Тэд Уильямс: Go ask Elric

The albino wondered again whether the idiot apparition might not be a further cruelty from his captor, but if it were, it smacked of a subtlety the Chon had not exhibited previously. He struggled to maintain his flagging patience. “If you cannot free me, friend, then leave me to suffer in peace. Thrice-cursed Badichar Chon has taken Stormbringer, and without the strength it gives to me, my own treacherous body will soon accomplish the executioner’s work without assistance.”

“Storm...?”

“Stormbringer. My dark twin, my pet demon. My sword.”

The strange youth nodded. “Got it. Your sword. Y’know, this is pretty weird, this whole set-up. Like a J.R.R. Tolkien calendar or something. Are there hobbits here, too?”

Elric shook his head, surfeited with nonsense. “Go now. One who has sat upon the Dragon Throne prefers to suffer in private. It would be a kindness.”

“Would it help if I got this sword for you?”

The albino’s laugh was sharp and painful. “Help? Perhaps. But the Chon would be unlikely to give it to you, and the two-score killers of his Topaz Guard might have something to say on the subject of your taking it.”

“Hey, everything flows, man. Just try to stay cool.”

The youth turned and walked back toward the front of the cell. Elric’s dimming sight could not follow him into the shadows there, but he did not hear the door open. Even in his pain and long-simmering fury, he had a moment’s pause. Still, whether the stranger was a demon, a hallucination, or truly some hapless traveler lured between the spheres by Elric’s desperate summons, the Melnibonean doubted he would see him again.

Curiouser and curiouser. Who said that?

Pogo grew back to his normal height on the far side of the door. This was certainly the strangest trip he had ever taken, and it wasn’t getting any more normal as it progressed. Still, he had told the pale man he’d fetch his sword, and who knew how long it would be until the acid started to wear off? Better get on it.

He chose a corridor direction from the somewhat limited menu and set off. The stone passageway wound along for quite a distance, featureless but for the occasional torch. Pogo was embarrassed by the meagemess of his own imagination.

Sammy went on a spaceship that time when we did the four-way Windowpane, with all those blue insects flying it and giant donut creatures and everything. ‘Course, he reads more science fiction than I do — all those guys with the funny names like Moorcock and Phil Dick. Sounds like they should be writing stroke-books instead.

Still, if his imagination hadn’t particularly extended itself in terms of dungeon decor, he was impressed by the relentless real-ness of the experience. The air was unquestionably dank, and what his desert boots were squelching through definitely looked, smelled, and sounded like the foulest of mud. And that Elric guy, with his built-in mime make-up, had been pretty convincing too.

The corridor opened at last into a stairwell, which alleviated the boredom somewhat. Pogo climbed for what seemed no little time. He was still terribly disappointed that it had not been Jimi Hendrix who had summoned him. He had been so certain ....

A few more steps brought him to a landing which opened out in several directions, and for the first time he could hear sounds other than his own crepe- soled footfalls. He picked one of the arched doorways at random. Within moments he found himself surrounded by people, rather a shocking amount of them — perhaps he had undercredited his own powers of creativity — all bustling about, all dressed like they were trying out for The Thief of Baghdad or some other Saturday morning movie of his youth. Shaven-headed, mustachioed men hurried past, bearing rolled carpets on their shoulders. Small groups of women, veiled to a disappointing degree, whispered to each other as they walked close to the walls. In one large room that opened off the hallway, dozens of sweating, flour-covered people seemed to be cooking a fantastically large meal. The din was incredible.

None of them seemed to pay much attention to Pogo. He was not invisible — no one bumped him and several actively avoided him — but nobody allowed themselves more than a swift glance before continuing briskly with whatever task consumed their attention. He forced a few to stop so he could ask them the whereabouts of a magic sword, but they gave him no reply, sliding away like cheerleaders avoiding a drunken loser at a party.

As Pogo walked on, the hallway widened and became more lavishly decorated, the walls scribed with flowing patterns of blossoming trees and flying birds. He saw fewer and fewer people until, after he had walked what he estimated was about twice the distance from his house to Xavier Cugat High School, he found himself in a section of the vast palace — or whatever it was — that was empty. Except for him. And the whispering.

He followed the rustling noise farther down the corridor, peeking into open rooms on either side; all were abandoned and deserted, though they looked as though they were in regular use. At last he found himself at the doorway of a large chamber that was in use. It was from here the whispering came.

In the center of a huge, high-roofed room stood a stone dais. Atop the dais, mumbling and hissing amongst themselves, stood half-a-dozen bearded men in robes of dramatic colors and wild design, each garment different, as though the men were in some sort of fashion competition. They were standing in a ragged circle, intently examining a black sword which lay atop the stone like a frozen snake.

All around the dais, facing outward, stood several dozen grim-faced men in gleaming armor studded with brown jewels, each with a long, nasty-looking spear in one hand and a curving, equally nasty-looking sword scabbarded at his waist.

Those must be the guard-guys Elric was talking about , he reasoned. _And that sword those other dudes are looking at must be Stormbanger, or whatever it is.

His good-acid-trip confidence began to pale a little. Surely even if they couldn’t really hurt him — it was only a hallucination, after all — getting whacked with all those sharp things could turn the trip into a real bummer, and possibly even make him feel kind of queasy for a couple of days after he came down.

After a moment’s consideration, then a single careful thought, he felt himself begin to shrink once more.

It was strange walking along the groove between the tiles and seeing the edges stretch, valley-like, over his head. It was even stranger staring up between the legs of the colossal Topaz Guardsmen, each one now as tall as a the pylons of a bridge.

Be pretty cool to do this right underneath Diana Darwent and her jockette friends. If they were wearing skirts.

He laughed, then froze in place, afraid that he might be heard and noticed. After a moment’s reflection — had he ever heard a bug laughing? — he hiked on.

Climbing up onto the dais was difficult, but at his present size there were irregularities in the stone that offered good handholds. The robed and bearded men around the sword were talking, and just as with Elric, he could understand them perfectly — or at least their words, although their voices were thunderously loud and rumbled like the bass notes at a Deep Purple concert. Their meaning was a little less clear.

“It is a coagulated form of Etheric Vapor. Were it not for the binding rituals, it would re^transmogrify into Vapor Absolute and evaporate. If we could just try the Splitting Spell once more....”

“Your reasoning is as thin as a viper’s skinny bottom, Dalwezzar. Etheric Vapor plays no part here. It is a perfectly ordinary sword which has been drawn through a Multiversal Nexus, and hence its individual monads have... er... turned inside" out. More or less.”