But then, shooting upwards into the dark sky, there arose, seemingly from the very earth, a huge figure which barred their way. Hands on hips, wreathed in golden light, a face of an ape, somehow blended with another shape to give it dignity and wild grandeur, its body alive and dancing with colour and light, its lips grinning with delight and knowledge—Darnizhaan, the Dead God!

  “Elric!”

  “Darnizhaan!” cried Elric fiercely, craning his head to stare up at the Dead God’s face. He felt no fear now. “I have come for my wife!”

  Around the Dead God’s heels appeared acolytes with wide lips and pale, triangular faces, conical caps on their heads and madness in their eyes. They giggled and shrilled and shivered in the light of Darnizhaan’s grotesque and beautiful body. They gibbered at the two riders and mocked them, but they did not move away from the Dead God’s heels.

  Elric sneered. “Degenerate and pitiful minions,” he said.

  “Not so pitiful as you, Elric of Melniboné,” laughed the Dead God. “Have you come to bargain, or to give your wife’s soul into my custody, so that she may spend eternity dying?”

  Elric did not let his hate show on his face.

  “I would destroy you; it is instinctive for me to do so. But—”

  The Dead God smiled, almost with pity. “You must be destroyed, Elric. You are an anachronism. Your time is gone.”

  “Speak for yourself, Darnizhaan!”

  “I could destroy you.”

  “But you will not.” Though passionately hating the being, Elric also felt a disturbing sense of comradeship for the Dead God. Both of them represented an age that was gone; neither was really part of the new Earth.

  “Then I will destroy her,” the Dead God said. “That I could do with impunity.”

  “Zarozinia! Where is she?”

  Once again Darnizhaan’s mighty laughter shook the Vale of Xanyaw. “Oh, what have the old folk come to? There was a time when no man of Melniboné, particularly of the royal line, would admit to caring for another mortal soul, especially if they belonged to the beast-race, the new race of the age you call that of the Young Kingdoms. What? Are you mating with animals, King of Melniboné? Where is your blood, your cruel and brilliant blood? Where the glorious malice? Where the evil, Elric?”

  Peculiar emotions stirred in Elric as he remembered his ancestors, the Sorcerer Emperors of the Dragon Isle. He realised that the Dead God was deliberately awakening these emotions and, with an effort, he refused to let them dominate him.

  “That is past,” he shouted, “a new time has come upon the Earth. Our time will soon be gone—and yours is over!”

  “No, Elric. Mark my words, whatever happens. The dawn is over and will soon be swept away like dead leaves before the wind of morning. The Earth’s history has not even begun. You, your ancestors, these men of the new races even, you are nothing but a prelude to history. You will all be forgotten if the real history of the world begins. But we can avert that—we can survive, conquer the Earth and hold it against the Lords of Law, against Fate herself, against the Cosmic Balance—we can continue to live, but you must give me the swords!”

  “I fail to understand you,” Elric said, his lips thin and his teeth tight in his skull. “I am here to bargain or do battle for my wife.”

  “You do not understand,” the Dead God guffawed, “because we are all of us, gods and men, but shadows playing puppet parts before the true play begins. You would best not fight me—rather side with me, for I know the truth. We share a common destiny. We do not, any of us, exist. The old folk are doomed, you, myself and my brothers, unless you give me the swords. We must not fight one another. Share our frightful knowledge—the knowledge that turned us insane. There is nothing, Elric—no past, present, or future. We do not exist, any of us!”

  Elric shook his head quickly. “I do not understand you, still. I would not understand you if I could. I desire only the return of my wife—not baffling conundrums!”

  Darnizhaan laughed again. “No! You shall not have the woman unless we are given control of the swords. You do not realise their properties. They were not only designed to destroy us or exile us—their destiny is to destroy the world as we know it. If you retain them, Elric, you will be responsible for wiping out your own memory for those who come after you.”

  “I’d welcome that,” Elric said.

  Dyvim Slorm remained silent, not altogether in sympathy with Elric. The Dead God’s argument seemed to contain truth.

