Michael Moorcock - The Skrayling Tree

I was distracted from this vision by a sense of more than one self nearby. It was hard enough for me to cope with the presence of Prince Elric, whose experience was supernaturally mingled with my own and manifested itself always in my dreams if not continually in my conscious mind. It felt as if these other intelligences, these alter egos, were also Elric. Mentally I was in a hall of repeating mirrors, where the same image is reversed and reflected again and again to infinity. I was one of millions, and the millions were also one.

I was intratemporally infinite and contained by the infinite. Yet that infinity was also my own brain, which contained all others. The mind of man alone was free to wander the infinity of the multiverse. One contains the other and one is contained in the other . . . Not only were these paradoxes of particular comfort to me, they felt natural. For all my fear of the place, I now knew a resounding resurgence of hope. I was returning home. I would soon be reunited with Oona. In this long moment, at least, I knew she was safe, hidden between life and death.

Only if the tree itself died would she die. But whether it was certain she would live again, I could not tell.

The green, gold and silver lattice of the mighty tree filled the horizon. Framed against it I saw three groups of three men. Each

of the men had his head bowed, and each had his hands wrapped around a tall, slender spear. At their belts were polished war clubs. They wore their hair in single scalp locks decorated with eagle feathers, and their bodies were tattooed and painted in a way I had seen before. All were pale and distinctly similar, in both physique and face, yet every one was different. I knew who they were. They were the last of the Kakatanawa, the guardians of the prophecy, of the tree. Perhaps they now stood funeral watch for the tree itself. There was something somber about the scene when there should have been joy.

"The tree is sick, you see." Sepiriz's deep voice sounded in my ear. "The roots are being poisoned by the very creature enjoined to protect them. That which regulates the Balance was stolen by Gaynor, then found by another ..."

"What creature is it that guards the roots?"

"Gunnar's Vikings would probably tell you it was the Worm Oroborous, the great world snake who eats his own tail-the dragon who both defends and gnaws the roots. Most of your world's mythologies contain some version. But Elric would know him as a blood relative. You have heard of the Phoorn?"

Already there were too many echoes. I might have replied that Elric would no doubt recognize the name, but I was not Elric! I refused to be Elric! The Phoorn name, in my present state, had no more significance to me than any other. Yet I did know what he meant. I was simply denying the memories which came un-summoned from my alter ego. Images crept insistently into my consciousness. My being was suffused with a deliciously terrifying sensation. My blood recognized the word even as my brain refused it.

"Why have you brought us to this place, Lord Sepiriz? And why are those three here? Why so gigantic? I thought we had escaped them. I thought we came here for our security. I also thought we came to find my wife! Now you confront me with my worst enemies!"

The ground rose and fell beneath my feet like a breathing beast.

"Elric is not your enemy. He is yourself."

"Then perhaps he is indeed my worst enemy, Lord Sepiriz."

I could see them now, wading towards us in all their martial weight, swords drawn and ready to spill blood. Again I was all too aware that we were virtually unarmed.

Something vibrated forcefully against my feet. I looked down, half expecting the ground to be thoroughly alive. Wildflowers swept like a tide around my legs. There was activity in the depths below. I imagined infinite roots spreading out to mirror the boughs above. I imagined caverns through which even now the dark reversals of ourselves prowled, seeking bones to break and spirits to suck. Was this the route the giants had taken to arrive here now? Had Shoashooan been unable to gain access to this oddly holy place?

Then far away and below I heard a wild, angry howling. I understood Lord Shoashooan had not been left behind.

There was more movement over near the tree's wide trunk. The multiverse was shaken by a long, mournful groan. I breathed in a familiar scent. I could resist the memory no longer.

"I know the Phoorn," I said.

I was surrounded by the finest flowing copper spreading like a woman's auburn hair, lock after lock, wave after wave into a crowd of people hiding among tall grasses, waiting to join with me. Did they protect my wife? I sought only Oona. I prayed Oona had lived long enough for me to save her. As I came closer to the riders, I saw they were not people. They were instead intricately shaped and colored scales, dimpled by millions of points of light, flashing with a thousand colors, each one of extraordinary beauty. I was aware that I saw only a shadow of an older glory. And where another might have known wonder, I knew sympathy.

I looked on the body of a sickly Phoorn, blood-kin to my ancestors. Some said we were born of the same womb before history began.

The Phoorn were what the people of the Young Kingdoms called dragons. But these were not dragons. These were Phoorn, who flew between the realms, who had no avatars, but made the whole multiverse their flying grounds. The Phoorn had conquered entire universes and witnessed the deaths of galaxies. Blood-kin to the Princes of Melnibone-who drank their venom and formed bonds of flesh and souls with them, creating even more terrible progeny, half-human, half-Phoorn-

they had loyalties only to their own kind and the fundamental life stuff of the multiverse.

My blood moved in harmony with this monster's, and I knew at once that it was ill, perhaps dying, its soul suffused with sadness. I understood our kinship. This Phoorn was a brother to my forefathers. The poor creature had known past anguish, but now he was near complete exhaustion. From a half-open mouth his poison dripped into the roots of the tree he was sworn to protect. He was too weak to drag his head clear. Massive quicksilver tears fell from his milky, half-blind eyes.

His condition was obvious. His skefla'a was gone. The membrane which drew sustenance from the multiverse itself and allowed the Phoorn to travel wherever they chose was also the creature's means of feeding. They might take thousands of years in their passing, but ultimately, without a skefla'a, the Phoorn were mortal. There were few of them left now. They were too curious and reckless to survive in large numbers. And this one was the greatest of the Phoorn, chosen to guard the Soul of Creation. It was rare enough for these elders to grow weak, almost unheard-of for one to sicken.

"What supernatural force is capable of stealing a skefla'a from the great world snake?" said Sepiriz from somewhere nearby. "Who would dare? He guards the roots of the multiversal tree and ensures the security of the Cosmic Balance."

"He sickens," I said. "And as he sickens his venom increases its effect..."

"Poisoning the roots as the Balance tips too far. Virtue turned to vice. This is a symbol of all our conflicts throughout the multi-