Michael Moorcock: The Fortress of the Pearl

"Then you must advise me, Lady Oone," said Elric simply, "for I am a novice here."

"I cannot advise you with any great clarity." She turned her eyes away from him, almost in modesty, perhaps in pain. "But I can make a decision here. We must claim the Pearl."

"As I understand it, the Pearl did not exist before the lords of Quarzhasaat conceived of it, before someone discovered the legend, before the Sorcerer Adventurers came."

"But it exists now," said Oone. "Lady Varadia, would you give the Pearl to me?"

"Willingly," said the Holy Girl, and she ran up the remaining steps and took the globe from the plinth and threw it to the ground so that shards of milky glass shattered everywhere, mingling with the bones and the armour of the Pearl Warrior, and she took the Pearl in one hand, as an ordinary child might grasp a lost ball. And she tossed it from palm to palm in delight, fearing it no longer. "It is very beautiful. No wonder they sought it."

"They made it, then they used it to trap you." Oone reached up and caught it as Varadia threw it to her. "What a shame those who could conceive of such beauty would go to such evil lengths to own it..." She frowned, looking about her in sudden concern.

The light was fading in the Court of the Pearl.

From all around them came an appalling noise, an anguished groaning; a great creaking and keening, a tortured screaming, as if all the tormented souls in all the multiverse had suddenly given voice.

It pierced their brains. They covered their ears. They stared in terror, watching as the floor of the Court erupted and undulated, as the ivory walls with all their wonderful mosaics and carvings began to rot before their eyes, crumbling and falling, like the fabric in a tomb suddenly exposed to daylight.

And then, over all the other noises, they heard the laughter.

It was sweet laughter. It was the unaffected laughter of a child.

It was the laughter of a freed spirit. It was Varadia's.

"It is dissolving at last. It is all dissolving! Oh, my friends, I am a slave no longer!"

Through all the falling filthy stuff, through all the decay and dissolution which tumbled upon them, through the destroyed carcass of the Fortress of the Pearl, Oone came towards them. She was hasty but she was careful. She held one of Varadia's hands.

"Not yet! Too soon! We could all dissolve in this!"

She made Elric take the child's other hand and they led her through the crashing, shrieking darkness, out of the chamber, down through the swaying corridors, out past the courtyards where fountains now gushed detritus and where the very walls were constructed of putrefying flesh which began to rot to nothing even as they went by. Then Oone made them run, until the final gateway lay ahead of them.

They reached the causeway and the marble road. There was a bridge ahead of them. Oone almost dragged the other two towards it, running as fast as she could possibly run, with the Fortress of the Pearl tumbling into nothing, roaring like a dying beast as it did so.

The bridge seemed infinite. Elric could not see to the further side. But at length Oone stopped running and allowed them to walk, for they had reached a gateway.

The gateway was carved of red sandstone. It was decorated with geometrical tiles and pictures of gazelles, leopards and wild camels. It had an almost prosaic appearance after so many monumental doorways, yet Elric felt some trepidation hi passing through it.

"I am afraid, Oone," he said.

"You fear mortality, I think." She pressed on. "You have great courage, Prince Elric. Make use of it now, I beg you."

He quelled his terrors. His grip on the child's hand was firm and reassuring.

"We go home, do we not?" said the Holy Girl. "What is it you do not want to find there, Prince Elric?"

He smiled down at her, grateful for her question. "Nothing much, Lady Varadia. Perhaps nothing more than myself."

They stepped together into the gateway.

Waking beside the still sleeping child, Elric was surprised to feel so refreshed. The dreamwand, which had helped them attain substance in the Dream Realm, was still hooked over their clasped hands and, looking across the child, he saw Oone beginning to stir.

"You have failed, then?"

It was Raik Na Seem's voice, full of resigned sadness.

"What?" Oone glanced at Varadia. Even as they watched, her skin began to shine with ordinary health and her eyes opened to see her anxious father staring down at her. She smiled. It was the easy, unaffected smile with which Oone and Elric were already familiar.

The First Elder of the Bauradim Clan began to weep. He wept as the seneschal of the Court of the Pearl had wept; he wept in relief and he wept in joy. He took up his daughter in his arms and he could not speak for the gladness in his heart. All he could do was reach one hand out towards his friends, the man and woman who had entered the Dream Realm to free his child's spirit, where it had fled to escape the evil of Lord Gho's hirelings.

They touched his hand and they left the Bronze Tent. They walked together into the desert and then they stood face to face, staring into one another's eyes.

"We have a dream in common now," said Elric. His voice was gentle, full of affection. "I think the memory will be a good one, Lady Gone."

She reached to hold his face hi her hands. "You are wise, Prince Elric, and you are courageous, but there is a certain kind of ordinary experience you lack. I hope that you are successful in finding it."

"That is why I wander this world, my lady, and leave my cousin Yyrkoon as Regent on the Ruby Throne. I am aware of more than one deficiency."

"I am glad we dreamed together," she said.

"You lost your true love, I think," Elric told her. "I am glad if I helped you ease the pain of that parting."

She was baffled for a moment, then her brow cleared. "You speak of Alnac Kreb? I was fond of him, my lord, but he was more a brother to me than a lover."

Elric became embarrassed. "Forgive my presumption, Lady Gone."

She looked up into the sky. The Blood Moon had not yet waned. It cast its red rays onto the sand, onto the gleaming bronze of the tent where Raik Na Seem welcomed his daughter back to him. "I do not love easily in the way you mean." Her voice was significant. She sighed. "Do you still plan to return to Melniboné and your betrothed?"

"I must," he said. "I love her. And my duty lies in Imrryr."

"Sweet duty!" Her tone was sarcastic and she took a step or two away from him, her head bowed, her hand on her belt. She kicked at the dust the colour of old blood.

Elric had disciplined himself against his heart's pain for too long. He could only stand and wait until she walked back to him. And now she was smiling. "Well, Prince Elric, would you join the dreamthieves and make this your living for a while?"

Elric shook his head. "It is a calling which requires too much of me, my lady. Yet I am grateful for what this adventure has taught me, both about myself and about the world of dreams. I still understand only a little of it I am still not wholly sure where we travelled or what we encountered. I do not know how much in the Dream Realm was the Lady Varadia's creation and how much was yours. It was as if I witnessed a battle of inventors! And did I contribute? I do not know."

"Oh, without you, believe me, Prince Elric, I think I would have failed. You have seen so much of other worlds! And you have read more. It does not do to analyse too closely the creatures and places one encounters in the Dream Realm, but be assured that you made your contribution. More, perhaps, than you'll ever know."

"Can reality ever be made from the fabric of those dreams?" he wondered.

"There was an adventurer of the Young Kingdoms called Earl Aubec," she said. "He knew how potent a creator of reality the human mind can be. Some say he and his kind helped make the world of the Young Kingdoms."