Elric At The End of Time [154-142-011-4.4]

By: Michael Moorcock

Category: fiction fantasy

Synopsis:

Book 7 of Elric


Last printing: 08/18/02
`>-71' ISBN: 0-5146-104-5483-1
CONTENTS

Introduction 9

Elric 13

Elric at the End of Time 15

The Last Enchantment 69

The Secret Life of Elric of Melnibone 84

Sojan the Swordsman 93

Jerry Cornelius and Co.  199

New Worlds-Jerry Cornelius 201

In Lighter Vein 215

The Stone Thing 217

Introduction

ELRIC AT THE END OF TIME was the last story I wrote about the albino
prince.  In some ways it's an affectionate commentary on the kind of
fantasy hero with whom I'm most closely identified and it's also based
on the remark made some years ago by M. John Harrison that the people
who inhabit my End of Time stories might, from Elric's perspective,
seem to be the very Lords of Chaos themselves.  The story brings
together elements from most of the series which, by the mid-seventies,
I was completing.  It was finished in 1977, originally for a book which
Big O intended to publish and which Rodney Matthews would illustrate.
Big O effectively folded before the book could appear.  The Rodney
Matthews paintings all exist, but only a few of them have been seen
(principally in Rodney's own 1983 Calendar) which is a great pity,
since they represent some of his best and most ambitious work.  The
only previous appearance of the story was in Terri Windling's and Mark
Arnold's Elsewhere anthology, which came out in the USA in 1981.  The
Last Enchantment was meant to be the final

Elric story.  It was written in 1962, only a short while after the
first had appeared in magazine form and before I wrote what was to
become Stormbringer.  I gave the story to Ted Carnell for his magazine
Science Fantasy but he didn't want a "last" Elric story.  He persuaded
me to write some more novellas and in his capacity as my agent sent The
Last Enchantment to America, where it was rejected.  Some fifteen years
later Ted's successor, Les Flood, came across the story and returned it
to me.  It eventually appeared in Ariel magazine in the U.S. in 1978,
illustrated by Tim Conrad.  That was its only publication until now.
Like Elric at the End of Time it has never been published in England
and this is its first appearance in book form.

The Sojan stories are my first fantasy tales to be professionally
published.  They were begun in the 1950s for Tarzan Adventures, before
I came to edit the magazine.  I was seventeen when they started to
appear and they were not published in book form until Dave Britton and
Mike Butterworth republished them as Sojan, the first book they did as
Savoy Editions.  It was re-illustrated by Jim Cawthorn, the original
illustrator who has worked with me through my whole career as a writer
of fantastic fiction.  This book was primarily a compendium of my
earliest work, together with some of my writing about my own fiction
and I have included one or two other pieces from Sojan here.

The Stone Thing was written in response to a request from Eric
Bentcliffe, editor of the fanzine Triode, which I used to write for in
the fifties.  It is one of several parodies of my own work which I've
done over the years (some of which, it could be argued, were not
published as such) and it's one I'm particularly fond of.  Triode
speciali sed in humorous "fan fiction" stories written about actual
personalities in the S-F field and dates from the period in which
science fiction fans did not take themselves quite so seriously as
nowadays, and those who made religion from an enthusiasm were generally
mocked for it.  I hope the story itself will show some readers that I
am neither in touch with secret supernatural forces nor the spokesman
for an illuminating new mystical knowledge.  As a matter of fact I'm by
nature extraordinarily sceptical of the supernatural.  I have always
conceived my fantastic stories simply as that fantastic stories,
escapist entertainment which hopes to give some pleasure to the reader.
Any profundities in those romances are a tribute to the one who
discovers them rather than to me.  For a long while the exaggerated
reaction of some readers to my fantasies caused me to try to dismiss
them altogether.  However, I should like to say that I denigrate
neither the stories nor their readers, though I do prefer my comedies
to my melodramas and personally would put a greater value on books such
as Gloriana, The Condition of Muzak, Byzantium Endures or The Brothel
in Rosenstrasse.  I've always had a happy facility for fantasy and I
suppose it's common enough for someone to make less of something which
comes easily to them.

Some of the non-fiction pieces about Elric and Co.  which were in the
original Sojan selection edited by Dave Britton are still here, for
whatever interest they provide.  I have Dave Britton and Mike
Butterworth to thank for many things, not least their willingness to
sift through long-forgotten piles of paper and find manuscripts and
tear-sheets (The Golden Barge would never have been published had it
not been for their retaining a copy of the manuscript which I had
thought permanently lost) and I should also like to recognise, once
again, Ted Carnell's encouragement as the editor of my first Elric
stories, Peter Ledeboer's kindness as the publisher who originally
commissioned the title story as a vehicle for Rodney Matthew's
illustrations, the present publishers Alison Peacock, Simon Scott and
Nick Webb of NEL and the encouragement, inspiration and friendship of
many people, amongst them Jim Cawthorn, Eric Bentcliffe, Ron Bennett,
Alan Dodd, Arthur Thomson and Ethel Lindsay who have known me since, as
an enthusiastic and, I'm sure, sometimes irritating fifteen-year-old, I
first began to write the Sojan stories.

Michael Moorcock, Fulham Road July 1983

ELRIC

Elric at the End of Time

1. In Which Mrs.  Persson Detects An Above Average Degree of Chaos In
The Megaflow

RETURNING FROM China to London and the Spring of 1936, Una Persson
found an unfamiliar quality of pathos in most of the friends she had
last seen, as far as she recalled, during the Blitz on her way back
from 1970.  Then they had been desperately hearty: it was a comfort to
understand that the condition was not permanent.  Here, at present,
Pierrot ruled and she felt she possessed a better grip on her power.
This was, she admitted with shame, her favourite moral climate for it
encouraged in her an enormously gratifying sense of spiritual
superiority: the advantage of having been born, originally, into a
later and probably more sophisticated age.  The 1960s.  Some women, she
reflected, were forced to have children in order to enjoy this
pleasure.

But she was uneasy, so she reported to the local Time Centre and the
bearded, sullen features of Sergeant Alvarez who welcomed her in white,
apologising for the fact that he had himself only just that morning
left the Lower Devonian and had not had time to change.

"It's the mega flow as you guessed," he told her, operating toggles to
reveal his crazy display systems.  "We've lost control."

"We never really had it."  She lit a Sherman's and shook her long hair
back over the headrest of the swivel chair, opening her military
overcoat and loosening her webbing.  "Is it worse than usual?"

"Much."  He sipped cold coffee from his battered silver mug.  "It cuts
through every plane we can pick up a rogue current swerving through the
dimensions.  Something of a twister."

"Jerry?"

"He's dormant.  We checked.  But it's like him, certainly.  Most
probably another aspect."

"Oh, sod."  Una straightened her shoulders.

"That's what I thought," said Alvarez.  "Someone's going to have to do
a spot of rubato."  He studied a screen.  It was Greek to Una.  For a
moment a pattern formed.  Alvarez made a note.  "Yes.  It can either be
fixed at the nadir or the zenith.  It's too late to try anywhere in
between.  I think it's up to you, Mrs.  P."

She got to her feet.  "Where's the zenith?"

"The End of Time."

"Well," she said, "that's something."

She opened her bag and made sure of her jar of instant coffee.  It was
the one thing she couldn't get at the End of Time.

"Sorry," said Alvarez, glad that the expert had been there and that he
could remain behind.

"It's just as well," she said.  "This period's no good for my moral
well-being.  I'll be off, then."

"Someone's got to."  Alvarez failed to seem sympathetic.  "It's Chaos
out there."

"You don't have to tell me."

She entered the make-shift chamber and was on her way to the End of
Time.

2. In Which The Eternal Champion Finds Himself at the End of Time

ELRIC OF MELNIBONE shook a bone-white fist at the greedy, glaring stars
the eyes of all those men whose souls he had stolen to sustain his own
enfeebled body.  He looked down.  Though it seemed he stood on
something solid, there was only more blackness falling away below him.
It was as if he hung at the centre of the universe.  And here, too,
were staring points of yellow light.  Was he to be judged?

His half-sentient rune sword Stormbringer, in its scabbard on his left
hip, murmured like a nervous dog.

He had been on his way to Imrryr, to his home, to reclaim his kingdom
from his cousin Yyrkoon; sailing from the Isle of the Purple Towns
where he had guested with Count Smiorgan Baldhead.  Magic winds had
caught the Filkharian trader as she crossed the unnamed water between
the Vilmirian peninsula and the Isle of Melnibone She had been borne
into the Dragon Sea and thence to The Sorcerer's Isle, socalled because
that barren place had once been the home of Cran Liret, the Thief of
Spells, a wizard infamous for his borrowings, who had, at length, been
dispatched by those he sought to rival.  But much residual magic had
been left behind.  Certain spells had come into the keeping of the
Krettii, a tribe of near-brutes who had migrated to the island from the
region of The Silent Land less than fifty years before.  Their shaman,
one Grrodd Ybene Eenr, had made unthinking use of devices buried by the
dying sorcerer as the spells of his peers sucked life and sanity from
them.  Elric had dealt with more than one clever wizard, but never with
so mindless a power.  His battle had been long and exhausting and had
required the sacrifice of most of the Filkharians as well as the entire
tribe of Krettii.  His sorcery had become increasingly desperate.
Sprite fought sprite, devil fell upon devil, in planes both physical
and astral, all around the region of The Sorcerer's Isle.  Eventually
Elric had mounted a massive summoning against the allies of Grrodd
Ybene Eenr with the result that the shaman had been at last overwhelmed
and his remains scattered in Limbo.  But Elric, captured by his own
monstrous magic kings had followed his enemy and now he stood in the
Void, crying out into appalling silence, hearing his words only in his
skull:

"Arioch!  Arioch!  Aid me!"

But his patron Duke of Hell was absent.  He could not exist here.  He
could not, for once, even hear his favourite protege.

"Arioch!  Repay my loyalty!  I have given you blood and souls!"

He did not breathe.  His heart had stopped.  All his movements were
sluggish.

The eyes looked down at him.  They looked up at him.  Were they glad?
Did they rejoice in his terror?

"Arioch!"

He yearned for a reply.  He would have wept, but no tears would come.
His body was cold; less than dead, yet not alive.  A fear was in him
greater than any fear he had known before.

"Oh, Arioch!  Aid me!"

He forced his right hand towards the pulsing pommel of Stormbringer
which, alone, still possessed energy.  The hilt of the sword was warm
to his touch and, as slowly he folded his fingers around it, it seemed
to swell in his fist and propel his arm upwards so that he did not draw
the sword.  Rather the sword forced his limbs into motion.  And now it
challenged the void, glowing with black fire, singing its high, gleeful
battle song

"Our destinies are intertwined, Stormbringer," said Elric.  "Bring us
from this place, or those destinies shall never be fulfilled."

Stormbringer swung like the needle of a compass and Elric's unfeeling
arm was wrenched round to go with it.  In eight directions the sword
swung, as if to the eight points of Chaos.  It was questing like a
hound sniffing a trail.  Then a yell sounded from within the strange
metal of the blade; a distant cry of delight, it seemed to Elric.  The
sound one would hear if one stood above a valley listening to children
playing far below.

Elric knew that Stormbringer had sensed a plane they might reach.  Not
necessarily their own, but one which would accept them.  And, as a
drowning mariner must yearn for the most inhospitable rock rather than
no rock at all, Elric yearned for that plane.

"Stormbringer.  Take us there."

The sword hesitated.  It moaned.  It was suspicious.

"Take us there!"  whispered the albino to his rune sword

The sword struck back and forth, up and down, as if it battled
invisible enemies.  Elric scarcely kept his grip on it.  It seemed that
Stormbringer was frightened of the world it had detected and sought to
drive it back but the act of seeking had in itself set them both in
motion.  Already Elric could feel himself being drawn through the
darkness, towards something he could see very dimly beyond the myriad
eyes, as dawn reveals clouds undetected in the night sky.

Elric thought he saw the shapes of crags, pointed and crazy.  He
thought he saw water, flat and ice blue  The stars faded and there was
snow beneath his feet, mountains all around him, a huge, blazing sun
overhead and above that another landscape, a desert, as a magic mirror
might reflect the contrasting character of he who peered into it a
desert, quite as real as the snowy peaks in which he crouched, sword in
hand, waiting for one of these landscapes to fade so that he might
establish, to a degree, his bearings.  Evidently the two planes had
intersected.

But the landscape overhead did not fade.  He could look up and see
sand, mountains, vegetation, a sky which met his own sky at a point
half-way along the curve of the huge sun and blended with it.  He
looked about him.  Snowy peaks in all directions.  Above desert
everywhere.  He felt dizzy, found that he was staring downward,
reaching to cup some of the snow in his hand.  It was ordinary snow,
though it seemed reluctant to melt in contact with his flesh.

"This is a world of Chaos," he muttered.  "It obeys no natural laws."
His voice seemed loud, amplified by the peaks, perhaps.  "That is why
you did not want to come here.  This is the world of powerful
rivals."

Stormbringer was silent, as if all its energy were spent.  But Elric
did not sheath the blade.  He began to trudge through the snow toward
what seemed to be an abyss.  Every so often he glanced upward, but the
desert overhead had not faded, sun and sky remained the same.  He
wondered if he walked around the surface of a miniature world.  That if
he continued to go forward he might eventually reach the point where
the two landscapes met.  He wondered if this were not some punishment
wished upon him by his untrustworthy allies of Chaos.  Perhaps he must
choose between death in the snow or death in the desert.  He reached
the edge of the abyss and looked down.

The walls of the abyss fell for all of five feet before reaching a
floor of gold and silver squares which stretched for perhaps another
seven feet before they reached the far wall, where the landscape
continued snow and crags uninterrupted.

"This is undoubtedly where Chaos rules," said the Prince of Melnibone.
He studied the smooth, cheque red floor.  It reflected parts of the
snowy terrain and the desert world above it.  It reflected the
crimson-eyed albino who peered down at it, his features drawn in
bewilderment and tiredness.

"I am at their mercy," said Elric.  "They play with me.  But I shall
resist them, even as they destroy me."  And some of his wild, careless
spirit came back to him as he prepared to lower himself onto the cheque
red floor and cross to the opposite bank.

He was half-way over when he heard a grunting sound in the distance and
a beast appeared, its paws slithering uncertainly on the smooth
surface, its seven savage eyes glaring in all directions as if it
sought the instigator of its terrible indignity.

And, at last, all seven eyes focused on Elric and the beast opened a
mouth in which row upon row of thin, vicious teeth were arranged, and
uttered a growl of unmistakable resentment.

Elric raised his sword.  "Back, creature of Chaos.  You threaten the
Prince of Melnibone."

The beast was already propelling itself towards him.  Elric flung his
body to one side, aiming a blow with the sword as he did so, succeeding
only in making a thin incision in the monster's heavily muscled hind
leg.  It shrieked and began to turn.

"Back."

Elric's voice was the brave, thin squeak of a lemming attacked by a
hawk.  He drove at the thing's snout with Stormbringer.  The sword was
heavy.  It had spent all its energy and there was no more to give.
Elric wondered why he, himself, did not weaken.  Possibly the laws of
nature were entirely abolished in the Realm of Chaos.  He struck and
drew blood.  The beast paused, more in astonishment than fear.

Then it opened its jaws, pushed its back legs against the snowy bank,
and shot towards the albino who tried to dodge it, lost his footing,
and fell, sprawling backwards, on the gold and silver surface.

3. In Which Una Persson Discovers An Unexpected Snag

THE GIGANTIC beetle, rainbow carapace glittering, turned as if into the
wind, which blew from the distant mountains, its thick, flashing wings
beating rapidly as it bore its single passenger over the queer
landscape.

On its back Mrs.  Persson checked the instruments on her wrist.  Ever
since Man had begun to travel in time it had become necessary for the
League to develop techniques to compensate for the fluctuations and
disruptions in the space time continua; perpetually monitoring the
chronoflow and mega flow  She pursed her lips.  She had picked up the
signal.  She made the semi-sentient beetle swing a degree or two SSE
and head directly for the mountains.  She was in some sort of enclosed
(but vast) environment.  These mountains, as well as everything
surrounding them, lay in the territory most utilised by the gloomy,
natural-born Werther de Goethe, poet and romantic, solitary seeker
after truth in a world no longer differentiating between the degrees of
reality.  He would not remember her, she knew, because, as far as
Werther was concerned, they had not met yet.  He had not even, if Una
were correct, experienced his adventure with Mistress Christia, the
Everlasting Concubine.  A story on which she had dined out more than
once, in duller eras.

The mountains drew closer.  From here it was possible to see the entire
arrangement (a creation of Werther's very much in character): a desert
landscape, a central sun, and, inverted above it, winter mountains.
Werther strove to make statements, like so many naive artists before
him, by presenting simple contrasts: The World is Bleak/ The World is
Cold/ Barren Am I As I Grow Old/ Tomorrow I Die, Entombed in Cold/ For
Silver My Poor Soul Was Sold she remembered he was perhaps the worst
poet she had encountered in an eternity of meetings with bad poets.  He
had taught himself to read and write in old, old English so that he
might carve those words on one of his many abandoned tombs (half his
time was spent in composing obituaries for himself).  Like so many
others he seemed to equate self-pity with artistic inspiration.  In an
earlier age he might have discovered his public and become quite rich
self pity passing for passion in the popular understanding).  Sometimes
she regretted the passing of Wheldrake, so long ago, so far away, in a
universe bearing scarcely any resemblances to those in which she
normally operated.

She brought her wavering mind back to the problem.  The beetle dipped
and circled over the desert, but there was no sight of her quarry.

She was about to abandon the search when she heard a faint roaring
overhead and she looked up to see another characteristic motif of
Werther's a gold and silver chessboard on which, upside down, a
monstrous dog-like creature was bearing down on a tiny white-haired man
dressed in the most abominable taste Una had seen for some time.

She directed the air car upwards and then, reversing the machine as she
entered the opposing gravity, downwards to where the barbaric ally
costumed swordsman was about to be eaten by the beast.

"Shoo!"  cried Una commandingly.

The beast raised a befuddled head.

"Shoo."

It licked lips and returned its seven-eyed gaze to the albino, who was
now on his knees, using his large sword to steady himself as he climbed
to his feet.

The jaws opened wider and wider.  The pale man prepared, shakily, to
defend himself.

Una directed the air car at the beast's unkempt head.  The great beetle
connected with a loud crack.  The monster's eyes widened in dismay.  It
yelped.  It sat on its haunches and began to slide away, its claws
making an unpleasant noise on the gold and silver tiles.

Una landed the air car and gestured for the stranger to enter.  She
noticed with distaste that he was a somewhat unhealthy looking albino
with gaunt features, exaggeratedly large and slanting eyes, ears that
were virtually pointed, and glaring, half-mad red pupils.

And yet, undoubtedly, it was her quarry and there was nothing for it
but to be polite.

"Do, please, get in," she said.  "I am here to rescue you."

"Shaarmraaam torjistoo quellahm vyeeanr," said the stranger in an
accent that seemed to Una to be vaguely Scottish.

"Damn," she said, "that's all we need."  She had been anxious to
approach the albino in private, before one of the denizens of the End
of Time could arrive and select him for a menagerie, but now she
regretted that Werther or perhaps Lord Jagged were not here, for she
realised that she needed one of their translation pills, those tiny
tablets which could "engineer" the brain to understand a new language.
By a fluke or perhaps because of her presence here so often the people
at the End of Time currently spoke formal early twentieth-century
English.

The albino who wore a kind of tartan divided kilt, knee-length boots, a
blue and white jerkin, a green cloak and a silver breastplate, with a
variety of leather belts and metal buckles here and there upon his
person was vehemently refusing her offer of a lift.  He raised the
sword before him as he backed away, slipped once, reached the bank,
scrambled through snow and disappeared behind a rock.

Mrs.  Persson sighed and put the car into motion again.

4. In Which The Prince of Melnibone Encounters Further Terrors

XIOMBARG HERSELF, thought Elric as he slid beneath the snows into the
cave.  Well, he would have no dealings with the Queen of Chaos; not
until he was forced to do so.

The cave was large.  In the thin light from the gap above his head he
could not see far.  He wondered whether to return to the surface or
risk going deeper into the cave.  There was always the hope that he
would find another way out.  He was attempting to recall some rune that
would aid him, but all he knew depended either upon the aid of
elementals who did not exist on this plane, or upon the Lords of Chaos
themselves and they were unlikely to come to his assistance in their
own Realm.  He was marooned here: the single mouse in a world of
cats.

Almost unconsciously he found himself moving downwards, realising that
the cave had become a tunnel.  He was feeling hungry but, apart from
the monster and the woman in the magical carriage, had seen no sign of
life.  Even the cavern did not seem entirely natural.

It widened; there was phosphorescent light.  He realised that the walls
were of transparent crystal and, behind the walls, were all manner of
artefacts.  He saw crowns, sceptres and chains of precious jewels;
cabinets of complicated carving; weapons of strangely turned metal;
armour, clothing, things whose use he could not guess and food.  There
were sweetmeats, fruits, flans and pies, all out of reach.

Elric groaned.  This was torment.  Perhaps deliberately planned
torment.  A thousand voices whispered to him in a beautiful, alien
language: "Bie-meee .. . Bie-meee ..."  the voices murmured.  "Baa-gen
baagen .. ."

They seemed to be promising every delight, if only he could pass
through the walls; but they were of transparent quartz, lit from
within.  He raised Stormbringer, half-tempted to try to break down the
barrier, but he knew that even his sword was, at its most powerful,
incapable of destroying the magic of Chaos.

He paused, gaping with astonishment at a group of small dogs which
looked at him with large brown eyes, tongues lolling, and jumped up at
him.

"O, Nee Tubbens!"  intoned one of the voices.

"Gods."  screamed Elric.  "This torture is too much!"  He swung his
body this way and that, threatening with his sword, but the voices
continued to murmur and promise, displaying their riches but never
allowing him to touch.

The albino panted.  His crimson eyes glared about him.  "You would
drive me insane, eh?  Well, Elric of Melnibone has witnessed more
frightful threats than this.  You will need to do more if you would
destroy his mind!"

And he ran through the whispering passages, looking to neither his
right nor his left, until, quite suddenly, he had run into blazing
daylight and stood staring down into pale infinity a blue and endless
void.

He looked up.  And he screamed.

Overhead were the gentle hills and dales of a rural landscape, with
rivers, grazing cattle, woods and cottages.  He expected to fall,
headlong, but he did not.  He was on the brink of the abyss.  The
cliff-face of red sandstone fell immediately below and then was the
tranquil void.  He looked back: "Baa-gen .. . O, Nee Tubbens ..."

A bitter smile played about the albino's bloodless lips as, decisively,
he sheathed his sword.

"Well, then," he said.  "Let them do their worst!"

And, laughing, he launched himself over the brink of the cliff.

5. In Which Werther de Goethe Makes A Wonderful Discovery

WITH A gesture of quiet pride, Werther de Goethe indicated his gigantic
skull.

"It is very large, Werther," said Mistress Christia, the Everlasting
Concubine, turning a power ring to adjust the shade of her eyes so that
they perfectly matched the day.

"It is monstrous," said Werther modestly.  "It reminds us all of the
Inevitable Night."

"Who was that?"  enquired golden-haired Gaf the Horse in Tears, at
present studying ancient legendry.  "Sir Lew Grady?"

"I mean Death," Werther told him, "which overwhelms us all."

"Well, not us," pointed out the Duke of Queens, as usual a trifle
literal minded.  "Because we're immortal, as you know."

Werther offered him a sad, pitying look and sighed briefly.  "Retain
your delusions, if you will."

Mistress Christia stroked the gloomy Werther's long, dark locks.
"There, there," she said.  "We have compensations, Werther."

"Without Death," intoned the Last Romantic, "there is no point to
Life."

As usual, they could not follow him, but they nodded gravely and
politely.

"The skull," continued Werther, stroking the side of his air car (which
was in the shape of a large flying reptile) to make it circle and head
for the left eyesocket, "is a Symbol not only of our Morality, but also
of our Fruitless Ambitions."

"Fruit?"  Bishop Castle, drowsing at the rear of the vehicle, became
interested.  His hobby was currently orchards.  "Less?  My pine-trees,
you know, are proving a problem.  The apples are much smaller than I
was led to believe."

"The skull is lovely," said Mistress Christia with valiant enthusiasm.
"Well, now that we have seen it..  ."

"The outward shell," Werther told her.  "It is what it hides which is
more important.  Man's Foolish Yearnings are all encompassed therein.
His Greed, his Need for the Impossible, the Heat of his Passions, the
Coldness which must Finally Overtake him.  Through this eye-socket you
will encounter a little invention of my own called The Bargain Basement
of the Mind ..."

He broke off in astonishment.

On the top edge of the eye-socket a tiny figure had emerged.

"What's that?"  enquired the Duke of Queens, craning his head back.  "A
random thought?"

"It is not mine at all!"

The figure launched itself into the sky and seemed to fly, with
flailing limbs, towards the sun.

Werther frowned, watching the tiny man disappear.  "The gravity field
is reversed there," he said absently, "in order to make the most of the
paradox, you understand.  There is a snowscape, a desert..."  But he
was much more interested in the newcomer.  "How do you think he got
into my skull?"

"At least he's enjoying himself.  He seems to be laughing," Mistress
Christia bent an ear towards the thin sound, which grew fainter and
fainter at first, but became louder again.  "He's coming back."

Werther nodded.  "Yes.  The field's no longer reversed."  He touched a
power ring.

The laughter stopped and became a yell of rage.  The figure hurtled
down on them.  It had a sword in one white hand and its red eyes
blazed.

Hastily, Werther stroked another ring.  The stranger tumbled into the
bottom of the air car and lay there panting, cursing and groaning.

"How wonderful!"  cried Werther.  "Oh, this is a traveller from some
rich, romantic past.  Look at him!  What else could he be?  What a
prize!"

The stranger rose to his feet and raised the sword high above his head,
defying the amazed and delighted passengers as he screamed at the top
of his voice:

"Heegeegrowinaz!"

"Good afternoon," said Mistress Christia.  She reached in her purse for
a translation pill and found one.  "I wonder if you would care to
swallow this it's quite harmless ..."

"Yakooom, oom glallio," said the albino contemptuously.

"Aha," said Mistress Christia.  "Well, just as you please."

The Duke of Queens pointed towards the other socket.  A huge, whirring
beetle came sailing from it.  In its back was someone he recognised
with pleasure.  "Mrs.  Persson!"

Una brought her air car alongside.

"Is he in your charge?"  asked Werther with undisguised disappointment.
"If so, I could offer you .. ."

"I'm afraid he means a lot to me," she said.

"From your own age?"  Mistress Christia also recognised Una.  She still
offered the translation pill in the palm of her hand.  "He seems a mite
suspicious of us."

"I'd noticed," said Una.  "It would be useful if he would accept the
pill.  However, if he will not, one of us .. ."

"I would be happy," offered the generous Duke of Queens.  He tugged at
his green and gold beard.  "Werther de Goethe, Mrs.  Persson."

"Perhaps I had better," said Una nodding to Werther.  The only problem
with translation pills was that they did their job so thoroughly.  You
could speak the language perfectly, but you could speak no other.

Werther was, for once, positive.  "Let's all take a pill," he
suggested.

Everyone at the End of Time carried translation pills, in case of
meeting a visitor from Space or the Past.

Mistress Christia handed hers to Una and found another.  They
swallowed.

"Creatures of Chaos," said the newcomer with cool dignity, "I demand
that you release me.  You cannot hold a mortal in this way, not unless
he has struck a bargain with you.  And no bargain was struck which
would bring me to the Realm of Chaos."

"It's actually more orderly than you'd think," said Werther
apologetically.  "Your first experience, you see, was the world of my
skull, which was deliberately muddled.  I meant to show what Confusion
was the Mind of Man ..."

"May I introduce Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine," said
the Duke of Queens, on his best manners.  "This is Mrs.  Persson,
Bishop Castle, Gaf the Horse in Tears.  Werther de Goethe your
unwitting host and I am the Duke of Queens.  We welcome you to our
world.  Your name, sir ... ?"

"You must know me, my lord duke," said Elric.

"For I am Elric of Melnibone, Emperor by Right of Birth, Inheritor of
the Ruby Throne, Bearer of the Actorios, Wielder of the Black Sword
..."

"Indeed!"  said Werther de Goethe.  In a whispered aside to Mrs.
Persson: "What a marvelous scowl!  What a noble sneer!"

"You are an important personage in your world, then?"  said Mistress
Christia, fluttering the eyelashes she had just extended by half an
inch.  "Perhaps you would allow me ..."

"I think he wishes to be returned to his home," said Mrs.  Persson
hastily.

"Returned?"  Werther was astonished.  "But the Morphail Effect!  It is
impossible."

"Not in this case, I think," she said.  "For if he is not returned
there is no telling the fluctuations which will take place throughout
the dimensions ..."

They could not follow her, but they accepted her tone.

"Aye," said Elric darkly, "return me to my realm, so that I may fulfill
my own doom-laden destiny ..."

Werther looked upon the albino with affectionate delight.  "Aha!  A
fellow spirit!  I, too, have a doom laden destiny."

"I doubt it is as doom-laden as mine."  Elric peered moodily back at
the skull as the two air cars fled away towards a gentle horizon where
exotic trees bloomed.

"Well," said Werther with an effort, "perhaps it is not, though I
assure you ..."

"I have looked upon hell-born horror," said Elric, "and communicated
with the very Gods of the Uttermost Darkness.  I have seen things which
would turn other men's minds to useless jelly .. ."

"Jelly?"  interrupted Bishop Castle.  "Do you, in your turn, have any
expertise with, for instance, blackbird trees?"

"Your words are meaningless," Elric told him, glowering.  "Why do you
torment me so, my lords?  I did not ask to visit your world.  I belong
in the world of men, in the Young Kingdoms, where I seek my weird. Why,
I have but lately experienced adventures ..."

"I do think we have one of those bores," murmured Bishop Castle to the
Duke of Queens, "so common amongst time-travellers.  They all believe
themselves unique."

But the Duke of Queens refused to be drawn.  He had developed a liking
for the frowning albino.  Gaf the Horse in Tears was also plainly
impressed, for he had fashioned his own features into a rough likeness
of Elric's.  The Prince of Melnibone pretended insouciance, but it was
evident to Una that he was frightened.  She tried to calm him.

"People here at the End of Time .. ."  she began.

"No soft words, my lady."  A cynical smile played about the albino's
lips.  "I know you for that great unholy temptress, Queen of the
Swords, Xiombarg herself."

"I assure you, I am as human as you, sir .. ."

"Human?  I, human?  I am not human, madam though I be a mortal, 'tis
true.  I am of older blood, the blood of the Bright Empire itself, the
blood of R'lin K'ren A'a which Cran Liret mocked, not understanding
what it was he laughed at.  Aye, though forced to summon aid from
Chaos, I made no bargain to become a slave in your realm ..."

"I assure you um your majesty," said Una, "that we had not meant to
insult you and your presence here was no doing of ours.  I am, as it
happens, a stranger here myself.  I came especially to see you, to help
you escape ..."

"Ha!"  said the albino.  "I have heard such words before.  You would
lure me into some worse trap than this.  Tell me, where is Duke Arioch?
He, at least, I owe some allegiance to."

"We have no one of that name," apologised Mistress Christia.  She
enquired of Gaf, who knew everyone.  "No time-traveller?"

"None," Gaf studied Elric's eyes and made a small adjustment to his
own.  He sat back, satisfied.

Elric shuddered and turned away mumbling.

"You are very welcome here," said Werther.  "I cannot tell you how glad
I am to meet one as essentially morbid and self-pitying as myself!"

Elric did not seem flattered.

"What can we do to make you feel at home?"  asked Mistress Christia.
She had changed her hair to a rather glossy blue in the hope, perhaps,
that Elric would find it more attractive.  "Is there anything you
need?"

"Need?  Aye.  Peace of mind.  Knowledge of my true destiny.  A quiet
place where I can be with Cymoril, whom I love."

"What does this Cymoril look like?"  Mistress Christia became just a
trifle over-eager.

"She is the most beautiful creature in the universe," said Elric.

"It isn't very much to go on," said Mistress Christia.  "If you could
imagine a picture, perhaps?  There are devices in the old cities which
could visualise your thoughts.  We could go there.  I should be happy
to fill in for her, as it were ..."

"What?  You offer me a simulacrum?  Do you not think I should detect
such witchery at once?  Ah, this is loathsome!  Slay me, if you will,
or continue the torment.  I'll listen no longer!"

They were floating now, between high cliffs.  On a ledge far below a
group of time-travellers pointed up at them.  One waved desperately.

"You've offended him, Mistress Christia," said Werther pettishly.  "You
don't understand how sensitive he is."

"Yes I do."  She was aggrieved.  "I was only being sympathetic."

"Sympathy!"  Elric rubbed at his long, somewhat pointed jaw.  "Ha! What
do I want with sympathy?"

