“Of Master Wheldrake I have heard.” There was perhaps some admiration in the lady’s voice. “But you, sir, I fear are unknown to me. I am called the Rose and my sword is called Swift Thorn while my dagger is called Little Thorn.” She spoke with pride and defiance and it was clear that she uttered some kind of warning, though what she feared from them Elric could not guess. “I travel the time streams in search of my revenge.” And she smiled down at her empty bowl, as if in self-mocking embarrassment at a shameful admission.

  “And what do the three sisters mean to you, madam?” asked Wheldrake, his little voice now a charming trill.

  “They mean everything. They have the means of leading me to the resolution of all I have lived for, since I swore my oath. They offer me the chance of satisfaction, Master Wheldrake. You are, are you not, that same Wheldrake who wrote The Orientalist’s Dream?”

  “Well, madam”—in some dismay—“I was but newly arrived in a new age. I needed to begin my reputation afresh. And the Orient was all the rage just then. However, as a mature work—”

  “It is exceptionally sentimental, Master Wheldrake. But it helped me through a bad hour or two. And I still enjoy it for what it is. After that comes The Song of Iananthe, which is of course your finest.”

  “But Heavens, madam, I have not yet written the work! It is sketched, that’s all, in Putney.”

  “It is excellent, sir. I’ll say no more of it.”

  “I’m obliged for that, madam. And”—he recovered himself—“also for your praise. I, too, have some affection for my Oriental period. Did you read, perhaps, the novel which was just lately published—Manfred; or, The Gentleman Houri?”

  “Not part of your canon when I last was settled anywhere, sir.”

  And while the pair of them talked of poetry, Elric found himself leaning his head upon his arms and dozing until suddenly he heard Wheldrake say:

  “And how do these gypsies go about unpunished? Is there no authority to keep them in check?”

  “I know only that they are a nation of travellers,” said the Rose quietly, “perhaps a large nomad horde of some description. They call themselves the Free Travellers or the People of the Road and there is no doubt that they are powerful enough for the local folk to fear. I have some suggestion that the sisters rode to join the Gypsy Nation. So I would join it, too.”

  And Elric remembered the wide causeway of beaten mud and wondered if that had any connection with the Gypsy Nation. Yet they would not league themselves, surely, with the supernatural? He became increasingly curious.

  “We are all three at a disadvantage,” said the Rose, “since we allowed our hosts to assume we were victims of the gypsies. This means we cannot pursue any direct enquiries but must understand elliptically what we can. Unless we were to admit our deception.”

  “I have a feeling this would make us somewhat more unpopular. These people are proud of their treatment of traders. But of non-traders, we have not learned. Perhaps their fate is less pleasant.” Elric sighed. “It matters not to me. But if you would have company, lady, we’ll join forces to seek these sisters.”

  “Aye, for the moment I see no harm in such an alliance.” She spoke sagely. “Have you heard anything of them?”

  “As much as have you,” said Elric, truthfully. Within him now a voice was speaking. He tried to quiet it but it would not be silent. It was his father’s voice. The sisters. Find them. They have the box. They have the box. The voice was fading now. Was it false? Was he deceived? He had no other course to follow, he decided, so he might as well follow this one and hope, ultimately, it might lead him to the rosewood box and his father’s stolen soul. Besides, there was something he enjoyed in this woman’s company that he felt he might never find again, an easy, measured understanding which made him, in spite of his careful resolve, wish to tell her all the secrets of his life, all the hopes and fears and aspirations he had known, all the losses; not to burden her, but to offer her something she might wish to share. For they had other qualities in common, he could tell.

  He felt, in short, that he had found a sister. And he knew that she, too, felt something of the same kinship, though he were Melnibonéan and she were not. And he wondered at all of this, for he had experienced kinship of a thoroughly different kind with Gaynor—yet kinship, nonetheless.

  When the Rose had retired, saying she had not slept for some thirty-six hours, Wheldrake was full of enthusiasm for her. “She’s as womanly a woman, sir, as I’ve ever seen. What a magnificent woman. A Juno in the flesh! A Diana!”