  Darnizhaan shook his body so that the golden light danced and its area widened momentarily. “Keep the swords and all of us will be as if we had never existed,” he said impatiently.

  “So be it,” Elric’s tone was stubborn, “do you think I wish the memory to live on—the memory of evil, ruin and destruction? The memory of a man with deficient blood in his veins—a man called Friendslayer, Womanslayer and many other such names?”

  Darnizhaan spoke urgently, almost in terror. “Elric, you have been duped! Somewhere you have been given a conscience. You must join with us. Only if the Lords of Chaos can establish their reign will we survive. If they fail, we shall be obliterated!”

  “Good!”

  “Limbo, Elric. Limbo! Do you understand what that means?”

  “I do not care. Where is my wife?”

  Elric blocked the truth from his mind, blocked out the terror in the meaning of the Dead God’s words. He could not afford to listen or fully to comprehend. He must save Zarozinia.

  “I have brought the swords,” said he, “and wish my wife to be returned to me.”

  “Very well,” the Dead God smiled hugely in his relief. “At least if we keep the blades, in their true shape, beyond the Earth, we may be able to retain control of the world. In your hands they could destroy not only us but you, your world, all that you represent. Beasts would rule the Earth for millions of years before the age of intelligence began again. And it would be a duller age than this. We do not wish it to occur. But if you had kept the swords, it would have come about almost inevitably!”

  “Oh, be silent!” Elric cried. “For a god, you talk too much. Take the swords—and give me back my wife!”

  At the Dead God’s command, some of the acolytes scampered away. Elric saw their gleaming bodies disappear into the darkness. He waited nervously until they returned, carrying the struggling body of Zarozinia. They set her on the ground and Elric saw that her face bore the blank look of shock.

  “Zarozinia!”

  The girl’s eyes roamed about before they saw Elric. She began to move towards him, but the acolytes held her back, giggling.

  Darnizhaan stretched forward two gigantic, glowing hands.

  “The swords first.”

  Elric and Dyvim Slorm put them into his hands. The Dead God straightened up, clutching his prizes and roaring his mirth. Zarozinia was now released and she ran forward to grasp her husband’s hand, weeping and trembling. Elric leaned down and stroked her hair, too disturbed to say anything.

  Then he turned to Dyvim Slorm, shouting: “Let us see if our plan will work, cousin!”

  Elric stared up at Stormbringer writhing in Darnizhaan’s grasp. “Stormbringer! Kerana soliem, o’glara…”

  Dyvim Slorm also called to Mournblade in the High Tongue of Melniboné, the mystic, sorcerous tongue which had been used for rune-casting and demon-raising all through Melniboné’s twenty thousand years of history.

  Together, they commanded the blades, as if they were actually wielding them in their hands, so that merely by shouting orders, Elric and Dyvim Slorm began their work. This was the remembered quality of both blades when paired in a common fight. The blades twisted in Darnizhaan’s glowing hands. He started backwards, his shape faltering, sometimes manlike, sometimes beastlike, sometimes totally alien. But he was evidently horrified, this god.

  Now the swords wrenched themselves from the clutching hands and turned on him. He fought against them, fending them off as they wove about in the air, whining malevolently, triumphantly, attacking him with vicious power. At Elric’s command, Stormbringer slashed at the supernatural being and Dyvim Slorm’s Mournblade followed its example. Because the runeblades were also supernatural, Darnizhaan was harmed dreadfully whenever they struck his form.

  “Elric!” he raved, “Elric—you do not know what you are doing! Stop them! Stop them! You should have listened more carefully to what I told you. Stop them!”

  But Elric in his hate and malice urged on the blades, made them plunge into the Dead God’s being time after time so that his shape sometimes faltered, faded, the colours of its bright beauty dulling. The acolytes fled upwards into the vale, convinced that their lord was doomed. Their lord, also, was so convinced. He made one lunge towards the mounted men and then the fabric of his being began to shred before the blades’ attack; wisps of his body-stuff seemed to break away and drift into the air to be swallowed by the black night.