"I never heard anyone who wanted it more."  Mistress Christia was kind.
"You're like a little boy, really, aren't you?"

"Compared to the ancient Lords of Chaos, I am a child, aye.  But my
blood is old and cold, the blood of decaying Melnibone, as well you
know."  And with a huge sigh the albino seated himself at the far end
of the car and rested his head on his fist.  "Well?  What is your
pleasure, my lords and ladies of Hell?"

"It is your pleasure we are anxious to achieve," Werther told him.  "Is
there anything at all we can do?  Some environment we can manufacture?
What are you used to?"

"Used to?  I am used to the crack of leathery dragon wings in the
sweet, sharp air of the early dawn.  I am used to the sound of red
battle, the drumming of hooves on bloody earth, the screams of the
dying, the yells of the victorious.  I am used to warring against
demons and monsters, sorcerers and ghouls.  I have sailed on magic
ships and fought hand to hand with reptilian savages.  I have
encountered the Jade Man himself.  I have fought side by side with the
elementals, who are my allies.  I have battled black evil .. ."

"Well," said Werther, "that's something to go on, at any rate.  I'm
sure we can .. ."

"Lord Elric won't be staying," began Una Persson politely.  "You see
these fluctuations in the mega flow not to mention his own destiny ...
He should not be here, at all, Werther."

"Nonsense!"  Werther flung a black velvet arm about the stiff shoulders
of his new friend.  "It is evident that our destinies are one.  Lord
Elric is as grief haunted as myself!"

"How can you know what it is to be haunted by grief .. . ?"  murmured
the albino.  His face was halfburied in Werther's generous sleeve.

Mrs.  Persson controlled herself.  She rose from Werther's air car and
made for her own.  "Well," she said, "I must be off.  I hope to see you
later, everybody."

They sang out their farewells.

Una Persson turned her beetle westward, towards Castle Canaria, the
home of her old friend Lord Jagged.

She needed help and advice.

6. In Which Elric of Melnibone Resists the Temptations of the Chaos
Lords

ELRIC REFLECTED on the subtle way in which laughing Lords of Chaos had
captured him.  Apparently, he was merely a guest and quite free to
wander where he would in their Realm.  Actually, he was in their power
as much as if they had chained him, for he could not flee this flying
dragon and they had already demonstrated their enormous magical gifts
in subtle ways, primarily with their shape changing  Only the one who
called himself Werther de Goethe (plainly a leader in the hierarchy of
Chaos) still had the face and clothing he had worn when first
encountered.

It was evident that this realm obeyed no natural laws, that it was
mutable according to the whims of its powerful inhabitants.  They could
destroy him with a breath and had, subtly enough, given him evidence of
that fact.  How could he possibly escape such danger?  By calling upon
the Lords of Law for aid?  But he owed them no loyalty and they,
doubtless, regarded him as their enemy.  But if he were to transfer his
allegiance to Law .. .

These thoughts and more continued to engage him, while his captors
chatted easily in the ancient High Speech of Melnibone, itself a
version of the very language of Chaos.  It was one of the other ways in
which they revealed themselves for what they were.  He fingered his
rune sword wondering if it would be possible to slay such a lord and
steal his energy, giving himself enough power for a little while to
hurl himself back to his own sphere .. .

The one called Lord Werther was leaning over the side of the
beast-vessel.  "Oh, come and see, Elric.  Look!"

Reluctantly, the albino moved to where Werther peered and pointed.

The entire landscape was filled with a monstrous battle.  Creatures of
all kinds and all combinations tore at one another with huge teeth and
claws.  Shapeless things slithered and hopped; giants, naked but for
helmets and greaves, slashed at these beasts with great broadswords and
axes, but were borne down.  Flame and black smoke drifted everywhere.
There was a smell.  The stink of blood?

"What do you miss most?"  asked the female.  She pressed a soft body
against him.  He pretended not to be aware of it.  He knew what magic
flesh could hide on a she-witch.

"I miss peace," said Elric almost to himself, "and I miss war.  For in
battle I find a kind of peace ..."

"Very good!"  Bishop Castle applauded.  "You are beginning to learn our
ways.  You will soon become one of our best conversationalists."

Elric touched the hilt of Stormbringer, hoping to feel it grow warm and
vibrant under his hand, but it was still, impotent in the Realm of
Chaos.  He uttered a heavy sigh.

"You are an adventurer, then, in your own world?"  said the Duke of
Queens.  He was bluff.  He had changed his beard to an ordinary sort of
black and was wearing a scarlet costume; quilted doublet and
tight-fitting hose, with a blue and white ruff, an elaborately
feathered hat on his head.  "I, too, am something of a vagabond.  As
far, of course, as it is possible to be here.  A buccaneer, of sorts.
That is, my actions are in the main bolder than those of my fellows.
More spectacular.  Vulgar.  Like yourself, sir.  I admire your
costume."

Elric knew that this Duke of Hell was referring to the fact that he
affected the costume of the southern barbarian, that he did not wear
the more restrained colours and more cleverly wrought silks and metals
of his own folk.  He gave tit for tat at this time.  He bowed.

"Thank you, sir.  Your own clothes rival mine."

"Do you think so?"  The hell-lord pretended pleasure.  If Elric had not
known better, the creature would seem to be swelling with pride.

"Look!"  cried Werther again.  "Look, Lord Elric we are attacked."

Elric whirled.

From below were rising oddly-wrought vessels something like ships, but
with huge round wheels at their sides, like the wheels of water-clocks
he had seen once in Pikarayd.  Coloured smoke issued from chimneys
mounted on their decks which swarmed with huge birds dressed in human
clothing.  The birds had multi-coloured plumage, curved beaks, and they
held swords in their claws, while on their heads were strangely shaped
black hats on which were blazed skulls with crossed bones beneath.

"Heave to!"  squawked the birds.  "Or we'll put a shot across your
bowels!"

"What can they be?"  cried Bishop Castle.

"Parrots," said Werther de Goethe soberly.  "Otherwise known as the
hawks of the sea.  And they mean us no good."

Mistress Christia blinked.

"Don't you mean pirates, dear?"

Elric took a firm grip on his sword.  Some of the words the Chaos Lords
used were absolutely meaningless to him.  But whether the attacking
creatures were of their own conception, or whether they were true
enemies of his captors, Elric prepared to do bloody battle.  His
spirits improved.  At least here was something substantial to fight.

7. In Which Mrs.  Persson Becomes Anxious About the Future of the
Universe

LORD JAGGED of Canaria was nowhere to be found.  His huge castle, of
gold and yellow spires, an embellished replica of Kings Cross station,
was populated entirely by his quaint robots, whom Jagged found at once
more mysterious and more trustworthy than android or human servants,
for they could answer only according to a limited programme.

Una suspected that Jagged was, himself, upon some mission, for he, too,
was a member of the League of Temporal Adventures.  But she needed aid.
Somehow she had to return Elric to his own dimensions without creating
further disruptions in the fabric of Time and Space.  The Conjunction
was not due yet and, if things got any worse, might never come.  So
many plans depended on the Conjunction of the Million Spheres that she
could not risk its failure.  But she could not reveal too much either
to Elric or his hosts.  As a Guild member she was sworn to the utmost
and indeed necessary secrecy.  Even here at the End of Time there were
certain laws which could be disobeyed only at enormous risk.  Words
alone were dangerous when they described ideas concerning the nature of
Time.

She racked her brains.  She considered seeking out Jherek Carnelian,
but then remembered that he had scarcely begun to understand his own
destiny.  Besides, there were certain similarities between Jherek and
Elric which she could only sense at present.  It would be best to go
cautiously there.

She decided that she had no choice.  She must return to the Time Centre
and see if they could detect Lord Jagged for her.

She brought the necessary co-ordinates together in her mind and
concentrated.  For a moment all memories, all sense of identity left
her.

Sergeant Alvarez was beside himself.  His screens were no longer
completely without form.  Instead, peculiar shapes could be seen in the
arrangements of lines.  Una thought she saw faces, beasts, landscapes.
That had never occurred before.  The instruments, at least, had
remained sane, even as they recorded insanity.

"It's getting worse," said Alvarez.  "You've hardly any Time left. What
there is, I've managed to borrow for you.  Did you contact the
rogue?"

She nodded.  "Yes.  But getting him to return ... I want you to find
Jagged."

"Jagged?  Are you sure?"

"It's our only chance, I think."

Alvarez sighed and bent a tense back over his controls.

8. In Which Elric and Werther Fight Side By Side Against Almost
Overwhelming Odds

SOMEWHERE, IT seemed to Elric, as he parried and thrust at the
attacking bird-monsters, rich and rousing music played.  It must be a
delusion, brought on by battle-madness.  Blood and feathers covered the
carriage.  He saw the one called Christia carried off screaming. Bishop
Castle had disappeared.  Gaf had gone.  Only the three of them,
shoulder to shoulder, continued to fight.  What was disconcerting to
Elric was that Werther and the Duke of Queens bore swords absolutely
identical to Stormbringer.  Perhaps they were the legendary Brothers of
the Black Sword, said to reside in Chaos?

He was forced to admit to himself that he experienced a sense of
comradeship with these two, who were braver than most in defending
themselves against such dreadful, unlikely monsters perhaps some
creation of their own which had turned against them.

Having captured the Lady Christia, the birds began to return to their
own craft.

"We must rescue her!"  cried Werther as the flying ships began to
retreat.  "Quickly!  In pursuit!"

"Should we not seek reinforcements?"  asked Elric, further impressed by
the courage of this Chaos Lord.

"No time!"  cried the Duke of Queens.  "After them!"

Werther shouted to his vessel.  "Follow those ships!"

The vessel did not move.

"It has an enchantment on it," said Werther.  "We are stranded!  Ah,
and I loved her so much!"

Elric became suspicious again.  Werther had shown no signs, previously,
of any affection for the female.

"You loved her?"

"From a distance," Werther explained.  "Duke of Queens, what can we do?
Those parrots will ransom her savagely and mishandle her objects of
virtue!"

"Dastardly poltroons!"  roared the huge duke.

Elric could make little sense of this exchange.  It dawned on him,
then, that he could still hear the rousing music.  He looked below.  On
some sort of dais in the middle of the bizarre landscape a large group
of musicians was assembled.  They played on, apparently oblivious of
what happened above.  This was truly a world dominated by Chaos.

Their ship began slowly to fall towards the band.  It lurched.  Elric
gasped and clung to the side as they struck yielding ground and bumped
to a halt.

The Duke of Queens, apparently elated, was already scrambling
overboard.  "There!  We can follow on those mounts."

Tethered near the dais was a herd of creatures bearing some slight
resemblance to horses but in a variety of dazzling, metallic colours,
with horns and bony ridges on their backs.  Saddles and bridles of
alien workmanship showed that they were domestic beasts, doubtless
belonging to the musicians.

"They will want some payment from us, surely," said Elric, as they
hurried towards the horses.

"Ah, true!"  Werther reached into a purse at his belt and drew forth a
handful of jewels.  Casually he flung them towards the musicians and
climbed into the saddle of the nearest beast.  Elric and the Duke of
Queens followed his example.  Then Werther, with a whoop, was off in
the direction in which the bird monsters had gone.

The landscape of this world of Chaos changed rapidly as they rode. They
galloped through forests of crystalline trees, over fields of glowing
flowers, leapt rivers the colour of blood and the consistency of
mercury, and their tireless mounts maintained a headlong pace which
never faltered.  Through clouds of boiling gas which wept, through
rain, through snow, through intolerable heat, through shallow lakes in
which oddly fashioned fish wriggled and gasped, until at last a range
of mountains came in sight.

"There!"  panted Werther, pointing with his own rune sword  "Their
lair.  Oh, the fiends!  How can we climb such smooth cliffs?"

It was true that the base of the cliffs rose some hundred feet before
they became suddenly ragged, like the rotting teeth of the beggars of
Nadsokor.  They were of dusky, purple obsidian and so smooth as to
reflect the faces of the three adventurers who stared at them in
despair.

It was Elric who saw the steps cut into the side of the cliff.

"These will take us up some of the way, at least."

"It could be a trap," said the Duke of Queens.  He, too, seemed to be
relishing the opportunity to take action.  Although a Lord of Chaos
there was something about him that made Elric respond to a fellow
spirit.

"Let them trap us," said Elric laconically.  "We have our swords."

With a wild laugh, Werther de Goethe was the first to swing himself
from his saddle and run towards the steps, leaping up them almost as if
he had the power of flight.  Elric and the Duke of Queens followed more
slowly.

Their feet slipping in the narrow spaces not meant for mortals to
climb, ever aware of the dizzying drop on their left, the three came at
last to the top of the cliff and stood clinging to sharp crags, staring
across a plain at a crazy castle rising into the clouds before them.

"Their stronghold," said Werther.

"What are these creatures?"  Elric asked.  "Why do they attack you? Why
do they capture the Lady Christia?"

"They nurse an abiding hatred for us," explained the Duke of Queens,
and looked expectantly at Werther, who added:

"This was their world before it became ours."

"And before it became theirs," said the Duke of Queens, "it was the
world of the Yargtroon."

"The Yargtroon?"  Elric frowned.

"They dispossessed the bodiless vampire goat-folk of Kia," explained
Werther.  "Who, in turn, destroyed or thought they destroyed the
Grash-Tu-Xem, a race of Old Ones older than any Old Ones except the
Elder Old Ones of Ancient Thriss."

"Older even than Chaos?"  asked Elric.

"Oh, far older," said Werther.

"It's almost completely collapsed, it's so old," added the Duke of
Queens.

Elric was baffled.  "Thriss?"

"Chaos," said the duke.

Elric let a thin smile play about his lips.  "You still mock me, my
lord.  The power of Chaos is the greatest there is, only equalled by
the power of Law."

"Oh, certainly," agreed the Duke of Queens.

Elric became suspicious again.  "Do you play with me, my lord?"

"Well, naturally, we try to please our guests ..."

Werther interrupted.  "Yonder doomy edifice holds the one I love.
Somewhere within its walls she is incarcerated, while ghouls taunt at
her and devils threaten."

"The bird-monsters,..  .?"  began Elric.

"Chimerae," said the Duke of Queens.  "You saw only one of the shapes
they assume."

Elric understood this.  "Aha!"

"But how can we enter it?"  Werther spoke almost to himself.

"We must wait until nightfall," said Elric, "and enter under the cover
of darkness."

"Nightfall?"  Werther brightened.

Suddenly they were in utter darkness.

Somewhere the Duke of Queens lost his footing and fell with a muffled
curse.

9. In Which Mrs.  Persson At Last Makes Contact With Her Old Friend

THEY STOOD together beneath the striped awning of the tent while a
short distance away armoured men, mounted on armoured horses, jousted,
were injured or died.  The two members wore appropriate costumes for
the period.  Lord Jagged looked handsome in his surcoat and mail, but
Una Persson merely looked uncomfortable in her wimple and kirtle.

"I can't leave just now," he was saying.  "I am laying the foundations
for a very important development."

"Which will come to nothing unless Elric is returned," she said.

A knight with a broken lance thundered past, covering them in dust.

"Well played Sir Holger!"  called Lord Jagged.  "An ancestor of mine,
you know," he told her.

"You will not be able to recognise the world of the End of Time when
you return, if this is allowed to continue," she said.

"It's always difficult, isn't it?"  But he was listening to her now.

"These disruptions could as easily affect us and leave us stranded,"
she added.  "We would lose any freedom we have gained."

He bit into a pomegranate and offered it to her.  "You can only get
these in this area.  Did you know?  Impossible to find in England.  In
the thirteenth century, at any rate.  The idea of freedom is such a
nebulous one, isn't it?  Most of the time when angry people are
speaking of 'freedom' what they are actually asking for is much simpler
respect.  Do those in authority or those with power ever really respect
those who do not have power?"  He paused.  "Or do they mean 'power' and
not 'freedom."  Or are they the same .. .?"

"Really, Jagged, this is no time for self-indulgence."

He looked about him.  "There's little else to do in the Middle East in
the thirteenth century, I assure you, except eat pomegranates and
philosophise .. ."

"You must come back to the End of Time."

He wiped his handsome chin.  "Your urgency," he said, "worries me, Una.
These matters should be handled with delicacy slowly ..."

"The entire fabric will collapse unless he is returned to his own
dimension.  He is an important factor in the whole plan."

"Well, yes, I understand that."

"He is, in one sense at least, your protege."

"I know.  But not my responsibility."

"You must help," she said.

There was a loud bang and a crash.

A splinter flew into Mrs.  Persson's eye.

"Oh, zounds!"  she said.

10.  In Which The Castle Is Assaulted And The Plot Thickened

A MOON had appeared above the spires of the castle which seemed to
Elric to have changed its shape since he had first seen it.  He meant
to ask his companions for an explanation, but at present they were all
sworn to silence as they crept nearer.  From within the castle burst
light, emanating from guttering brands stuck into brackets on the
walls.  There was laughter, noise of feasting.  Hidden behind a rock
they peered through one large window and inspected the scene within.

The entire hall was full of men wearing identical costumes.  They had
black skull caps, loose white blouses and trousers, black shoes.  Their
eyebrows were black in dead white faces, even paler than Elric's and
they had bright red lips.

"Aha," whispered Werther, "the parrots are celebrating their victory.
Soon they will be too drunk to know what is happening to them."

"Parrots?"  said Elric.  "What is that word?"

"Pierrots, he means," said the Duke of Queens.  "Don't you, Werther?"
There were evidently certain words which did not translate easily into
the High Speech of Melnibone.

"Sshh," said the Last Romantic, "they will capture us and torture us to
death if they detect our presence."

They worked their way around the castle.  It was guarded at intervals
by gigantic warriors whom Elric at first mistook for statues, save
that, when he looked closely, he could see them breathing very slowly.
They were unarmed, but their fists and feet were disproportionately
large and could crush any intruder they detected.

"They are sluggish, by the look of them," said Elric.  "If we are
quick, we can run beneath them and enter the castle before they realise
it.  Let me try first.  If I succeed, you follow."

Werther clapped his new comrade on the back.  "Very well."

Elric waited until the nearest guard halted and spread his huge feet
apart, then he dashed forward, settling like an insect between the
giant's legs and flinging himself through a dimly lit window.  He found
himself in some sort of storeroom.  He had not been seen, though the
guard cocked his ear for half a moment before resuming his pace.

Elric looked cautiously out and signalled to his companions.  The Duke
of Queens waited for the guard to stop again, then he, too, made for
the window and joined Elric.  He was panting and grinning.  "This is
wonderful," he said.

Elric admired his spirit.  There was no doubt that the guard could
crush any of them to a pulp, even if (as still nagged at his brain)
this was all some sort of complicated illusion.

Another dash, and Werther was with them.

Cautiously, Elric opened the door of the storeroom.  They looked onto a
deserted landing.  They crossed the landing and looked over a
balustrade.  They had expected to see another hall, but instead there
was a miniature lake on which floated the most beautiful miniature
ship, all mother-of-pearl, brass and ebony, with golden sails and
silver masts.  Surrounding this ship were mermaids and mermen bearing
trays of exotic food (reminding Elric how hungry he still was) which
they fed to the ship's only passenger, Mistress Christia.

"She is under an enchantment," said Elric.  "They beguile her with
illusions so that she will not wish to come with us even if we do
rescue her.  Do you know no counter-spells?"

Werther thought for a moment.  Then he shook his head.

"You must be very minor Lords of Chaos," said Elric, biting his lower
lip.

From the lake, Mistress Christia giggled and drew one of the mermaids
towards her.  "Come here, my pretty piscine!"

"Mistress Christia!"  hissed Werther de Goethe.

"Oh!"  The captive widened her eyes (which were now both large and
blue).  "At last!"

"You wish to be rescued?"  said Elric.

"Rescued?  Only by you, most alluring of albi noes

Elric hardened his features.  "I am not the one who loves you,
madam."

"What?  I am loved?  By whom?  By you, Duke of Queens?"

"Sshh," said Elric.  "The demons will hear us."

"Oh, of course," said Mistress Christia gravely, and fell silent for a
second.  "I'll get rid of all this, shall I?"

And she touched one of her rings.

Ship, lake and mer folk were gone.  She lay on silken cushions,
attended by monkeys.

"Sorcery!"  said Elric.  "If she has such power, then why ?"

"It is limited," explained Werther.  "Merely to such tricks."

"Quite," said Mistress Christia.

Elric glared at them.  "You surround me with illusions.  You make me
think I am aiding you, when really ..."

"No, no!"  cried Werther.  "I assure you, Lord Elric, you have our
greatest respect well, mine at least we are only attempting to "

There was a roar from the gallery above.  Rank upon rank of grinning
demons looked down upon them.  They were armed to the teeth.

"Hurry!"  The Duke of Queens leapt to the cushions and seized Mistress
Christia, flinging her over his shoulder.  "We can never defeat so
many!"

The demons were already rushing down the circular staircase.  Elric,
still not certain whether his new friends deceived him or not, made a
decision.  He called to the Duke of Queens.  "Get her from the castle.
We'll keep them from you for a few moments, at least."  He could not
help himself.  He behaved impulsively.

The Duke of Queens, sword in one hand, Mistress Christia over the other
shoulder, ran into a narrow passage.  Elric and Werther stood together
as the demons rushed down on them.  Blade met blade.  There was an
unbearable shrilling of steel mingled with the cacklings and shrieks of
the demons as they gnashed their teeth and rolled their eyes and
slashed at the pair with swords, knives and axes.  But worst of all was
the smell.  The dreadful smell of burning flesh which filled the air
and threatened to choke Elric.  It came from the demons.  The smell of
Hell.  He did his best to cover his nostrils as he fought, certain that
the smell must overwhelm him before the swords.  Above him was a set of
metal rungs fixed into the stones, leading high into a kind of a
chimney.  As a pause came he pointed upward to Werther, who understood
him.  For a moment they managed to drive the demons back.  Werther
jumped onto Elric's shoulders (again displaying a strange lightness)
and reached down to haul the albino after him.

While the demons wailed and cackled below, they began to climb the
chimney.

They climbed for nearly fifty feet before they found themselves in a
small, round room whose windows looked out over the purple crags and,
beyond them, to a scene of bleak rocky pavements pitted with holes,
like some vast unlikely cheese.

And there, rolling over this relatively flat landscape, in full
daylight (for the sun had risen) was the Duke of Queens in a carriage
of brass and wood, studded with jewels, and drawn by two bovine
creatures which looked to Elric as if they might be the fabulous oxen
of mythology who had drawn the war chariot of his ancestors to do
battle with the emerging nations of mankind.

Mistress Christia was beside the Duke of Queens.  They seemed to be
waiting for Elric and Werther.

"It's impossible," said the albino.  "We could not get out of this
tower, let alone those crags.  I wonder how they managed to move so
quickly and so far.  And where did the chariot itself come from?"

"Stolen, no doubt, from the demons," said Werther.

"See, there are wings here."  He indicated a heap of feathers in the
corner of the room.  "We can use those."

"What wizardry is this?"  said Elric.  "Man cannot fly on bird
wings."

"With the appropriate spell he can," said Werther.  "I am not that well
versed in the magic arts, of course, but let me see ..."  He picked up
one set of wings.  They were soft and glinted with subtle, rainbow
colours.  He placed them on Elric's back, murmuring his spell:

Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove,

To carry me to the one 1 love .. .

"There!"  He was very pleased with himself.  Elric moved his shoulders
and his wings began to flap.  "Excellent!  Off you go, Elric.  I'll
join you in a moment."

Elric hesitated, then saw the head of the first demon emerging from the
hole in the floor.  He jumped to the window ledge and leapt into space.
The wings sustained him.  Against all logic he flew smoothly towards
the waiting chariot and behind him, came Werther de Goethe.  At the
windows of the tower the demons crowded, shaking fists and weapons as
their prey escaped them.

Elric landed rather awkwardly beside the chariot and was helped aboard
by the Duke of Queens.  Werther joined them, dropping expertly amongst
them.  He removed the wings from the albino's back and nodded to the
Duke of Queens who yelled at the oxen, cracking his whip as they began
to move.

Mistress Christia flung her arms about Elric's neck.  "What courage!
What resourcefulness!"  she breathed.  "Without you, I should now be
ruined!"

Elric sheathed Stormbringer.  "We all three worked together for your
rescue, madam."  Gently he removed her arms.  Courteously he bowed and
leaned against the far side of the chariot as it bumped and hurtled
over the peculiar rocky surface.

"Swifter!  Swifter!"  called the Duke of Queens casting urgent looks
backward.  "We are followed!"

From the disappearing tower there now poured a host of flying,
gibbering things.  Once again the creatures had changed shape and had
assumed the form of striped, winged cats, all glaring eyes, fangs and
extended claws.

The rock became viscous, clogging the wheels of the chariot, as they
reached what appeared to be a silvery road, flowing between the high
trees of an alien forest already touched by a weird twilight.

The first of the flying cats caught up with them, slashing.

Elric drew Stormbringer and cut back.  The beast roared in pain, blood
streaming from its severed leg, its wings flapping in Elric's face as
it hovered and attempted to snap at the sword.

The chariot rolled faster, through the forest to green fields touched
by the moon.  The days were short, it seemed, in this part of Chaos.  A
path stretched skyward.  The Duke of Queens drove the chariot straight
up it, heading for the moon itself.

The moon grew larger and larger and still the demons pursued them, but
they could not fly as fast as the chariot which went so swiftly that
sorcery must surely speed it.  Now they could only be heard in the
darkness behind and the silver moon was huge.

"There!"  called Werther.  "There is safety!"

On they raced until the moon was reached, the oxen leaping in their
traces, galloping over the gleaming surface to where a white palace
awaited them.

"Sanctuary," said the Duke of Queens.  And he laughed a wild, full
laugh of sheer joy.

The palace was like ivory, carved and wrought by a million hands, every
inch covered with delicate designs.

Elric wondered.  "Where is this place?"  he asked.  "Does it lie
outside the Realm of Chaos?"

Werther seemed nonplussed  "You mean our world?"

"Aye."

"It is still part of our world," said the Duke of Queens.

"Is the palace to your liking?"  asked Werther.

"It is lovely."

"A trifle pale for my own taste," said the Last Romantic.  "It was
Mistress Christia's idea."

"You built this?"  the albino turned to the woman.  "When?"

"Just now."  She seemed surprised.

Elric nodded.  "Aha.  It is within the power of Chaos to create
whatever whims it pleases."

The chariot crossed a white drawbridge and entered a white courtyard.
In it grew white flowers.  They dismounted and entered a huge hall,
white as bone, in which red lights glowed.  Again Elric began to
suspect mockery, but the faces of the Chaos lords showed only pleasure.
He realised that he was dizzy with hunger and weariness, as he had been
ever since he had been flung into this terrible world where no shape
was constant, no idea permanent.

"Are you hungry?"  asked Mistress Christia.

He nodded.  And suddenly the room was filled by a long table on which
all kinds of food were heaped and everything, meats and fruits and
vegetables, was white.

Elric moved to take the seat she indicated and he put some of the food
on a silver plate and he touched it to his lips and he tasted it.  It
was delicious.  Forgetting suspicion, he began to eat heartily, trying
not to consider the colourless quality of the meal.  Werther and the
Duke of Queens also took some food, but it seemed they ate only from
politeness.  Werther glanced up at the faraway roof.  "What a wonderful
tomb this would make," he said.  "Your imagination improves, Mistress
Christia."

"Is this your domain?"  asked Elric.  "The moon?"

"Oh, no," she said.  "It was all made for the occasion."

"Occasion?"

"For your adventure," she said.  Then she fell silent.

Elric became grave.  "Those demons?  They were not your enemies.  They
belong to you!"

"Belong?"  said Mistress Christia.  She shook her head.

Elric frowned and pushed back his plate.  "I am, however, most
certainly your captive."  He stood up and paced the white floor.  "Will
you not return me to my own plane?"

"You would come back almost immediately," said Werther de Goethe.  "It
is called the Morphail Effect.  And if you did not come here, you would
yet remain in your own future.  It is in the nature of Time."

"This is nonsense," said Elric.  "I have left my own realm before and
returned though admittedly memory becomes weak, as with dreams poorly
recalled."

"No man can go back in Time," said the Duke of Queens.  "Ask Brannart
Morphail."

"He, too, is a Lord of Chaos?"

"If you like.  He is a colleague."

"Could he not return me to my realm?  He sounds a clever being."

"He could not and he would not," said Mistress Christia.  "Haven't you
enjoyed your experiences here so far?"

"Enjoyed?"  Elric was astonished.  "Madam, I think .  Well, what has
happened this day is not what we mortals would call 'enjoyment'!"

"But you seemed to be enjoying yourself," said the Duke of Queens in
some disappointment.  "Didn't he, Werther?"

"You were much more cheerful through the whole episode," agreed the
Last Romantic.  "Particularly when you were fighting the demons."

"As with many time-travellers who suffer from anxieties," said Mistress
Christia, "you appeared to relax when you had something immediate to
capture your attention ..."

Elric refused to listen.  This was clever Chaos talk, meant to deceive
him and take his mind from his chief concern.

"If I was any help to you," he began, "I am, of course ..."

"He isn't very grateful," Mistress Christia pouted.

Elric felt madness creeping nearer again.  He calmed himself.

"I thank you for the food, madam.  Now, I would sleep."

"Sleep?"  she was disconcerted.  "Oh!  Of course.  Yes.  A bedroom?"

"If you have such a thing."

"As many as you like."  She moved a stone on one of her rings.  The
walls seemed to draw back to show bedchamber after bedchamber, in all
manner of styles,

with beds of every shape and fashion.  Elric controlled his temper.  He
bowed, thanked her, said goodnight to the two lords and made for the
nearest bed.

As he closed the door behind him, he thought he heard Werther de Goethe
say: "We must try to think of a better entertainment for him when he
wakes up."

11.  In Which Mrs.  Persson Witnesses The First Sign Of The Megaflow's
Disintegration

IN CASTLE CAN ARIA Lord Jagged unrolled his antique charts.  He had had
them drawn for him by a baffled astrologer in 1590.  They were one of
his many affectations.  At the moment, however, they were of
considerably greater use than Alvarez's electronics.

While he used a wrist computer to check his figures, Una Persson looked
out of the window of Castle Canaria and wondered who had invented this
particular landscape.  A green and orange sun cast sickening light over
the herds of grazing beasts who resembled, from this distance at any
rate, nothing so much as gigantic human hands.  In the middle of the
scene was raised some kind of building in the shape of a vast helmet,
vaguely Greek in conception.  Beyond that was a low, grey moon.  She
turned away.

"I must admit," said Lord Jagged, "that I had not understood the extent
..."

"Exactly," she said.

"You must forgive me.  A certain amount of amnesia euphoria, perhaps?
always comes over one in these very remote periods."

"Quite."

He looked up from the charts.  "We've a few hours at most."

Her smile was thin, her nod barely perceptible.

While she made the most of having told him so, Lord Jagged frowned,
turned a power ring and produced an already lit pipe which he placed
thoughtfully in his mouth, taking it out again almost immediately.
"That wasn't Dunhill Standard Medium."  He laid the pipe aside.

There came a loud buzzing noise from the window.  The scene outside was
disintegrating as if melting on glass.  An eerie golden light spread
everywhere, flooding from an apex of deeper gold, as if forming a
funnel.

"That's a rupture," said Lord Jagged.  His voice was tense.  He put his
arm about her shoulders.  "I've never seen anything of the size
before."

Rushing towards them along the funnel of light there came an entire
city of turrets and towers and minarets in a wide variety of pastel
colours.  It was set into a saucer-shaped base which was almost
certainly several miles in circumference.

For a moment the city seemed to retreat.  The golden light faded.  The
city remained, some distance away, swaying a little as if on a gentle
tide, a couple of thousand feet above the ground, the grey moon below
it.

"That's what I call mega flow distortion," said Una Persson in that
inappropriately facetious tone adopted by those who are deeply
frightened.

"I recognise the period."  Jagged drew a telescope from his robes.
"Second Candlemaker's Empire, mainly based in Arcturus.  This is a
village by their standards.  After all, Earth was merely a rural park
during that time."  He retreated into academe, his own response to
fear.

Una craned her head.  "Isn't that some sort of vehicle heading towards
the city.  From the moon good heavens, they've spotted it already.  Are
they going to try to put the whole thing into a menagerie?"

Jagged had the advantage of the telescope.  "I think not."  He handed
her the instrument.

Through it she saw a scarlet and black chariot borne by what seemed to
be some form of flying fairground horses.  In the chariot, armed to the
teeth with lances, bows, spears, swords, axes, morning stars maces and
almost every other barbaric hand-weapon, clad in quasi-mythological
armour, were Werther de Goethe, the Duke of Queens and Elric of
Melnibone.

"They're attacking it!"  she said faintly.  "What will happen when the
two groups intersect?"

"Three groups," he pointed out.  "Untangling that in a few hours is
going to be even harder."

"And if we fail?"

He shrugged.  "We might just as well give ourselves up to the biggest
chronoquake the universe has ever experienced."