  “I know nothing of your local divinities,” said Elric gently, but he agreed with Wheldrake that they had met an exceptional individual that day. He had begun to speculate on this peculiar linking of fathers and sons, quasi-brothers and quasi-sisters. He wondered if he did not sense the presence of the Balance in this—or perhaps, more likely, the influence of the Lords of Chaos or of Law, for it had become obvious of late that the Dukes of Entropy and the Princes of Constancy were about to engage in a conflict of more than ordinary ferocity. Which went further to explaining the urgency that was in the air—the urgency his father had attempted to express, though dead and without his soul. Was there, in this slow-woven pattern that seemed to form about him, some reflection of a greater, cosmic configuration? And, for a second, he had a glimmering of the vastness of the multiverse, its complexity and variousness, its realities and its still-to-be-realised dreams; possibilities without end—wonders and horrors, beauty and ugliness—limitless and indefinable, full of the ultimate in everything.

  And when the grey-haired man came back, a little better dressed, a little neater in his toilet, Elric asked him why they did not fear direct attack from the so-called Gypsy Nation.

  “Oh, they have their own rules about such things, I understand. There is a status quo, you know. Not that it makes your circumstances any more fortunate…”

  “You parley with them?”

  “In a sense, sir. We have treaties and so forth. It is not Agnesh-Val we fear for, but those who would come to trade with us…” And again he made apologetic pantomime. “The gypsies have their ways, you know. Strange to us, and I would not serve them directly, I think, but we must see the positive as well as the negative side of their power.”

  “And they have their freedom, I suppose,” said Wheldrake. “It is the great theme of The Romany Rye.”

  “Perhaps, sir.” But their host seemed a trifle doubtful. “I am not aware of what you speak—a play?”

  “An account, sir, of the joys of the open road.”

  “Ah, then it would be of gypsy origin. We do not buy their books, I fear. Now, gentlemen, I do not know if you would take advantage of what we offer distressed travellers by way of credit and cost-price equipment. If you have no money, we will take kind. Perhaps to be sure one of those books, if you like, Master Wheldrake, for a horse.”

  “A book for a horse, sir! Well, sir!”

  “Two horses? I regret I have no notion of the market value. Book-reading is not a great habit among us. Perhaps we should feel ashamed, but we prefer the passive pleasures of the evening arena.”

  “As well as the horses, perhaps a few days’ provisions?” suggested Elric.

  “If that seems fair to you, sir.”

  “My books,” pronounced Wheldrake through gritted teeth, his nose seeming more pointed than ever, “are my—my self, sir. They are my identity. I am their protector. Besides, though through the oddity of some telepathy we all enjoy, we can understand language, we cannot read it. Did you know that, sir? The ability does not extend to that. Logical, in one sense, I suppose. No, sir, I will not part with a page!”

  But when Elric pointed out that Wheldrake had already explained that one of the volumes was in a language even he did not know and suggested that their lives might depend upon acquiring horses and throwing in with the Rose, who already had her horse, Wheldrake at last consented to part with the Omar Khayyám he had hoped one day to read.

  So Elric, Wheldrake and the Rose all three rode back down the white road beside the river, back to where they had joined the trail on the previous day, but now they remained on the path, letting it carry them slowly and sinuously southward, following the lazy flow of the river. And Wheldrake sang his Song of ’Rabia to an entranced Rose, while Elric rode some distance ahead, wondering if he had entered a dream and fearing he would never find his father’s soul.

  They had reached a part of the river road Elric did not remember passing over and he was remarking to himself that this had been close to where the dragon had headed due south, away from the water’s winding course, when his sensitive ears caught a distant noise he could not identify. He mentioned it to the others but neither could hear it. Only after another half-hour had passed did the Rose cup her hand to her ear and frown. “A kind of rushing. A sort of roar.”

  “I hear it now,” said Wheldrake, rather obviously piqued that he, the poet, should be the least well-tuned. “I did not know you meant that rushing, roaring kind of noise. I had understood it to be a feature of the water.” And then he had the grace to blush, shrug and take an interest in something at the end of his beaklike nose.

