Michael Moorcock: The Skrayling Tree

He almost reached the rock, but his armor and his sword became too heavy for him. He sank as quickly as the ice vanished. He stood up to his waist in black water, raging to survive, roaring out his anger and frustration even as he slipped suddenly beneath the waves and was gone.

Gone. A warm, gentle breeze blew from the south.

I could not believe that angry immortal had simply disappeared. I knew by now that he would never die. Not, at least, until I, too, died.

Oona tugged at my arm. "We must go home now," she said. "Prince Lobkowitz will take us."

Klosterheim and the other survivors looked listlessly at the spot of water where their leader had vanished. Then, turning towards us, the leading Viking shrugged and sheathed his sword. "We have no fight with you. Take our word on it. Let us make our way back to our ship, and we will return to where we belong."

Elric had affection for some of these men. He accepted their offer. "You can sail The Swan back to Las Cascadas. And take that disappointed wretch with you." Smiling he indicated a gloomy Klosterheim. "You can tell them what you witnessed here."

One of the tall black warriors laughed aloud. "To spend the rest of our days as reviled madmen? I have seen others cursed with such reminiscences. They die friendless. You'll not come with us, Duke Elric? To captain us?"

Elric shook his head. "I will help you get back to the mainland. Then I have a mind to go with Ayanawatta when he returns to take the Law to his people and fulfill the rest of his destiny. We are old friends, you see. I have some eight hundred years until my dream is ended, and only then shall I know if I had power enough to summon Stormbringer to me in that other world. My curiosity takes me further into this land." He lifted a gloved hand in farewell.

Sepiriz shrugged and spread his hands in gentle acquiescence. "I will find you," he said, "when I need you."

White Crow came close to look directly into Elric's face. "My future does not seem to hold much joy," he said.

"Some," said Elric, staring back. He sighed and looked up at the snowcapped mountains, the silver sky, the few birds which flew in the warm, clean air. "But most of that is in slaughter." He turned away from White Crow as if he could no longer bear to look at him. At that I finally understood that White Crow was neither son nor brother nor nephew nor twin. White Crow was completing his own long dream-journey, part of his appren-

ticeship, his training as an adept, his preparation for his destiny, to become Sorcerer Emperor of Melnibone. White Crow was Elric himself, in his youth! Each had been moved in his own way by what he saw in the face of the other. Without another word, White Crow returned to stand with Bes. He would be the last Melnibonean of noble blood to be sent to Kakatanawa for his training. Their city gone, the giants had only one duty, to guard the tree forever.

"It is done at last," said White Crow. "Fate is served. The mul-tiverse will survive. The treasures of the tree have been restored, and the great oak blooms again. I look upon the end of all our histories, I think." He clambered up into the big wooden saddle and goaded Bes towards the lapping water.

None of us tried to stop him as White Crow guided the noble old mammoth into the waves and began to descend until Bes had submerged completely. He turned in the saddle once and raised his bow above his head before he, too, disappeared back into his particular dream, as we all began to return slowly to our own.

"Come," said Lobkowitz. "You'll want to see your children."

And so another episode in the eternal struggle for the Balance was completed and resolution achieved. How human endeavor has the power to create and make real its most significant symbols I do not know, but I do know that a logical creator might build such a self-sustaining system. In spite of my adventures, my belief in a supreme spirit remains.

Ayanawatta believed strongly in his dream, somehow reinforced rather than contradicted by the Longfellow account, and went on to found the Iroquois Confederacy, a model for the federal system of the United States. Ulric and I worked first for the UN and later for Womankind Worldwide, whose work becomes increasingly important.

Passing without incident from one realm to another, Ulric, Prince Lobkowitz and I returned, traveling chiefly by rail, from Lake Huron to the Nova Scotian coast.

As dreamers, we both experience dreams and we create them. The experience brings us wisdom, which is why such dreams are coveted by dreamthieves. But they place equal value on creative dreams. These can be more volatile and hard to negotiate, let alone control. In the so-called Ghost Worlds, where everything is malleable, one learns to value the power of supernatural logic.

Ulric and I were to know only one more unusual adventure together, but there is no question that our relationship had altered. Our love, our understanding of the value of our public work, was deeper, yet there was an uneasy, rarely mentioned memory. Ulric had, indeed, killed me as I tried to help him in my assumed shape of White Buffalo. And he did almost destroy the Skrayling Tree as a result. These thoughts continue to burden him.

He has other dreams. We do not live in a linear multiverse.

We do not tell a simple history with a beginning, middle and end. We weave instead a tapestry. We depend upon repetition but not upon imitation, which is mere corruption, confirming nothing. Each strand must be new, though the pattern might be familiar.

Gunnar's expedition to America left little to show for itself, unless the destruction of Kakatanawa was an achievement. But a few legends were made and others confirmed. As for Gaynor, we would meet him again in a final adventure.

The strange mathematics of the multiverse, which orders the weft and woof of the great tapestries, is the means by which we order Chaos. But the strict formality of the design demands an adherence to ritual similarly found, for instance, in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Every word uttered, every step on the destined path must be exact, or that destiny will change. The choreography for such actions is the special skill of Prince Lobkowitz and Lord Sepiriz.

As for Elric of Melnibone, he lived out his dream of a thousand years. How that dream ended and its effect on the von Bek family is the last story still to be told.

Oona, Countess of Bek, Sporting Club Square, London, S.W.