"You're exaggerating," she said.

"Why not?  Everyone else is."

12.  The Attack On The Citadel Of The Skies

"MELNIBONE!  MELNIBONE"I  cried the albino as the chariot circled over
the spires and turrets of the city.  They saw startled faces below.
Strange engines were being dragged through the narrow streets.

"Surrender!"  Elric demanded.

"I do not think they can understand us," said the Duke of Queens. "What
a find, eh?  A whole city from the past!"

Werther had been reluctant to embark on an adventure not of his own
creation, but Elric, realising that here at last was a chance of
escape, had been anxious to begin.  The Duke of Queens had, in an
instant, aided the albino by producing costumes, weapons, transport.
Within minutes of the city's appearance, they had been on their way.

Exactly why Elric wished to attack the city, Werther could not make
out, unless it was some test of the Melnibonean's to see if his
companions were true allies or merely pretending to have befriended
him.  Werther was learning a great deal from Elric, much more than he
had ever learned from Mongrove, whose ideas of angst were only
marginally less notional than Werther's own.

A broad, flat blue ray beamed from the city.  It singed one wheel of
the chariot.

"Ha!  They make sorcerous weapons," said Elric.  "Well, my friends. 
Let us see you counter with your own power."

Werther obediently imitated the blue ray and sent it back from his
fingers, slicing the tops off several towers.  The Duke of Queens
typically let loose a different coloured ray from each of his extended
ten fingers and bored a hole all the way through the bottom of the city
so that fields could be seen below.  He was pleased with the effect.

"This is the power of the Gods of Chaos!"  cried Elric, a familiar
elation filling him as the blood of old Melnibone was fired.
"Surrender!"

"Why do you want them to surrender?"  asked the Duke of Queens in some
disappointment.

"Their city evidently has the power to fly through the dimensions.  If
I became its lord I can force it to return to my own plane," said Elric
reasonably.

"The Morphail Effect .. ."  began Werther, but realised he was spoiling
the spirit of the game.  "Sorry."

The blue ray came again, but puttered out and faded before it reached
them.

"Their power is gone!"  cried Elric.  "Your sorcery defeats them, my
lords.  Let us land and demand they honour us as their new rulers."

With a sigh, Werther ordered the chariot to set down in the largest
square.  Here they waited until a few of the citizens began to arrive,
cautious and angry, but evidently in no mood to give any further
resistance.

Elric addressed them.  "It was necessary to attack and conquer you, for
I must return to my own Realm, there to fulfill my great destiny.  If
you will take me to Melnibone, I will demand nothing further from
you."

"One of us really ought to take a translation pill" said Werther.
"These people probably have no idea where they are."

A meaningless babble came from the citizens.  Elric frowned.  "They
understand not the High Speech," he said.  "I will try the Common
Tongue."  He spoke in a language neither Werther, the Duke of Queens
nor the citizens of this settlement could understand.

He began to show signs of frustration.  He drew his sword Stormbringer.
"By the Black Sword, know that I am Elric, last of the royal line of
Melnibone!  You must obey me.  Is there none here who understands the
High Speech?"

Then, from the crowd, stepped a being far taller than the others.  He
was dressed in robes of dark blue and deepest scarlet and his face was
haughty, beautiful and full of evil.

"I speak the High Tongue," he said.

Werther and the Duke of Queens were nonplussed This was no one they
recognised.

Elric gestured.  "You are the ruler of the city?"

"Call me that, if you will."

"Your name?"

"I am known by many names.  And you know me, Elric of Melnibone, for I
am your lord and your friend."

"Ah," said Elric lowering his sword, "this is the greatest deception of
them all.  I am a fool."

"Merely a mortal," said the newcomer, his voice soft, amused and full
of a subtle arrogance.  "Are these the renegades who helped you?"

"Renegades?"  said Werther.  "Who are you, sir?"

"You should know me, rogue lords.  You aid a mortal and defy your
brothers of Chaos."

"Eh?"  said the Duke of Queens.  "I haven't got a brother."

The stranger ignored him.  "Demigods who thought that by helping this
mortal they could threaten the power of the Greater Ones."

"So you did aid me against your own," said Elric.  "Oh, my friends!"

"And they shall be punished!"

Werther began: "We regret any damage to your city.  After all, you were
not invited ..."

The Duke of Queens was laughing.  "Who are you?  What disguise is
this?"

"Know me for your master."  The eyes of the stranger glowed with myriad
fires.  "Know me for Arioch, Duke of Hell!"

"Arioch!"  Elric became filled with a strange joy.  "Arioch!  I called
upon thee and was not answered!"

"I was not in this Realm," said the Duke of Hell.

"I was forced to be absent.  And while I was gone, fools thought to
displace me."

"I really cannot follow all this," said the Duke of Queens.  He set
aside his mace.  "I must confess I become a trifle bored, sir.  If you
will excuse me."

"You will not escape me."  Arioch lifted a languid hand and the Duke of
Queens was frozen to the ground, unable to move anything save his
eyes.

"You are interfering, sir, with a perfectly " Werther too was struck
dumb and paralysed.

But Elric refused to quail.  "Lord Arioch, I have given you blood and
souls.  You owe me .. ."

"I owe you nothing, Elric of Melnibone.  Nothing I do not choose to
owe.  You are my slave ..."

"No," said Elric.  "I serve you.  There are old bonds.  But you cannot
control me, Lord Arioch, for I have a power within me which you fear.
It is the power of my very mortality."

The Duke of Hell shrugged.  "You will remain in the Realm of Chaos
forever.  Your mortality will avail you little here."

"You need me in my own Realm, to be your agent.  That, too, I know,
Lord Arioch."

The handsome head lowered a fraction as if Arioch considered this.  The
beautiful lips smiled.  "Aye, Elric.  It is true that I need you to do
my work.  For the moment it is impossible for the Lords of Chaos to
interfere directly in the world of mortals, for we should threaten our
own existence.  The rate of entropy would increase beyond even our
control.  The day has not yet come when Law and Chaos must decide the
issue once and for all.  But it will come soon enough for you,
Elric."

"And my sword will be at your service, Lord Arioch."

"Will it, Elric?"

Elric was surprised by this doubting tone.  He had always served Chaos,
as his ancestors had.  "Why should I turn against you?  Law has no
attractions for one such as Elric of Melnibone."

The Duke of Hell was silent.

"And there is the bargain," added Elric.  "Return me to my own Realm,
Lord Arioch, so that I might keep it."

Arioch sighed.  "I am reluctant."

"I demand it," bravely said the albino.

"Oho!"  Arioch was amused.  "Well, mortal, I'll reward your courage and
I'll punish your insolence.  The reward will be that you are returned
from whence you came, before you called on Chaos in your battle with
that pathetic wizard.  The punishment is that you will recall every
incident that occurred since then but only in your dreams.  You will be
haunted by the puzzle for the rest of your life and you will never for
a moment be able to express what mystifies you."

Elric smiled.  "I am already haunted by a curse of that kind, my
lord."

"Be that as it may, I have made my decision."

"I accept it," said the albino, and he sheathed his sword,
Stormbringer.

"Then come with me," said Arioch, Duke of Hell.  And he drifted
forward, took Elric by the arm, and lifted them both high into the sky,
floating over distorted scenes, half-formed dream-worlds, the whims of
the Lords of Chaos, until they came to a gigantic rock shaped like a
skull.  And through one of the eye-sockets Lord Arioch bore Elric of
Melnibone. And down strange corridors that whispered and displayed all
manner of treasures.  And up into a landscape, a desert in which grew
many strange plants, while overhead could be seen a land of snow and
mountains, equally alien.  And from his robes Arioch, Duke of Hell
produced a wand and he bade Elric to take hold of the wand, which was
hot to the touch and glittered, and he placed his own slender hand at
the other end, and he murmured words which Elric could not understand
and together they began to fade from the landscape, into the darkness
of limbo where many eyes accused them, to an island in a grey and
storm-tossed sea; an island littered with destruction and with the
dead.

Then Arioch, Duke of Hell, laughed a little and vanished, leaving the
Prince of Melnibone sprawled amongst corpses and ruins while heavy rain
beat down upon him.

And in the scabbard at Elric's side, Stormbringer stirred and murmured
once more.

13.  In Which There Is A Small Celebration At The End Of Time

WERT HER DE GOETHE and the Duke of Queens blinked their eyes and found
that they could move their heads.  They stood in a large, pleasant room
full of charts and ancient instruments.  Mistress Christia was there,
too.

Una Persson was smiling as she watched golden light fade from the sky.
The city had disappeared, hardly any the worse for its experience.  She
had managed to save the two friends without a great deal of fuss, for
the citizens had still been bewildered by what had happened to them.
Because of the mega flow distortion, the Morphail Effect would not
manifest itself.  They would never understand where they had been or
what had actually happened.

"Who on earth was that fellow who turned up?"  asked the Duke of
Queens. "Some friend of yours, Mrs.  Persson?  He's certainly no
sportsman."

"Oh, I wouldn't agree.  You could call him the ultimate sportsman," she
said.  "I am acquainted with him, as a matter of fact."

"It's not Jagged in disguise is it?"  said Mistress Christia who did
not really know what had gone on.  "This is Jagged's castle but where
is Jagged?"

"You are aware how mysterious he is," Una answered.  "I happened to be
here when I saw that Werther and the Duke were in trouble in the city
and was able to be of help."

Werther scowled (a very good copy of Elric's own scowl).  "Well, it
isn't good enough."

"It was a jolly adventure while it lasted, you must admit," said the
Duke of Queens.

"It wasn't meant to be jolly," said Werther.  "It was meant to be
significant."

Lord Jagged entered the room.  He wore his familiar yellow robes.  "How
pleasant," he said.  "When did all of you arrive?"

"I have been here for some time," Mrs.  Persson explained, "but Werther
and the Duke of Queens ..."

"Just got here," explained the duke.  "I hope we're not intruding. Only
we had a slight mishap and Mrs.  Persson was good enough ..."

"Always delighted," said the insincere lord.  "Would you care to see my
new ?"

"I'm on my way home," said the Duke of Queens.  "I just stopped by.
Mrs.  Persson will explain."

"I, too," said Werther suspiciously, "am on my way back."

"Very well.  Goodbye."

Werther summoned an air car a restrained figure of death, in rags with
a sickle, who picked the three up in his hand and bore them towards a
bleak horizon.

It was only days later, when he went to visit Mongrove to tell him of
his adventures and solicit his friend's advice, that Werther realised
he was still speaking High Melnibonean.  Some nagging thought remained
with him for a long while after that.  It concerned Lord Jagged, but he
could not quite work out what was involved.

After this incident there were no further disruptions at the End of
Time until the beginning of the story concerning Jherek Carnelian and
Miss Amelia Underwood.

14.  In Which Elric of Melnibone Recovers From a Variety of
Enchantments and Becomes Determined to Return to the Dreaming City

ELRIC WAS awakened by the rain on his face.  Wearily he peered around
him.  To left and right there were only the dismembered corpses of the
dead, the Krettii and the Filkharian sailors destroyed during his
battle with the half brute who had somehow gained so much sorcerous
power.  He shook his milk-white hair and he raised crimson eyes to the
grey, boiling sky.

It seemed that Arioch had aided him, after all.  The sorcerer was
destroyed and he, Elric, remained alive.  He recalled the sweet,
bantering tones of his patron demon.  Familiar tones, yet he could not
remember what the words had been.

He dragged himself over the dead and waded through the shallows towards
the Filkharian ship which still had some of its crew.  They were, by
now, anxious to head out into open sea again rather than face any more
terrors on Sorcerer's Isle.

He was determined to see Cymoril, whom he loved, to regain his throne
from Yyrkoon, his cousin .. .

15.  In Which A Brief Reunion Takes Place At the Time Centre

WITH THE manuscript of Colonel Pyat's rather dangerous volume of
memoirs safely back in her briefcase, Una Persson decided it was the
right moment to check into the Time Centre.  Alvarez should be on duty
again and his instruments should be registering any minor imbalances
resulting from the episode concerning the gloomy albino.

Alvarez was not alone.  Lord Jagged was there, in a disreputable
Norfolk jacket and smoking a battered briar.  He had evidently been
holidaying in Victorian England.  He was pleased to see her.

Alvarez ran his gear through all functions.  "Sweet and neat," he said.
"It hasn't been as good since I don't know when.  We've you to thank
for that, Mrs.  P."

She was modest.

"Certainly not.  Jagged was the one.  Your disguise was wonderful,
Jagged.  How did you manage to imitate that character so thoroughly? It
convinced Elric.  He really thought you were whatever it was a Chaos
Duke?"

Jagged waved a modest hand.

"I mean," said Una, "it's almost as if you were this fellow "Arioch'
..."

But Lord Jagged only puffed on his pipe and smiled a secret and
superior smile.

The Last Enchantment

THROUGH THE blue and hazy night ran a shuddering man.  He clutched
terror to him, his bloated eyes full of blood.  First behind him and
then seemingly ahead of him came the hungry chuckles, the high
whispered words.

"Here toothsome.  Here sweetmeat."

He swerved in another direction, moaning.  Like a huge husk he was,
like a hollow ornament of thin bone, with his great, rolling head
swaying on his shoulders resembling a captive balloon, the wet cavern
of his wide mouth fully open and gasping, the yellow spikes of teeth
clashing in his head.

Awkwardly he ran, sometimes scuttling like a wounded spider, something
lurching, mooing to himself through the tall and ancient forest, his
feet sinking into the carpet of wet, pungent bracken and rotting roots.
He held in his hand, that long, white, metal-coloured claw, a glowing
black talisman, held it out and cried:

"Oh Teshwan aid me, Teshwan.  Aid me ..."

In the sluggish brew that was the contents of his rolling skull a few
words swam to the surface and seemed to lie there, moving with the tide
of his mind.  And the voice which spoke them was sardonic: "How can
Teshwan aid thee, little mortal?"

But this relic of disoriented flesh could not form a coherent thought;
could not answer save to scream its fear.  So Teshwan took his presence
away and it was left to the horseman to find the horror-crazed man.

Elric of Melnibone heard the voice and recognized the name.  He sensed
other, more ominous, denizens lurking about him in the forest.

Moodily he curled his hands about the reins of his mount and jerked its
head, guiding it in the direction of the screams.  He only casually
considered aiding the man and he rode his horse toward him more from
curiosity than anything.  Elric was untroubled by the terrors that the
forest held, regarding them as another, more normal man might regard
the omnipresent song of birds and the rustle of small rodents in the
undergrowth.

Great tremblings shuddered through Slorg's ruined body and he still
heard the sharp whisperings.  Were they carried on the air or were they
slithering about in his jellied brain?

He gasped as he turned and saw the white-faced horseman riding like a
grim, handsome god into the moon-glazed glade.

The horseman's long, sharply delineated skull was leper white as if
stripped of flesh, and his slightly slanting eyes gleamed crimson.  He
wore a jerkin of black velvet caught at the throat by a thin silver
chain.  His britches, too, were of black cloth, and his leather boots
were high and shining.  Over his shoulders was a high-collared cape of
scarlet and a heavy long sword slapped at his side as he pulled his
steed to a standstill.  His long, flowing hair was as white as his
face.  The horseman was an albino.

The shock of confronting this new and more tangible figure jerked Slorg
back into half-sanity and broken words sidled from his lips.

"Who are you?  Aid me!  I beg you, aid me!"

Elric laughed lightly.  "Now why should I, my friend?  Tell me that."

"I have been been profaned I am Slorg.  I was once a man but those ..
He rocked his body and flung his rolling head backwards, the curved
lids falling down to cover his bulging eyes.  "I have been profaned
..."

Elric leaned forward on the pommel of his saddle and said lazily: "This
is none of my business, Master Slorg."

The great head darted forward, the eyes snapped open and Slorg's long
lips writhed over his teeth like a camel's.  "Address not me by a
mundane title!  I am Siletah Slorg Siletah of Oberlorn rightfully
rightfully."

The title was unknown to Elric.

"My apologies, O Siletah," he mocked, "for now I observe a man of
rank."

"A man no longer," whispered Slorg and began to sob.  "Help me."

"Are you, then, in danger?"

"Aye, danger my kinsmen have set the Hungry Whisperers upon me, do you
not hear them?"

And Elric cocked his head to listen.  Yes, he heard sibilant voices
now.  "Where are you, morsel?"

"Oh, help me, help me," begged Slorg and lurched toward Elric.  The
albino drew himself up and pulled his horse back.

"No closer," he warned.  "I am Elric of Melnibone."

Slorg's tattered face squeezed itself into a frown.  "Ah, the name and
the face," he mumbled to himself, "the face and the name.  Elric of
Melnibone.  Outcast!"

"Indeed," smiled Elric, "but no more than you, it seems.  Now I must
bid you farewell and suggest, by way of friendly advice, that you
compose yourself soon.  It is better to die with dignity, Siletah
Slorg,"

"I have powers, outcast of Melnibone I have powers, still!  Help me and
I will tell you secrets such secrets!"

Elric waved a disdainful hand.  A moonbeam caught for an instant the
flash of the rare actorios ring which reposed on his finger.  "If you
know me, you should also know that I'm no merchant to bargain.  I ask
nothing and give nothing.  Farewell!"

"I warn you, Elric I have one power left.  I can send you screaming
from this place into another.  It is the power which Teshwan gives all
his servants it is the one he never takes back!"

"Why not send your hungry friends into this other place?"

"They are not human.  But if you leave me, I shall lay my last
enchantment upon you."

Elric sighed.  "Your last, perhaps, but not the last or the first to be
laid upon me.  Now I must go and search for a quieter place than this
where I can sleep undisturbed."

He turned his horse and his back on the shaking remnant of a man and
rode away.

He heard Slorg calling again as he entered another part of the forest,
untainted by the Siletah or those he had termed the Hungry
Whisperers.

"Teshwan return!  Return to do me one last service a deed of vengeance
a part of our bargain, Teshwan!"

A short time later Elric heard a thin, wailing scream come flowing out
of the night behind him and then the whole forest seemed alive with
horrible laughter.  Satiated, triumphant, chuckling.

His mood altered by his encounter, Elric rode through night, not caring
to sleep, and came out of the forest in the morning, glad of the sight
of the green plateau stretching ahead of him.

"Well," he mused, "Teshwan disdained to aid Slorg and it seems there is
no enchantment on me.  I am half regretful.  Now Slorg resides in the
bellies of those he feared and his soul's at home in Hell."

Then the plateau changed quite suddenly to grey rock.

Swiftly Elric wheeled his horse.  The plateau and the forest was behind
him.  He spurred his mount quickly forward and the plateau and forest
faded away to leave a vast and lonely expanse of flat, grey stone.
Above him the sun had disappeared and the sky was bright and white and
cold.

"Now," said Elric grimly into silence, "it seems I was wrong in my
assumption."

The plateau its atmosphere reminded him of another environment in which
he had once found himself.  Then he remembered clearly a time years
before when he and two companions had sought an ancient volume called
the Dead God's Book.  Their questing had led them to a cavern guarded
at its entrance by the symbol of the Lords of Chaos.  In that cavern
they had discovered an underground sea which had had unnatural
qualities.  There was the same sense of a sardonically amused presence
here as there had been in the Caverns of Chaos.

Teshwan was a Lord of Chaos.

Hastily Elric pulled his rune sword Stormbringer from its thick
scabbard.

The sword was dead.

Normally the blade, forged by un human smiths for Elric's royal
ancestors, was alive with sentience throbbing with the life force it
had stolen from a hundred men and women whom Elric had slain.  Once
before it had been like this in the Caverns of Chaos long ago.

Elric tightened his lips, then shrugged as he replaced the sword in its
scabbard.

"In a world completely dominated by the Forces of Chaos," he said, "I
cannot rely on the powers which normally aid me in my sorcery.  Thank
Arioch I have a good supply of drugs about me, or I would indeed be
doomed."

In earlier times Elric had relied on his soul-stealing rune sword to
give him the energy which, as an albino, he lacked intrinsically, but
recently he had rediscovered a cleaner way of counteracting his
deficiency, by taking herbs he had discovered in the Forest of Troos
where many unlikely things grew, both flora and fauna.

"By my father's plague-infested bones," he swore.  "I must find a way
off this granite plain and discover who, if anyone, rules in this
world.  I have heard of the powers invested in Teshwan's worshippers
and I seem to remember a hint of why the Lords of Chaos confer such
peculiar talents upon them."

He shuddered.

He began to sing a ululating hate-song of old Melnibone.  Elric's
ancestors had been clever haters.  And on he rode beneath the sunless
sky.

He could not tell how much time had passed before he saw the figure
standing out strongly against the featureless horizon.

Now on the flat waste of stone there were two points at which the
monotony was broken.

Elric white, black and scarlet on a grey gelding.

The morose man, black hair lying like a coat of lacquer on his rounded
skull, dressed in green, a silver sword dangling in his right hand.

Elric approached the man who raised his eyes to regard the albino.

"This is a lonely place," said the stranger, sucking at his fleshy
cheeks, and he stared at the ground again.

"True," replied Elric halting his horse.  "Is this your world or were
you sent here, also?"

"Oh, it's my world," said the man, without looking up.  "Where are you
bound?"

"For nowhere, seeking something.  Where do you journey?"

"I oh, I go to Kaneloon for the Rites, of course."

"All things, it is said, are possible in the World of Chaos," Elric
murmured, "and yet this place seems unusually barren."

The man looked up suddenly, and jerking his lips into a smile, laughed
sharply.

"The Rites will alter that, stranger.  Did you not know that this is
the Time of The Change, when the Lords of Chaos rest before re-forming
the world into a fresh variety of patterns?"

"I did not know that," said Elric.  "I have come here only recently."

"You wish to stay?"

"No."

"The Lords of Chaos are fickle.  If you wished to stay they might not
let you.  Now that you are resolved to leave, they might keep you here.
Farewell.  You will find me therein!"  He lifted his sword and pointed.
A great palace of greenstone appeared at once.  The man vanished.

"This, at least, will save me from boredom," Elric said
philosophically, and rode towards the palace.

The many-pinnacled building towered above him, its highest points hazy
and seeming to possess many forms, shifting as if blown by a wind.  At
the great arch of the entrance a huge giant, semi-transparent, with a
red, scintillating skin, blocked his way.  Over the archway, as if
hanging in the air above the giant's proud head, was the Symbol of
Chaos, a circle which produced many arrows pointing in all
directions.

"Who visits the Palace of Kaneloon at the Time of the Change?" enquired
the giant in a voice like limbo's music.

"Your masters, I gather, know me for they aided their servant Slorg in
sending me hither.  But tell them it is Elric of Melnibone, nonetheless
Elric, destroyer of dreaming Imrryr, kin slayer and outcast.  They will
know me."

The giant appeared to shrink, to solidify and then to drift in a red
mist, pouring like sentient smoke away from the portal and into the
palace.  And where he had been a portcullis manifested itself to guard
the palace in the giant's absence.

Elric waited patiently until at length the portcullis vanished and the
giant reformed himself.

"My masters order me to inform you that you may enter but that, having
once come to the Palace of Kaneloon, you may never leave save under
certain conditions."

"Those conditions?"

"Of these they will tell you if you enter.  Are you reckless or will
you stand pondering?"

"I'll avail myself of their generosity," smiled Elric and spurred his
nervous horse forward.

As he entered the courtyard, it appeared that the area within the
palace was greater than that outside it.  Not troubling to seek any
mundane explanation for this phenomenon in a world dominated by the
Lords of Chaos, Elric instead dismounted from his horse and walked for
nearly a quarter of a mile until he reached the entrance of the main
building.  He climbed the steps swiftly and found himself in a vast
hall which had walls of shifting flame.

In the glow from the fiery walls, there sat at a table at the far end
of the hall nine men or at least, men or not, they had assumed the form
of men.  Different in facial characteristics, they all had the same
sardonic air.  In the centre of these nine was the one who had first
addressed Elric.  He leaned forward and spoke words carefully from his
red lips.

"Greetings to you, mortal," he said.  "You are the first for some time
to sit with the Lords of Chaos at the Time of the Change.  Behold there
are others who have had the privilege."

A rent appeared in the wall of flame to disclose some thirty frozen
human figures, some men and some women.  They were petrified in
positions of many kinds, but all had madness and terror in their eyes
and they were still alive, Elric knew.

He lifted his head.

"I would not be so impertinent, my lords, as to set myself beside you
all insofar as powers are concerned, but you know that I am Elric of
Melnibone and that my race is old; my deficient blood is the royal
blood of the Kings of the Dreaming City.  I have little pity or
sentiment of any kind within me, for sentiment, whether love or hate,
has served me badly in the past.  I do not know what you require of me,
and I thank you for your hospitality nonetheless, but I believe that I
can conduct myself better in most ways than can any other mortal."

"Let us hope so, Elric of Melnibone, for we would not wish you to fail,
know that.  Besides, you are not fully mortal as humans understand the
word.  Now, know you that I be Teshwan, and these need not be named and
may be addressed singly or collectively by the name of Lords of
Chaos."

Elric bowed politely.  "Lord Teshwan my Lords of Chaos."

They returned his bow by slightly inclining their heads and broadening
a trifle their sardonic, crooked smiles.

"Come," said Teshwan briskly, "sit here beside me and I will inform you
of what we expect.  You are more favoured than others have been, Elric,
and, in truth, I welcomed the opportunity given me by my vengeful
servant Slorg before he died."

Elric climbed upon the dais and seated himself in the chair which
appeared beside Teshwan.  About him the walls of flame soared and
tumbled, mumbled and roared.  Sometimes shadow engulfed them, sometimes
they were bathed in light.  For a while they all sat in silence,
pondering.

At last Teshwan spoke.

"Now," he said decisively.  "Here's the situation in which we have
decided to place you.  You may leave only if you can create something
which it has never occurred to us to create."

"But you, surely, are the Masters of Creation?"  said Elric in
puzzlement.  "How may I do this?"

"Your first statement is not strictly true and in qualifying it I can
give you a hint of the answer to your question.  We of Chaos cannot
make anything new we may only experiment with combinations of that
already created.  Do you understand?"

"I do," said Elric.

"Only the Greatest Power, of which we know little more than do humans,
can create fresh conceptions.  The Greatest Power holds both Law and
Chaos in perpetual balance, making us war only so that the scale will
not be tilted too far to one side.  We wish not for power only for
variety.  Thus every time we weary of our domain and let our old
creations fade and conceive new ones.  If you can bring a fresh element
to our domain, we shall free you.  We create jokes and paradoxes.
Conceive a better joke and a better paradox for our entertainment and
you may leave here."

"Surely you expect the impossible from me?"

"You alone may assess the truth of your question.  Now, we begin."

And Elric sat and watched, pondering his problem, as the great Lords of
Chaos began their mighty experiments.

The walls of fire slowly flickered and faded and again he saw the vast
and barren plain of flat stone.  Then the air darkened and a sighing
wind began to moan over the plain.  In the sky clouds blossomed in
myriad shapes, alien, dark, unfamiliar, blacks and smoky orange, at the
same time familiar .. .

The rock heaved like lava, became liquid, rearing upwards and as it
reared it became giants, mountains, ancient beasts, monsters, gryphons,
basilisks, chime rae unicorns.  Forests bloomed, their growths huge and
exotic, elephants flew and great birds crushed boiling mountains
beneath their feet.  Fingers of brilliant colour climbed the sky,
crisscrossing and blending.  A flight of wildly singing lions fell from
the firmament towards the forest and soared upwards again, their music
lonely.

As the forest melted to become an ocean, a vast army of wizened
homunculae came tramping from its depths dragging boats behind them.
For a short while they marched over the seething waters and then, with
precision, began, in ordered style, to climb into the flaring sky. When
they had all left the ocean behind them, they righted their boats, set
their sails, laughed and screamed and shouted, waved their arms,
climbed into the boats and with fantastic speed streamed towards the
horizon.

All creation tumbled and poured, malleable in the Domain of Chaos.  All
was gusto, craze and roaring terror, love, hate and music mingled.

The sky shook with multi-coloured mirth, blossoming white shot through
with veins of blue and purple and black, searing red, splattered with
spreading flowers of yellow, smeared, smeared, smeared with ghoulish
green.  Across this seething backdrop sped bizarre shapes.

The Lords of Chaos shouted and sang their weird creation and Elric,
shouting also, thought the frozen statues he had seen were weeping and
laughing.

A grotesque combination of man and tree sent roots streaming towards
the earth to tug mountains from the caverns it exposed and set them,
peak first, like inverted pyramids, into the ground.  Upon the flat
surfaces dancers appeared in bright rags which fluttered and flared
around them.  They were warped, un human pale as dead beauty, grinning
fixedly and then Elric saw the strings attached to their limbs and the
silently laughing puppet-master bearlike and gigantic, controlling
them.  From another direction sped a small, blind figure bearing a
scythe that was a hundred times bigger than the bearer.  With a sweep,
he cut the strings and, with that action, the whole faded to be
replaced by a gushing brilliance of green and orange flame which formed
itself into streamers of zigzagging disorder.

All this went on around them.  The Lords of Chaos smiled to themselves
now, as they created, but Elric frowned, watched with wonder and no
little pleasure, but puzzled how he might emulate such feats.

For long hours the pageant of Chaos continued as the Lords took the
elements of Elric's world and shook them about, turned them inside out,
stood them on end, made startling, strange, beautiful, unholy
combinations until they were satisfied with the constant movement of
the scene about them, the perpetual shifting and changing.  They had
set a pattern that was no pattern, which would last until they became
bored with their domain again and brought about another Time of the
Change.

Then their heads turned and all regarded Elric expectantly.

Teshwan said a trifle wearily.  "There you have seen what we can do."

"You are artists, indeed," said Elric, "and I am so amazed by what I
have witnessed that I need a little time to think.  Will you grant it
me?"

"A little time a little time only we want to see what you prepare for
us while the excitement is still upon us."

And Elric placed his white albino's head upon his fist and thought
deeply.

Many ideas occurred to him, only to be discarded, but at length he
straightened his back and said: "Give me the power to create and I will
create."

So Teshwan said smilingly.  "You have the power use it well.  A joke
and a paradox is all we require."

"The reward for failure?"

"To be forever conscious."

At this, Elric shivered and put his mind to concentrating, searching
his memory until a manlike figure formed before him.  Then he placed
features on its head and clothes on its body until there stood before
Elric and the Lords of Chaos a perfect replica of Elric.

Puzzledly, Teshwan said: "This is splendid impertinence, I grant you
but this is nothing new you already sit there beside us."

"Indeed," replied Elric, "but look in the man's mind."

They frowned and did as he asked.  Then, smiling, they nodded.  "The
paradox is good," said Teshwan, "and we see your point.  We have, for
an eternity, created the effect.  You, in your pride and innocence,
have created the cause.  In that man's mind was all that could ever
exist."

"You have noted the paradox?"  asked Elric, anxious that the correct
interpretation had been divulged.

"Of course.  For though the mind contains the variety beloved of we of
Chaos, it contains the order that those barren Lords of Law would foist
on the world.  Truly, young mortal, you have created everything with a
stroke.  And thank you, also, for the joke."

"The joke?"

"Why truly the best joke is but a simple statement of truth.  Farewell.
Remember, friend mortal, that the Lords of Chaos are grateful to
you."

And with that, the whole domain faded away and Elric stood on the
grassy plain.  In the distance he observed the city of Bakshaan which
had been his original destination, and nearby was his horse to take him
there.

He mounted, flapped the reins, and, as the grey gelding broke into a
trot, he said to himself: "A joke indeed, but it is a pity that men do
not laugh at it more often."

Reluctantly, he headed for the city.

The Secret Life of Elric of Melnibone

SOME YEARS ago, when I was about eighteen, I wrote a novel called The
Golden Barge.  This was an allegorical fantasy about a little man
completely without self-knowledge and with little of any other kind,
going down a seemingly endless river, following a great Golden Barge
which he felt, if he caught it would contain all truth, all secrets,
all solutions to his problems.  On the journey he met various groups of
people, had a love affair, and so on.  Yet every action he took in
order to reach the Golden Barge seemed to keep him farther away from
it.  The river represented Time, the barge was what mankind is always
seeking outside itself (when it can be found inside itself), etc." etc.
The novel had a sad ending, as such novels do.  Also, as was clear
when I'd finished it, my handling of many of the scenes was clumsy and
immature.  So I scrapped it and decided that in future my allegories
would be intrinsic within a conventional narrative that the best
symbols were the symbols found in familiar objects.  Like swords for
instance.

Up until I was twenty or so, I had a keen interest in fantasy fiction,
particularly Sword-and-Sorcery stories of the kind written by Robert E.
Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and the like, but this interest began to
wane as I became more interested in less directly sensational forms of
literature, just as earlier my interest in Edgar Rice Burroughs' tales
had waned.  I could still enjoy one or two Sword-and-Sorcery tales,
particularly Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword and Fritz Leiber's Grey
Mouser stories.  A bit before this casting off of old loyalties, I had
been in touch with Sprague De Camp and Hans Santessen of fantastic
Universe about doing a new series of Conan tales.