  It was another two hours before they saw that the water was now gushing and leaping with enormous force, through rocks which even the most skilled navigator could not have negotiated, and sending up such a whistling and shouting and yelling it might have been a live thing, voicing its furious discontent. The roadway was slippery with spray and they could scarcely make themselves heard above the noise, could scarcely see more than a few paces in front of them, could smell only the angry water. And then the road had dropped away from the river and entered a hollow which made the noise suddenly distant.

  The rocks around them still ran with water sprayed from above, but the near-silence was almost physically welcome to them and they breathed deep sighs of pleasure. Then Wheldrake rode a little ahead and came back to report that the road curved off, along what appeared to be a cliff. Perhaps they had reached the ocean.

  They had left the hollow and were on the open road again where coarse grass stretched to an horizon which still roared, still sent up clouds of spray, like a silver wall. Now the road led them to the edge of a cliff and a chasm so deep the bottom was lost in blackness. It was into this abyss that water poured with such relentless celebration and when Elric looked up he gasped. Only at that moment had he seen the causeway overhead—a causeway that curved from the eastern cliff of a great bay to the western cliff—the same causeway, he was sure, that he had seen earlier. Yet this could not be made of beaten mud. The mighty curving span was woven of boughs and bones and strands of metal supporting a surface that seemed to be made of thousands of animal hides fixed one on top of another by layers of foul-smelling bone-glue—utterly primitive in one way, thought Elric, but otherwise a sturdy and sophisticated piece of engineering. His own people had once possessed similar ingenuity, before magic began to absorb them. He was admiring the extraordinary structure as they rode beside it, when Wheldrake spoke up.

  “It’s no wonder, friend Elric, nobody chooses to consider the river route below what is, I’m sure, the thing they call the Divide.”

  And Elric was forced to smile at this irony. “Does that strange causeway lead, do you think, to the Gypsy Nation?”

  “Leads to death, disorder and dismay; leads to the craven Earl of Cray,” intoned Wheldrake, the association sparking, as it did so often, snatches of self-quotation. “Now Ulric takes the Urgent Brand and hand in hand they trembling stand, to bring the justice of the day, the terrible justice of the day, to evil Gwandyth, Earl of Cray.”

  Even the admiring Rose did not applaud, nor think his verse appropriate to this somewhat astonishing moment, with the roaring river to one side, the cliffs and the chasm to another; above that a great causeway of primitive construction stretching for more than a mile from cliff to cliff, high over the water’s spray—and some distance off the wide waters of a lake, blue-green and dreamy in the sun. Elric yearned for the peace it offered. Yet he guessed the peace might also be illusory.

  “Look, gentlemen,” says the Rose, letting her horse break into a bit of a canter, “there’s a settlement ahead. Can it be an inn, by any happy chance?”

  “It would seem an appropriate place for one, madam. They have a similar establishment at Land’s End, in my last situation…” says Wheldrake, cheering.

  The sky was overclouded now, dark and brooding, and the sun shone only upon the far-off lake, while from the chasm beside them came unpleasant booming noises, sounds like wailing human voices, savage and greedy. And all three joked nervously about this change in the landscape’s mood and said how much they missed the easy boredom of the river and the wheat and would gladly return to it.

  The unpainted, ramshackle collection of buildings—a two-storey house with crooked gables surrounded by about a dozen half-ruined outhouses—did, indeed, sport a sign—a crow’s carcass nailed to a board. Presumably the indecipherable lettering gave a name to the place.

  “ ‘The Putrefied Crow’ is good enough for me,” says Wheldrake, seemingly in more need of this hostelry than the other two. “A place for pirate meetings and sinister executions. What think you?”

  “I’m bound to agree.” The Rose nods her pale red curls. “I would not choose to visit it, if there were any choice at all, but you’ll note there’s none. Let’s see, at least, what information we can gain.”

  In the shadow of that causeway, on the edge of that abyss, the three unlikely companions gave their horses somewhat reluctantly up to an ostler of dirty, though genial, appearance, and stepped inside “the Putrefied Crow,” to look with surprise upon the six burly men and women who were already enjoying such hospitality as the place offered.

