The White Wolf's Son: The Albino Underground

  I was left alone in the small antechamber looking out over the garden and, since I had no other way of calming myself, took an intense interest in the flowers. Although the windows were wide open, they were covered by screens so that it was impossible to go out.

  After what seemed hours, Countess Flana and her entourage entered the room. She was tall and slender. She covered her head with a magnificently wrought heron mask, with a long, sharp beak and a half-raised crest, all in silver and ebony. From it two large golden, cool and unreadable eyes regarded me.

  “I hear you have strong opinions of your own, Mademoiselle von Bek.” The voice was humorous, vibrant. If I hadn’t been warned by Baron Bous-Junge what she was really like, I might have thought I would find sympathy there. I kept my own counsel. I was still planning to escape. I felt it was almost my duty to try, since I seemed so crucial to whatever Dark Empire plan was in place to conquer the multiverse.

  Of course, I hadn’t taken them and their plans seriously, but even their reconquering of the Continent would be bad enough. I might manage to stop something if I escaped.

  I decided to pretend to be deceived by Countess Flana, who sent her slaves from the room and came to stand over me where I sat on an uncomfortable, asymmetrical couch facing the garden.

  “You like my little private garden, child?”

  “I love it,” I said as innocently as I could. “Do you work in it yourself?”

  This brought a soft laugh. “As it happens, I do, when I am alone. Which is all too rare.”

  Slender-fingered hands reached to remove the elegant mask, revealing one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, on or off the screen. She had a fair, glowing skin, platinum hair and dark red lips. There was a kind of wondering, dreaming quality to her as she turned those eyes, the shade of sunflowers, upon me. Her color was higher than I would have expected, and the flush took time to leave her cheeks. It was very hard not to trust and like someone who looked so beautiful, even vulnerable. I wondered how she had handled twelve husbands. Twelve. She seemed to belong to the wrong order. Was there an Order of the Spider? She contradicted everything I knew about her. I wondered about her kind’s potential longevity. She looked twenty-five, but she must be more than one hundred.

  For all her reputation, I found myself warming to her as she drew back the screens from the French doors and led me into the tranquility of the water garden. The sky above was awash with speeding dark clouds, which flung their shadows over black towers, domes and turrets. Once a big, black ornithopter flew over the city, its engine pounding, throwing out the usual trail of smoke and sparks.

  “So you are Jack D’Acre’s sister?” We walked among the flower beds and the streams of water. “There is little family resemblance.”

  “I agree,” I said. “You’d never know we were related.”

  She frowned at this. “Oh, no, I think the prophecy was accurate. I miss little Jack. He lived with me, you know. An odd experience, no doubt, for us both.” She stared into the fountain. A tribe of stylized bronze merpeople rose onto rocks, water spewing from their metallic mouths. They rode dolphins and carried tridents and nets, yet, for all their classical origins, they were distinctly Granbretanian: faintly grotesque, faintly aggressive and possibly alive. Her voice became distant as she remembered something. She raised her head and watched the disappearing ornithopter as it flew between the towers. “Then he ran away.”

  If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she recollected a lover who had left her.

  “But now I have you,” she said. She reached to stroke my hair. “Poor Jack. Poor Jack.”

  “Were you the one who blinded him?”

  “He sang so beautifully. And he knew the future. He was a seer, as you know, my dear. And you are aware, I’m sure, of the fate of such folk.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from repeating, “How was he blinded?”

  “By the light. They needed him to listen for the demons in the steel, you see.” Her voice faded and became almost inaudible. “They didn’t know his true value. They took him off to Mirenburg. My informants tell me they were trying to make a particular kind of sword.” Perhaps she was thinking back to when it had happened. I couldn’t be sure. I had never been with anyone as mysterious, as impossible to read. “Taragorm, you see, had these machines … But originally I bought him for his voice.”

  “Bought him?”