I think it was in the autumn of 1960, when I was working for Sexton
Blake Library and reading S-F for Suspense (the short-lived companion
to Argosy) that I bumped into a colleague at Fleetway Publications,
Andy Vincent, who was an old friend of Harry Harrison's (who had also
freelanced for Fleetway for some time).  Andy told me he was meeting
Harry and Ted Carnell in the Fleetway foyer and suggested I went along.
As I remember, that was where I first met Harry.  Previously, I'd sold
a couple of stories to Ted, one in collaboration with Barry Bayley, and
had had more bounced than bought.  Later on in a pub, Ted and I were
talking about Robert E. Howard and Ted said he'd been thinking of
running some Conantype stuff in Science Fantasy.  I told him of the
fantastic Universe idea which had fallen through when Fantastic
Universe folded, and said I still had the stuff I'd done and would he
like to see it.  He said he would.  A couple of days later I sent him
the first chapter and outline of a Conan story.  To tell you the truth,
writing in Howard's style had its limitations, as did his hero as far
as I was concerned, and I wasn't looking forward to producing another
10,000 words of the story if Ted liked it.

Ted liked it or at least he liked the writing, but there had been a
misunderstanding.  He hadn't wanted Conan he had wanted something on
the same lines.

This suited me much better.  I decided that I would think up a hero as
different as possible from the usual run of S-and-S heroes, and use the
narrative as a vehicle for my own "serious' ideas.  Many of these
ideas, I realise how, were somewhat romantic and coloured by a long
drawn-out and, to me, at the time, tragic love affair which hadn't
quite finished its course and which was confusing and darkening my
outlook.  I was writing floods of hack work for Fleetway and was
getting sometimes 70 or 80 a week which was going on drink mainly, and,
as I remember, involved rather a lot of broken glass of one description
or another.  I do remember, with great pride, my main achievement of
the winter of 1960 or 1961, which was to smash entirely an unbreakable
plate-glass door in a well-known restaurant near Piccadilly.  And the
management apologised .. .

I mention this, to give a picture of my mood at the time of Elric's
creation.  If you've read the early Elric stories in particular, you'll
see that Elric's outlook was rather similar to mine.  My point is, that
Elric was me (the me of 1960-1, anyway) and the mingled qualities of
betrayer and betrayed, the bewilderment about life in general, the
search for some solution to it all, the expression of this bewilderment
in terms of violence, cynicism and the need for revenge, were all
characteristic of mine.  So when I got the chance to write The Dreaming
City, I was identifying very closely with my hero-villain.  I thought
myself something of an outcast (another romantic notion largely
unsubstantiated now that I look back) and emphasised Elric's physical
differences accordingly:

His bizarre dress was tasteless and gaudy, and did not match his
sensitive face and long fingered almost delicate hands, yet he flaunted
it since it emphasised that he did not belong in any company that he
was an outsider and an outcast.  But, in reality, he had little need to
wear such outlandish gear for .. . (he) was a pure albino who drew his
power from a secret and terrible source.

(Stealer of Souls, page 13)

The story was packed with personal symbols (as are all the stories bar
a couple).  The "secret and terrible source" was the sword
Stormbringer, which symbolised my own and others tendency to rely on
mental and physical crutches rather than cure the weakness at source.
To go further, Elric, for me, symbolised the ambivalence of mankind in
general, with its love-hates, its mean-generosity, its
confidentbewilderment act.  Elric is a thief who believes himself
robbed, a lover who hates love.  In short, he cannot be sure of the
truth of anything, not even of his own emotions or ambitions.  This is
made much clearer in a story containing even more direct allegory, the
second in the series, While the Gods Laugh.  Unfortunately, Ted left
out the verse from which the title was taken:

I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am; Maelstrom of passions
in that hidden sea, Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me, And
in small compass the dark waters cram.

Mervyn Peake (Shapes and Sounds)

This, I think, gave more meaning to both title and story which involved
a long quest after the Dead

God's Book a mythical work alleged to contain all the knowledge of the
universe, in which Elric feels, he will at last find the true meaning
of life.  He expresses this need in a somewhat rhetorical way.  When
the wingless woman Shaarilla asks him why he wants the book he
replies:

"I desire, if you like, to know one of (misprinted as or in magazine
version) two things.  Does an ultimate God exist or not?  Does Law or
Chaos govern our lives?  Man needs a God, so the philosophers tell us.
Have they made one or did one make them?"  etc."  etc.

Here, as in other passages, the bewilderment is expressed in
metaphysical terms, for at that time, due mainly to my education I was
very involved with mysticism.  Also, the metaphysical terms suited the
description of a Sword-and-Sorcery hero and his magical, low-technology
world.

It may seem odd that I use such phrases as "at that time" and so on, as
if I'm referring to the remote past, but in many ways, being a trifle
more mature, perhaps, happily married with a better sense of direction,
etc."  all this does seem to have taken place in the remote past.

The Dead God's Book is eventually located in a vast underground world
which I had intended as a womb-symbol, and after a philosophical
conversation with the book's keeper, Elric discovers it.  This passage
is, to me now, rather overwritten, but, for better or worse:

It was a huge book the Dead God's Book, its covers encrusted with alien
gems from which the light sprang.  It gleamed, it throbbed with light
and brilliant colour.

"At last," Elric breathed.  "At last the truth!"  He stumbled forward
like a man made stupid with drink, his pale hands reaching for the
thing he sought with such savage bitterness.  His hands touched the
pulsating cover of the Book and, trembling, turned it back .. . With a
crash, the cover fell to the floor, sending the bright gems skipping
and dancing over the paving stone.  Beneath Elric's .. . hands lay
nothing but a pile of yellowish dust.

The Dead God's Book and the Golden Barge are one and the same.  They
have no real existence, save in the wishful imagination of mankind.
There is, the story says, no Holy Grail which will transform a man
overnight from bewildered ignorance to complete knowledge the answer
already is within him, if he cares to train himself to find it.  A
rather over emphasised fact, throughout history, but one generally
ignored all the same.

The Stealer of Souls, the third story, continues this theme, but
brought in rather different kinds of symbols.  Coupled with the Jungian
symbols already inherent in any tale using direct mythic material, I
used Freudian symbols, too.  This was a cynical attempt and a rather
vulgar attempt to make the series popular.  It appeared to work.  The
Stealer of Souls, whatever else it may be, is one of the most
pornographic stories I have ever written.  In Freudian terms it is the
description of, if you like, a night's lovemaking.

Which brings me to another point.  Although there is comparatively
little direct description of sexual encounters in the stories and what
there are are largely romanticised, the whole Elric saga has, in its
choice of situations and symbols, very heavy sexual undertones.  This
is true of most Sword-and-Sorcery stories, but I have an idea that I
may be the first such author to understand his material to this extent,
to know what he's using.  If I hadn't been a bit fed-up by the big
response received by The Stealer of Souls (magazine story, not the
book) I could have made even greater use of what I discovered.

Other critics have pointed out the close relationship the horror story
(and often the S-F story for that matter) has with the pornographic
story, so there's no need to go any deeper into it here.

The pornographic content of the Elric saga doesn't interest me much,
but I have hinted at the relationship between sex and violence in
several stories, and indeed, there are a dozen syndromes to be found in
the stories, particularly if you bear in mind my own involvement with
sexual love, expression in violence, etc."  at the time the stories
were first conceived.  Even my own interpretation of what I was doing
is open to interpretation, in this case!

The allegory goes through all ten stories (including To Rescue Tanelorn
which did not feature Elric) in Science Fantasy, but it tends to change
its emphasis as my own ideas take better shape and my emotions mature.
When, in the last Elric story of all, the sword, his crutch,
Stormbringer turns and slays Elric it is meant to represent, on one
level, how mankind's wish-fantasies can often bring about the
destruction of (till now at least) part of mankind.  Hitler, for
instance, founded his whole so-called "political" creed on a series of
wish-fantasies (this is detailed in that odd book Dawn of Magic,
recently published here).

Again this is an old question, a bit trite from being asked too often,
maybe, but how much of what we believe is true and how much is what we
wish were true.  Hitler dreamed of his Thousand Year Reich, Chamberlain
said There Will Be No War.  Both were convinced both ignored plain fact
to a frightening extent, just as many people (not just politicians
whose public statements are not always what they really believe) ignore
plain facts today.  This is no new discovery of mine.  It is probably
one of the oldest discoveries in the world.  But, in part, this is what
nearly all my published work points out.  Working, as I did once, as
editor of a party journal (allegedly an information magazine for party
candidates) this conviction was strengthened.  The build-up of a
fantasy is an odd process and sometimes happens, to digress a bit, like
this.

The facts are gathered, related, a picture emerges.  The picture,
though slightly coloured by the personalities of the fact-relaters, is
fairly true.  The picture is given to the politician.  If the
politician is a man of integrity he will not deliberately warp the
facts, but he will present them in a simplified version which will be
understood by the general public (he thinks).  This involves a
selection, which can change a picture out of all recognition, though
the politician didn't deliberately intend to warp the facts.  The other
kind of politician almost automatically selects and warps in order to
prove a point he, or his party, is trying to make.  So the fantasy
begins.  Soon the real picture is almost irrevocably lost.

Therefore this reliance on pseudo-knowledge which seems to prove
something we wish were true, is a dangerous thing to do.

This is one of the main messages of the Elric series, though there are
several others on different levels.

Don't think I'm asking you to go back over the stories looking for
these allegories and symbols.  The reason I abandoned The Golden Barge
was because among other things-it wasn't entertaining.  The Elric
stories are meant to entertain as much as anything else, but if anyone
cares to look for substance beyond the entertainment level, they might
find it.

One of the main reasons, though, for taking this angle when Alan (Dodd)
asked me to write a piece on Elric, was because I have been a little
disappointed at the first book being dismissed by some professional
critics (who evidently didn't bother to read it closely, if at all) as
an imitation of Conan.  When you put thought and feeling into a story
thought and feeling which is yours you don't much care for being called
an imitator or a plagiarist however good or bad the story.  Probably
the millionth novel about a young advertising executive in love with a
deb and involved with a married woman has just been published, yet the
author won't be accused of imitating anyone or plagiarising anyone.  It
is the use to which one puts one's chosen material, not that material,
which matters.

SO JAN

THE

SWORDSMAN

1. Daughter of a Warrior King

A MYAT trotted peacefully across the broad, seemingly never-ending
plain which made up the landscape as far as it was possible to see.  No
sound issued from the cloven hoofs, muffled by the moss like substance
which clothed the ground in a mantle of vivid colour purple, green and
yellow, with a trace of crimson or violet here and there.  Nothing grew
upon that plain.  It was a wilderness, barren, deserted the greatest
desert on the planet of Zylor.

A wandering warrior sat astride the myat's broad back.  At his steed's
side hung a shield, a virtually unknown accoutrement on Zylor, but the
tribe to which Sojan belonged had perfected it as a valuable asset. The
beast upon which he rode was a big, sturdy animal.  From both sides of
its huge head grew long sharp horns, curving outward.  More like a
reptile than a mammal, its head tapered like a snake's, its tail was
thick and it, too, tapered.

Sojan was clothed in a bright blue jerkin reaching to his knees, his
legs were bare and tough boots of myat hide were upon his feet,
reaching to about two inches from his knees.  Over the jerkin was a
leather harness of simple design two straps across his shoulders,
coming to the waist and attached to a broad belt whereupon hung his
weapons a sword, a dirk, long and sharp, and a holster containing his
big, round-butted air-pistol.

The mercenary's hair was long and held by a fillet of leather.  At the
back of his big saddle were two saddle-bags, a container of water and,
rolled across these, his crimson cloak.

The man himself was tall, broad-shouldered and slim-wasted with smooth
muscles rippling beneath his jerkin.  The perfect fighting-man,
keen-eyed and wary.

Suddenly Sojan caught a flash of marble to the west and knew that he
had sighted Vermlot, the capital city of Hatnor, the greatest warrior
nation of a warrior world.  A rich city, was Vermlot, rich in
fighting-men and weapons of war, rich in terms of gold, rich in beauty
and splendour.

As he neared the city walls a guard bade him halt and state his
business.

"I come in peace," he cried, "to offer my sword, my loyalty and my life
to his Imperial Highness, the War Lord of Hatnor.  I am a mercenary, my
only possessions are the clothes I wear, the weapons I carry and the
myat I ride.  I have travelled half a world to offer my services to
your ruler!"

He was admitted to the city and made his way to one of the many taverns
situated within the protection of the mighty walls.  His strange
protective weapon aroused much interest.  A certain warrior made mock
of him and his shield.

"Oh!"  he laughed.  "What a brave mercenary!  He has travelled half a
world to give us his protection for with his great shield in front of
him he will be able to withstand all our enemies.  Perhaps he cannot
fight without it.  That's so, is it not, mercenary?"

Sojan halted, and gazed up at the man who was leaning against a pillar
on the balcony above.

Grimly, quietly, he spoke, but his tones were cold and his words were
acid.

"I do not like your attitude," he said.  "And I like your words less.
Draw your sword if you know how to use it and defend yourself!  Perhaps
you will be hiding behind the shield before I have finished with
you!"

The warrior stiffened and his face flushed: he put one hand on the
balcony rail and vaulted into the street below, drawing his long
"vilthor", a sabre-like weapon, as he did so.

Sojan unslung his shield from the myat and drew his own long blade. The
warrior of the Palace struck first, aiming a wicked slash at Sojan's
legs with his curved vilthor but the mercenary from Ilthoth jumped high
in the air and attacked the other with a weaving arc of steel, driving
him further and further back.  Then the man saw his chance and slashed
at an exposed limb of the mercenary's, but was too slow.  There was a
dull thud as the sword hit and rebounded from the shield, then he was
made to duck beneath a vicious slash from Sojan.

The Vermlotian slowly lost ground until with a flick of his wrist Sojan
disarmed his opponent.  Then, from a second-storey window a figure
dropped, first to the balcony of the first-storey and from there to the
ground.  He removed his cloak and, with a smile upon his lips, came
forward with drawn sword.

"I fancy you will not disarm me so quickly."

This time Sojan was not so lucky for the newcomer was as quick as the
proverbial cobra.  His sword weaved an invisible circle around Sojan's
guard and the newcomer soon had him at his mercy.  Before he knew it,
the mercenary's sword flew from his grasp and clattered to the earth,
ten feet away.

"Yield?"  questioned the victor.

"I yield," panted he.  "You are a great fighter.  Who are you, sir?"

"Perhaps you have heard of me," smiled his late adversary, "I am Nornos
Kad, War Lord of the Imperial Empire of Hatnor!"

"Sir," said Sojan with a bow, "I, who came to enlist in your service
and offer my aid to you, begin by fighting you.  I crave your
forgiveness."

Nornos Kad laughed.  "Never mind, you did very well against my warrior
here.  To best him is a test indeed and I feel that I would do well to
enlist your services."  He signed to a servant who was waiting in a
doorway.  "Come, you will be my guest until I have need of you.  Here,
Oumlat, take Sojan to one of the best guest rooms and see that he is
well looked after."

For a week or so Sojan enjoyed the privileges of the Royal Guest until
one morning a messenger came to say that Nornos Kad had asked for
him.

"I summoned you, Sojan," Nornos Kad said, when they were alone,
"because you are to accompany me on a journey.  Our mission is to take
Il-that, princess of Sengol, back to her father's country.  I desire to
bring Sengol into the Hatnorian alliance without bloodshed if possible
and the king would think well of it if his daughter was personally
escorted home by the War Lord himself.  You had better prepare your
weapons and be ready to move from your quarters by dawn tomorrow."

Ten warships, heavily armed with Hatnorian air guns which worked on the
simple principle of compressed air, with a range of over half a mile,
and the Royal Airship, were ready to take to the air early the next
morning.  They rose majestically, hovered for a few moments, and then,
with motors purring, the great gas-bags veered off towards Sengol which
lay far to the north.

Within three or four hours they had crossed the outermost boundary of
Hatnor and her satellites and were winging their way at a steady eighty
miles an hour over Veronlam, a country which owed no allegiance to
Hatnor and which, although fearing the mighty Empire, was constantly
stirring up petty strife between the minor Hatnorian nationals.  They
had nearly reached the border of Veronlam when the soft purr of motors
was heard and a shell whistled past them and exploded in their rear air
container.

"Veronlam pirates!"  yelled the fore-gunner.

Quickly the small fleet formed a protective barrier about the Royal
ship.  One airship was hit a dozen times in as many different places
and hurtled downwards, flames roaring from the gas-bag and the crew
jumping overboard rather than die in the flames.

Nornos Kad realised at once that to fight against so many would soon
end in disaster for his fleet, and he ordered them to turn about and
flee back to Hatnor.  He decided to rely upon his speedier engines to
aid them rather than their powerful guns.

The Hatnorian fleet circled and fled.  Nornos Kad was the last to leave
the battle and hastily turned about to follow his ships.  But alas, it
was too late, for three well-aimed shots in their main tank sent them
spiralling slowly to earth to land with a sickening crash amidst a
tangle of red-hot girders and flaming fabric.  Being on the platform of
the ship

Nornos Kad, Sojan and Il-that were flung clear of the main wreckage, to
lie stunned.

Sojan did not know how long it was he lay amidst the wreckage of the
Royal Airship, but when he awoke it was dawn.  He knew that none could
have escaped if they had been trapped in the wreckage but nevertheless
he spent a fruitless two hours searching for his companions all he
found were two or three charred corpses but none lived.  Convinced that
his companions were dead he took the only unbroken water bottle and set
off in the direction of Hatnor.  Sojan's eye caught the gleam of white
stone far to the south of his position.  With a sigh of relief he began
to walk quickly towards the gleam which grew soon into a patch and from
that into a city, its walls towering fifty paces in places.  Knowing
that he was still probably in Veronlam he knew that it would be useless
to try to gain admission on the strength of his allegiance to Nornos
Kad the War Lord.  Stripping himself of his Hatnorian Navy-Cloak and
also his Navy-type gauntlets he stood arrayed as when he had first
entered Hatnor, as a mercenary swordsman.

He easily gained admittance to the city of Quentos as mercenaries were
always welcome to swell the ranks of any army.

"By Mimuk, friend, you're the third to pass through these gates this
day," the guard said, as he was allowed to enter the city.

"The third.  That's strange is it not, guard?"  replied Sojan.  "Three
people in one day!  Mimuk, you must be joking!"

"I joke not, friend mercenary, strange as it seems two others have
preceded you and one of them was a woman.  Our warriors found them near
the wreck of an airship.  Some say the ones we captured were Nornos Kad
himself and Il-that, daughter of Hugor of Sengol.  Two prizes indeed if
it be the truth."

Sojan strode off in the direction indicated by the friendly guard.

Arriving at the tavern he hired a room and ordered himself a meal.
Finishing his repast, he was horrified to find that the only money he
had was that of Hatnor.  If he tried to pass this he knew that the
suspicions of the keeper of the tavern would be instantly aroused. What
should he do?  He had brought nothing with him to the tavern save his
sword, shield and poi nard and the clothes he wore.  He reasoned that
the only chance he stood was to try and slip quietly out of the door
before the proprietor spotted him and ordered him to pay his bill.

Just as he thought he had reached the safety of the street a hand fell
on his shoulder and the leering face of the landlord was brought close
to his.

"Going so soon, my lord?  Methinks you would like to stay and sample
some more of our victuals before you make your er hasty departure," he
said with ponderous sarcasm.  "Now pay up or my men'll make sure you
pay for your meal in blood!"

"You threaten me, by Mimuk!"  cried Sojan, his easily roused temper
getting the better of him.  "You dare threaten me!  Draw your
weapon!"

"Hey, Tytho, Zatthum, Wanrim come and save me from this murdering
bilker!"  cried the keeper of the tavern in terror.

Instantly three ruffians appeared in the narrow doorway and, drawing
their blades, rushed at Sojan, causing him to release his grasp upon
the unfortunate man and turn to face this new danger.

Zatthum went down in the first minute with an inch of steel marking its
path through his heart.  The remaining two were not so easily defeated.
Back and forth across the narrow street the three fought, sparks flying
from their blades, the clang of their weapons resounding upon the
rooftops.  Sojan was marked in a dozen places, but his adversaries were
bleeding in as many as he was.  With a quick thrust, a parry and
another thrust the mercenary succeeded in dispatching the second man.
Now only Tytho was left.  Sojan allowed himself to be headed off and
the man edged him completely around so that they were now retracing
their path.  With a mighty effort Sojan, who was still tired after his
narrow escape from the airship, gathered his remaining strength
together and made a vicious lunge in Tytho's direction.  He cried out
in pain when Sojan's blade found the muscles of his left arm, but did
not relax his grip upon his own sword.  Again Sojan was forced further
back towards the gaping crowd which had collected outside the tavern.
His shield saved him from the thrust designed to end the fight but he
knew he could not last longer for he was rapidly tiring.  Suddenly his
foot caught in the trappings of one of the dead men's harnesses and he
fell backwards across the corpse.  A grim smile graced Tytho's face as
he raised his sword to deliver the final thrust.

"Kill him, Tytho, kill him," the crowd roared in frenzied bloodlust.

Sojan, entangled in the harness of the man he had slain, tried to rise
but was stopped from doing so by a shove from Tytho's booted foot.

The hireling raised his sword again and the Crowd leaned forward.

Suddenly there was a disturbance at one end of the street and the crowd
quickly began to disperse.

As it did so, Tytho saw the City Patrol, scourge of the city thieves,
was the cause of the crowd's disappearance.  Looking hurriedly about
him for a way of escape he found none; he dropped his sword and began
to run, foolishly, along the street.

The leader of the Patrol raised his pistol.  There was the slight hiss
of escaping air and the running hireling gave a short cry, threw up his
arms, stumbled and dropped on the cobbles of the street.

"What's happening here?"

By this time Sojan had disentangled himself from the harness of his
late opponent and was standing, legs a'sprawl, hand to head.

"You've saved my life, sir!"  he gasped.  "These ruffians attacked me
for my money.  I succeeded in killing two but unfortunately became
tangled up with this fellow."  He indicated the body.  "Tytho was about
to finish me when you arrived!"

The leader laughed.  "You certainly accounted very well for yourself,"
he said, "these three are among the worst of the type with whom we have
to contend.  Ruthless murderers, perfect swordsmen."  Again he laughed.
"Or almost perfect.  You did us a service and I am grateful."

He surveyed Sojan's bloodstained and tattered clothing.

"You're a stranger here are you not?"  he enquired.  "A mercenary
swordsman, perhaps?"

"Yes, I am named Sojan they nickname me "Shieldbearer' as I use this."
Sojan pointed to his shield.

"Well, Sojan Shieldbearer, how would you like to bear a shield and
wield a sword in the Patrol?"

Instantly Sojan saw his chance.  If he could get a post in the
organised militia of the city, he might be able to contact his prisoned
friends.

"It has always been my ambition to serve in the Veronlamite Guard," he
lied, "but to become a member of the great Patrol is a chance for which
I had not dared hope."

"Then come with us and we'll enlist you immediately.  And," he added,
"get you a decent jerkin and harness."

Before he could become a full-fledged Patrolman, Sojan had to undergo a
course of basic training.  When this was finished, his duties were to
Patrol, with his men, a certain section of the city, and arrest any
thieves, footpads or similar wrongdoers.  The "justice" was rough
indeed and was not appreciated by the population.  All the time he
heard rumours and from these rumours he gleaned that Nornos Kad and
Il-that were imprisoned somewhere in the Prison of Zholun a mighty
towered building situated near the centre of the city.  Sojan knew well
that the Patrol's duties included patrolling the prison and acting as
guards to "special" prisoners and he was hoping that he would be given
this assignment soon.

Sure enough, one day his hopes were fulfilled and he was assigned to
guard a section of Zholun Prison.

With his eyes wide open, Sojan learned where the two were imprisoned.

"One is in the East tower the other in the West.  Nornos Kad lies in
the East tower," a guard told Sojan one night after Sojan had plied him
with enough ale to get him drunk.

Sojan had to work fast; there were rumours that his friends were to die
by the sword in two days' time.

His first loyalty was to Nornos Kad.  He contrived to enter the East
tower wherein Nornos Kad was imprisoned.  Stealthily he made his way to
the metal studded door of the cell.

"Nornos Kad," he whispered.

He heard the rattle of chains and through the bars of the door saw his
chieftain's handsome face, drawn and pale through lack of food and
sleep.

"Sojan!"  exclaimed the War Lord.  "I thought you died in the crash!"

"I am alive and here to save you if I can.  I was assigned to guard the
West wing so it will be more difficult however I shall try and get the
keys.  Until I return have hope!"

And with that Sojan crept back along the gloomy passage.  On return he
found that the Patrolman on duty was talking to someone.  He waited
until the man had left and then walked into the little room which was
being used to house guards.

"Hullo, Stontor," cried Sojan, "what's up?"

Stontor looked worried.  "It's my wife, Sojan, she's been taken ill and
I can't leave my post."

Sojan saw his chance.

"Well, you go and help her," he said.  "I'll stay here until you get
back.  Don't worry."

"Thanks a lot, Sojan, you're a friend indeed.  Here are the keys
shouldn't think there'll be much doing tonight."  And with that he
picked up his cloak and ran down the long passage.

Hastily Sojan picked up the keys and ran back to Nornos Kad's cell.
Unlocking the door he helped Nornos Kad from his chains.

"I was lucky a coincidence guard's wife ill but the main trouble will
be getting out of the city," he panted, as he unlocked the heavy
padlocks.

Together they returned to the guards' room.  Here

Sojan left Nornos Kad.  Then he made his way back to the West wing
where it was a simple matter to get the princess from her cell.
Silently they returned to Nornos Kad.

Keeping to the sidestreets and the shadows, the three sped along
towards the city gates.

Suddenly Nornos Kad hissed, "Stop!  Stop, Sojan, there may be an easier
way."  He pointed to a flat area dotted with hangers and anchored
airships.  "With one of those we would have a better chance of
escaping."

"But how?"  enquired Sojan.

Again Nornos Kad pointed.  "You see that small ship nearest to us the
one anchored down by a couple of ropes?"  The ship of which he was
speaking was fifteen feet above them, held to the ground by anchors
attached to heavy ropes.  "With luck we could gain the ship and climb
the ropes."

Stealthily they padded along the side of the field, keeping well into
the shadows all the time.  A single guard lolled on the ground.  Sojan
crept behind him and reversing his pistol, knocked the man
unconscious.

With Sojan's and Nornos Kad's help, Il-that was able to climb the rope
and they boarded the ship.  As they clambered over the rail a light
suddenly appeared from one of the cabins and an armed man appeared on
deck.  He was followed by three others.

"Mimuk!"  he cried.  "What have we here?"

There was no time for words and, handing Nornos Kad his long dirk and
Il-that his pistol, Sojan drew his sword, and engaged the man and his
companions.  Nornos Kad was close behind him.  Back and forth across
the narrow deck the six men fought, and the four crewmen were no mean
battlers.  Nornos

Kad, weak from his sojourn in Zholun Prison, still put up a good fight.
Together they succeeded in killing two of their opponents but the other
two were better swordsmen.  The clash of steel echoed across the silent
field.  Sojan was blinded by the sudden flash of a searchlight and
taking advantage of this, his opponent cut past his guard and made a
painful gash in his side.  The pain was like fire and Sojan could
barely restrain himself from crying out.  He stumbled to the deck and
with a cry of triumph the crewman raised his sword.  A sudden hiss and
a strangled gasp and he collapsed over Sojan.  Turning his head he saw
Il-that with the pistol in her hand.

"Thanks," was all he could say as he struggled to his feet and ran to
help Nornos Kad.

While Nornos Kad threw the bodies overboard, Sojan started the engines.
Below them they heard shouts of a Patrol and two searchlights were now
levelled on the swaying airship.  Soon they heard cries as the bodies
of the crewmen were found.

With two sword strokes Nornos Kad cut the anchoring ropes and the ship
rose swiftly into the air.  There was a coughing roar and the
propellers began to turn.  The searchlights followed them; all around
them shells whistled.

Suddenly, behind them, they saw that three battle cruisers of the
fastest and heaviest type had risen to follow them.

"More speed, Sojan, more speed!"  cried Nornos Kad.  "Make for Sengol,
it's nearer."

With a glance at the compass, Sojan turned the ship's nose towards the
North.  Nearer and nearer came the battle cruisers guns popping softly.
Il-that, a true daughter of a warrior king, climbed into the gunner's
rear-seat and aimed the guns of their own ship at the pursuing
cruisers.  She pressed the triggers and the twin muzzles of the gun
gave a jerk, a hiss, and there was an explosion.  What all a gunner's
skill could not easily have accomplished, Il-that had done with luck
brought down a cruiser in its most vulnerable spot the main gas-bag.
Flames roared from the fabric and the ship lost height.  Faster and
faster it went as the earth pulled it downwards.  The engines roaring
to the last it crashed with a flash of orange and crimson flame.  But
the other two ships had still to be accounted for and Il-that was not
so lucky this time.

For two hours the chase continued, neither gaining and all the time the
shells from the Veronlam craft were getting closer and closer as the
gunner perfected his aim.

"They will catch us soon," cried Il-that, who still sat in the
rear-gunner's seat, "they seem to be drawing closer!"

"Then we shall have to land and hope that we're not still in Veronlam,"
yelled Nornos Kad above the shrieking wind.

"It will be a long time for us to do so, sir," Sojan told Nornos Kad,
"we have no anchors, and to release the gas in the gas-bag would mean
that while we lost height we should also lose speed."

"Then there's only one thing we can do!"  cried the Emperor, "and
that's this!"  Raising his sword he cut deep into the nearest gas-bag.
He was thrown to the deck as the contents rushed out and almost at once
the ship began to drop, dangerously fast.  The three stood by the side,
ready to jump.

With a hard jolt the ship touched the ground, bumped along it, and
stopped.  Over the side the three companions went and ran over soft
moss to the sheltering shadows of some rocks as the Veronlamite
searchlights began to stab into the darkness.

But it was easy to hide in the rocks and the caves sheltered them when
the Veronlams landed and made a vain search for them.

In the morning it was an easy matter to walk to the nearest Sengolian
city and thence to the capital, where the king gratefully took his
daughter and promised that Sengol would always be an ally to Hatnor.

(Original draft c. 1955)

2. Mission to Asno

MOTORS PURRING, captains shouting orders, the rustle of the canvas
gun-covers being drawn back, gay flags, flashing steel, flying cloaks
of many hues; a Hatnorian war-fleet rose rapidly into the sky.

On the deck of the flagship stood a tall, strong figure that of Sojan,
nicknamed "Shieldbearer", second in command to the great War Lord of
Hatnor himself Nornos Kad.

At his side was a long broadsword, upon his back his round shield; his
right hand rested on the butt of his heavy air-pistol an incredibly
powerful weapon.  Clad in a jerkin of sky-blue, a divided kilt of deep
crimson and boots of dark leather, over his shoulder his leathern
war-harness, he was the typical example of a Zylorian mercenary, whose
love of bright garb was legendary.

The great war-fleet was destined for Asno a country far to the north of
Hatnor where the king, so the spies told, was raising an army of
mercenaries to attack Yundrot a colony of the Hatnorian Empire.

To stop a major war, Nornos Kad decided to send a mighty fleet to crush
the attack before it was started.

Having other business, he assigned Sojan to take his place and
instructed him to completely wipe out any signs of an attack.

Only too pleased at the chance of battle, Sojan had readily assented
and was now on his way the entire fleet under his command.

Soon the fleet was winging its way over Asno a land of snow and ice,
fierce beasts, great tracts of uninhabited ice fields uninhabited, that
is, by civilised beings.

In another hour it would be over Boitil, the capital city.

"Gunners, take your positions!"  Sojan roared through cupped hands and
picking up a megaphone for there was no radio on Zylor shouted the same
orders, which went from ship to ship until every gunner was seated in
his seat, guns loaded and ready for firing.

"Drop two hundred feet!"  Sojan roared again to the steersman, and
repeated these orders to the other captains, who in turn shouted them
to their own steersmen.

"Prepare hand weapons and fasten down loose fixtures, check gas-bag
coverings, every man to position!"  Sojan shouted when the ships had
all dropped two hundred feet.

"Slow speed!"  The ships slowed into second speed

In Zylorian naval terms there are five speeds: "Speed No.  1" is
fastest possible, "Speed No.  2" is a fifth of this slower, and so on.
When a commander gives the order to slow when travelling at Speed No.
1, the ship automatically adjusts to Speed No.  2; if going at No.  2
and told to slow, it changes to No.  3.

Now they were over the outskirts of the city, drop ping lower and lower
until Sojan thought they would touch the very towers of Boitil,
scanning the squares and flying-fields for signs of the army.  Halfway
over the city a message was passed to Sojan that a great army camp had
been spotted just on the outskirts of the city.  At the same time
someone yelled for him to look, and doing so he saw that a fleet almost
as large as his own was rising from flying-fields all over the vast
city.