  Viciously and ferociously, Elric goaded the blades while Dyvim Slorm’s voice blended with his in a cruel joy to see the bright being destroyed.

  “Fools!” he screamed, “in destroying me, you destroy yourselves!”

  But Elric did not listen and at last there was nothing left of the Dead God and the swords crept back to lie contentedly in their masters’ hands.

  Quickly, with a sudden shudder, Elric scabbarded Stormbringer.

  He dismounted and helped his girl-wife onto the back of his great stallion and then swung up into the saddle again. It was very quiet in the Vale of Xanyaw.

  6

  Three people, bent in their saddles with weariness, reached the Chasm of Nihrain days later. They rode down the twisting paths into the black depths of the mountain city and were there welcomed by Sepiriz whose face was grave, though his words were encouraging.

  “So you were successful, Elric,” he said with a small smile.

  Elric paused while he dismounted and aided Zarozinia down. He turned to Sepiriz. “I am not altogether satisfied with this adventure,” he said grimly, “though I did what I had to in order to save my wife. I would speak with you privately, Sepiriz.”

  The black Nihrainian nodded gravely. “When we have eaten,” he said, “we will talk alone.”

  They walked wearily through the galleries, noting that there was considerably more activity in the city now, but there was no sign of Sepiriz’s nine brothers. He explained their absence as he led Elric and his companions towards his own chamber. “As servants of Fate they have been called to another plane where they can observe something of the several different possible futures of the Earth and thus keep me informed of what I must do here.”

  They entered the chamber and found food ready and, when they had satisfied their hunger, Dyvim Slorm and Zarozinia left the other two.

  The fire from the great hearth blazed. Elric and Sepiriz sat together, unspeaking, hunched in their chairs.

  At last, without preamble, Elric told Sepiriz the story of what had happened, what he remembered of the Dead God’s words, how they had disturbed him—even struck him as being true.

  When he had finished, Sepiriz nodded. “It is so,” he said. “Darnizhaan spoke the truth. Or, at least, he spoke most of the truth, as he understood it.”

  “You mean we will all soon cease to exist? That it will be as if we had never breathed, or thought, or fought?”

  “That is likely.”

  “But why? It seems unjust.”

  “Who told you that the world was just?”

  Elric smiled, his own suspicions confirmed. “Aye, as I expected, there is no justice.”

  “But there is,” Sepiriz said, “justice of a kind—justice which must be carved from the chaos of existence. Man was not born to a world of justice. But he can create such a world!”

  “I’d agree to that,” Elric said, “but what are all our strivings for if we are doomed to die and the results of our actions with us?”

  “That is not absolutely the case. Something will continue. Those who come after us will inherit something from us.”

  “What is that?”

  “An Earth free of the major forces of Chaos.”

  “You mean a world free of sorcery, I presume…?”

  “Not entirely free of sorcery, but Chaos and sorcery will not dominate the world of the future as it does this world.”

  “Then that is worth striving for, Sepiriz,” Elric said almost with relief. “But what part do the runeblades play in the scheme of things?”

  “They have two functions. One, to rid this world of the great dominating sources of evil—”

  “But they are evil, themselves!”

  “Just so. It takes a strong evil to battle a strong evil. The days that will come will be when the forces of good can overcome those of evil. They are not yet strong enough. That, as I told you, is what we must strive for.”

  “And what is the other purpose of the blades?”

  “That is their final purpose—your destiny. I can tell you now. I must tell you now, or let you live out your destiny unknowing.”

  “Then tell me,” Elric said impatiently.

  “Their ultimate purpose is to destroy this world!”

  Elric stood up. “Ah, no, Sepiriz. That I cannot believe. Shall I have such a crime on my conscience?”

  “It is not a crime, it is in the nature of things. The era of the Bright Empire, even that of the Young Kingdoms, is drawing to a close. Chaos formed this Earth and, for aeons, Chaos ruled. Men were created to put an end to that rule.”