  She frowned, puzzled. “Taragorm had other purposes for him, and no sense of his talents. He cost me the fortune of one of my husbands.” She laughed softly. “But he was worth it. Until he went away.” She sighed. “The king’s orders, of course. Now this … I’m sure he’ll be discovered eventually. But this time they will tear out his tongue. If he is lucky. They’ll ruin him.”

  I knew a second or two of hope. “I didn’t think anyone could escape from Londra.”

  “Oh, he hasn’t escaped the city,” she said. “He is still here, somewhere. He must be. I can almost smell him. After all, he can’t go back to Mirenburg now, can he? I’m told your presence will make him reveal himself, once he knows his sister is in our power. What do you think?”

  “I think he’d be an idiot to risk it,” I said.

  She found this amusing. She smiled and reached for me again. I let her stroke my neck and shoulder, but she could tell I was tense. She withdrew her hand. “I miss him. I suppose you do, too.”

  “Not as much as you, I think.”

  Her expression became strangely grateful. I found it very difficult to believe her a husband-killer, but I could have been seeing only one side of her. Or maybe all these Granbretanner aristocrats were like that. I had the impression that half these people only barely repressed hysteria. Something about their taste for masks and enclosed spaces was associated in my mind with that kind of madness. I had read the expression “my blood ran cold” and had never really thought what it meant. Now I knew. In spite of the warmth, I found myself shivering in her water garden as she led me down crazy-paving paths, staring thoughtfully into vivid, fleshy blooms and pretending, I supposed, to frame her thoughts.

  “You didn’t know him as I knew him,” she said. And she sighed deeply, then laughed. “Who could?”

  “You really think he’ll come back to you just because I’m here?”

  “Oh, no, my dear, he won’t come back to me because of you. In fact, because of you he is even more likely to stay away.”

  She looked at me blankly for a moment, then turned away. “That’s absurd. Jack is my adopted son. I intend to make him king-emperor someday.”

  “But King Huon’s immortal, isn’t he?”

  She looked at me in surprise, as if I had overheard her speaking to herself. “Of course he is.” She smiled as she stopped to point out an especially magnificent variety of lily: purple caps, not dissimilar to deadly nightshade.

  We wandered back to the French doors, and she again surprised me when she asked, “Have you any preferences for food this evening? There are certain shortages, because of the war, but I can have almost anything prepared for you.”

  I shook my head.

  Her voice softened. “You’re not enjoying your stay in Londra. Why is that?”

  “I miss my mother and father.”

  “They turned you out?”

  “No. That Klosterheim and his friend chased me all over the place. Underground. All through the dimensions. Across half of Europe. And as a result I lost touch with them.”

  “Where are they? Still alive?”

  “In England,” I said. “In Yorkshire.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, brightening. “What a coincidence. We have provinces here in Granbretan which bear very similar names.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised.” I yawned. It had been a long, long day. The sun was in its final quarter, spreading red, agitated light across the rooftops and domes. Maybe I liked this woman because she was unstable. It suggested a kind of vulnerability. “How long are they going to keep me here?”

  ??
?Not long, as I understand it. They have the Sword; they have the Cup; they have the Stone. Now they need the Blood and the Staff to perform the ritual. And you and Jack, of course, will provide those.”

  “Why is that?” I hardly wanted to hear her reply.

  “Male and female fluids are needed, and of course, they must come from your veins. For you traditionally guard the Grail. Keepers of the Stone, as they say. The Blood must come from twins of that old von Bek strain. Taragorm, who is still a good friend of mine though we were married once, told me all about it. To gain control over the Balance, virgin blood of the twin Grail children must spill and mingle, while the essence of what is male and female must combine in ritual bloodletting …”

  “Ritual bloodletting?” I was beginning to get a clearer picture. Not a very pleasant one. I shivered.