"Prepare for battle!"  he shouted.

As one, the safety catches of the guns were pushed off.

"Shoot as you will!"  Sojan ordered.

There was a muffled "pop" and the hiss of escaping air as the explosive
shells of the Hatnorian craft were sent on their mission of
destruction.  Almost at once the enemy retaliated.

Two Hatnorian ships, one only slightly damaged, the other a mass of
roaring yellow and blue flame, dropped earth wards

For twelve hours the great air-battle was fought, developing into
ship-to-ship duels as the opposing sides became mixed.  Bit by bit the
battle moved southwards until it was over the great ice wastes.

But expert handling of their craft, superior marksmanship and a
slightly superior weight of numbers on the part of the Hatnorian fleet
was slowly but surely weakening the Asnogian fleet.  Sojan, now with a
gun mounted on the officer's platform, was taking an active part in the
battle.  His uncanny ability to hit almost whatever he aimed at was
taking great toll.  Everywhere ships were hurtling earth wards crashing
in an inferno of flame, or merely bouncing gently when a gas-bag was
only slightly punctured.

At last, one by one, the enemy began to flee.  The other ships, seeing
their companions escape, disengaged and followed them.  The hired
ships, manned mainly by mercenaries, flew in every direction but that
of Asno, while the Asnogian craft turned and headed for their home
base.  In this direction went the Hatnorian fleet, re-forming to a
close formation and turning to No.  1 speed.  If they overtook a ship
it was ruthlessly shot down; but half a dozen or so were lucky and
escaped them.  In three hours they were back over Asno and bombing the
troop encampment with incendiaries until nothing remained of the great
camp but smouldering fabric and twisted steel.  Through the south gate
of the city streamed forth ragged bands of hired soldiers, bent on
escaping while they could.  The planned attack on a Hatnorian colony
had not even begun.  A just reprisal on Nornos Kad's part.  A reprisal
carried out in full by Sojan.  But his business was not finished and,
landing on part of an undamaged airfield, Sojan ordered the frightened
commanding officer to take him to King Tremorn of Asno.

"I bring a message from my Emperor!"  he cried when he was in the vast
chamber which housed the king's court.  All around him stood courtiers
and servants, worried and anxious to hear his terms.  Great pillars
supported the roof and brilliant tapestries hung from the ceiling.
Murals on the walls depicted scenes of battles, on land, water and in
the air.

"Speak your message," ordered the king.  "What are your terms?  I admit
that I am beaten!  For the present!"  he added.

"For all time, sir, while a member of the Nornis family sits on the
throne of Hatnor!"  Sojan replied.  "Now, do you wish to hear my
terms?"

"Speak!"

"The first is that you acknowledge allegiance to Hatnor and pay a
tribute of five hundred young men to train in our armies every tenth
year.  The second is that you disband any army you still have, save for
policing your city.  On signs of attack, you will notify the Empire,
who will come to your aid.  As a member of the Empire you will be
subject to all laws and trading terms of the Empire and in times of
major war shall enlist two-thirds of your fighting strength in the
armies of Hatnor and the remaining third if called upon.  You will not
make war-ships or weapons of war, save hand weapons, for your own use,
but all war-ships and arms shall be sent direct to the capital.  Do you
recognise these terms?"

The king paused and, turning to his major domo, whispered a few words
to him.  The man nodded.

"Yes, I recognise your terms," he sighed.

"Then sign your name and oath to this document and seal it with your
royal seal.  Upon the breaking of your word, the lapse shall be
punished according to the magnitude."

Sojan handed the paper to a courtier who carried it to the king.  The
act of bowing to a king is unknown upon the planet Zylor, instead the
subject places his right hand upon his heart to signify complete
allegiance.

So it was that Sojan achieved his purpose.  But more adventures were
yet to come before he could return to his palace at Hatnor.

3. Revolt in Hatnor

SO JAN SO JAN  the call rang across the clear Zylorian sky as a small
scout-ship veered towards the larger warship, the flagship of Sojan,
second-in-command to the War Lord of Hatnor Nornos Kad.

"Who are you?"  Sojan's lieutenant roared through a megaphone.

"I bring urgent tidings from the court of Nornos Kad the land is in
turmoil!"

"Come alongside," the man roared.

As the scout-ship drew alongside, an armed man jumped from it and
rushed up the ladder to the platform whereon Sojan stood.

"Sojan!  While the fleet has been at war, revolution has swept through
the land.  Nornos Kad has been deposed and a tyrant sits on the throne
of Hatnor.  There is a price upon your head and upon the heads of all
whom you command.

"Flee now, Sojan, while you have the chance.  Trewin the Upstart
controls the city and half the Empire.  The other half is in a state of
unrest, unsure whether to support one Emperor or another!"

"I cannot flee while my Emperor rots in chains tell me, who still cries
"Loyalty to the Nornis family'?"

"None openly, Sojan.  A few are suspected, but they are still powerful
nobles and even Trewin dare not arrest them without cause."

Sojan's face became grim and he clenched his hand upon his sword
hilt.

"Lun!"  he cried.  "Order the fleet to turn about and adjust to Speed
One!"

A look of surprise crossed his lieutenant's face.  "We're not running,
Sojan?"

"Do as I say!"

"Turn about and adjust to Speed One!"  Lun shouted through his
megaphone.

At once the great fleet turned gracefully about and adjusted, speed by
speed, until it was flying at maximum speed.  There were puzzled looks
in the eyes of many of Sojan's captains, but they obeyed his order.

"Tell them to set a course for Poltoon," he ordered Lun.  Lun did so
and soon every ship was heading south to the steaming jungles and
burning deserts of the Heat Lands.

"Why do we sail for Poltoon, Sojan?"  asked Lun.

But Sojan's only reply was, "You will see," and he resumed his earnest
conversation with the messenger who had brought him the news.

On the third day they were sailing at No.  1 speed over a vast belt of
jungle, seemingly impenetrable.  But Sojan's eyes, less atrophied by
civilised living, caught what he had been looking for a patch of green,
lighter than the dark green which predominated.

"STOP!"  he roared.  "Stop and hover no one is to drop anchor."

The flying machines of the Zylorian nations are usually very similar to
our airships.  The gondola is supported by steel hawsers depending from
the main gas-bag.  The propeller is adjustable and can be slung either
fore or aft of the ship it is usually slung aft.  They are steered by
two methods, a rudder aft plus manipulation of the propeller.  A normal
sized warship usually mounts five guns two very powerful ones fore and
aft, a smaller one on the captain's platform and two mounted in a
platform on top of the huge gas-bag.  The gunners reach this platform
by means of ladders from the deck to the platform.  This position is
extremely dangerous and if ever the gas-bag is hit it is unlikely that
a gas-bag gunner could ever escape.

The ships stopped as ordered and while they waited, Sojan had his ship
drop downwards, nearer and nearer to the little patch of green which
became a small clearing, just large enough to land one ship, but for a
fleet of over fifty ships to land here was impossible.  With a slight
bump the ship dropped to the ground and the anchor was thrown into the
soft grass.  Sojan ordered that the gas-bags be deflated.  They could
always be inflated again as every ship carried a large supply of
gas-cylinders.

Now the ship was only a third of the size and was dragged into the
undergrowth which was not at all thick.  Sojan told his crew of eight
to get to work and chip down all the small growth but to leave the huge
forest giants standing.  This they did and very soon the clearing
widened and as it did so a new ship dropped down until the fifty were
all deflated and covering a large area of ground under the trees.  The
cabins made excellent living quarters so there was no difficulty about
housing the men.  Rations were also plentiful and a spring of fresh
water was nearby.

"I know this part of the country well," Sojan told his men that night,
"the inhabitants are for the most part friendly.  While they are not
civilised, they are not savages and I believe that they will give us
some help.  But now we sleep and tomorrow we shall rouse the tribes!"

Next morning, Sojan with a small party of his men set off for the
village of his barbarian friends.

The chief greeted him warmly and was interested in Sojan's need for
soldiers.

"You know me and my people, Soyin," he said, using the nearest
Poltoonian equivalent of Sojan's name.  "We all love to fight and if
there's a bit of loot thrown in, who's to say 'no'?"

"Then I can depend on you?"

"By all means I shall form a council immediately and recruit as many of
my fellow chiefs as possible.  `>-71' Between us we should muster a few
thousand fighting men."

By Zylorian standards, where most nations are comparatively small to
Earth nations, a thousand men is quite a large number.

"Then have them ready by the third day, my friend," Sojan replied.
"Blood will stain the usurper's robes before the month is gone!"

4. The Hordes Attack

THE DAY of the invasion was drawing nearer and Sojan began to work
harder and harder in the training of his barbarian horde the
Poltoonians.  Spies brought word that there was more and more unrest in
the outlying provinces of Hatnor.

"The time is right to strike," Sojan told his captains and the wild
chiefs.  "We must invade now or our cause will be lost and we will
never again have the opportunity to win Hatnor back from the usurper
and restore Nornos Kad to his rightful throne!"

His airships, camouflaged by the mighty trees of the steaming
Poltoonian jungle, were provisioned and ready to do battle.  His
captains were wordperfect in his plan of invasion.  Everyone had his
orders and knew how to carry them out.

A day later a horde, consisting of thousands of mounted barbarians led
by Sojan himself, moved towards the North and Hatnor!

Two days later, the faster moving airships rose into the air like a
swarm of hornets armed with stings a hundred times more powerful.  As
they passed the horde, the ships slowed to minimum speed and followed,
flying low, just above them.  In another day they would arrive at the
boundaries of Hatnor and blood would run in the gutters of all who
opposed them.

Sojan was sure that very little blood would flow as the army would be
on his side.  It was the criminal population, egged on by an evil and
power-mad noble, who had risen and overthrown their Emperor while the
bulk of his army was crushing a rebellion in an outer province.

There would always be unrest in any regime.  Sojan knew this, but there
was no cause for the people to grumble about their ruler.  As always,
the unrest had been caused by a power seeker intent on turning a nation
into a blood-bath for his own selfish ends.

Now the once happy people groaned beneath the tyrant's yoke, no man,
woman or child could count themselves safe from his oppression.

Not only men made up the barbarian army, their maidens rode beside
them, armed with knife, sword, shield and spear.  In their left hands
they carried charm sticks to keep their men and themselves from harm.
Most of these girls were extremely beautiful and the armour they wore
did not detract from their good looks in any way, rather it enhanced
them.

At last they reached the outer boundaries of the Empire and found
little opposition here.  It would be later, when news of their invasion
reached the city of Hatnor, that the fighting would begin.  Sojan was
finding it difficult to keep the barbarians in order; they had decided
that anyone could be slain as long as they got their loot.  But after a
council meeting with the chiefs he was sure that they would be reliable
for a time.

Two days later found them at the gates of Vermlot, gates which were
securely locked and guarded.

The barbarians were all for laying violent siege to the place, but
Sojan realised that they could hold out for an eternity.

"You are forgetting our ships," he said, "we have the whole of the
Hatnorian airforce under our control.  They will not last as long as
they hope!"

His flagship sailed gracefully down for him and then shot up again when
he was aboard.  Orders were shouted from ship to ship and the fleet
dipped downwards towards the great city square.  Aboard were hundreds
of soldiers, the most reliable of the barbarian horde, and as soon as
the ships reached the ground, not without some opposition, they swarmed
from the ships and ran to engage the rather frightened militia who
barred their way.

Wild cries, strangely woven banners raised against a background of
flashing steel and muffled poppings of the air pistols and rifles.  It
was impossible to use the heavier artillery.

Into the square they poured and soon it was impossible to tell friend
or foe as the fighting surged back and forth, spreading outwards into
the streets, into the very houses themselves.  Attacked from the inside
as well as at their walls, the tyrant's men were uncertain whom to
attack and while they wavered, the barbarians took the opportunity to
batter in one of the minor gateways and clamber over the inner wall.

The streets were slippery with blood, echoing with the ring of steel
and the cries of the wounded.

Sojan was in front, hewing and hacking with his great blade, his long
hair streaming behind him and a grim smile upon his lips.  "To the
Palace, to the

Palace," he cried.  "Take the Palace or our cause is lost!"

And, like a tidal wave, the army surged over their enemies in the
direction of the great Palace.  The doors would not open to their
thunderous knocking so battering rams were brought in.  As the main
door flew open, Sojan and his men drew back in horror.

There stood Nornos Kad, their ruler, worn and in rags, a filthy stubble
on his face.  And surrounding him, a body of Trewin's personal guard.
Behind them stood their leader.

"Come another step closer, Sojan, and I'll be forced to kill your
precious Emperor!"  he called.

Sojan and his men were in a quandary, what were they to do?  It was
checkmate, if not defeat, for them.

An idea sprang into Sojan's mind.

Aiming a pistol at Nornos Kad, he pulled the trigger.  The Emperor fell
to the ground with a moan and lay still.

"There, dog, I've done your dirty work for you!"  he laughed.

In a rage Trewin fired blindly at Sojan.  The Swordsman flung himself
to the ground and the bullet whistled by to catch one of his men in the
shoulder.

Lifting his own pistol, Sojan fired twice.  Trewin, in the act of
fleeing up the staircase, flung up his arms and toppled down the great
stairway, blood trickling from his mouth.  He landed with a thud at the
feet of his guards.

With a cry, Sojan, his sword glistening in the light of the torches
suspended around the wall, charged for the astounded guards who,
without thinking, threw down their weapons and fled.

Nornos Kad picked himself up from the floor with Sojan's help.

"A clever move, Sojan," he grinned, "but it took some clever shooting,
too."

He examined the hole which Sojan's bullet had made in his coat.

"It was a minor risk, sir.  If I had not taken it, the city would even
now be in the hands of Trewin."

"At the moment it seems to be in the hands of your Poltoonian
barbarians," laughed the War Lord.  "Let us go to the rescue of our
fellow countrymen."

Peace had come once more to Hatnor.

5. The Purple Galley

To DESCRIBE the wonderful pageantry, the colours, the races and the
myriad weapons which flashed in that great hall would be impossible.
The gleaming white stones of the hall, hung with vivid tapestries of
red, black, gold, yellow, orange, green and purple, almost reflected
the equally scintillating colours of the uniforms and dresses of the
men and women who stood before the throne of Nornos Kad.

But there was one uniform missing, one tall figure which should have
been there was not, one sword did not flash in the great hall.

And the faces of the nobles were sad for the missing man was Nornos
Rique, Prince of Hatnor the War Lord's son.

"My people," said Nornos Kad, softly and very sadly, "my son has been
missing for thirteen days now and still no news of him or the Princess
Asderma.  Has anyone anything to report you, Sojan, have you found any
traces of my son?"

"No, sire, although I have searched the whole nation.  I can only
conclude that your son is not in the Hatnorian Empire!"

"Then we must find him, Sojan!  Take the men you require and return
with my son!  If it is possible then you are the man to find him!"

The sun was just setting when a weary and travel stained rider guided
his myat into the small collection of stone and wooden buildings which
was the border town of Em.  He had ridden for days, stopping only to
eat and gather a few hours' sleep when he could no longer stay awake.
His clothes were good and were mainly made of durable hide.  His
weapons nestled in well-oiled sheaths and scabbards, his shield was
covered with canvas.  It was easy to see that here was the typical
soldier of fortune a Zylorian mercenary.

He dismounted at the small tavern and called through the door which was
ajar.

"Hey there!  Is there a stable for my animal and a bed for me?"

"Yes, my lord," came a woman's voice from the tavern and a girl of
about eighteen appeared in the doorway.  "Hey, Kerk!"  she called.
"Fetch a blanket for this gentleman's myat and take him to the
stables!"

"This way my lord," said the battle-scarred veteran who came to do the
woman's bidding.  "What's trade like?"  he added with a grin as they
neared the wooden building which served as a stable for the beasts of
the whole village.

"Not too bad," the mercenary smiled.  "As long as men are men and their
tempers are the same then I'll never be out of a job.  There was an
uprising in Hatnor some months ago.  That was a good scrap if ever
there was one!"

"Aye, I heard about it from another gentleman who came this way soon
after it happened.  Didn't say much, though most un talkative type if
you ask me!  He wasn't a Hatnorian nor a Northerner for that matter,
that was easy to see!"

"What do you mean?"  The mercenary was obviously interested; more than
casually so.

"He was a Shortani man, you can't mistake' em

"Shortani's a big continent did you hear him say what country in
Shortani?"

"Wait a minute.  I believe he did say something."  The old man paused
and tugged at his grizzled beard.  He frowned, thinking hard.  "Yes,
I've got it it was raining at the time.  Like it does most of the time
in these parts," Kerk laughed "Never seems to stop it don't .. ."

"Yes," the mercenary was impatient, "but what did he say?"

"What?  Oh, yes.  The country.  Well, he said, when he got here, that
it was 'never like this in Uffjir!"  Yes, that was it."

"Uffjir, hmm, that's right on the farthest side of Shortani.  And even
then he may not have been returning there.  It probably isn't anything
but it seems strange for an Uffjirian to travel so far from his
tropical lands, especially in winter.  What did he look like, this
man?"

"Oh!  The usual type, you know.  Small, a bit fat, wore one of them
fancy jewelled swords which snaps as soon as you cross it with a good
bit of Turani steel.  Why, I remember when I was a young' un that would
have been a bit before your time.  We didn't have none of them
newfangled flying machines in those days, I can tell you.  We had to do
all our travelling by myat or more likely on our feet..."

"Yes!"  The mercenary was almost crying with impatience by this time.
"But can you describe the Uffjirian?"  '

"Well, he had a beard if that's any good.  And it was curled up a bit
looked as if he'd put oil on it.  Wore fancy clothes, too, no good for
travelling but expensive yes, they were certainly expensive.  He was a
nobleman by the look of him hired a whole crowd of the village men and
they all went off together somewhere.  They ain't back yet."

"Have you any idea where they went?"

"Only the direction.  They went off in the opposite direction to the
one from which you came.  Mounted, too, and although they wouldn't
admit it, every one of them has a sword hidden in his blankets.  They
can't fool me, I have to look after their my ats

The myat had been rubbed down and was in his stable by this time,
attended by the two men, one an aged veteran with over a hundred years
of fighting behind him and the other equally a veteran with not much
more than twenty years behind him.  They lived short lives on Zylor for
most men died of a sword thrust by the time they were seventy or
eighty.  Their life span of 120 years was rarely reached.

That night, the mercenary sat in the corner of the tavern, drinking and
cleaning his heavy pistol.  There were two other visitors at the
tavern.  A young man of seventeen years or so and his father.  They
were friendly men and the mercenary and he found mutual ground in that
they were both veterans of the Findian/Kintonian wars.  The mercenary
had fought for the Findians and the man Orfil had fought on the side of
the Kintonians.  But there was no bad feeling between the men for at
that time Orfil had also been a mercenary.  Now he was a merchant
dealing in precious jewels and he and his son were travelling to
Aborgmingi, a small group of islands in the Shortani Sea.  The mining
of precious stones was unknown there, he said, and he found it worth
his while to travel the distance over land and sea to sell them as they
obtained prices which were over five times as much as those in Fria,
his own country.

"Ride with us," he invited, "there is always a greater amount of safety
if there is a greater amount of men and I would be glad of your
company."

"I ride towards Shortani," said Sojan, "but whether I shall for long
depends on circumstances."

The merchant knew better than to ask what "circumstances" they were for
privacy means life on Zylor and those who ask too many needless
questions are liable to find themselves in an alleyway keeping close
company with a knife!

The three men retired to their respective rooms and the mercenary was
glad to get some rest.  Wearily he sank on to the not-so-soft bed and
lay down to sleep.

In the morning he awoke at his accustomed hour and attempted to rise.
He could not, for his hands were bound.  He was strapped to the bed and
the only thing he could move was his head.  Looking down at him with a
smile on his face was Orfil the merchant, and his son.  Only his "son"
had donned her skirts again and was an extremely pretty girl!

"Well, my nosy soldier, you've put your nose into one game too many
this time!"  laughed Orfil, who seemed to be enjoying a great joke. The
girl behind him was not so amused.  Her whole bearing was tense and the
hand that gripped the pistol at her side gleamed white at the
knuckles.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself," continued the man.  "my name is
Orfil.  I am the Captain of the

Spies Guild in Rhan.  This lady prefers to.  remain unknown, although
where you're going the gods will know it anyway!"

"You're going to kill me then?"

"Yes."

"And am I permitted to enquire 'why'?"

"Certainly.  I am afraid that I shall be forced to kill you though I
regret it, sir, for I like you.  You see, you have been enquiring just
a little too pointedly to be harmless.  I suspect that you are more
than a common mercenary that perhaps you are in the pay of Uffjir and
if this is so, then it will be more of a pleasure to kill you!"

"I am no Uffjirian, you oaf!  And I am not involved in any intrigue.  I
seek my War Lord's son who disappeared some time ago!  Think not that I
would sink so low as you!"

The smile vanished from the Rhanian's face and his right hand clenched
on his long sword.

"Then I am sorry!  You see Nornos Rique is in this right up to his
lance-tip!"

And with that, he raised his sword.  The girl turned away, and just as
Orfil was about to deal the death thrust, the door opened slowly and he
saw the face of the Uffjirian nobleman.  Behind him were half a dozen
burly swordsmen.

"Yit take you, Parijh!"  cried the spy and then to the girl, "Quick,
get behind me and open the window.  I'll hold them back.  There are my
ats awaiting!"

And with that he rushed upon the Uffjirian who, for a moment was so
taken aback that he could hardly defend himself from the furious attack
of Orfil's sword.

"Quick men," he yelled, "seize him, kill him, don't let him escape!"
But the narrow doorway would not permit more than one man to enter at a
time and Orfil easily pushed Parijh back and swung the heavy bar into
position as the door shut.

"No time to slay you now," he panted as he clambered over the window
ledge, "perhaps some other time ..."

The girl had by this time scrambled from the window and was waiting
with the my ats  The soft thud of their hooves was drowned by the yells
of the man from Uffjir and the surly answers of his companions.

Silence fell as the men gave chase to Orfil and the girl.  The
mercenary still lay strapped to the bed.  The door was barred from the
inside and he had begun to think that he would soon starve to death
when someone knocked on the door.

"Get me out of here!"  he yelled.

"Is there anything the matter, sir?"

This was too much even for a hardened warrior.  "Yes there is!"  he
roared.  "And if you don't let me out right now I'll tear the place
down with my bare hands!"  A rather vain boast considering his
position.

Murmurs at the door and the retracing of steps down the creaking
staircase.

He waited expectantly, hearing occasional voices.  Then there were
tramping feet on the stairway and in a few moments the door fell
inwards, closely followed by two men with a battering log and behind
them old Kerk.

"I said there was something up!"  he exclaimed triumphantly.

It was a matter of minutes to untie the mercenary, for him to gather up
his accoutrements, to pay Kerk and to find and saddle his myat.  Then
he was off, down the long forest track, following the trail of Orfil
and his pursuers.

For three hours he followed a trail which was easily found.  Once or
twice he thought he heard movements in the forest but, although he kept
his hand ever ready on his sword, he was not attacked.

Then, just as he turned the bend in the trail, they were there.  The
Uffjirian's men, lined across the narrow path, swords drawn and pikes
at the ready.

But the mercenary was trained to quick thinking and at the same moment
as his heels dug into his myat's flanks, he drew sword, unhooked shield
and brought his lance to bear as he thundered down upon his foes, his
crimson cloak flying behind him like a vampire's wings soaked in blood,
and a bloodcurdling war-shout on his lips!

Taken aback, they wavered, but at the Uffjirian's shouts behind them,
pushed forward to meet the charging lancer.  Down went one with a
brilliantly tufted shaft protruding from his throat.  The lance was
wrenched out of the mercenary's hands and his steed reared and snorted,
flailing with its cloven hooves.  His face was alight with battle-lust,
he ducked beneath the guard of another man and dealt him a cut which
put him down, shrieking and calling to some unknown god in an agony of
death.  He whirled his steed about, hoping to gain a little ground by
retreating, but it was too late, for he was surrounded by a solid ring
of pikes and blue steel.  He caught blow after blow on his shield and
the flat of his sword.  One man lunged upwards with his heavy pike and
the myat snorted in pain before his deadly hooves beat the man down.

Leaping from the wounded myat, the lone swordsman found himself
surrounded by four of Parijh's men.  He bled from a dozen superficial
cuts and still he fought with the skill and ferocity of a trained
crinja cat.  Then there was a gap in their ranks and he was through,
rushing for a tethered myat twenty yards away.

Howling like were-wolves, they followed him across the glade and
reached him just as he cut the tethering rope of the myat with his
sword and leaped into the high saddle.  They attempted to cut at his
animal's legs but a swift arc of blue steel drove them back.  As he
passed the body of the man whom he had first slain, he stooped and
wrenched the lance from the corpse and then he was away, down the long
trail in the direction Orfil had taken.  All his would-be captors heard
was a grim laugh which echoed through the tall trees of the forest.

Turning in the saddle, the mercenary saw them run to their mounts and
Parijh come from behind, scolding and cursing for among other things,
the fine beast the mercenary had taken had belonged to the Uffjirian!

And it soon proved its worth for he easily outdistanced them and was
again following Orfil's tracks a trail which was to lead to the
weirdest adventure in his whole career.

6. The Sea Wolves!

Two DAYS after his fight with the Uffjirian's men, the mercenary rode
into the port of Minifjar in the country of Barj.

There were several ships in the harbour.  Merchantmen mainly, but here
and there rose the tall prows of warships.

Although their airships are motor-powered, the Zylorians have not found
an engine capable of moving their ships, or for carrying them for very
far and, since steam-power also is unknown, they still rely on sails
and oars for motive power.

Most of the ships were equipped with both sails and oars but two of
them were built for sails only.  From every one of them, long barrels
poked from strategic ports, for it was only a suicidal madman who would
sail anything but the calm waters of the Asnogi Channel and the
Shortani Sea unarmed.

There was one ship, a galley, which stood out from the others.  Its
tall prow triumphantly above the rest and its sails and paintwork were
predominantly purple.  Purple, like black on Earth, is the colour of
death on Zylor, so it attracted much attention from the inhabitants of
the small town.

The mercenary sought out the only presentable inn and bought a meal and
a bed for the night.

As he lugged his equipment wearily up the flight of narrow stairs, he
looked up and caught a glimpse of a familiar face that of Orfil of
Rhan's girl companion.

Evidently she had been watching him and the warrior kept a wary hand on
his sword and resolved to make sure that his door was firmly barred
that night.

But soon after he had dumped his belongings on the dirty bed, he heard
the rattle of harness and, from his small window, he saw the spy and
the girl leaving the walled entrance to the inn they had none of their
possessions with them which told the mercenary a great deal.  They had
gone for reinforcements.  He sat on the edge of the bed pondering what
he should do.

He had decided that it would be wiser to leave, when there came the
sound of myat's hooves and a squad of Barjite Cavalry, fully armed with
lances, swords, long rifles and pistols, clad in uniforms of blue, red
and green with shining breastplates, helmets and leg greaves of bright
steel.  They clattered to a halt outside the inn.

"Thank Yit!"  the mercenary murmured.  For he recognised the captain of
the mounted men as an old friend, who had fought beside him in an
expedition Barj had made when bandits had been raiding their caravans
of merchandise.

"Red," he cried, opening the window.  "Red, you son of a crinja cat!"

Red, or as his men knew him, Captain Jeodvir,

Vollitt's son of Chathja, turned.  Then, as he saw who called him, a
wide grin took the place of his previously astonished expression and he
passed a hand through the shock of hair which gave him his nickname.

"Sojan!  What are you doing in this particular bit of Hell?"

"And you?  One of King Vixian's crack lancers commanding a coast
patrol!"

"The king doesn't like me any more, Sojan," laughed the warrior.  "Not
since I pressed for better pay for the cavalry and nearly started a
civil war at the last council!"

It was Sojan's turn to laugh.  "You couldn't plead for better
conditions for the underpaid infantry, I suppose!"

"What?  And have them get the idea that they're up to cavalry
standard!"

The rivalry between infantry and mounted divisions in Barj was very
real and at times became a threat to the internal peace of that nation.
The brawls between the better trained cavalry (generally inheriting the
right to become an officer) and the recruited infantry were cursed in
every town from Em to Ishtam-Zhem, the capital.  But Sojan was not
concerned with this, he had an ally now, no need to run, he could stay
and fight like a man.

"Looking for a fight, Red?"  he said.

"Dying to be killed, why?"  enquired Red, using an expression which was
currently popular among fighting men.

"Because I have a feeling that we will be in one soon!"

"Good, I'll tell my men to be prepared."

"Thanks, I'll need some help, I think."

"Unusual for you to admit that!"

"Shut up, I'm coming down."

In the courtyard of the inn, Sojan told Red what he knew about Orfil
and what had happened to him since he left the court of Hatnor to
search for his ruler's son.

And as he finished, Orfil and a band of some twenty mounted men in
seamen's clothes, rode into the courtyard.  The captain's squad
consisted of ten men so they were outnumbered almost two-to-one.  The
seamen had no lances but the cavalry had left their rifles, pistols and
lances with their my ats saddles and other equipment.  Now they were
armed only with long sabres (or vilthors) and small battle axes

It took Orfil less than a second to take stock of the situation and
with a curse, he bore down upon the group, yelling a blasphemous
battle-shout so full of evil that it made Sojan's hair tingle.  His men
followed him, hardened sea-wolves these, all of them by rights fodder
for the executioner's axe.  Scarred, wild-eyed men in exotic clothes of
many hues and nations.  Black, green, white and red.  From every nation
on Zylor, they bore weapons which were equally varied battle-axes,
maces, pikes, hooked swords and broadswords, vilthors and blades
resembling scimitars.  All were there, and many so strange that they
defied simple description.

Sojan blocked Orfil's lance thrust with his own long sword and unslung
his shield from his back in a hurry.  But not soon enough, for Orfil's
lance stabbed again and flung the mercenary backward against a wall.
Luckily, the lance tip broke on Sojan's breastplate and Orfil swore to
his dark gods as he wheeled his steed about and attempted to cut at
Sojan with his broadsword.  But now Sojan was up again, back against
the wall, shield up and blade screaming as he cut past Orfil's guard.

But Orfil was swept away as the fight eddied back and forth across the
courtyard.  There, a green man of Poltoon went down with a lancer on
top of him, stabbing again and again.  Near him a huge red man,
bearded, with one of his small horns broken and splintered, staggered
towards his tethered steed spitting blood from a punctured lung he
never made the myat.  A lancer was crushed by sheer weight of numbers
as four howling, long-haired black men from Shortani bore him down and
almost tore him to pieces.  Everywhere was chaos and Sojan hardly knew
who it was he fought, there were so many of them.  Finally he singled
out another red giant who whirled a shrieking twin-bladed axe around
his head and laughed through his black beard all the time.  He bled
from a flesh wound in his left arm and his face streamed blood from a
superficial sword cut, but he never seemed to tire.  Sojan caught a
blow of the axe on his shield which dented so much that it almost broke
his arm.  Discarding it he skipped nimbly away from the arc of
blood-stained steel, ducked beneath it and ripped upwards with a thrust
that caught the giant in the throat and threw him groaning to the
cobbles before Sojan lost sight of him as a fresh wave of sea-spoilers
pushed towards him.

The war-shout of his people was upon Sojan's lips and it rose above the
screams and curses of the men, spurred Red and his men on to greater
feats of magnificent swordsmanship until the sailors were driven back.
Slowly, very slowly, they gave ground and just as victory seemed in the
hands of Sojan and his allies, from the courtyard walls dropped scores
of well-armoured axe men

It was impossible to defend themselves against this sudden onslaught
and the last thing Sojan heard as an axe haft fell on his helmet and
blackness followed blinding light was:

"Take them alive.  They will suffer more tonight!"

7. Sojan at Sea

SO JAN AWOKE with a piercing pain in his head which quickly
disappeared. Looking about him he found that he was lying on a
comfortable couch in a well furnished room which seemed to have an
indefinable "something" wrong with it.

Then he realised what it was.  Every article of furniture was clamped
to the floor and the windows were small square openings in the walls,
just below eye-level.

He was in a ship's cabin.  Obviously one of the ships in the harbour
that was why the men who had attacked him had worn seafaring garb.
Which ship though?  He didn't know.  Doubtless he would find out soon
enough.  Could it be the purple ship of death which swayed at anchor in
Minifjar harbour?  It was likely, this business was mysterious enough
for anything.

He walked over to the port hole and looked out.  No, the purple ship
could be seen from there.  Then what ship was this?

He went back to the couch after trying the door which he found locked
as he had expected.

He waited an hour a long hour until the bar on the door was lifted with
a creak and the door swung open.

To his surprise, he found himself staring into the face of Parijh, the
Uffjirian who said:

"Welcome aboard the Sea Crinja my friend!"

But the man who stood behind Parijh caught the adventurer's attention
most of all.  It was his War Lord's son, Nornos Rique of Hatnor!

"Shiltain!"  swore Sojan when he saw him.  "What ?"

