Michael Moorcock: The Fortress of the Pearl

In better health Elric would have relished the city's monumental beauty. It was a beauty derived from an aesthetic refined over centuries and bearing no signs of outside influence. Though so many of the curving ziggurats and palaces were of gigantic proportions there was nothing vulgar or ugly about them; they had an airy quality, a peculiar lightness of style which made them seem, in their terra-cotta reds and glittering silver granite, their whitewashed stucco, their rich blues and greens, as if they had been magicked out of the very air. Their luscious gardens filled marvellously complex terraces, their fountains and water-courses, drawn from deep-sunk wells, gave tranquil sound and wonderful perfume to her old cobbled ways and wide tree-lined avenues, yet all this water, which might have been diverted to growing crops, was used to maintain the appearance of Quarzhasaat as she had been at the height of her imperial power and was more valuable than jewels, its use rationed and its theft punishable by the severest of laws.

Elric's own lodgings were in no way magnificent, consisting as they did of a truckle bed, straw-strewn flagstones, a single high window, a plain earthenware jug and a basin containing a little brackish water which had cost him his last emerald. Water permits were not available to foreigners and the only water on general sale was Quarzhasaat's single most expensive commodity. Elric's water had almost certainly been stolen from a public fountain. The statutory penalties for such thefts were rarely discussed, even in private.

Elric required rare herbs to sustain his deficient blood, but their cost, even had they been available, would have proven far beyond his present means which had been reduced to a few gold coins; a fortune in Karlaak but of virtually no worth in a city where gold was so common it was used to line the city's aqueducts and sewers. His expeditions into the streets had been exhausting and depressing.

Once a day the boy, who had found Elric in the desert and brought him to this room, paid the albino a visit, staring at him as if at a curious insect or captured rodent. The boy's name was Anigh and, though he spoke the Melnibonéan-derived lingua franca of the Young Kingdoms, his accent was so thick it was sometimes impossible to understand all he said.

Once more Elric tried to lift his arm only to let it fall. That morning he had reconciled himself to the fact that he would never again see his beloved Cymoril and would never sit upon the Ruby Throne. He knew regret, but it was of a distant kind, for his illness made him oddly euphoric.

"I had hoped to sell you."

Elric peered, blinking, into the shadows of the room on the far side of a single ray of sunlight. He recognized the voice but could make out little more than a silhouette near the door.

"But now it seems all I have to offer in next week's market will be your corpse and your remaining possessions." It was Anigh, almost as depressed as Elric at the prospect of his prize's death. "You are still a rarity, of course. Your features are those of our ancient enemies but whiter than bone and those eyes I have never seen before in a man."

"I'm sorry to disappoint your expectations." Elric rose weakly on his elbow. He had deemed it imprudent to reveal his origins but instead had said he was a mercenary from Nadsokor, the Beggar City, which sheltered all manner of freakish inhabitants.

"Then I had hoped you might be a wizard and reward me with some bit of arcane lore which would set me on the path to becoming a wealthy man and perhaps a member of the Six. Or you might have been a desert spirit who could confer on me some useful power. But I have wasted my waters, it seems. You are merely an impoverished mercenary. Have you no wealth left at all? Some curio which might prove of value, for instance?" And the boy's eyes went towards a bundle which, long and slender, rested against the wall near Elric's head.

"That's no treasure, lad," Elric informed him grimly. "He who possesses it could be said to bear a curse impossible to exorcise." He smiled at the thought of the boy trying to find a buyer for the Black Sword which, wrapped in a torn cassock of red silk, occasionally gave out a murmur, like a senile old man attempting to recall the power of speech.

"It's a weapon, is it not?" said Anigh, his thin, tanned features making his vivid blue eyes seem large.

"Aye," Elric agreed. "A sword."

"An antique?" The boy reached under his striped brown djellabah and picked at the scab on his shoulder.

"That's a fair description." Elric was amused but found even this brief conversation tiring.

"How old?" Now Anigh took a step forward so that he was entirely illuminated by the ray of sunlight. He had the perfect look of a creature adapted to dwell amongst the tawny rocks and the dusky sands of the Sighing Desert.

"Perhaps ten thousand years." Elric found that the boy's startled expression helped him forget, momentarily, his almost certain fate. "But probably more than that..."

"Then it's a rarity, indeed! Rarities are prized by Quarzhasaat's lords and ladies. There are those amongst the Six, even, who collect such things. His honour the Master of Unicht Shlur, for instance, has the armour of a whole Ilmioran army, each piece arranged on the mummified corpses of the original warriors. And my Lady Talith possesses a collection of war-instruments numbering several thousands, each one different. Let me take that, Sir Mercenary, and I'll discover a buyer. Then I'll seek the herbs you need."

"Whereupon I'll be fit enough for you to sell me, eh?" Elric's amusement increased.

Anigh's face became exquisitely innocent. "Oh, no, sir. Then you will be strong enough to resist me. I shall merely take a commission on your first engagement."

Elric felt affection for the boy. He paused, gathering strength before he spoke again. "You expect I'll interest an employer, here in Quarzhasaat?"

"Naturally," Anigh grinned. "You could become a bodyguard to one of the Six, perhaps, or at least one of their supporters. Your unusual appearance makes you immediately employable! I have already told you what great rivals and plotters our masters are."

"It is encouraging"-Elric paused for breath-"to know that I can look forward to a life of worth and fulfillment here in Quarzhasaat." He tried to stare directly into Anigh's brilliant eyes, but the boy's head turned out of the sunlight so that only part of his body was exposed. "However, I understood from you that the herbs I described grew only in distant Kwan, days from here-in the foothills of the Ragged Pillars. I will be dead before even a fit messenger could be half-way to Kwan. Do you try to comfort me, boy? Or are your motives less noble?"

"I told you, sir, where the herbs grew. But what if there are some who have already gathered Kwan's harvest and returned?"

"You know of such an apothecary? But what would one charge me for such valuable medicines? And why did you not mention this before?"

"Because I did not know if it before." Anigh seated himself in the relative cool of the doorway. "I have made enquiries since our last conversation. I am a humble boy, your worship, not a learned man, nor yet an oracle. Yet I know how to banish my ignorance and replace it with knowledge. I am ignorant, good sir, but not a fool."

"I share your opinion of yourself, Master Anigh."

"Then shall I take the sword and find a buyer for you?" He came again into the light, hand reaching towards the bundle.

Elric fell back, shaking his head and smiling a little. "I, too, young Anigh, have much ignorance. But, unlike you, I think I might also be a fool."

"Knowledge brings power," said Anigh. "Power shall take me into the entourage of the Baroness Narfis, perhaps. I could become a captain in her guard. Maybe a noble!"