  “But my ancestors worshipped the powers of Chaos. My patron demon, Arioch, is a Duke of Hell, one of the prime Lords of Chaos!”

  “Just so. You, and your ancestors, were not true men at all, but an intermediary type created for a purpose. You understand Chaos as no true men ever could understand it. You can control the forces of Chaos as no true men ever could. And, as a manifestation of the Champion Eternal, you can weaken the forces of Chaos—for you know the qualities of Chaos. Weaken them is what you have done. Though worshipping the Lords of Chance, your race was the first to bring some kind of order to the Earth. The people of the Young Kingdoms have inherited this from you—and have consolidated it. But, as yet, Chaos is still that much stronger. The runeblades, Stormbringer and Mournblade, this more orderly age, the wisdom your race and mine have gained, all will go towards creating the basis for the true beginnings of mankind’s history. That history will not begin for many thousands of years, the type may take on a lowlier form, become more beastlike before it re-evolves, but when it does, it will re-evolve into a world bereft of the stronger forces of Chaos. It will have a fighting chance. We are all doomed, but they need not be.”

  “So that is what Darnizhaan meant when he said we were just puppets, acting out our parts before the true play began…” Elric sighed deeply, the weight of his mighty responsibility was heavy on his soul. He did not welcome it; but he accepted it.

  Sepiriz said gently: “It is your purpose, Elric of Melniboné. Hitherto, your life has appeared comparatively meaningless. All through it you have been searching for some purpose for living, is that not true?”

  “Aye,” Elric agreed with a slight smile, “I’ve been restless for many a year since my birth; restless the more between the time when Zarozinia was abducted and now.”

  “It is fitting that you should have been,” Sepiriz said, “for there is a purpose for you—Fate’s purpose. It is this destiny that you have sensed all your mortal days. You, the last of the royal line of Melniboné, must complete your destiny in the times which are to follow closely upon these. The world is darkening—nature revolts and rebels against the abuses to which the Lords of Chaos put it. Oceans seethe and forests sway, hot lava spills from a thousand mountains, winds shriek their angry torment and the skies are full of awful movement. Upon the face of the Earth, warriors are embattled in a struggle which will decide the fate of the world, linked as the struggle is, with greater conflicts among gods. Women and little children die on a million funeral pyres upon this continent alone. And soon the conflict will spread to the next continent and the next. Soon all the men of the Earth will have chosen sides and Chaos might easily win. It would win but for one thing: you and your sword Stormbringer.”

  “Stormbringer. It has brought enough storms for me. Perhaps this time it can calm one. And what if Law should win?”

  “And if Law should win—then that, too, will mean the decline and death of this world—we shall all be forgotten. But if Chaos should win—then doom will cloud the very air, agony will sound in the wind and foul misery will dominate a plunging, unsettled world of sorcery and evil hatred. But you, Elric, with your sword and our aid, could stop this. It must be done.”

  “Then let it be done,” Elric said quietly, “and if it must be done—then let it be done well.”

  Sepiriz said: “Armies will soon be marshalled to drive against Pan Tang’s might. These must be our first defence. Thereafter, we shall call upon you to fulfil the rest of your destiny.”

  “I’ll play my part, willingly,” Elric replied, “for, whatever else, I have a mind to pay the Theocrat back for his insults and the inconvenience he has caused me. Though perhaps he didn’t instigate Zarozinia’s abduction, he aided those who did, and he shall die slowly for that.”

  “Go then, speedily, for each moment wasted allows the Theocrat to consolidate further his new-won empire.”

  “Farewell,” said Elric, now more than ever anxious to leave Nihrain and return to familiar lands. “I know we’ll meet again, Sepiriz, but I pray it be in calmer times than these.”

  * * *

  Now the three of them rode eastwards, towards the coast of Tarkesh where they hoped to find a secret ship to take them across the Pale Sea to Ilmiora and thence to Karlaak by the Weeping Waste. They rode their magical Nihrain horses, careless of danger, through a war-wasted world, strife-ruined and miserable under the heel of the Theocrat.