"Explanation later, Sojan, we were lucky to rescue you.  Right now
you're not very welcome.  My fault, I suppose, for giving no hint that
I would be going but there was no time."

"But how did I get out of Orfil's hands?"

"It's a long story too long to relate here.  Meanwhile, we sail for the
Sea of Demons!"

"What?"

"We're sailing dangerous waters Sojan, for we play a dangerous game in
which the whole planet is at stake.  Do you want to come on deck?"

"Thanks."

The three men climbed the long ladders to the poopdeck.  Nornos Rique
shouted orders as sails were set and men moved to their oars.  All the
men were well built fighting men.

Sojan looked back to where the huge purple galley swayed at anchor like
a dead ship becalmed in the terrible weed jungle of the Black Ocean.
She gave no signs of following and soon the sails were billowing, oars
creaked in unison and they were on the open sea, bound for the
mysterious Sea of Demons.

Like all ships, there was continual movement aboard.  Men scurrying up
and down the rigging,

guns oiled and cleaned, the shouts of the mate giving orders.

The ship comprised three decks.  Two raised fore and aft and a middle
deck which was little more than a raised platform over the oarsmen's
pits on port and starboard.  In the centre of this deck there was
another slightly raised platform measuring about thirty feet upon which
was the single mast.  At the base of this mast a drummer sat beating
out a steady rhythm which was followed by the oars who took their
timing from the drum.

On this platform, also, was the heavy artillery and something which
Sojan had never seen before harpoon guns, twelve of them, five a side
and another two fore and aft.

It was obvious that peaceful trading with the tribes along the Shortani
coast was not the object of this particular voyage.

Suddenly, Sojan remembered his comrades.

"What happened to my friends?"  he asked.

"They're all aboard the Purple Arrow, that cursed ship of Death you saw
in Minifjar harbour," answered Rique.  "You see, Sojan, we only had
time to free you before we were discovered.  My men and I swam across
and boarded her silently last night.  We finally found you and, judging
by your snores, you were in a drugged sleep.  There were four others
with you but they were so much dead weight that we could only take you
and secretly leave knives in their shirts with which to aid themselves
if they have the chance.  I'm sorry, Sojan, but it is too late to go
back for them now even if it were practical."

"You are right, of course, Rique," answered Sojan, "but I would that I
could help them!"

Now the tall Sea Crinja was in open waters, beyond sight of land. Bound
for the terrible Sea of Demons where few ships ever sailed and
returned.  And, in the days they sailed towards their destination,
Sojan pieced together the ominous tale of the Old Ones and how the
Priests of Rhan sought to conquer Zylor with their evil aid.

It seemed that word of the plot was brought to Uffjir first.  This
country lies due North of Rhan on the Shortani coast and is generally
better informed about the island of Mystery as it is sometimes called
than is the rest of Zylor.

The Uffjirian monarch, King Ashniophil, had feared to make public the
news as it would very likely force the Rhanian priesthood into swifter
action.  Instead, he had sent a messenger to enlist Nornos Rique's aid
as, if the worst ever happened, Hatnor was the most powerful country on
the whole planet.  Nornos Rique, naturally, had not thought it wise to
notify his father at once as he knew the other's aptitude to make
quick, but sometimes hasty decisions and this is what Uffjir was trying
to prevent.

Unfortunately, at the time of the messenger's coming, the Princess
Asderma had been with Rique and had overheard everything.  She
threatened to betray Nornos Rique to the Rhanians unless he paid her a
fabulous amount of money.

Knowing that even when she had the money, she would be dangerous, Rique
decided to go into hiding.  He had had to kidnap the girl and ride for
Rhan in an effort to come to terms with the rulers or, if this failed,
destroy or capture their leaders and their strange un human allies.

After several detours, he finally reached Minifjar but not before the
Princess had escaped and fled to Orfil who had promptly ridden for
Minifjar himself where a ship (one of the purple fleet of the Rhanian
Theocracy or Priest Rulers) awaited him in case just such an emergency
as this should occur.  The mercenary's questions had aroused his
interest when he had overheard them at the inn and he had taken Sojan
prisoner.  Only to be foiled by the Uffjirian messenger who was acting
as a rear-guard for Nornos Rique.  The rest Sojan knew.  Now it was a
race to get to Rhan first.

8. The Sea of Demons

IT WAS a race to get to Rhan first.  The Purple Arrow would take the
comparatively safe way there by sailing down the coast of Poltoon until
safer waters were reached (namely the Poltoonian Ocean) and back to
Rhan via these waters.

The Crinja, however, would attempt to sail through the Demon Sea,
cutting off a considerable part of the distance.  They knew little of
what they had to fight against.  The Arrow did not know of their plan
and was relying on the greater speed to catch the Crinja and either
destroy it or beat it to Rhan and have it destroyed then.  If the
Crinja could reach Rhan first, it would have several days start and the
fate of the world would be decided in those days.  Why the Arrow had
not sailed earlier, they knew not, but guessed that they were waiting
for someone.

It was a day's sail until they would reach the Demon Sea and in that
time, Sojan got to know his companions better.

Parijh, the Uffjirian, proved to be a humorous man.  Cheerful in the
face of every danger they had had to meet.  When necessary, he was an
excellent swordsman, but preferred to keep out of what he called
'unnecessary brawling'.  This often gained him a reputation of
cowardliness but, as he said, it was an asset rather than otherwise,
for what better opponent is there than the one who underestimates
you?

Sojan had to agree with this statement and a strong feeling of
comradeship and mutual respect grew between them as they sailed ever
nearer to the Sea of Demons.

Nornos Rique himself captained the Crinja.  Rique was a tall man with a
face that, though not handsome, had a dependable and rock-hard
ruggedness and eyes of steel grey.

The mate was, as is usual on Zylorian naval craft, either privateer or
part of an authorised Navy, a cavalry captain by the name of Andel of
Riss who, although inclined to make independent decisions without
consulting anyone first, was a good man in any kind of fight, and worth
four of any man in the crew, who were all fine men and who admired him
and respected him as only seamen can respect a man.  They would also
prove this in a fight with man or the elements.

The custom of placing cavalry men as seconds-in command of ships is not
as strange as it seems and the custom evolved thus:

At one time in the not-so-ancient history of Zylor a strong rivalry
developed between seamen and landsmen.  It became so bad that if a war
came, the land forces could never rely on the naval forces and vice
versa.

It was the idea of assigning landsmen to learn the ways of the sea and
naval officers to get to know the cavalry and infantry that saved them
from chaos,

and nowadays the two forces worked together in perfect harmony.

Later, on the evening of the third day out of Minifjar they were
sailing a sea which was similar to any other sea but which, according
to the maps, was the feared Sea of Demons.

"We'd better anchor here and sail on at daybreak," Nornos Rique
decided, and he gave the order to drop anchor.  The anchor chain
rattled down for several seconds before stopping with a jarring
clank.

"Water's too deep, sir!  Anchor won't take!"  yelled Andel.

"Then we dar en drift.  Ship oars and set sail on your course."

"Yes, sir!"

Night fell forming an atmosphere of decay and death which could almost
be smelled or touched.  But apart from this, nothing happened save a
faint scraping from time to time along the side of the boat which was
attributed to some heavy sea-weed or a piece of drift wood.

The twin suns rose and the green dawn came, sending shadows and
atmosphere scurrying over the horizon.  The sea was green and shone
like dark jade with some of jade's intangible mistiness.

Oars smashed into it, ploughing it in bright foam flecked furrows, and
the monotonous beat of the drum began.

Sojan and his comrades ate breakfast in an atmosphere of gloom.

"It's this confounded sea!"  suddenly roared Andel, rising from his
chair and crashing his fist into his open palm.  "Yit!  By the time
this voyage is over, there'll be men's lives lost and most likely we'll
all be on the bottom!"

"Calm down, Andel, we'll come to any danger when we get to it," Nornos
Rique said.

Andel grunted sullenly and subsided.

Two depressed hours followed until:

"Yit take us!"

This oath was followed by a piercing scream which tailed off into a
choking gasp.

The four men rushed on deck.  Most of the crew were at the starboard
rail, staring downward to where a red foam flecked the white.

"Turn back, sir, you must turn back!"  One hysterical seaman rushed
towards Nornos Rique screaming.

"Calm down, and tell me what happened!"

Fear was in the man's eyes.  A terrible fear bordering on madness.  He
babbled out his tale.

"A a thing, sir it crept up on Mitesh and oh, sir it grabbed him by the
throat and jumped overboard!"

"Is that all?"

"It's enough, sir!"  muttered another of the men.

"What did this 'thing' look like?  Who saw it clearly?"

"I did, sir."

It was the man who had commented a second before.

"Well?"

"It was a kind of green and brown.  Scaly.  By Yit, sir, it looked like
a man might look if his mother had been a fish!"

"You mean this animal was human?"

"Not human, sir.  But it had a man's body sure enough.  And his face
was pointed, like, sir.  And his eyes his eyes were green, like the
rest of him, and seemed to rot you when he stared at you!"

"All right.  Thank you.  Take this man below and give him something to
drink!"

"Yes sir.  Do we turn back?"

"No!  You all knew there was danger!"

"Danger, yes sir, but not from from devils!"

"Get below we sail on!"

Back in their cabin, Sojan spoke.

"I've heard old folktales, Rique, about occurrences such as this one.
Now I know why the ancients called this the "Sea of Demons'."

"Do you think they are organised in any way?"

"I've never heard of them being anything but in large numbers!"

"Perhaps this was a warning, then?"

"I think it might have been."

"We'd better set all guns in readiness.  Those harpoons will come in
useful.  I had them mounted in case of meeting any of those large
saurians that inhabit the Poltoonian Ocean.  But it looks as if they'll
be needed for a different 'game' now!"

The ship's oars began to creak again.  But was the beat of the drum
less sure?  Were the oars a heartbeat slower?  It seemed to the men
standing on the poopdeck that this was so.

Towards the middle of the day, the atmosphere of death grew and
suddenly from the sea on four sides of the vessel the weird inhabitants
of the Sea of Demons rose and attempted to board them.

But this time they were ready and the guns sent forth a steady stream
of deadly missiles, driving the shrieking horde back into the sea.

"They went quickly enough!"  yelled Andel jubilantly.

"Too quickly.  They'll be more wary next time and they'll be back at
night for sure!"

And night did fall and with it strange sounds which rose from the water
and chilled the blood of the men on board.

But this time the crew were prepared and their searchlights stabbed the
gloom, picking out the grotesque figures of the sea-people.

The crew moved forward, their yells mingling with the strange hissing
cries of the sea-people.  Sabres flashed in the searchlight glare and
the blood of seamen and the man-like monsters mingled on the deck,
making it difficult to get a footing.

The ship was a contrast of glaring light and total blackness.  Men
leaped from shadow into blinding gleam or disappeared into murky
darkness.  Men's breath was streaming in the cold night air.  Men's
battle cries pierced the shadows where light failed.  And Sojan and his
companions were in the thick of it, their swords lashing this way and
that at their inhuman adversaries.  Sojan's war-cry spurred on the men
and slowly, then swiftly, they pushed them back and the body of the
last monster to invade their ship crashed over the rail to splash into
the murky waters below.

There was an audible sigh from the sweating men.

"We've pushed 'em back once, lads, and by Yit, we'll push them back
from here to Rhan if needs be!"  cried Sojan.  With the thrill of
victory still in their hearts, their pulses tingling with conquest, the
men's voices rose in assent.

A brief count found two sailors suffering from wounds where the talons
of the sea-people had ripped them, while three more men were missing,
obviously dragged down by the sea-people.

"We should reach Rhan in a day," said Nornos Rique.

"Or the bottom," broke in Andel gloomily.

But the monotonous day ahead was broken only by the screaming of
sea-birds as they passed the outlying islands of The Immortal Theocracy
of Rhan as it was called.  This "immortal theocracy" was little more
than Rhan itself and a group of four islands inhabited mainly by
primitive tribes, most of whom dwelt in the interior, anyway, and had
probably never heard of Rhan.

As they neared Rhan, Sojan felt misgivings.  Would they succeed in
carrying out their plan?  Or would their perilous journey be in vain.

It was with these odd questions in his mind that he followed his
friends down the gangplank and down a series of narrow lanes to a
private house owned by a society known to those few holding positions
of trust in the Hatnorian Empire, as the "Friends of Hatnor."  These
"friends" were generally native Hatnorians carrying forged or, as in
some cases, real papers giving assumed names as well as assumed
nationalities.

Three long knocks and two short ones three times repeated gained them
admission.

As they walked along the narrow corridor to the main living room they
began to feel just a little more secure, even though they were deep in
the heart of the enemy's city Jhambeelo.

But as the door swung open and friendly light flooded into the dark
corridor they were taken aback!

"Hullo, Sojan," grinned Red.  "I don't think I've met your friends?"

"By Yit!  Red, how did you get here before us?"  cried Sojan.

"Simple.  I flew!"

"What?  No airship could make the distance."

"You're quite right.  I didn't come by airship.  Banjar, here, brought
me!"

For the first time, the comrades noticed what appeared to be a
hunchbacked, rather tall, man with piercing blue eyes and aquiline
features.  Dark-haired, with a swarthy complexion.

"To snap the bow in half," said Red, using a term common on Zylor which
means roughly "To cut a long story short," "Jik, Wanwif, Selwoon and
myself succeeded in staving a rather large hole in the bottom of the
Purple Arrow.  Naturally enough, it was not long before we were
beginning to regret this as the water was rising steadily in the hold.
Then, as we were all good swimmers, I thought that the only way to
escape drowning would be to enlarge the hole and get out that way.  So
in turns we widened the hole and, with a great deal of difficulty,
pulled ourselves under the keel of the boat and up into the open water.
We lost Wanwif, I'm sorry to say.  He didn't make it.  Well, after that
we found that we would have been better off drowning in the ship as
there was no sight of land.  I learned afterwards that we were in the
Black Ocean and this didn't help as the stories I've heard of the Black
Ocean are anything but cheerful.  But believe it or not, after swimming
in a Westerly direction for an hour or so, we were picked up by a
little fishing vessel, oared only, manned by some natives of Yoomik
which is the largest of the Rhanian group next to Rhan itself.

"The people looked after us but soon we got weary of hanging around
their village and decided that an exploratory trip into the interior of
the island would be the only thing to break the monotony.  We trekked
for several days until coming upon the village of Banjar's people the
Ascri.

"The Ascri at one time were enslaved by the Rhanian Priesthood and
still bear a grievance against them.  It was Banjar, who, when he had
heard that I believed you were going to Rhan, suggested that he fly me
there.  We landed at night and made our way here.  Banjar's people are
advanced in many of the crafts and sciences and they have an asset
which helps them tremendously.  Show Sojan and his friends your asset,
Banjar!"

Banjar grinned and stood up.  Unfolding a pair of huge wings.

"My people, I believe, are descended from the ancient winged mammals
who used to live on Zylor.  Just an off-shoot of evolution, I suppose.
But one which has proved of great help to my people who can travel
great distances at great speeds and although we are few in number, we
can elude any enemies by leaving the ground and escaping that way.  As
my friend says, "It is a great asset'!"

Formal introductions were made and food eaten but when this was
finished Sojan spoke to Red.

"Have you managed to find out anything which might prove useful to us,
Red?"

"I have indeed, my friend, I have found out something which, with your
courage and skill and a great deal of luck, will save the world from
chaos!"

9. Prisoners in Stone

RED'S PLAN was simple enough.  Members of the secret society of the
"Friends of Hatnor" had found an ancient plan of the Great Temple which
was both chief place of worship and the centre of the Priesthood's rule
in Rhan.  There were three tunnels leading into it.  Old sewers, long
since disused.  Two were cul-de-sacs, having been walled up.  But in
the last, the walling had been a hasty job and the bricks used to seal
it had collapsed.  However, these tunnels were still guarded at the
other end.  Some said by Palace Guards but others said simply that they
were guarded by "something".  Even if the foe was human it would take
an incredibly brave man to venture the rotting tunnels.

"Why not an army?"  asked Andel.  "Surely a great many men would be
safer than one?"

"Safer, yes, but certainly not so secret.  Every action we make must
not be detected by the Priesthood otherwise we are lost.  We can only
make a very wide guess at what power these Old Ones wield and it is our
aim to stop them using it not bring it down upon our heads and the rest
of the world's heads, also."

"I see," said Parijh, "then let me be the one to go.  I offer not out
of heroics which are extremely bad taste in any case but I am more
accustomed to stealth than these sword-swinging barbarians with me." He
grinned.

"Ho!  So that's what we are, are we?"  roared Andel.  "I'll have you
know ..."

But the comrades would never hear the rest of Andel's forthcoming
witticism for Red broke in: "Be a bit quieter, Andel, or you'll have
the whole of the Rhanian Soldiery on our heads."

"Sorry," said Andel.

"No," continued Red, "I think Sojan should go.  He is better for the
job than anyone else.  He has barbarian training, he is cat-footed,
lynx-eyed and can hear a sword sing in its scabbard a mile away.  I
think he will succeed in getting through more than any other man in our
company!"

"Then it will be I, that's settled," said Sojan with satisfaction.
"When and where do I start?"

"You start now, and I will lead you to the entrance of the tunnel.  I
suggest that you take a rifle, an axe, your shield and your long sword.
Half-armour would be advisable, also."

"Then I shall take your advice," Sojan laughed and proceeded to don
half-armour.  This consisted of greaves for his legs, and a breastplate
and helmet.

Then he was ready and prepared to follow Red down winding backstreets
to a small turning near the Great Temple.  Here, Red lifted a rusted
cover to reveal an equally rusted ladder leading down into darkness.

"Good luck!"  was all he said as Sojan slipped down into the gloom and
sought about for hand and foot-holds on the age worn rail.  Then the
lid was replaced and Sojan found himself in utter darkness.

Down he fumbled, sometimes missing footing where one of the metal bars
had rusted away, once nearly falling when his groping hand instead of
closing on solid metal closed on damp air.  But at last he was on the
uneven floor of the disused sewer, peering into the gloom.  He followed
the wall along for what seemed an eon, stumbling over fallen bricks and
refuse.  At last he sensed an obstruction ahead and he unsheathed his
sword and felt the reassuring butt of his heavy pistol in his hand.  On
he went, past the fallen wall until suddenly there was no more tunnel.
Or so it seemed.  His right hand, which had been groping along the wall
touched nothing.  But after the first brief shock he grinned to
himself. This was the right hand turn of the tunnel.  Soon he would
meet the Guardians.

And meet them he did for, with a soul-shaking shriek, two of the
mysterious guardians were upon him.  Huge reptilian things, red-eyed
and red-mouthed with teeth reaching a foot long and razor sharp.

Sojan, shocked by their sudden attack, took a step backwards, hitched
his rifle to his shoulder and fired straight into the mouth of the
foremost beast.  It shrieked again but still came on.  Hastily he
dropped the rifle and replaced it with his heavy axe and long sword.
But before the beast reached him it had stumbled and fallen with
crumpling forelegs, writhing in a fit of agony which ended with one
abrupt shudder of death.

The other monster was checked for a moment, sniffed the corpse of its
companion and then voiced another spine-chilling shriek which was half
hiss and half human cry.  Sojan met it with sword lashing and axe
whining through the air about his head.  Back went the monster but it
returned in an instant, clutching at Sojan with its claws which almost
resembled human hands though hands with six inch steel talons on the
ends of each finger.  Sojan stumbled backwards, his axe cutting and
hacking at the hideous thing, his sword slashing into its throat again
and again until at last it was down in a death agony that lasted
minutes.

Pausing to wipe his weapons clean of blood and to pick up his rifle,
Sojan moved on down the tunnel, feeling a little more cheerful now that
he knew his foe and had conquered it.

And, abruptly, he was at the end of the runnel and a similar steel
ladder, in better condition, leading upwards.  Warily he clambered up.
Rifle, axe and shield strapped across his broad back and his sword
firmly clenched in his teeth.

There was a metal cover here, too, and he lifted it cautiously to be
blinded for a moment by the sudden gleam.  He had been so long in
darkness and the semi-darkness of the tunnel that he blinked hard for
several seconds until his eyes became accustomed to the light.

Silently he eased his body through the narrow hole and just as softly
replaced the cover.  He was in a lighted corridor with torches on
either side.  The corridor was short and had a door at each end.  Which
door?  He decided immediately to take the door which led farthest away
from the tunnel.  At least he would be a little deeper into the Temple
and nearer the Inner Room in the centre which housed the Old Ones.

Gradually he pushed the door until it swung open.

He thanked the Gods of Light, Yit and Corrunj, that they had not been
locked.

Down another corridor he sped, cat-footed as ever, wary hands on sword
and rifle.  His armour glinted in the torchlight and his shadow loomed
black and huge on the wall.

Most of the priests would be at rest, he knew, but it was equally
certain that guards would be posted at strategic points and absolute
caution was necessary.  He had a rough plan of the Temple printed in
his mind but the maze of corridors which he was following and which ran
deeper and deeper into the heart of the Temple were complicated and
were probably or more recent origin, for the map had been very old.

But cautious as he knew he must be he was certainly not slow.  For
every heartbeat counted.  He had to reach the chamber of the Old Ones
somehow and discover who or what they were and what their motives were
for allying themselves with the evil Priesthood of Rhan.

The murmurs of voices.  The laughs of men.  The clank of sword-scabbard
against armour.  At last, a guarded entrance.  Was he near the strange
sanctuary of the Old Ones?

The men's backs were to him.  This was not the time for heroics, for a
cry would mean discovery; and discovery he must avoid.  He raised his
rifle and brought it down on the head of one guard while with his other
hand he chopped at the back of the other man's neck.  They both
collapsed without a murmur.  Looking up and down the intersecting
corridor to make sure he had not been seen, he grabbed the two bodies
by their loose clothing and pulled them back into the shadows.  No time
to hide them.  And no time to hide himself.  For the clank of steel
shod feet resounded down the corridor.  He hugged the wall and prayed
to his ancient gods that he would not be discovered.

Sojan heard the steps come nearer and nearer, and then, miraculously,
fade away again.  Risking discovery, he peered round the wall and saw
another passageway.  Down it strode two guards and one of the infamous
High Priests of Rhan, the rulers of the place.  Cat-footed as usual, he
followed them.  This corridor was not very well lighted but, unlike the
others, it had doors set in the walls.

Sojan hoped that one of these would not open.

Suddenly the priest stopped.

"Wait here," Sojan heard him say.  No time to think, now, he must act.
Into the nearest apartment and pray to Yit that it was unoccupied.

Luck!  The rooms were empty.  These, Sojan could see, were the
apartments of the High Priests.  No monkish sparsity of furniture here
these rooms were lavishly furnished and decorated.  Grinning, Sojan
bounced down on to the bed and breathed a prayer of relief.  Then he
was up again and taking in his surroundings.  On one wall hung several
of the long flowing robes which the High Priests wore.

One of the customs of these men was to go veiled to give them a little
more security from the assassin, Sojan guessed and also to enable them
to slip from the Temple and mingle with the people without fear of
being recognised.  This was one of the reasons why the people of Rhan
were so easily kept in subjection by the evil priest-Rulers.

But there was a chance, though Sojan knew it was a slim one, that he
could don one of these robes and enter the Inner Chamber and meet the
mysterious Old Ones face to face.

Quickly he slipped into the robe, stuffing all but his sword and pistol
under a nearby couch, and hoping that they would not be discovered. His
sword and pistol were well hidden by the folds of the robe and he could
keep his armour on.

Out now, and down the passage, past the lounging soldiers who sprang to
attention and saluted him with the usual Zylorian salute clenched fists
against temples and a short bow from the waist.

Sojan acknowledged the salute by a curt nod of his head.  The veil hid
his features entirely, and if he was unmasked by some mishap only the
other High Priests would know whether he was a fraud or not.  So,
comparatively safe, Sojan moved along the corridor towards the huge,
metal-studded door which was the portal to the Inner Chamber.

It was unlocked, and the guards on each side of it stood away
respectfully as Sojan opened it.

At first he could see nothing, the room was lit by one torch which cast
shadows everywhere.  Then, from one corner of the large chamber, a
voice spoke.  It was a voice of infinite weariness, full of lost hope
and the knowledge of an eternity of despair.

"Why trouble us again, Priest, we have promised to do your bidding? And
we keep our word if you do not."

Sojan realised that instead of the evil forces he had expected, here
were prisoners; slaves rather than allies of the Priesthood.

"I'm no priest," he said, "if I knew who you were I might help you
even!"

"Is this another trick, Priest," murmured the voice, although this time
there was a little hope in it.

"No trick.  I'm a sworn enemy of the priesthood of Rhan.  I represent
the rest of Zylor, who have no wish to become enslaved by.  the
Rhanians. Yet rumour has it that you are allied with them."  He
squinted into the darkness.  "Who are you or what?"

"We are the old inhabitants of Zylor.  We lived here before ever the
shining ships of humanity sprang from distant planets in a desperate
attempt to reach another habitable planet.  They thought that the end
of their world had come.  As it happened their world did not die, but
it was too late then, they had taken all their knowledge out into space
with them, and in the long journey from Galaxy to Galaxy much of their
knowledge perished, for the journey took centuries to complete.

"By the time the new generations reached this planet, their ancestors
had died and Man had to start again, almost from the beginning.  These
Men, who called themselves "Lemurians" lived peacefully with us for
many hundreds of years and we helped them as much as possible, for we
are a very ancient race and had more knowledge than ever the ancestors
of the Lemurians, although of a different kind for while Man
concentrated on improving his body, we concentrated on improving our
minds and could control mighty elements with our wills.  Eventually the
Men became frightened of us and sent us away (there were only a few of
us living in far-flung colonies then; now we are even less)."

"But how did you become the slaves of these priests?"  asked Sojan.
"What happened?"

"Although there were many men who feared us and called us Things of
Evil and similar names, there were others who began to worship us for
our powers, calling us gods and setting up altars and Temples to us.

"Just as some men are foolish, some of our num her were foolish and
began to think that perhaps they were gods after all.  They dwelt in
the Temples and had sacrifices made to them and took part in
meaningless rituals.  The priests soon found their weaknesses, however,
and decided that they could rule the people if they frightened them by
telling them of the wrath of the gods and so on.  They succeeded in
capturing us and imprisoning us.  I was one of the foolish ones, our
contemporaries have long since left this planet in search of another,
uninhabited by Man, with whom they cannot live in peace.

"You may have read in your history scrolls of the mighty Theocracy
which dominated the world at one time.  Rhan is now all that is left of
the Theocracy a remnant of a great and terrible nation!  The people
rose against their oppressors, country by country, until the evil
Priesthood was driven back, further and further, to seek refuge on this
island, the original capital of the old Imperial Theocracy.  It was
here that the cult, based on worship of us, was spawned and, if you can
help us, it is here that it will die.  Otherwise a new Black Age shall
cover the world in a cloak of death!"

"But," cried Sojan, "if you do not wish them to rule Man then why do
you help them?  Why do you lend them your powers to destroy the great
Nations of Zylor?"

"They have promised us freedom, O, Man!  Freedom after thousands of
decades.  Freedom after eons of despair.  We would follow our brothers,
we would travel the infinite lengths of Space and Time were we once
released.  We would see Suns and Planets, green things.  Seas and
Plains.  For us these things are worth more than life.  We are of them
more than

Man for we, like the planets and the stars, and the grass that grows
for ever, are almost immortal.  We have no bodies, as Man knows bodies,
no senses as Man interprets senses we are Minds.  You can see that the
temptation is great!  We were not strongwilled to begin with, we were
proud of Man's petty ceremonies.  Now that he offers us Light and
Freedom again, we must accept.  Unless there is another way."

"There may be another way," Sojan said.  "If you will but tell me how
you are imprisoned, perhaps I can release you!"

"There are certain minerals, rare and almost unknown, which have the
properties that lead has compared to radium.  Radium cannot harm or
pass through lead.  Similarly, although we can pass through most
minerals and life forms, we are imprisoned if we enter a certain
precious stone.  We can enter it, but by some strange trick of nature,
our beings cannot pass back through it.  Thus we were enticed,
centuries ago, into these blocks of ermtri stone.  The only way in
which we can escape is by someone outside boring shafts into the blocks
and thus cutting channels through which we can pass.  Do you
understand?"

Dimly Sojan understood, though his brain was shaken by the effort of
trying to imagine beings so utterly alien to Man, yet in some ways akin
to him.  He picked up the torch and cast its light towards the centre
of the hall.  There on an altar, covered by a crimson cloth, rested
five large blocks of some dark, cloudy blue substance.  Like like blue
jade. It was a stone that Sojan, who had travelled the whole of his
planet almost, had never seen had never, what is more, heard of not
even in legends.

"I understand," he said, "what tool will cut it?"

"Steel, sharp steel will bore into it.  Have you steel?"

"Yes.  Will it hurt you?"

"No, it will leave no impression."

Wiping sweat from his forehead and hands, Sojan moved towards the
blocks.  He drew his sword and clambered up on to the altar.  Placing
the sharp point of his blade on top of the first block, he turned it
round and round.  Feeling it bite deeper and deeper into the strange
substance he became aware of a strange tingling which seemed to flow up
his sword and into his body, he couldn't define it but it was not
unpleasant.  Suddenly there was a dazzling burst of green and orange
brightness and something seemed to flow from the hole that he had
bored, flow out and upwards, lighting the room.  He heard no words, but
in his mind there was a great sense of joy of thanks.  Then, one by one
he saw the other blocks, broken by the same strange power, open and the
green and orange brightness flow from them.

Then they took on a slightly more solid shape, until Sojan could make
out eyes and circular bodies.  These, then, were the Old Ones.  Perhaps
in a million, million years, man too would have succeeded in being able
to form the atoms of his body into whatever shape he desired.  Perhaps,
these beings once were Men?  That would explain the strange kinship
Sojan felt for them.  A kinship which his Lemurian ancestors felt also,
before their witnessing of such alien powers changed their finer
feelings into those of fear and hate.

"Before you leave," Sojan begged, "I crave one request as a price for
your release."

"Anything!"

"Then when I am out of this building and safely at sea, destroy this
place of evil so that the power of the priests will be shattered for
all time and such an evil can never rise again!"

"Gladly we grant you this.  We will wait here until you are at sea. But
tread carefully, we cannot help you to escape."

Thanking them, Sojan turned about and left, sword in hand.  But in his
exultation he had forgotten the soldiers outside and they stared in
amazement at the sword in his hand and the sweat on his face.  This did
not seem to them any High Priest.

Taking quick stock of the situation, Sojan spoke to them.

"I I had a little difficulty with one of the bolts on the interior," he
lied, "I had to use this sword to loosen it .. ."

With a puzzled look, the men bowed and saluted, but there was doubt in
their eyes.

"A priest would not go unveiled for anything," he heard one of them
murmur as he entered the room which he had left previously.  "He
doesn't seem a priest to me!  Here you, stop a minute!"

But Sojan had bolted the door and was hastily donning his weapons
again.  The men began to bang on the door and more men came to see what
the noise was about.

"That's no priest," he heard someone say, "The High Priest Thoro is
conducting the Ceremony of Death in the Outer Temple!  He won't be back
for hours!"

"Batter the door down you fools," came a voice that was obviously that
of one in authority, probably a High Priest.

Anxiously, Sojan looked for another exit.  There was only a curtained
window.

He parted the curtain, and looked outside.  It was still dark.  He
looked down.  A courtyard scarcely ten feet below.  With luck, he
thought, I can jump down there and escape as best I can.  He put a foot
on the ledge and swung himself over, dropping lightly to the grass of
the courtyard.  In the centre of the courtyard a fountain splashed
quietly a scene of peace and solitude.  But not for long.  He saw a
face at the window he had so recently quit.

"He's down there," one of the soldiers shouted.

Sojan ducked into the nearest doorway, opposite the room he had left.
He ran down a short, dark corridor and up a flight of steps.  No sign
of pursuit yet.  Panting heavily he ran in the direction he knew an
exit to be.  It would be guarded now, he knew, for the whole Temple was
by this time alert.  And so it was.  With his usual good luck, Sojan
had succeeded in making the exit unchallenged.  But there would be no
such luck here, with five huge soldiers coming at him.

Again he had no time for heroics.  His pistol came up and two of his
would-be killers went down.  The other three were on him now and his
sword cut a gleaming arc about his head.  His battle-axe shrieked as if
for blood as he carried the attack towards his foes instead of they to
him.  Nonplussed for a second, they fell back.

That falling back was for them death, for now Sojan had some kind of
advantage and he made full use of it as he drove blow after blow,
thrust after thrust into the men.

Bleeding himself from several wounds, Sojan came on, down went one man,
then another.  Now the last warrior, fighting with desperation hacked
and parried, and sought an opening in Sojan's amazing guard.

None came, the man sought an opening too often, lunged forward and
almost pinioned himself on Sojan's blade.  Back he tried to leap,
clumsily.  A perfect target for a whistling, battered axe to bury
itself in helmet and brain.

