Michael Moorcock: The Skrayling Tree

I would have laughed if I were not in such bizarre circumstances. "So do you come here from Hell? Is that where my husband is to be found-the Underworld?"

"I do come from Hell, my lady, though not directly, and if your husband were already there, I would not be here."

"I am only interested in my husband's whereabouts, sir."

He shrugged and pointed at the Kakatanawa artifact. "That would no doubt help, but they would probably kill you, too."

"They mean to kill my husband?"

"Quite possibly. I was, however, referring to myself. The Kakatanawa have no liking for me or for Gaynor, but Gaynor's interests are no longer mine. Our paths parted. I went forward. He went back. Now I am something of a watcher on the sidelines." His cadaverous features showed a certain humor.

"I am certain you are not here through the promptings of a Christian heart, Herr Klosterheim."

"No, madam. I came to propose an alliance. Have you heard of a hero called Ayanawatta? Longfellow wrote about him. In English 'Hiawatha'? His name was used for a local poem, I believe."

I had, of course, read Longfellow's rather unfashionable but hypnotic work. However, I was scarcely in the mood to discuss creaking classics of American literature. I think I might have gestured with the gun. Klosterheim put up a bony hand.

"I assure you I am in no way being facetious. I see I must put it another way." He hesitated. I knew the dilemma of all prescient creatures, or all those who have been into a future and seen the consequence of some action. Even to speak of the future was to create another "brane," another branch of the great multiversal tree. And that creation in turn could confuse any plans one might have made for oneself to negotiate the worlds. So we were inclined to speak somewhat cryptically of what we knew. Most of our omens were as obscure as the Guardian crossword.

"Do you know where Gaynor is?"

"I believe I do, in relation to our present circumstances and his own." He spoke with habitual care.

"Where would that be?"

"He could be where your husband is." An awkward, significant pause.

"So those were Gaynor's men?"

"Far from it, my lady. At least, I assume so." He again fell silent. "I came to propose an alliance. It would be even more valuable to you, I suspect. I can guarantee nothing, of course . . ."

"You expect me to believe one who, by his own confession, serves the Master of Lies?"

"Madam, we have interests in common. You seek your husband and I, as always, seek the Grail."

"We do not own the Holy Grail, Herr Klosterheim. We no longer even own the house it is supposed to reside in. Haven't you

noticed that the East is now under Stalin's benign protection? Perhaps that ex-

priest has the magic cup?"

"I doubt it, madam. I do believe your husband and the Grail have a peculiar relationship and that if I find him I shall find what I seek. Is that not worth a truce between us?"

"Perhaps. Tell me how I may follow my husband and his abductors."

Klosterheim was reluctant to give away information. He brooded for a moment, then gestured towards the round frame. "That medicine shield should get you there. You can tell by its size it has no business being here. If you were to give it the opportunity to return to where it came from, it might take you with it."

"Why do you tell me that? Why do you not use the shield yourself?"

"Madam, I do not have your skills and talents." His voice was dry, almost mocking. "I am a mere mortal. Not even a demon, madam. Just a creature of the Devil, you know. An indentured soul. I go where I am bid."

"I seem to remember that you had turned against Satan. I gather you found him a disappointment?"

Klosterheim's face clouded. He rose from the chair. "My spiritual life is my own." He stared thoughtfully into the barrels of my shotgun and shrugged. "You have the power to go where I need to go."

"You require a guide? When I have no idea where they have taken Ulric? Less idea than you, apparently."

"I lack your grace." He spoke quietly, though his jaw tightened as if in anger. "Countess, it was your husband's help I sought." Something struggled in him. "But I think it is time for reconciliation."

"With Lucifer?"

"Possibly. I opposed my master as my master opposed his. I scarcely understand this mania for solipsism or how it came about. Once half our lives were spent contemplating God and the nature of evil. Now Satan's domain throughout the multiverse shrinks steadily." He did not sound optimistic.

I thought him completely mad with his weird, twisted pieties. I had made it my business to read old family histories long before I decided to marry Ulric. Half the von Beks, it seemed, had had dealings with the supernatural and denied it or were disbelieved. A manuscript had only recently been found which claimed to be some sort of ancestral record, written in an idiosyncratic hand in old German; but the East German authorities, unfortunately, had claimed it as a state archive, and we had not yet been able to read it. There was a suggestion that its contents were too dangerous to publish. We did know, however, that it had something to do with the Holy Grail and the Devil.

Again he gestured towards the medicine shield. "That will take you to your husband, if he still lives. I don't require a guide. I require a key. I do not travel so easily between the worlds as you. Few do. I have given you all the information I can to help you find Count Ulric. He does not possess what I want, but what I want is in his power to grant me. I hoped he would have the key."

I was losing interest in the conversation. I had decided to see what the Kakatanawa medicine shield could do for me. Perhaps I should have been more cautious, but I was desperate to follow Ulric, ready to believe almost anything in order to find him.

"Key?" I asked impatiently.

"There is another way to reach the world to which he's been taken. A door of some kind. Perhaps on the Isle of Morn."

"How did you think Ulric could help you?"

"I hoped the door through to that world is on Morn and the key to that door would be in your husband's keeping." He seemed deeply disappointed, as if this was the culmination of a long quest which had proven to be useless.

"I can assure you we have no mysterious keys."

"You have the sword," he said, without much hope. "You have the black sword."

"As far as I know," I told him, "that, too, is in the hands of the East German authorities."

He looked up in some dismay. "It's in the East?"

"Unless the Russians now have it."

He frowned. "Then I have bothered you unnecessarily."

"In which case ..." I gestured with the shotgun.

He nodded agreeably and began walking towards the front door. "I'm obliged to you, madam. I wish you well."

I was still in an appalling daze as I watched him open the door and leave. I followed him and saw that he had come in a taxi. It was the same driver who had brought us from Englishtown. I had a sudden thought, asked him to wait, and went inside. I wrote a hasty note to the children, came out, and asked him to post it for me. As Klosterheim got into his cab, the driver waved cheerfully. He had no sense of the supernatural tensions in the air, nor of the heartbreaking tensions within me, the impossible decision I had to make.

After watching them drive off, I returned to the house and picked up the medicine shield. I had no interest in Klosterheim's ambitions or any conflict he was engaged in. All I cared about was the information he had given me. I was prepared to risk all to let the shield take me to my husband.

Almost in a trance, I carried the thing through a blustering wind that tugged and buffeted at it, down to the jetty. Then I stripped off my outer clothes, threw the shield into the water and gasped as I flung myself after it. Feeling it move under me, I climbed onto it, using it like a raft. The wind wailed and bit at my flesh, but now the shield had a life of its own. It felt as if muscles began to form in the skin as it moved rapidly across the water out towards the island we had visited. I expected it to follow its owner into the maelstrom.