  “Greetings to you, gentlemen. My lady.” One of them doffed a hat so trimmed in feathers, ribbons, jewels and other finery its outline was completely lost. All these folk were festooned in lace, velvet, satin, in the most vivid array, with caps and hats and helmets of every fanciful style, their dark curls oiled to mingle with the blue-black beards of the men or fall upon the olive shoulders of the women. All were armed to the teeth and clearly ready to address any argument with steel. “Have you travelled far?”

  “Far enough for a day,” said Elric, stripping off his gloves and cloak and taking them up to the fire. “And you, my friends. Do you come far?”

  “Why,” says one of the women, “we are the Companions of the Endless Way. We are travellers, always. Pledged to it. We follow the road. We are the free auxiliaries of the Gypsy Nation. Pure-bred Romans of the Southern Desert, with ancestors who travelled the world before there were nations of any sort!”

  “Then I’m delighted to meet you, madam!” Wheldrake shook his hat into the fire, causing it to hiss and spit. “For it’s the Gypsy Nation we seek.”

  “The Gypsy Nation requires no seeking,” said the tallest man, in red and white velvet. “The gypsies will always come to you. All you must do is wait. Put a sign upon your door and wait. The season is near-ended. Soon begin the seasons of our passing. Then you shall see the crossing of the Treaty Bridge, by which we keep to our old trail, though the land has long since fallen away.”

  “The bridge is yours? And the road?” Wheldrake was puzzled. “Can gypsies own such things and still be gypsies?”

  “I smell walkerspew!” One of the women rose, a threatening fist upon her dagger’s hilt. “I smell the droppings of a professor-bird. There’s nonsense in the air and the place for nonsense isn’t here.”

  It was Elric who broke that specific tension, by moving easily between the two. “We are come to parley and perhaps to trade,” he said, for he could think of no other excuse they might accept.

  “Trade?” This caused a general grinning and muttering amongst the gypsies. “Well, gentlemen, everyone’s welcome in the Gypsy Nation. Everyone who has the taste for wandering.”

  “You’ll take us there?”

  Again they seemed to find this amusing and Elric guessed few residents of this plane volunteered to travel with the gypsies.

  It was clear to Elric that the Rose was deeply suspicious of this cut-throat half-dozen and not at all sure she wished to go with them, yet again she was determined to find the three sisters and would risk any danger to follow them.

  “There are friends of ours gone ahead,” said Wheldrake, ever the quickest wit in such situations. “Three young ladies, all very alike? Would you have made their acquaintance?”

  “We are Romans of the Southern Desert and do not as a rule make small talk with the diddicoyim.”

  “Ha!” exclaims Wheldrake. “Gypsy snobs! The multiverse reveals nothing but repetitions! And we continue to be surprised by them…”

  “This is no time for social observation, Master Wheldrake,” says the Rose severely.

  “Madam, it is always time for that. Or what are we else, but beasts?” He’s offended. He winks at the tall gypsy and raises his tiny voice in song. “I’d rather go with the Gypsy Wild; And bear a Gypsy’s nut-brown child!” He hums the air. “Are you familiar with the ballad, good friends?”

  And he charms them enough to make them ease their bodies more comfortably upon their benches and tell patronising jokes about a variety of non-gypsy peoples, including, of course, Wheldrake’s own, while Elric’s strange appearance soon gets him nicknamed “the Ermine,” which he accepts with the equanimity with which he accepts all other names presented by those who find him unnatural and disturbing. He bides his time with a patience that has become almost physical, as if it is a shell he can strap around himself, to make himself wait. He knows he has but to draw Stormbringer for a minute and six gypsies would lie, drained of life and soul, upon the stained boards of the inn; but also, perhaps the Rose would die, or Wheldrake, for Stormbringer is not always satisfied merely with the lives of enemies. And because he is an adept, and no other person here, at the roaring edge of the world, has any inkling of his power, he smiles a little to himself. And if the gypsies take it for a placatory grin and tell him he’s thin enough to wipe out a whole warren-full of rabbits, then he cares not. He is Elric of Melniboné, prince of ruins, last of his line, and he seeks the receptacle of his dead father’s soul. He is a Melnibonéan and he draws upon this atavistic pride for all the strength it can give him, remembering the almost sensuous joy that came with the assumption of his superiority over all other creatures, natural and supernatural, and it armours him, though it brings back, too sharply, the pain in memory.