Leaving his axe where it had come to rest, Sojan fled the Temple.  His
heart pounding, he finally reached the house where his friends
waited.

"Come," he cried, "I'm successful but we must make the ship
immediately, all of us, else we all die.  I don't know what they intend
to do."

His companions realised that there was no time for an explanation and
followed him wordlessly.

A frantic race for the docks.  One brief skirmish with a City Patrol
and then they were on board.  Up anchor, out oars, castoff.

And as the ship sped from the harbour they looked back.

There came a blinding flash and then a deep, rolling roar as the great
Temple erupted in a sudden burst of flame.  Then, as they peered back
at the city, there was blackness again.  The Temple was not burning
there was no Temple now to burn it had been dissolved.

As they watched, Sojan and his friends saw five streaks of blue and
orange flame rise skyward and rocket upwards and outwards towards the
stars.

"What was that?"  gasped Nornos Rique.

"The Old Ones," smiled Sojan.  "I'll tell you a tale which you may not
believe.  But it is a tale which has taught me much as well as giving
me a valuable history lesson!"

The voyage back was not a boring one for Sojan's companions as they
listened to his strange tale.

But what of the Purple Galley you ask, what of Orfil and the Princess
who betrayed Rique?  That, readers, is a story which is short and sad.
They, too, attempted to sail through the Sea of Demons in pursuit of
Sojan and his companions.

But they were not so lucky.

10.  The Plain of Mystery

THE WIND tore at the rigging of the tiny air-cruiser as it pushed
bravely into the howling storm.

Four men clung to the deck rails whilst a fifth strove to steer the
tossing gondola.

"Keep her headed North!"  yelled Nornos Rique to Sojan.

"At this rate we'll be tossed on to Shortani unless the wind shifts!"
he yelled back.

Parijh the Uffjirian grimaced.

"I've been meaning to go home for some time!"  he called.

"You'll be home for your own funeral unless someone gives me a hand
with this wheel!"  cried Sojan.

Sojan, Nornos Rique, Parijh, Andel and Red, the five men who had saved
their planet of Zylor from the evil priest-rulers of Rhan some months
ago, were returning to Hatnor after being the guests of honour at
several banquets held to celebrate their triumph.  Sojan, Rique, Andel
and Red had been uncomfortable about the whole thing, only Parijh,
always glad of the limelight, had enjoyed himself thoroughly.

The storm had sprung up quickly and they were now battling to keep the
little dirigible into the wind which drove them steadily southwards.

"Wouldn't it be better to land, Sojan?"  Andel shouted.

"It would be, my friend, if we knew where we were.  There's every
likelihood of getting out of this trouble into something worse."

Suddenly there was a loud snapping sound and the wheel spun throwing
Sojan off balance and on to the deck.

"What was that?"  yelled Parijh.

"Steering's gone!  We can't attempt to repair it in this weather. We'll
just have to drift now!"

The five trooped down into the tiny cabin.  Even there it was not warm
and they were all depressed as they shivered in their cloaks and
attempted to get some sleep.

Morning came and the storm had not abated.  It lasted all through that
day, the wind ripping into the ship and sending it further and further
South.

"There's never been a storm like this in my memory!"  Nornos Rique
said.

The others agreed.

"Further North," said Andel, "they're quite frequent.  Lasting for
days, so they say."

"That's true," said Sojan.

By midnight of the next night the storm finished and the sky cleared of
the clinging cloud.  The stars, their constellations unfamiliar to
Earth eyes, shone brightly and Sojan took a quick bearing.

"We're over Shortani all right," he muttered.  "Well over.  In fact, I
believe we're near the interior of the continent."

Beneath them the scene was one of peace rather than that of death and
mystery.  Great plains, watered by winding rivers, lush forests,
rearing mountains, proud like gods looking down upon men.  Here and
there herds of strange animals could be detected for the moons were
very bright.  They were drinking and did not look up at the airship
gliding silently above them.

In the morning Sojan and Andel set to work on repairing the broken
steering-lines whilst the others looked down at the peaceful-seeming
country beneath them.

All the time they worked they drifted further and further into the
interior.

"If we drift much further Sojan, we won't have enough fuel to get us
out again.  Remember, we only had enough for a short journey!"  Parijh
called up to him where he was working on the steering gear.

"Yit take us!  I hadn't thought of that," cried Sojan.  "But there's
nothing we can do until this steering is fixed.  Work as fast as
possible Andel or we'll be stranded here!"

But repairing the steering wires and readjusting the rudder, especially
sitting in the rigging with only a flimsy safety line between you and
oblivion, isn't easy and it took Sojan and Andel several hours before
the motors could be started up again.

"There's not enough fuel to make it back to Hatnor," Sojan said.  "But
if we're lucky we'll make a civilised country on the Shortani coast!"

Now there was nothing they could do but hope and the men relaxed,
watching the wonderful scenery beneath them and speculating on what
kind of men, if any, lived there.

Red, who played a Zylorian instrument called a rinfrit a kind of
eight-stringed guitar, sang them a song, based on an old legend about
these parts.  The first verse went something like this:

"There's many a tale that has been told Of Phek the traveller, strong
and bold!  But the strangest one I've ever heard Is when he caught a
shifla bird."

"What's a shifla bird?"  enquired Andel curiously.

"Oh, it's supposed to be as big as an airship and looks like a great
lizard."

His companions were amused at this story, and all but Sojan, who was
looking over towards the West, laughed.

"Don't worry too much," said Sojan calmly, "but is that anything like
your shifla bird?"

And there, rising slowly from the forest, was the largest animal any of
the adventurers had ever seen.  Earth men would call it a dragon if
they saw it.  Its great reptilian jaws were agape and its huge batwings
drove it along at incredible speed.

"It seems there was some truth in the legend," muttered Red, licking
dry lips and automatically fingering his pistol at his belt.

"There's always some truth in legends," said Sojan, "however
incredible."

The thing was almost upon them now, obviously taking their cruiser for
some kind of rival.  It was as big as their cruiser although its body
was about half the size whilst its wings made up the rest of its bulk.
It was a kind of blueish grey, its great mouth a gash of crimson in its
head whilst wicked eyes gleamed from their sockets making it look like
some supernatural demon from the Zylorian "Halls of the Dead"

"Drop, Sojan, drop!"  cried Nornos Rique as the men stood for a moment
paralysed at this sight of something which they attributed only to the
story scrolls of children.

Sojan whirled, rushed over to the controls and pushed several levers
which opened valves in their gas-bag and caused the ship to lose height
quickly.

The shifla swooped low overhead, barely missing them and causing them
to duck automatically.  Suddenly there came a crashing of branches, the
ripping of fabric and the harsh snap of breaking wood.  The ship had
crashed into the forest.  The men had been so busy trying to escape
from the danger above them that they had forgotten the forest beneath
them.

Sojan lifted his arm to shield his face and flung himself backwards as
a branch speared through the ship as if it were a fish and nearly
speared him at the same time.  Eventually the noise stopped and,
although the ship was swaying dangerously and threatening to fall apart
any moment, sending the men to destruction, Sojan and his friends found
that they had only bruises and scratches.

Sojan's barbarian instincts came to the rescue.  Catfooted as ever he
clambered out of the wreckage on to the branch which had almost killed
him.

"Quick," he yelled, "after me!"

His friends followed him quickly, Parijh panting with the effort.  They
moved cautiously along the branch and finally reached the trunk of the
tree.  Down they clambered, easily now for the tree was full of strong
branches and it was only a drop of four or five feet to the ground.

Sojan looked up to where the airship dangled, its great gasbag
deflated, the gondola smashed and torn.

"When that falls," he said, "we'd better be some distance away for it's
likely that the engine will explode."

"There go our supplies and rifles and ammunition," said Nornos Rique
quietly.

"We've got our lives for the present at least," Sojan reminded him.
"We'll have to head steadily Northwards and hope that we don't strike a
mountain range.  If we are lucky we can follow a river across a plain.
Several plains adjoin civilised or semi civilised territories don't
they, Parijh?"

"One of them runs into my own country of Uffjir, Sojan, but there's one
chance in fifty of making it!"

"Then it looks as if we'll have to chance it, Parijh," Sojan replied
slowly, looking over towards the East.  "But at least we shall be able
to ride.  There see?"

They looked in the direction in which he was pointing.  About a mile
away, a herd of my ats grazed placidly.

"Fan out we should catch them easily if we organise properly," Sojan
called.

Slowly, so that they would not disturb the animals, Sojan and his
friends closed in on the my ats Once trapped they were easily caught
for, unlike most animals used as beasts of burden, my ats were bred
originally for the sole purpose of carrying man.

Now that they were mounted, the friends made good time in the direction
in which they were headed.  Some days later Sojan caught sight of a
strange gleam in the distance as if the sun was glancing off a highly
polished surface.

"Head in that direction," he called to his companions.  "There seems to
be a building of some kind over there!"

And sure enough, it was a building.  A great glistening domed
construction, rising hundreds of feet,

so it seemed, into the air.  It was built of a similar stone to marble
but what was it?  And why was it standing alone in such a savage
wilderness and (this troubled the companions more than anything) were
there men using it now?

"The only way to find out who or what is in there is to go nearer,"
said Andel.

"You're right," agreed Sojan.  "Let's go!"

They forced their steeds into a quick trot.

They dismounted silently and made their way cautiously to the wide
entrance of the place, which seemed to be unguarded.

There were windows high above them, seeming to be set in rooms situated
at different levels in the building.  Part of the roof was flat but
most of it rose in a magnificent dome.  Although there were no signs of
corrosion at all, the men got the impression that the building was
centuries old.

"There seem to be no stairs in the place," mused Sojan, looking around
him at the gleaming marble halls which they had entered.  To his left
were two sheets of shining metal, seemingly set into the walls for no
reason.  To his right was an archway leading into a room just as bare
as the one in which they now stood.

"Wonder what these are?"  Red said, brushing his hand across one of the
metal sheets.

Instantly there was a faint hum and the sheet of metal disappeared
upwards, revealing a small was it a cupboard?

Red stepped warily into the alcove, sword in hand.  At once, the sheet
of metal hummed downwards behind him.

"By Yit.  He's trapped!"  cried Sojan.

He brushed his own hand across the metal, but nothing happened.  For
several minutes he tried to open the metal door but it seemed
impossible.  How Red had done it, they could not tell.

Suddenly from the outside came a yell.

Rushing into the sunlight they looked up and there was Red, looking
very cheerful, grinning down on them from a window of the tenth storey,
the one nearest the roof.

"How did you get up there?"  called Nornos Rique.

"The 'cupboard' took me up!  It's a kind of moving box which lifts you
up to any storey you wish.  Though I had to go all the way up.  There
were lots of buttons to press, but I dare not press any of them.  After
I'd got out, the doors closed again.  I tried to get back in but the
doors at that end wouldn't move.  It looks as if I'm stuck here for
life."

He didn't look as if he was particularly worried about the prospect.

Comprehending, Sojan rushed back into the great hall and again passed
his hand over the metal "door."  It hummed upwards.  He didn't step in
immediately but waited for his friends to join him.

"The ones who built this place must have been wonderful engineers,"
remarked Sojan.  "And by the way, I recognised the language in which
the directions for the operation of that thing were written it's old
Kifinian!"

"What?"  exclaimed Parijh.  "You mean that the ancestors of the
Kifinians built this?"

"Obviously.  Otherwise how do you explain the language?"

"From what you learned at the Temple of Rhan, Sojan," mused Nornos
Rique, "the ancestors of the entire planet, so far as human beings like
ourselves are concerned, came from another planet thousands of years
ago perhaps this was built before the race spread and degenerated.  But
what could it be?"

"I think I know," answered Sojan.  "Notice how the whole area around
the building is entirely treeless a flat plain a few shrubs, now, and
other vegetation, but for the most part flat.  This place was a landing
field for airships of some kind.  We have, as you know, similar landing
fields all over the civilised parts of Zylor.  This place was a control
station probably."

Suddenly Red who had been standing by the window called to his
friends.

"Look, down there!"  he yelled.  "Savages, hundreds of them!"

Below them swarmed a silent mass of strange near human creatures.  They
all carried spears and broad bladed swords.  They were covered in
short, matted hair and had long tails curling behind them.

"We seem to have violated taboo ground, judging by their actions," said
Parijh who knew the people better than the rest, for his race
occasionally traded with them.  "They won't enter themselves, but they
will wait until we come out as come out we must, for food."

"The best thing we can do," said Andel, "is to look around this place
and see if there is any other way out."

"Good idea," agreed Sojan, "if you see any more of those metal plates,
try to open them."

They split up and each explored a certain section of the floor.  Soon
they heard Andel call from the centre of the building.  Rushing to the
room from which he had called they were astounded to see a large,
opened panel.  This one revealed a kind of bridge spanning a drop which
must have gone right down to the foundations of the building.  The
bridge led to a huge, streamlined shell of gleaming metal fitted with
triangular fins.

They stepped on to the bridge and moved single file across it until
they reached a door.  Scowling faintly, Sojan deciphered the ancient
hieroglyphics on it.

"Here we are," he said, pressing a button.  "To Open."  And open it
did.

"It's obviously an airship of some kind," said Andel, who was the most
mechanically minded of the five.  "Probably a ship similar to the ones
in which our ancestors came to this planet."

"You mean an airship capable of travelling through space?"  said
Sojan.

"Perhaps," said Andel, "but also travelling from continent to continent
probably.  If only we knew how to operate it!"

They finally managed to find the control room of the ship.  All around
them were tiers of dials and instruments.  Working quickly, now that
the script was becoming more familiar to him, Sojan deciphered most of
the captions on the instruments.  Set on the main control panel were
levers marked, "Automatic, Emergency, Poltoon, Automatic, Emergency,
Jhar", etc.  The names were those of continents.

"We can't stay here all the time," said Sojan.  "If we stay we will
starve to death, if we go outside we die, we might as well risk it." So
saying, and without waiting for his friends' advice he pulled the lever
marked Poltoon and stood back.

There came a gentle hum as the door through which they had entered
closed.  Another hum grew steadily louder and the entire roof of the
building opened out letting in the sunlight.  Then a hiss and a rumble
like thunder and Sojan and his companions were thrown to the floor.
Still the rumble increased until blackness overcame them and they lost
consciousness.

Sojan was the first to recover.  Looking through the forward porthole
he saw a sight which to him was terrifying.  The velvet blackness of
outer space, stars set like diamonds in its ebony beauty.

There was another rumble from the depths of the ship.  With animal
tenacity he sought to cling to consciousness.  But it was no good.  He
collapsed once more on the floor of the ship.

He awoke a second time to see a blue sky above him and green vegetation
beneath him.  His friends rose on shaky legs.

"We're not much better off, it seems," grinned Sojan cheerful now.
"We're in the Poltoonian Wilderness.  The nearest civilised land is
Tigurn.  See over there are the remains of a port similar to the one on
the Shortani plain."

He pulled another lever.  Immediately the portholes disappeared and
they had the sensation of moving downwards at great velocity.  A high
pitched whine and they stopped.  A panel slid open and a small bridge
moved outwards over a drop of some five feet above the ground.

"There was probably a landing stage at this point," said Sojan with the
air of an ancient professor delivering a lecture.  "Anyway," he
laughed, "we can drop the last few feet."

When they reached the ground they stood back.

Then the faint purr of machinery and the doors closed.  Another sound,
not quite so smooth the chug-chug of an airship motor.  The companions
turned and saw several large airships of standard pattern circling
above them.  They flew the banner of Pelira, a country which had
allegiance to Hatnor.  Flying low, the captain of the airship inspected
them, saw that they were not the strange monsters he had expected and
landed his craft lightly fifty feet away from them.  They ran towards
it.

The look of astonishment on the captain's face was ludicrous.  He
immediately recognised the companions who, since their conquest of the
priest-rulers of Rhan had become national heroes.

"What what ?"  was all he could get out at first.

"How're you fixed for fuel, friend?"  laughed Sojan.

"We we've got a full tank, sir, but how .. . ?"

"Then head for Hatnor," grinned the adventurer.  "We'll explain on the
way."

11.  The Sons of the Snake-God

"WHO SEEKS to set foot in Dhar-Im-Jak?"

A harsh voice rang across the harbour to the merchantman Kintonian
Trader, which ran at anchor there.

The captain cupped his hands into a megaphone and roared back at the
soldier.

"Sojan Shieldbearer, late of the court of Nornos Kad in Hatnor,
mercenary swordsman!  Seeking employment!"

"I've heard of him.  Very well, we need good sword arms in Dhar-Im-Jak,
tell him he may land!"

Traani, captain of the Trader, called down to Sojan who sat sprawled in
his cabin.

"They say you can land, Sojan!"

"Right, I'll get my gear together."

Ten minutes later, a tall figure stepped on to the deck of the ship.
His long fair hair was held back from his eyes by a fillet of metal,
his dark blue eyes had a strange, humorous glint in them.  Over a
jerkin of green silk was flung a heavy cloak of yellow, his blue
breeches were tucked into leather boots.  Upon his back was slung a
long and powerful air rifle, on his left arm he carried a round shield.
From a belt around his waist were hung a long vilthor and a pistol
holster.  Sojan the Swordsman was looking for work.

Later that day, in an inn near the city centre, Sojan met the man to
whom he had been directed when he had told the authorities of the
harbour what kind of employment he was seeking.

"You're looking for employment in the ranks of the regular military, I
hear?  What qualifications do you have?"  he said.

"I was commander of the Armies of Imperial Hatnor for nearly a year. In
that time I succeeded in stopping a rising in Veronlam, a similar
rising in Asno, I organised the Poltoonian barbarians when Nornos Kad
was deposed and restored him to his throne.  I and four others were
instrumental in utterly destroying the would-be conquerors of Zylor the
Rhanian Theocracy.  I have been involved in several minor border wars,
but of late things have quietened down and I thought that I would try
my luck somewhere else.  I heard of the impending war between the city
states of Dhar-Im-Jak and Forsh-Mai and decided that I would like to
take part."

"I have heard of you, Sojan.  Your remark about Rhan jogged my memory.
I feel that you would be a great asset to us.  We need more
professional soldiers of your calibre.  As you know, both Dhar-ImJak
and Forsh-Mai have been on friendly terms for hundreds of years,
neither of us had any use for regular armies.  Then about a year ago
this new religious cult took over the ruling of Forsh-Mai and quickly
formed an army of soldiers, spies, troublemakers and all kinds of
undercover men.  It was only recently that our own spies brought us the
news that, as we suspected, Forsh-Mai was preparing to march into
Dhar-Im-Jak and take over our republic."

"Have you any idea when they intend to attack?"

"In two weeks time, no less, I'm sure."

"Then we must work fast.  I would be grateful to know what kind of
command you intend giving me?"

"I shall have to discuss that with my superiors.  I will naturally let
you know as soon as possible."

Edek rose, downed the last of his drink and, with a short nod, left the
inn.  Just as Sojan was rising, there came a scream from the alley
outside.  Sword out, he rushed for the door to see a girl struggling in
the grip of several burly fighting men.  They were obviously bent on
kidnapping her and Sojan lost no time in engaging the nearest hireling
The man was an expert swordsman, his thrusts were well timed and it was
all Sojan could do, at first, to parry them.  The man's companions were
still holding the girl who seemed to be making no attempt to get free.
The clash of steel was music to him and a grim fighting smile appeared
on his lips.  Suddenly he felt a hard blow on the back of his head and
the lights went out.

He regained consciousness in a small room, barred on both door and
windows.  Standing over him were two men; one held a water jug in his
hand with which he was dousing Sojan.

"So our hard-headed mercenary is at last awake; I see!"  The tone was
gloating.  The man's face did not belie the impression his voice gave.
His thick black locks and beard were curled and oiled.

Upon his fingers were heavy rings, his nails were tinted with gold.
Sojan looked at him in disgust.  The bejewelled fop signalled to his
companion to throw some more water at Sojan.  Instantly Sojan rose and
knocked the jug flying across the small cell.

"If your manners were as fine as the silks you wear, my friend, I
should take you for some sort of man!"

The fop's face twisted for a moment and he half raised his hand.  Then
he smiled and dropped the hand to his side.

"We'll allow the wolf some time in which to cool the heat of his temper
as water seems to be no use," he murmured.  "Come Yuckof, let us leave
this place it smells!"

Sojan signalled to the guard who was locking the door.

"What place is this, friend?"

"You're in the Castle of Yerjhi, swordsman, we caught you nicely didn't
we?  That ruse in getting a girl to pretend that she was being captured
was Lord Yerjhi's idea.  He's a clever one.  You'd be better off to be
a little more civil to him, he is thinking of employing you."

Several hours later, Yerjhi returned with the same escort.

"Now, Sojan," he smiled, "I can understand your annoyance at being
locked up in this place but it was the only way in which we could um
convince you of our sincerity when we offer you fifty thousand derkas
to take command of our armies and lead them to glorious victory for the
State of Forsh-Mai.  We, the Sons of the Snake, will conquer all.
Everything will be yours.  What say you man, is that not a fair
proposition?"

"Aye, it's fair," Sojan's eyes narrowed.  He decided to bluff for a
while.  "Fifty thousand you say?"

"That and any spoils you can take for yourself when we loot
Dhar-Im-Jak!"

"But what's this "Sons of the Snake' you mention?  Do I have to join
some secret society to wield a sword for fifty thousand derkas?"

"That is a necessary part of our offer, Sojan.  We are, after all,
doing this for the glory of Rij, the Snake, Lord of the World and the
After World, Master of Darkness, Ruler of the ..."

"Yes, yes, we'll forget that for a moment.  What does it involve?"

"First a meeting of all the major disciples, myself, the
General-in-Command (who will take orders from you while the conquest is
in progress), my majordomo, the two priests who invent hmm who spread
the Truth of the Snake."

"But why this mumbo-jumbo if you want to conquer your enemy, why not
just do it?  I can't understand what you're trying to do."

"Then briefly I will explain.  The two cities have been at peace for
hundreds of years.  Men and women from the states have intermingled
with each other, intermarried.  Apart from the names and boundaries, we
are practically the same people.  We need an excuse, man, don't you
see?  We can't send a man to march against his brother or even son
unless he thinks that there is something worth fighting for.  This, my
dear Sojan, is a hmm Holy war.  Quite legitimate.  We are how shall I
put it?  spreading the Word of the Snake God with the Sword of Justice!
Part of our indoctrination campaign, actually, that last bit."

"Right!  I'll join."  Sojan had hit on a daring plan.  "When do I
become an initiate?"

An hour later, Sojan stood in a darkened room.  In front of him was a
long table and at it sat men dad in robes decorated with serpents.

"Let the ceremony begin," he intoned.

Now was the time to act.  They had given Sojan back his sword along
with his other equipment and he now drew it.  With the blade humming he
downed the two nearest men.  Three left, three wary men and led by one
who had been described as the finest swordsman in Shortani.

Luckily only two of the men were swordsmen the other was almost
helpless.  In the fore Yerjhi, cowl flung back and his face a mask of
hate.

"Trick me would you," he hissed.  "We'll show you what we do to dogs
who try to turn on Yerjhi!"

Sojan felt a lancing pain go through him and he felt the warm blood as
it trickled down his left arm.  With renewed energy he launched himself
at Yerjhi who was taken off guard for a moment.  Clean steel pierced a
tainted heart and the man toppled backwards with a short
death-scream.

With the fake "Sons of the Snake God" exposed for what they were, what
amounted to civil war was averted and the two cities resumed their
friendly relations.  Once again Sojan had done a major service for a
cause in which he believed.

12.  The Devil Hunters of Norj

THE LAST rays of Zylor's second sun were just waning when Sojan reined
his myat and stared down into the green valley below.

He glanced at the crude map before him.

"This must be the Valley of Norj.  It seems to be unexplored according
to the map.  Strange that no one has ventured into it."

Strange it was; for, even in the dusk, Sojan could see that the valley
was lush and green.  A river wound through it and brightly plumed birds
sang from the branches of tall trees.  A seeming paradise.

"It will make an excellent place to camp," thought the mercenary as he
guided his mount downwards.

Later that night, he made his camp in a small natural clearing in the
forest.  His myat was tethered nearby and his campfire glowed cheerily.
The night was warm and full of forest smells.

After eating his meal, Sojan climbed between his blankets and was soon
asleep.

It was just after midnight when the strange noises awakened the
warrior.

There they were again a peculiar hissing screech and the pounding of
hooves; the cries of men, and the vicious cracks of whips.

Sojan raised himself on one elbow, hand reaching for his sword.  The
myat stirred uneasily and swished its great tail from side to side.

The noises drew nearer and then subsided as they fell away towards the
West of the valley.

Sojan did not sleep any more that night but kept a watchful eye open.
The rest of the night was uneventful and in the morning, Sojan cooked
himself a big meal which was meant to last him the day, for he intended
to investigate the noises he had heard the night before.

Riding slowly, with eyes always scanning the ground, Sojan soon found
the tracks that the inhabitants of the valley had made.  There were two
distinct sets of tracks.  One similar to those of a myat although with
subtle differences, seemingly lighter.  The others were entirely
unfamiliar.  Three-toed tracks like, and yet unlike, those of a bird
and considerably larger.  The beast that had made them as obviously a
quadruped of some kind, but other than that Sojan could not tell what
kind of animal had made them there were four legged birds he could
think of and none of these he had heard about were as large as this.

There had been at least ten riders, and it seemed that they had been
chasing one or perhaps two of these bird-beasts.  Probably some kind of
hunt, thought Sojan, yet what kind of men were they who hunted at the
dead of night?

Sojan rode on, following the tracks in the hope that he would find some
clue to the mystery.  He came across a steep inclination, the tracks
ended here in a flurry of mud and blood.  Then the tracks of the beasts
the men had been riding continued, and they had ridden for a short
while parallel with the bluff and then forced their animals to ride up
it.

Sojan did the same, the beast slipped occasionally and nearly slid back
but eventually it reached the top.  From there Sojan saw a strange"
scene.

A battle of some kind was going on between two groups of men.  Near a
squat black-stoned tower, five men, one mounted, were endeavouring to
check a horde of armoured warriors who rushed from the tower.  Beasts
similar to Sojan's myat but hornless and almost tailless stood
waiting.

The mounted man held the tethering reins of the other four animals
while he cut at two of the armoured men with a battle axe held in his
right hand.

Although the mounted man was clad in armour, the other four were
dressed only in jerkins of coloured cloth and divided kilts of leather.
They were unshod and carried no sheaths for the weapons, mainly swords,
with which they defended themselves.  It seemed to Sojan that they were
attempting to escape from the armoured warriors, one of whom, dressed
more richly, and darker than the other, stood in the rear and urged
them on in a language which was unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar, to
Sojan's ears.

But there was no time to ponder over this now; the men needed help and
Sojan, in a more curious than chivalrous mood, intended to aid them and
perhaps find some answer to the mystery.

His long spear was out, his shield up and he forced the myat into a
wild gallop down the hill, screaming to his gods in a barbarian
war-shout.

His savage thrust caught the first of the armoured warriors in the
throat and stayed there, the spear jerking like a tufted reed in a
storm.  His sword screamed from its scabbard as he pushed deeper into
the melee of cursing men.

Taking this chance of escape while the enemy were still confused, the
other men quickly mounted their beasts.  Sojan was still in the thick
of it, sword lashing everywhere and dealing death with every stroke.
One of the riders looked back, saw the mercenary still engaged and
spurred his own beast back to where Sojan fought.

Grinning his thanks to Sojan he covered the mercenary's retreat with
his own slim blade then followed.

Howling, the warriors attempted to pursue on foot, were brought back by
their leader's frantic cries and scrambled round the back of the
building.

The armoured rider called to Sojan in the familiar, yet unintelligible
tongue, and pointed towards the East.  Sojan understood and turned his
myat in that direction.  Behind them their pursuers were whipping their
steeds in an effort to overtake them.

Deep into the forest they rode, leaving their enemies far.  behind  For
perhaps three hours they detoured until they reached the end of the
valley where a sheer cliff rose.  Brushing aside some shrubbery, the
armoured man disclosed an opening in the base of the cliff.

Ducking their heads, the six rode through, the last man replacing the
camouflage.

The passage ended in several connecting caves and it was in one of
these that they stabled their mounts and continued on foot to the cave
at the far end.  Here they slumped into chairs, grinning with relief at
their escape.

The leader, the man in armour began to speak to

Sojan who stood bewilderedly trying to understand the language in which
they questioned him.  Vaguely he began to realise what it was it was
his own tongue, yet so altered as to be scarcely recognisable.  In an
hour he could understand most of their speech and in two he was telling
them how he had come to the Valley of Norj.

"But I am curious to find out who you are and why men hunt giant
four-legged birds at midnight," he said.  "Who were the men from whom
you escaped?"

"It is a long story to explain in a few words," said Jarg, the leader,
"but I will first attempt to tell you a little of the political
situation here, in Norj.

"There are two distinct races living here men like ourselves and
another race whom I scarcely like to define as 'men'.  Ages ago our
people reached this valley after a long sea voyage and trek across
Shortani.  we came to this valley and settled in it and it was not for
some time that we learned that another people lived at the far end of
the valley.  A race of grim, black haired and black-eyed men, who
hunted at night with steel tipped flails and who remained in their
castles during the day.  They did not trouble us at first and
eventually we became used to the hunts, even though they sometimes
passed through our fields and destroyed our crops.  We were secure, we
thought, in the valley and there was no man curious enough to venture
too near the black-stoned castles of the Cergii.

"But soon men and women even children of our people began to disappear
and the hunts became more frequent for the Cergii had found a new sport
a different quarry to the Devil-birds which they breed and release at
night to hunt with their whips.  It was then that the mangled bodies of
our tribesmen began to be found lashed to death.

"They were capturing our people and hunting them!  So it was that we
declared war upon these beasts, these whom we had never harmed nor
attempted to harm.

"Over the years traitors to our race went over to the enemy and became
their warriors you saw some of them today our once great race dwindled
and became fugitives, living in caves and if captured the quarry of the
Hunters of Norj.  Still we carry on warfare with them but it is hit and
run fighting at best.  The four you see here were captured recently and
it was more by luck than anything that I managed to bribe a guard to
release them.  I came last night with weapons and my ats you see that
the breed had changed as has our speech.  Unfortunately the timing was
imperfect and the first sun arose before we could make good our escape.
We were seen and would all be dead or captured had it not been for
you."

"There must be some way to defeat them!"  cried Sojan.  "And if there
is a way I swear that I will find it!"

Sojan and the fighting men of Norj, some sixty in all, stood in the
main cave, waiting for nightfall.

Plans of Sojan's attempt to overcome the Cergii, who hunted men with
steel-tipped flails, had been discussed and Sojan and Jarg, the leader,
had reached a decision.

The Cergii were few, it seemed, about ten in number.  They were
immortal, or at least their life-spans were incredibly long and the
race had gradually dwindled to ten evil sorcerer-warriors whose only
pleasure was the midnight hunts.

At dusk, Sojan rose, went over the final plan with his friends, and
left, heading Eastwards towards the castles of the Cergii some twenty
in all, mostly in an advanced state of decay only one which housed the
Cergii and their Norjian slaves and hirelings.

The tiny Zylorian moons gave scant light and Sojan found it difficult
picking his way through the rubble of the ruined outbuildings.

There came a faint scuffling behind him; a sound which only a
barbarian's senses could have heard.

Sojan ignored it and carried on.

Even when the scuffling came nearer he ignored it.  The sudden blow on
the back of his head was impossible to ignore, however, and a blind
sense of survival set him wheeling round, hand groping for his sword
hilt before blackness, deeper than night swam in front of his eyes and
he lost consciousness.

He awoke in a damp-smelling cell, only lit by torchlight which filtered
through a tiny grille in the wall.  The cell was obviously on a corner
for the large barred door was not in the same wall as the grille.

Peering through this door was an unkempt warrior clad in dirty armour
and holding a spear.

He glared shortsightedly at the mercenary with half-mad eyes.  His
mouth gaped pen showing bad teeth and he chuckled loudly.

"You're the next game for the Hunters of Cergii," he cackled.  "Oh!
What a feast the beasts will have tonight."

Sojan ignored these words, turned over and attempted to ease the pain
in his aching head.

After many hours in which he attempted to get some rest, Sojan was
jabbed roughly awake by the guard's spear butt.

"What is it now?"  he enquired as he raised himself to his feet and
dusted off the straw in which he'd been sleeping.

"Heh, heh!"  cackled the man.  "It's almost midnight time for one of
our little hunts!"

Sojan became tense.  He had a plan based on the knowledge that if he
was captured he would most certainly be forced to partake in one of the
hunts of the Cergii as the quarry.

"Very well," he said, trying to sound as frightened as possible.

The courtyard was dark and gloomy, one moon showing through a gap in
the ruins.  The strange smell of an unknown animal came to Sojan's
nostrils and he gathered that these were the "hounds" of the Cergii
that Jarg had told him about.

He heard the stamping of the my ats hooves and the jingle of harness
and, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, made out the vague
outlines of tall mounted men.

