His blind head tilted, a hand went to his ear. He murmured in a tone of satisfaction, “Aha!” The head lifted. “Elric?”

“Here,” said the albino. “Above you.”

“We are almost there, Elric.”

The apparently fragile hand found the rail of the companionway. The captain began to climb.

Elric faced him at the top of the ladder. “If it’s a battle...”

The captain’s smile was enigmatic, bitter. “It was a fight-or shall be one.”

“. . . we’ll have no part of it,” concluded the albino firmly.

“It is not one of the battles in which my ship is directly involved,” the blind man reassured him. “Those whom you can hear are the vanquished-lost in some future which, I think, you will experience close to the end of your present incarnation.”

Elric waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll be glad, Captain, if you would cease such vapid mystification. I’m weary of it.”

“I’m sorry it offends you. I answer literally, according to my instincts.”

The captain, going past Elric and Otto Blendker so that he could stand at the rail, seemed to be apologizing. He said nothing for a while, but listened to the disturbing and confused babble from the mist. Then he nodded, apparently satisfied.

“We’ll sight land shortly. If you would disembark and seek your own world, I should advise you to do so now. This is the closest we shall ever come again to your plane.”

Elric let his anger show. He cursed, invoking Arioch’s name, and put a hand upon the blind man’s shoulder. “What? You cannot return me directly to my own plane?”

“It is too late.” The captain’s dismay was apparently genuine. “The ship sails on. We near the end of our long voyage.”

“But how shall I find my world? I have no sorcery great enough to move me between the spheres! And demonic assistance is denied me here.”

“There is one gateway to your world,” the captain told him. “That is why I suggest you disembark. Elsewhere there are none at all. Your sphere and this one intersect directly.”

“But you say this lies in my future.”

“Be sure-you will return to your own time. Here you are timeless. It is why your memory is so poor. It is why you remember so little of what befalls you. Seek for the gateway-it is crimson and it emerges from the sea off the coast of the island.”

“Which island?”

“The one we approach.”

Elric hesitated. “And where shall you go, when I have landed?”

“To Tanelorn,” said the captain. “There is something I must do there. My brother and I must complete our destiny. We carry cargo as well as men. Many will try to stop us now, for they fear our cargo. We might perish, but yet we must do all we can to reach Tanelorn.”

“Was that not, then, Tanelorn, where we fought Agak and Gagak?”

“That was nothing more than a broken dream of Tanelorn, Elric.”

The Melnibonèan knew that he would receive no more information from the captain.

“You offer me a poor choice-to sail with you into danger and never see my own world again, or to risk landing on yonder island inhabited, by the sound of it, by the damned and those which prey upon the damned!”

The captain’s blind eyes moved in Elric’s direction. “I know,” he said softly. “But it is the best I can offer you, nonetheless.”

The screams, the imploring, terrified shouts, were closer now, but there were fewer of them. Glancing over the side, Elric thought he saw a pair of armored hands rising from the water; there was foam, red-flecked and noxious, and there was yellowish scum in which pieces of frightful flotsam drifted; there were broken timbers, scraps of canvas, tatters of flags and clothing, fragments of weapons, and, increasingly, there were floating corpses.

“But where was the battle?” Blendker whispered, fascinated and horrified by the sight.

“Not on this plane,” the captain told him. “You see only the wreckage which has drifted over from one world to another.”

“Then it was a supernatural battle?”

The captain smiled again. “I am not omniscient. But, yes, I believe there were supernatural agencies involved. The warriors of half a world fought in the sea-battle-to decide the fate of the multiverse. It is-or will be-one of the decisive battles to determine the fate of Mankind, to fix Man’s destiny for the coming Cycle.”

“Who were the participants?” asked Elric, voicing the question in spite of his resolve. “What were the issues as they understood them?”

“You will know in time, I think.” The captain’s head faced the sea again.

Blendker sniffed the air. “Ach! It’s foul!”

Elric, too, found the odor increasingly unpleasant. Here and there now the water was lighted by guttering fires which revealed the faces of the drowning, some of whom still managed to cling to pieces of blackened driftwood. Not all the faces were human (though they had the appearance of having, once, been human): Things with the snouts of pigs and of bulls raised twisted hands to the Dark Ship and grunted plaintively for succor, but the captain ignored them and the steersman held his course.