  “Yes, of both. That is very important. I’m sure you understand, being of that blood. But much of this is new to me. I have never studied magic, you see, and know few who do. Taragorm has machines which speak to him. They are perfectly clear about what has to be done. Like to like. Same to same. Shape to shape. Blood to blood. It is the absolute fundamental of their science as well as their magic and medicine. We follow the principles of similarity. The principle of the Balance itself. Opposites in balance. The principles upon which all life is based. But Taragorm explained this to me and will no doubt do the same for you.”

  “Taragorm?” I wanted to know more about him.

  “He is the master of the Palace of Time. He can travel in time, they say. At least he can see into the past and future. The world’s greatest scholar in the Doctrine of Signatures. What our ancestors called Signatura Rarum. Like affects like. The fundamentals of science. He searches the dimensions, back and forth through history, seeking to restore all the wisdom we lost when the Tragic Millennium descended upon us.”

  “And what brought that disaster?”

  “Who knows, child? Perhaps a similar sequence of events. What is done in one time and place repeats and repeats, yet with each repetition comes a subtle change. There is a legend of a sword, a stone, a cup, I understand, which no doubt dates from the same period. It would be ironic, would it not, if we repeated the same mistakes which brought that long, dark age from which we so recently emerged.” Her laughter was sweet and light but with an edge of weariness to it. “How boring if that turned out to be the truth.”

  I must admit, a lot of this magic stuff went over my head. Countess Flana didn’t seem to notice.

  “When does this ritual take place?” It seemed reasonable for me to ask a question about their plans for my death.

  “When all the worlds are in conjunction,” she said. “Smaller conjunctions appear fairly regularly. A hundred spheres. A million spheres. Over the past two or three centuries there have been a series of such conjunctions. Repeating and repeating. And at every repetition, Taragorm tells me, an opportunity has been lost. On this occasion they intend to be certain. They will preserve the Balance, and they will control it.” She smiled almost tenderly at me and reached out her hand to me again. This time I avoided it. “They intend to gain control over both Law and Chaos.”

  “Isn’t that a bit overambitious?”

  “It seems so, doesn’t it, my dear? What is in such men that they must control so much?” She smoothed her dress over her legs. “They say Hawkmoon or some avatar of his is destined to destroy the Balance. But if they control it, they will take control of the Grey Fees …”

  “The DNA of the multiverse?” Wasn’t that what someone had called it? I hardly knew what they were talking about.

  “You are a well-educated child. They believe they can re-create the multiverse in their preferred image. When the mainlanders Klosterheim and von Minct came to them with the plan, they were skeptical. However, they were at last convinced, partly by the ease with which those two moved between the various realms of the multiverse. Our people only had the vaguest of notions of such worlds, though they have been working on a means of traveling to them for some time. In the Signatura Rarum there’s evidence our ancestors had this power and lost it. If Granbretan is able to pass between one world and another easily, we will find and kill those who conspire against us. Until now, the ability to travel at will between the dimensions has belonged only to others. That is why you and your brother are so valued, of course, as are your great-grandfather and your grandmother. Not only does your blood possess the magical properties required to perform the ritual, but your physical capture will bring the others to us at the right time. And they’ll reveal their secrets because we’ll be able to experiment on them in the optimum conditions.”

  Something nagged at the back of my mind. There was a flaw somewhere in her logic.

  “So you want half my family in on this. Are we all going to die?”

  “Your bleeding,” she said, “would not mean your dying in the conventional sense. But, of course, it will not be pleasant. I almost feel sorry for you.”

  I suddenly had an image of Mrs. Ackroyd, the farmer’s wife up at Chapel-le-Dale, hanging the pig and slitting its throat in order to make black pudding. The poor thing squealed horribly while its blood poured into a big bucket. I remember her pushing her hands down into the bucket, stirring the blood and pulling out strings of some impurity. Even my friends the Ackroyd girls thought it was gross. I ran away. I didn’t wait for a lift. I ran almost three miles nonstop and was in a bit of a state when I got to Tower House. My mum and dad were furious when they heard I’d seen this. They very nearly refused to let me go and play with the Ackroyds after that.