"Is the quarry ready?"  called out a voice as dead and cold as the
ruins around them.

"Yes, Master, he is here!"

"Then tell him that he will be given quarter of an hour's start then we
will be upon his scent!"  the voice went on.

The guards stood aside and Sojan was off along a route already planned
nights ago.  His plan was a daring one and one which called for a great
deal of courage.  He was acting as a human snare for the Hunters.

Down a narrow forest trail he ran, the trees and grasses rustling in
the cold night breeze, the sound of small animals calling to each other
and the occasional scream as a larger animal made its kill.

The air in his lungs seemed to force itself out as he ran faster and
faster.  The time was getting short and he had several more minutes yet
until he could reach the agreed spot.

Sounds not the sounds of the forest, but more ominous began to reach
his ears.  The sounds of cracking whips and thundering hooves as the
Hunters and their silent hounds rode in pursuit.

Faster and faster he ran keeping his eyes open for the landmark which
would afford him comparative safety.

At last it came into sight, just as the cracking of whips and pounding
hooves seemed to be on top of him.  Past the tall rock he ran, into a
tiny gorge flanked on each side by towering rock walls.

Up the side of the cliff he scrambled as the Hunters entered the gorge.
Then:

"Now!"  roared Sojan, and as he did so sixty death tipped arrows flew
down and buried themselves in the bodies of many of the Cergii.

Their curses and frantic screams were music to Sojan and his friends as
they fitted new arrows and let fly at the sounds.

Sojan leapt down the rocks again, a long sword in his right hand.

A shadowy rider loomed out of the darkness and an evil face, white
teeth flashing in a grin of triumph, aimed a blow at Sojan with his own
blade.

Sojan cut upwards, catching the rider in the leg.  He screamed and
tumbled off his steed, putting it between himself and Sojan.

He came upright, limping rapidly in the mercenary's direction.  Sojan
ducked another savage cut and parried it.  Down lunged his opponent's
sword attempting to wound Sojan's sword-arm.  He again parried the
stroke and counterthrust towards the man's chest.

Following up this move with a thrust to the heart, the mercenary ended
the evil hunter's life.

Most of the Cergii were now either dead or mortally wounded and it did
not take Sojan and his friends long to finish off the job they had
started.

"Now for their hirelings!"  yelled Sojan, goading his myat in the
direction from which they had come; his sword dripping red in the
moonlight, his hair tousled and a wildness in his eyes.

The sixty riders thundered down the narrow forest trail towards the
castles of the dead Cergii, Sojan at their head, voicing a battle-cry
which had been shouted at a dozen great victories for the men whom
Sojan had led.

Straight into the courtyard they swarmed, catching the soldiers
entirely unawares.

Dismounting, they crashed open the doors of the castle and poured in.

"Guard the doors!"  yelled Sojan.  "And all other exits we'll
exterminate every traitor in the place!"

His first call was in the dungeons for there he knew he would find the
man who had been his jailer during the previous day.

The half-crazed warrior cringed when he saw Sojan enter sword in hand.
But one look at the tall mercenary told him that he could expect no
mercy.

Drooling with fear he yanked his own sword from its scabbard and swung
a blow at Sojan which would have cut him in two had it not been
deflected by Sojan's blade.

Coolly Sojan fought while his opponent became more and more
desperate.

Slowly the warrior was forced back as Sojan's relentless sword drove
him nearer and nearer the wall.

His madness gave him immense stamina and gradually he began to fight
with more skill.

"Heh, heh!"  he cackled, "you will soon die man!  Think not that you
escaped death when you escaped the Cergii!"

Sojan smiled a grim smile and said nothing.

Suddenly the maddened warrior wrenched a spear from the wall and hurled
it at Sojan.  It plunked heavily into his left arm causing him to gasp
with pain.

Then his eyes hardened and the warrior read his fate in them.

"You'll die for that," said Sojan calmly.

Almost immediately the warrior went down before a blurring network of
steel and died with an inch of steel in his throat.

Sojan returned to the main hall of the castle where his friends were
finishing off the rest of the Cergii's warriors.

"Well," he laughed cheerfully, "I must be off!"

Jarg turned.  He saw the wound inflicted by the madman's spear.

"You can't ride in that state, Sojan!"  he cried.

"Oh it will heal," Sojan smiled.  "It is only a superficial cut!  But
you have work to do, restoring your farms now that the Cergii are
vanquished.  I should like to stay but this is an interesting continent
with lots to see.  If I hurry I might be able to see it all before I
die!"

With that he strode from the room, mounted his myat and cantered off,
up the steep track which led out of the valley of Norj.

"There goes a brave man!"  murmured Jarg as he watched him disappear
over the hill-top.

JERRY CORNELIUS

AND CO.

New Worlds Jerry Cornelius

NEW WORLDS began as a magazine founded by S-F enthusiasts in the middle
1940s.  A consortium published the first few issues.  This consortium
consisted of, among others, Bill Temple, Ted Carnell, Leslie Flood,
John Wyndham, Frank Arnold and Steve Frances.  Later Maclarens took it
over (though the company remained independent as Nova Publications
Ltd.), and published it for the best part of its career with Ted
Carnell as editor.  Ted published the first Ballard stories and the
work of then-starting authors like Brunner, Aldiss, Roberts, etc.  In
1964 the circulations of the magazines (Science Fantasy was also edited
by Ted) were very low and Maclarens decided to fold the titles.  David
Warburton of Roberts and Vinter Ltd."  heard they were folding and
decided to buy them.  Ted wanted to edit his new anthology series, New
Writings in S-F, and so recommended me as editor.  Warburton wanted two
editors (wisely), one for each of the magazines.  I chose New Worlds
and Kyril Bonfiglioli became editor of Science Fantasy.  My first
issue, in a paperback-style format, but a magazine in all other
respects, appeared for May June 1964 (number 142).  We ran as a
bimonthly for a short time and then went monthly with issue 146.  Many
people expected me to opt for the editorship of Science Fantasy, since
most of my work had previously appeared in that magazine, but in fact I
was interested in broadening the possibilities of the S-F idiom and New
Worlds, being a much more open title, seemed the best place to do it. 
My first editorial stated pretty much the policy I have followed ever
since, though perhaps I'm a little more sophisticated now.  Also I was
naive in thinking there were a lot of authors who shared the sense of
frustration which Ballard and I had felt for some years.  I tried to
find good young authors and follow what one might call a policy of
enlightened conservatism publishing the best of the old and the best of
the new.  There were a lot of outcries when we started dealing with
explicit sex (never an important issue to us) and so on, also when the
first Ballard fragmented narratives began to appear with The Atrocity
Exhibition, also with the rather astringent criticism of "Golden Age"
masters of S-F, etc."  but gradually readers began to realise that
there was value in the new stuff and it didn't take long before they
were criticising the newer stuff in its own terms.  We were crusading
but we weren't thinking in terms of tabu-breaking and so on, because
the restrictions here had never been as marked as they were in the US. 
We were seriously attempting to find new ways of dealing with new
subject matter and we always placed substance before style.  People
have since confused our "revolution" with a stylistic revolution, but
our principal aim was concerned with substance and structure it had
little to do with what Judy Merril and Harlan Ellison, for instance,
later came to term the "new wave" in US

S-F.  We were specifically out to perpetuate, if you like, the European
moral tradition in literature.  We hardly "rejected" the US pulp
tradition, because it had never much influenced us anyway.  Some of the
writers, indeed, were quite conservative in their tastes and styles
Disch, for instance, who became closely associated with the magazine
(and still is).  While having no prejudice against it (and admiring
much of it) we had little in common with the aims apparently
represented in the work of the newer (or regenerated) US writers like
Ellison, Delany, Zelazny,.  Lafferty or Silverberg.  We also, of
course, published most of those writers at some stage, and were pleased
to do' so, because we always strove for a broad representation of the
best work of its kind.  I feel we published some of the best work done
by them Zelazny's For A Breath I Tarry (later reprinted, I think, in
Amazing) and several others: Ellison's Boy and His Dog, Delany's Time
Considered as a Helix, etc.  But our main raison d'etre became the
publishing of what some would call "experimental" work and when, in
1967, Roberts and Vinter suffered severe financial set-backs (not over
the S-F magazines), Brian Aldiss was responsible for suggesting to the
Arts Council (responsible for encouraging and maintaining the arts; a
government-financed agency) that they help us.  Thanks largely to the
enthusiasm of Angus Wilson, then chairman of the Council, and letters
from various distinguished critics and academics (rallied by Brian) we
received an award which, while not enough to support us in any way save
as a "little magazine" gave us the moral support we needed and I became
part-publisher, putting my own money into the magazine and going to the
large, "glossy" format we then adopted.  Unfortunately the two business
partners I had to begin with showed themselves over-cautious and pulled
out so that the magazine schedules were thrown into confusion. During
1967-8 we followed an erratic schedule culminating in the banning of
two issues by the two major British distributors and the banning of the
magazine in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, etc. All of these
areas were fairly crucial to us and if it hadn't been for advertising
we should have had to fold.  Also the newspapers came out in our favour
and the ban was technically lifted.  It was at this time that a
Question was asked in the House of Commons about public money being
spent on a "pornographic" magazine and it seemed for a while that we
would lose the grant.  This blew over and I became sole publisher of
the magazine.  Foolishly, I didn't form a company to publish the
magazine, so that I became personally responsible for the debts.  From
1968 to 19711 published New Worlds.  In 1970 it emerged that the
distributors had been receiving large quantities of New Worlds and had
deliberately refrained from distributing them without telling us
because they wanted to avoid any further newspaper publicity.
Effectively we lost the income on six months' issues and I suddenly
found myself owing over 3000, which I didn't have.  This was at a time
when, thanks particularly to Charles Platt who was editing the magazine
and running the business affairs, New Worlds had become viable.  I was
forced to wind New Worlds up, publishing a last "Subscription Only"
issue (No.  201) in 1971, as an independent company.  Tom Dardis of
Berkley expressed an interest in doing New Worlds as a Quarterly and
Anthony Cheetham was very enthusiastic about doing it through Sphere in
this country, so I did four issues for Berkley who then decided that
sales didn't merit their continuing the series.  I decided, though the
Sphere sales were on the increase, to cut back to two issues a year for
the time being, since the Sphere advance alone wasn't sufficient to
cover what I wanted to do and we're still partially financing the
British editions through subsidiary income derived, for instance, from
my editing fees for the Best of New Worlds series and so on.  And, of
course, I'm still paying off the creditors for the large size issues.

The daily routine?  It varied, depending on who was publishing the
magazine or, for that matter, who was editing it, since I didn't, of
course, edit it for the whole time.  The early days were fairly quiet,
with just Lang Jones and myself doing the whole thing from an office I
had in Southwark.  Later I began to work from home, going into the
publisher's office about once a week, and later still Charles Platt
joined the staff as art editor and much improved the appearance of the
paperback size issues.  That period, too, was the only time I was
actually getting paid to do it!  By and large I tend to set one or two
days aside for reading.  Lang Jones is our best copy editor and he
would tend to do that (and still does) after I'd done the rough
copy-editing. We never change stories without consultation with the
author and the author's viewpoint is always respected.  Where we have
changes to suggest we tend to Xerox the manuscript, make the
suggestions on the Xerox and send them to the author for his or her
comments.  If the author disagrees we'll discuss alternatives until
we're both satisfied. This extends even to titles.  The office always
ran on democratic lines, with every editor being encouraged to
encourage authors who suited his particular taste.  This meant, of
course,

that I'd sometimes publish stories I couldn't stand or that I would
include stories others didn't like, but we reached a fairly
satisfactory compromise ("I'll put this story in I think is brilliant
because you're putting in that story you think is brilliant.") I don't
believe there's such a thing as objective literary judgement for
someone running a magazine and it seemed the best way of ensuring the
representation of as many different kinds of writing as possible.  The
special "New Writers" issues we have done have largely been the work of
people like Jim Sallis, Graham Hall, Mike Harrison, Graham Charnock and
Charles Platt.  Through most of the magazine's career there was always
something of a "commune" feel about the day-to-day editing, with
authors and staff getting together to discuss specific stories or
general policy.  The issues about which I am happiest, I suppose, are
the first few of the 1967-8 large size issues where my own policies
found their strongest expression.  To me, these were the best issues
say from 173 to 176 where we got a good balance between science and art
features, artwork, good "conventional" fiction and good "experimental"
fiction.  Particular issues came after that which I particularly liked
but not as a "run."  I enjoyed doing the special 201st issue (labelled
our Special Good Taste Issue and containing a distinctly Victorian
feel!).  The last thing I can think of to say about the day-to-day
running of the magazine was that it filled the minds of a fairly large
group of us for a long time i.e. social life for many of us was centred
around the magazine.  It dominated our days.  A rather heady and hectic
love affair in which the magazine could be seen from time to time as
either an inspiring mistress or a vampiric femme fatale.  Certainly the
publishing problems dominated my days and nights for several years.

I think we accomplished a fair amount.  Without doubt we altered the
attitudes of many publishers towards the newer ideas we were promoting.
We encouraged many authors to do their best and/or most interesting
work.  Many authors, for instance, claimed that without New Worlds they
would have given up writing or that they would have become cynical
about their writing or that they wouldn't have put so much work into
something.  Aldiss, Ballard, Disch, Sladek, Roberts and others have all
said, at different times, that New Worlds encouraged them to do their
best work.  We were responsible for interesting many critics, academics
and journalists in what might be called the S-F renaissance.  I think
we achieved an enormous amount.  If what we were trying to do has been
misinterpreted in America this has largely been because most people
received their impressions at second-hand through, say, the Judith
Merril Year's Best and England Swings anthologies.  Judy did a lot to
publicise New Worlds and was a good friend, but her interpretations
were often somewhat at odds with our views!  New Worlds became a banner
in Judy's own crusade and Judy, after all, started the ball rolling in
the US.  If the issues became clouded in rhetoric about "new wave
speculative fiction" or "The New Thing', it wasn't much to do with us.
Harlan Ellison followed Judy with Dangerous Visions and I think it's
fair to claim that again, if obliquely, New Worlds supplied the
impetus.  I think, however, that battles are being fought in the States
which have been over in this country for some years everyone's settled
down to doing their own thing.  There was never any danger of one idea
super ceding another but it was necessary to make room for other ideas
and that, if nothing else, is what New Worlds achieved.  And our
influence, if that isn't too pompous a phrase, extended well beyond the
S-F world in this country, if nowhere else.  We know many rock
musicians who've claimed that New Worlds gave them the impetus they
were looking for, for we know artists, non-S-F writers and poets who
think the same. A lot of our ideas and, indeed, our contributors turned
up in the pages of the "alternative" press.  We still meet readers of
the large size New Worlds who tell us it was the only magazine which
gave them any hope or spoke to them in a vocabulary which made sense to
them.  And we have possibly influenced the vocabulary (both in terms of
ideas and language) of S-F-broadened its possibilities.  Failures?  We
claimed too much for what we were doing in the early days and are only
now beginning to see the results.  We never licked the distribution
problem until it was too late and so never reached as many readers as
we might have done.  We failed completely to convince the majority of
fans that we felt writers like Heinlein were short-changing them with
bad writing and simple-minded notions.  We failed to improve the
standard of writing in S-F, which, in the main, remains abominable.  On
the other hand we offered an alternative to readers who couldn't face
that kind of writing and, of course, we still do.  We've certainly
failed to convince the majority of US publishers concerning the merits
of typical New Worlds fiction for they plainly prefer to publish the
sensationalistic and poorly-conceived S-F they have always published
and their preference doesn't appear to be dictated by commercial
reasoning. We've failed, perhaps, to produce a large market for the
kind of fiction we like best, but we have produced a large enough one
to make publishing that fiction a viable proposition (which it wasn't
even five years ago).  And, by and large, we've failed to get across to
most S-F fans the seriousness of our intentions, the purpose of our
intentions. This again, perhaps, is because our particular point of
view has been obscured by interpreters.  Certainly New Worlds' policy
has little to do with what most US fans would identify as the "S-F New
Wave".

Which, I suppose, almost brings us to Jerry Cornelius.

Jerry Cornelius began as a version of Elric of Melnibone when, in late
1964, I was casting around for a means of dealing with what I regarded
as the "hot" subject matter of my own time stuff associated with
scientific advance, social change, the mythology of the mid-twentieth
century.  Since Elric was a "myth" character I decided to try to write
his first stories in twentieth-century terms.  The Final Programme was
written, in first draft, in about ten days in January 1965.  It began
as a kind of rewrite of the first two Elric stories, The Dreaming City
and While the Gods Laugh.  By doing this I found a style and a form
which most suited what I wanted to write about.  I was elated.  I
borrowed as much from the Hammett school of thriller fiction as I
borrowed from S-F and I think I found my own "voice" as a writer.
Influences included Ronald Firbank and, to a minor extent, William
Burroughs (two not dissimilar figures in my estimation).  I felt, at
the time, that I had at last found a way of marrying "serious" fiction
with "popular" fiction and I had always believed that science fiction
was the form which could most easily act, as it were, as the ideal
environment in which this marriage could take place.  (This,
incidentally, was the idea which was behind much of the New Worlds
policy).  S-F knew how to cope with much of the subject matter and was
a vital and popular form but was largely unable to deal with the
traditional and sophisticated moral questions found in the best
fiction, largely because its accepted forms had denied any attempt
authors might make to incorporate these questions the form as it stood
distorted and simplified the problems.  Just as Ballard found his
remedy in the form he used for Atrocity Exhibition and the later
stories `>-71' published from 1965 onwards, I felt I'd found my remedy in the
form I used in The Final Programme by using a character who accepted
the moral questions without discussing them (the dialogue tends to take
for granted the reader's familiarity with the questions and doesn't
detail them doesn't spell them out) and by supplying the reader with a
straightforward dynamic narrative which he could enjoy for its own
sake.  The plot, while being unimportant, was supplied for those who
required a plot to keep them reading.  Moreover, I prefer, in the main,
books with a straightforward plot, too, so I was trying to produce
something I'd enjoy reading.  I was very pleased with the book and
thought that everyone else would enjoy it, too, if only for its ironies
and sensations.  A couple of British publishers asked to see it and
surprised me with their strong reactions I'd written the book to shock,
they said, and I wouldn't get anywhere like that.  It hadn't occurred
to me that the book would do anything but amuse (if nothing else).  I
despaired, became cynical, put the book aside.  A copy went out
automatically to my, then, agents, Scott Meredith.  In 1967 the book
was bought, enthusiastically, by George Erns berger, then an editor at
Avon.  Parts of it had been published in New Worlds in 1965 and 1966 as
an experiment in cutting up chunks and putting them in a different
order (a mistake, I now think).  By this time I had begun what was
eventually published as A Cure For Cancer.  I had started the book
using another character's name and hadn't got very far when I realised
that this was effectively a sequel to the Jerry Cornelius novel.  I put
what I'd written aside and thought about it all, eventually conceiving
the notion of writing a tetra logy of books about Jerry, each one
expanding upon the various moral questions raised in The Final
Programme.  I visited New York in 1967 and told George Ernsberger about
my scheme and George, was, again, enthusiastic.  Eventually, in 1968, I
had a contract from Avon for the remaining three books.  By this time
The Final Programme had been bought by Allison and Busby who were
equally enthusiastic and had also bought Behold the Man in its novel
version.  They, too, were pleased with the tetra logy idea and
guaranteed to publish them in England.  It gave me the necessary
encouragement to carry on with A Cure For Cancer which took, in all,
some three years to write, appearing first as a serial in New Worlds.
In 1968, The Final Programme was published, at the time when Jim Sallis
had come over to work on New Worlds.  Jim read the book and was very
enthusiastic about it.  When Lang Jones was commissioned to edit the
big hardback anthology for Hutchinson, The New S-F, he asked me for a
story and I decided that I would try to write a Jerry Cornelius story
(this was The Peking Junction) developing some of the techniques I was
beginning to feel happy with while working on A Cure For Cancer.  Jim
Sallis asked me, then, if I had any objection to his writing a Jerry
Cornelius story since, in his opinion, the JC stories were a form in
themselves.  I had none, of course.  He wrote Jeremiad, which was
published in New Worlds.  Taking up part of a theme I'd put into my
second JC short, The Delhi Division, he expanded from there and wrote
an entirely different story.  Taking up part of his theme I wrote it
back into Delhi Division, which he'd so far only seen in rough draft.
The Delhi Division was the first JC short to appear in New Worlds and
was quickly followed by Jeremiad.  Once this had happened several
others who had enjoyed The Final Programme felt that they'd like to do
a story about Jerry, so shortly afterwards there appeared stories by
Brian Aldiss, Norman Spinrad, a poem by Lang Jones, and other stories
by M. John Harrison, Maxim Jakubowski and one other by me The Tank
Trapeze.  (Most of these were eventually published in a book called The
Nature of the Catastrophe (Hutchinson, 1971).  In the meantime I had
also begun a comic strip for It, then the leading underground paper in
Britain, with Mal Dean, who had illustrated many of the JC stories. 
The It strip sent up many of the current obsessions of the underground
the mysticism, the political naivete and so on.  We began to alternate,
with Mike Harrison and Richard Glyn Jones taking up our themes and us
taking up their themes turn by turn.  The strip ran for about a year in
It as The Adventures of Jerry Cornelius, The English Assassin.  Part of
the strip was also published in The Nature of the Catastrophe.  In our
terms we found a cool way of dealing with hot material.  The essence of
the stories is their irony, their attempts to concentrate as much
information as possible into as small a space as possible, their
obsession with contemporary imagery, their strong reliance on
metaphorical imagery drawn from many disparate sources pop music,
astronomy, physics, cybernetics, etc.  They are, ideally, deeply
serious in intention.  Unfortunately many critics have missed the
serious points of the stories, even if they've found the stuff
entertaining.  Sexual ambiguity, for instance, is taken for granted in
the JC stories a fact of life but critics continue to see that element,
among others, as "daring".  In this country, at any rate, the stories
receive their most intelligent responses from that section of the
public most at ease with what's these days called the "alternative'
society, was earlier called "beat" and before that called "bohemian"
i.e. people who by and large do take certain things for granted which
are regarded as shocking by the average middle-class person.  I'm not
here suggesting that this is good or bad, but it is a fact.  Judy
Merril, for instance, regarded The Final Programme as an "evil" book.
Other people have expressed similar reactions.  I find them almost
impossible to understand.  Perhaps people will get a better idea of the
JC novels when the whole tetra logy is complete.  The English Assassin
will be out in England this year, after three years in the writing.  I
don't know when the last book, The Condition of Muzak, will appear
probably in a couple of years, maybe three or four.  I'll just have to
wait patiently until then.  At present, while having reservations about
the first two books, I'm very satisfied with Assassin it's the first
book of mine I've been able to proof-read without wincing all the way
through.  Presumably Holt Reinhardt, who did Cure, will be doing
Assassin in the States sometime next year.  I haven't had any
information either from Avon or from Holt, as yet.  Maybe Final
Programme will get its points across better as a film.

The rights have been bought and the script written and it's being
produced by the company who did Performance (which has something in
common with Final Programme).  I heard Jagger turned down the JC part
as being too freaky and I don't know if the film ever will be made, but
it would be interesting to see how the public reacted to it.  I think
the JC stories have matured considerably since Final Programme becoming
better written and more complex and it does disappoint me when people
don't enjoy them or find them obscure.  I remember the delight I felt
at producing a book which I was sure everyone would find at very least
entertaining.  I was puzzled when some people reacted in a puzzled or
even antagonistic way.  My own wavelengths changed somewhere at some
time.  These days, for instance, I can't understand S-F I read the
words and they no longer mean anything to me, even when written by a
writer I used to enjoy.  So I suppose I can appreciate how people feel
when they find a JC story they can't focus on.  It isn't incidentally,
anything to do with radical alterations in life-style on my part.  It
just happened at some point.  Ho hum.

(Letter to reader)

In Lighter Vein

A Note on the Jerry Cornelius Tetralogy

PART of my original intention with the Jerry Cornelius stories was to
"liberate" the narrative; to leave it open to the reader's
interpretation as much as possible to involve the reader in such a way
as to bring his own imagination into play.  The impulse was probably a
result of my interest in Brecht an interest I'd had since the
mid-fifties.

Although the structure of the tetra logy is very strict (some might
think over-mechanical) the scope for interpretation is hopefully much
wider than of a conventional novel.  The underlying logic is also very
disciplined, particularly in the last three volumes.  It's my view that
a work of fiction should contain nothing which does not in some way
contribute to the overall scheme.  The whimsicalities to be found in
all the books are, in fact, not random, not mere conceits, but make
internal references.  That is to say, while I strive for the effect of
randomness on one level, the effect is achieved by a tightly controlled
system of internal reference, puns, ironies,

logic jumps which no single reader may fairly be expected to follow.

Thus, in a scene in Condition of Muzak (the end of the section called
"Outcast of the Islands"), there is a short discussion about the
Japanese invasion of Australia and Jerry makes a reference to big egoes
and Hitler.  Shakey Mo then asks if he was a character in a children's
comic and then immediately asks if Hitler wasn't a police chief they'd
met in Berlin.  The first reference is to Big Ego (a cartoon ostrich in
The Dandy or The Beano); the second reference is to an earlier story of
mine (a "key" story, in my view) called The Pleasure Garden of Felippe
Sagittarius (where Hitler was a rather pathetic police chief in an
imaginary Berlin), leading to a reference to the fact that the
historical Adolf Hitler doesn't exist in this world.

All this happens in a couple of sentences or so and should give the
effect, among others, of time in a state of flux, men in a state of
introverted confusion, close to fugue, and so on.  But its internal
logic is straightforward: the two characters know exactly what they are
talking about.  To "explain" all this, to editorialise, would be to
break the mood, break the dramatic tensions, and ruin the effect I was
trying to achieve.  The apparent obscurity should not confuse the
reader because the narrative should be moving so rapidly that he
shouldn't care if he doesn't understand every reference.  Similarly, if
he was watching a richly textured film, he would not expect to perceive
consciously every detail of every scene, dialogue, music, etc.  They
are maintained primarily by a complicated series of prefiguring images
which are developed as the book progresses.

(Note to bibliography)

The Stone Thing

A Tale of Strange Parts

Our OF the dark places; out of the howling mists; out of the lands
without sun; out of Ghonorea came tall Catharz, with the moody sword
Oakslayer in his right hand, the cursed spear Bloodlicker in his left
hand, the evil bow Deathsinger on his back together with his quiver of
fearful rune-fl etched arrows, Heartseeker, Goregreedy, Soulsnatcher,
Orphanmaker, Eyeblinder, Sorrowsower, Beanslicer, and several others.

Where his right eye should have been there was a jewel of slumbering
scarlet whose colour sometimes shifted to smouldering blue, and in the
place of his left eye was a many-faceted crystal, which pulsed as if
possessed of independent life.  Where Catharz had once had a right
hand, now a thing of iron, wood and carved amethyst sat upon his stump;
nine fingered alien, cut by Catharz from the creature who had sliced
off his own hand.  Catharz' left hand was at first merely gauntleted,
but when one looked further it could be observed that the gauntlet was
in fact a many jointed limb of silver, gold and lapis lazuli, but as
Catharz rode by, those who saw him pass remarked not on the murmuring
sword in his right hand, not on the whispering spear in his left hand,
not on the whining bow upon his back or the grumbling arrows in the
quiver; neither did they remark on his right eye of slumbering scarlet,
his left eye of pulsing crystal, his nine-fingered right hand, his
shining metallic left hand; they saw only the fearful foot of Cwlwwymwn
which throbbed in the stirrup at his mount's right flank.

The foot of the Aching God, Cwlwwymwn Rootripper, whose ambition upon
the old and weary Earth had been to make widows of all wives; Cwlwwymwn
the Striker, whose awful feet had trampled whole cities when men had
first made cities; Cwlwwymwn of the Last Ones, Last of the Last Ones,
who had been driven back to his island domain on the edge of the world,
beyond the Western Ice, and who now came limping after Catharz
screaming out for vengeance, demanding the return of his foot, sliced
from his leg by Oakslayer so that Catharz might walk again and continue
upon his doom laden quest, bearing weapons which were not his
protection but his burden, seeking consolation for the guilt which ate
at his soul since it was he who had been responsible for the death of
his younger brother, Forax the Golden, for the death of his niece,
Libia Gentleknee, for the living death of his cousin, Wertigo the
Unbalanced, seeking the whereabouts of his lost love, Cyphila the Fair,
who had been stolen from him by his arch-enemy, the wizard
To'me'ko'op'r, most powerful, most evil, most lustful of all the great
sorcerers of this magic-clouded world.

And there were no friends here to give aid to

Catharz Godfoot.  He must go alone, with shuddering terror before him
and groaning guilt behind him, and Cwlwwymwn, screaming, vengeful,
limping Cwlwwymwn, following always.

And Catharz rode on, rarely stopping, scarcely ever dismounting,
anxious to claim his own vengeance on the sorcerer, and the foot of
Cwlwwymwn, Last of the Last Ones, was heavy on him, as well it might be
for it was at least eighteen inches longer than his left foot and
naked, for he had had to abandon his boot when he had found that it did
not fit.  Now Cwlwwymwn possessed the boot; it was how he had known
that Catharz was the mortal who had stolen his green, seventeen-clawed
limb, attaching it by fearful sorcery to the flesh of his leg. 
Catharz' left leg was not of flesh at all, but of lacquered cork, made
for him by the People of the World Beneath the Reefs, when he had aided
them in their great fight against the Gods of the Lowest Sea.

The sun had stained the sky a livid crimson and had sunk below the
horizon before Catharz would allow himself a brief rest and it was just
before dark that he came in sight of a small stone cottage, sheltered
beneath terraces of glistening limestone, where he hoped he might find
food, for he was very hungry.

Knocking upon the door he called out:

"Greetings, I come in friendship, seeking hospitality, for I am called
Catharz the Melancholy, who carries the curse of Cwlwwymwn Rootripper
upon him, who has many enemies and no friends, who slew his brother,
Forax the Golden, and caused the death of Libia Gentleknee, famous for
her beauty, and who seeks his lost love Cyphila the Fair, prisoner of
the wizard To'me'ko'op'r, and who has a great and terrible doom upon
him."

The door opened and a woman stood there.  Her hair was the silver of a
spiderweb in the moonlight, her eyes were the deep gold found at the
centre of a beehive, her skin had the pale, blushing beauty of the
tea-rose.  "Welcome, stranger," said she.  "Welcome to all that is left
of the home of Lanoli, whose father was once the mightiest in these
parts."

And, upon beholding her, Catharz forgot Cyphila the Fair, forgot that
Cwlwwymwn Rootripper limped after him still, forgot that he had slain
his brother, his niece, and betrayed his cousin, Wertigo the
Unbalanced.

"You are very beautiful, Lanoli," he said.

"Ah," said she, "that is what I have learned.  But beauty such as mine
can only thrive if it is seen and it has been so long since anyone came
to these lands."

"Let me help your beauty thrive," he said.

Food was forgotten, guilt was forgotten, fear was forgotten as Catharz
divested himself of his sword, his spear, his bow and his arrows and
walked slowly into the cottage.  His gait was a rolling one, for he
still bore the burden that was the foot of the Last of the Last Ones,
and it took him some little time to pull it through the door, but at
length he stood inside and had closed the door behind him and had taken
her in his arms and had pressed his lips to hers.

"Oh, Catharz," she breathed.  "Catharz!"

It was not long until they stood naked before one another.  Her eyes
travelled over his body and it was plain that the eyes of scarlet and
crystal were lovely to her, that she admired his silver hand and his
nine-fingered hand, that even the great foot of Cwlwwymwn was beautiful
in her sight.  But then her eyes, shy until now, fell upon that which
lay between his legs, and those eyes widened a little, and she blushed.
Her lovely lips framed a question, but he moved forward as swiftly as
he could and embraced her again.

"How?"  she murmured.  "How, Catharz?"

"It is a long tale and a bloody one," he whispered, "of rivalry and
revenge, but suffice to say that it ended in my father, Xympwell the
Cruel, taking a terrible vengeance upon me.  I fled from his court into
the wastes of Grxiwynn, raving mad, and it was there that the tribesmen
of Velox found me and took me to the wise Man of Oorps in the mountains
beyond Katatonia.  He nursed me and carved that for me.  It took him
two years, and all through those two years I remained raving, living
off dust and dew and roots, as he lived.  The engravings had mystical
significance, the runes contain the sum of his great wisdom, the tiny
pictures show all that there is to show of physical love.  Is it not
beautiful?  More beautiful than that which it has replaced?"

Her glance was modest; she nodded slowly.

"It is indeed, very beautiful," she agreed.  And then she looked up at
him and he saw that tears glistened in her eyes.  "But did it have to
be made of Sandstone?"

"There is little else," he explained sadly, "in the mountains beyond
Katatonia."

(From The Outcast of Kitzoprenia Volume 67 in The History of the Purple
Poignard)