Fires spluttered and water hissed; smoke mingled with the mist. Elric had his sleeve over his mouth and nose and was glad that the smoke and mist between them helped obscure the sights, for as the wreckage grew thicker not a few of the corpses he saw reminded him more of reptiles than of men, their pale, lizard bellies spilling something other than blood.

“If that is my future,” Elric told the captain, “I’ve a mind to remain on board, after all.”

“You have a duty, as have I,” said the captain quietly. “The future must be served, as much as the past and the present.”

Elric shook his head. “I fled the duties of an empire because I sought freedom,” the albino told him. “And freedom I must have.”

“No,” murmured the captain. “There is no such thing. Not yet. Not for us. We must go through much more before we can even begin to guess what freedom is. The price for the knowledge alone is probably higher than any you would care to pay at this stage of your life. Indeed, life itself is often the price.”

“I also sought release from metaphysics when I left Melnibonè,” said Elric. “I’ll get the rest of my gear and take the land that’s offered. With luck this Crimson Gate will be quickly found and I’ll be back among dangers and torments which will, at least, be familiar.”

“It is the only decision you could have made.” The captain’s blind head turned toward Blendker. “And you, Otto Blendker? What shall you do?”

“Elric’s world is not mine and I like not the sound of those screams. What can you promise me, sir, if I sail on with you?”

“Nothing but a good death.” There was regret in the captain’s voice.

“Death is the promise we’re all born with, sir. A good death is better than a poor one. I’ll sail on with you.”

“As you like. I think you’re wise.” The captain sighed. “I’ll say farewell to you, then, Elric of Melnibonè. You fought well in my service and I thank you.”

“Fought for what?” Elric asked.

“Oh, call it Mankind. Call it Fate. Call it a dream or an ideal, if you wish.”

“Shall I never have a clearer answer?”

“Not from me. I do not think there is one.”

“You allow a man little faith.” Elric began to descend the companionway.

“There are two kinds of faith, Elric. Like freedom, there is a kind which is easily kept but proves not worth the keeping, and there is a kind which is hard-won. I agree, I offer little of the former.”

Elric strode toward his cabin. He laughed, feeling genuine affection for the blind man at that moment. “I thought I had a penchant for such ambiguities, but I have met my match in you, Captain.”

He noticed that the steersman had left his place at the wheel and was swinging out a boat on its davits, preparatory to lowering it.

“Is that for me?”

The steersman nodded.

Elric ducked into his cabin. He was leaving the ship with nothing but that which he had brought aboard, only his clothing and his armor were in a poorer state of repair than they had been, and his mind was in a considerably greater state of confusion.

Without hesitation he gathered up his things, drawing his heavy cloak about him, pulling on his gauntlets, fastening buckles and thongs, then he left the cabin and returned to the deck. The captain was pointing through the mist at the dark outlines of a coast. “Can you see land, Elric?”

“I can.”

“You must go quickly, then.”

“Willingly.”

Elric swung himself over the rail and into the boat. The boat struck the side of the ship several times, so that the hull boomed like the beating of some huge funeral drum. Otherwise there was silence now upon the misty waters and no sign of wreckage.

Blendker saluted him. “I wish you luck, comrade.”

“You, too, Master Blendker.”

The boat began to sink toward the flat surface of the sea, the pulleys of the davits creaking. Elric clung to the rope, letting go as the boat hit the water. He stumbled and sat down heavily upon the seat, releasing the ropes so that the boat drifted at once away from the Dark Ship. He got out the oars and fitted them into their rowlocks.

As he pulled toward the shore he heard the captain’s voice calling to him, but the words were muffled by the mist and he would never know, now, if the blind man’s last communication had been a warning or merely some formal pleasantry. He did not care. The boat moved smoothly through the water; the mist began to thin, but so, too, did the light fade.

Suddenly he was under a twilight sky, the sun already gone and stars appearing. Before he had reached the shore it was already completely dark, with the moon not yet risen, and it was with difficulty that he beached the boat on what seemed flat rocks, and stumbled inland until he judged himself safe enough from any inrushing tide.

Then, with a sigh, he lay down, thinking just to order his thoughts before moving on; but, almost instantly, he was asleep.