  I had this image of myself hung like Mrs. Ackroyd’s pig, and I suddenly felt sick. I asked where the toilet was. One of the slaves took me to a similar cubicle to the one in Mirenburg, and I threw up some bile, but I wasn’t really that ill. I stayed there for a bit, just trying to collect my thoughts and wondering how on earth I was going to escape. It might have seemed hopeless, but it really never occurred to me that I really was in extreme danger. The image of that pig prepared me for it, though.

  I opened the cubicle grille to look out. The young slaves were waiting for me. I couldn’t see a way of escape at that stage, but I was beginning to get an idea, based on these people’s psychology. The mysterious Jack had got away. He must be very clever to have done it, considering they’d blinded him. Or did he have friends among the king-emperor’s lackeys?

  For the time being, until I got a better idea of my surroundings and my chances of escape, I decided I’d better just go back. When I returned to the courtyard, Countess Flana was wearing her silver, gold and platinum heron mask again. She had a visitor. The man had his back to me but wore no mask. I recognized him at once.

  She was saying, “The boy is lost again. Would the girl know where he is? If so …”

  I heard him reply, “That’s what I came to warn you about. Don’t even break her skin, if you can avoid it. She must stay a virgin or the blood’s no use to you. With luck, the albino and his bitch-whelp will lead us to the boy. The boy will bring you the Staff. Without it, the other objects are useless.” He turned as I came in. His eyes narrowed and hardened.

  I looked into the handsome face of a man I had thought our friend, who had been so charming and delightful when we first met, who had brought Elric to Ingleton and enjoyed our hospitality. A man I had liked and trusted. The balloonist bowed in that exaggerated way of his, and his smile was hypocrisy itself.

  “Good afternoon, young mademoiselle. So pleasant to see you again.” The Chevalier St. Odhran doffed his elaborate bonnet.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Now Hawkmoon, Count Brass and his daughter Isolda, Oladahn of the Bulgar Mountains, all dressed in mirrored, flashing armor, again led their forces against the armies of Meliadus and his barons. Meliadus fumed. What power did these rebels have that they could appear and disappear at will, forever choosing the place and time of the most crucial battles…?

  MEANWHILE, AS LORD Taragorm and Baron Bous-Junge contemplated
the ritual which was to end in Oonagh’s terrible death, Elric, searching the worlds of the moonbeam roads, determined for himself that Klosterheim and von Minct had tricked him. He returned to the world in which the Dark Empire forces were at bay, and learned from Yaroslaf Stredic that his daughter and the others had arrived and headed for München. He arrived at the lakeside ruins and found his friends only a few hours after the Granbretanian ships had left.

  The stink of the ornithopters was still in the air. The party had been raided with poison-gas bombs; Elric recognized the kind. The bolting horses had escaped the worst of the gas. They now stood some distance away from the ruins, cropping the grass, carriages abandoned. Two of the party were gone: Oona and Oonagh. The rest had been left to die. Using his own considerable skills in sorcerous alchemy, Elric quickly revived his friends, learning from them the possible fate of the others.

  Lord Renyard was the most agitated. He blamed himself for what had happened. Elric was able to reassure him. “Plots and counterplots, Lord Renyard, are in the nature of this particular game, where even the loyalties of one’s closest friends are tested. We have all been deceived by that pair and their allies. I understood Bastable tried to reach you and failed. This complicates our game. Given the way in which all the realms of the multiverse now arrange themselves in conjunction, I would guess Granbretan plans to begin their blood ritual very shortly.”

  The great fox scratched himself behind his left ear. “Why is that so important to them? Do they serve Chaos or Law? What do they want?”

  “Oh, they’re playing for pretty high stakes, I think. They play for more than either Chaos or Law.”

  “There’s something more than that?”

  Elric turned for help to his friend, Prince Lobkowitz, who walked slapping at his clothing and wrinkling his nose against the smell. “Something more indeed. They seek the ‘consanguine conduit,’ bringing together all the scattered manifestations of the Balance itself.”