“Now!” It was Sepiriz. He, too, was as enormous as the single creature I had become. “Now you must climb. Now you must restore the tree and return the Balance.”
I could see Lord Shoashooan whirling wildly below me. The Kakatanawa could no longer hold him. I heard Lobkowitz’s voice. “Go! We will do all we can here. But if you do not go, nothing will be worth it. Gaynor will win.”
Once again Elric’s familiar personality was absorbing my own. I had no sense of White Crow’s individuality. For me it was exactly as it had been before when only Elric and I had combined. But now I felt even more powerful. The black sword had become a monstrous and beautiful object, far more ornate and intricate in design than anything I had ever wielded in battle. Her voice was melodic, yet still as cold as justice, and her metal blazed with life. I had no doubt that I held the first sword, from which all others had come. I looked up at the flaking bark, the decaying pulp that now blotched the base of the Skrayling Oak. Gaynor’s work had been well done.
I flung my arm forward towards the oak, and the sword did the rest, carrying me deep towards the core of the trunk. The closer I came, the larger I grew, until the tree, though tall, was of more familiar size.
I scabbarded the sword and climbed. I knew what this ascent meant. I knew what I had to do. Elric’s blood and soul informed my own as mine informed his. While Lobkowitz had given me only hints, he had told Elric everything he needed to know. Since the time they first saw White Buffalo Woman and Kakatanawa city, Elric had schemed against Gaynor while pretending to serve his cause. And now, too, I knew who White Crow was.
On my belt was Elric’s horn, and I moved with the agility of White Crow. The outer bark of the supernatural tree was very thick and layered, forming deep fissures and overhangs which afforded me handholds on my route upwards.
I heard a sound below and looked down. Far away the Kakatanawa were being pressed back by the power of the Lord of Winds. Lord Shoashooan had widened their circle until it must surely break. I knew in my bones that unless the Phoorn had more time to heal and recover he would still perish. Oona was doing her best for the great beast, but if Lord Shoashooan were to break free now, the Phoorn would not yet be strong enough to destroy him.
I thought I glimpsed Ayanawatta, Sepiriz and Lobkowitz on the edge of my vision, but then I could not look away any longer. I needed all my faculties to climb the constantly changing organic fissures in the tree.
Noise from the tornado crashed and wailed. Every part of the tree began to shake. I had to exert even more effort to cling to the weird bark. Often pieces crumbled away in my hands. I feared I would soon weaken and lose my grip completely.
An inch at a time I climbed. The air grew thinner and colder and the sounds of the Lord of Winds more shrill. Then something grabbed at my body. It felt as if a giant skeletal hand seized me about the waist. The cold went deep into my guts, and I knew Lord Shoashooan was free.
I fought to keep my grip on the tree. Being held so, I could not climb any further. It was all I could do to hang on.
The Lord of Winds’ voice trumpeted a vainglorious note now. Once I thought I glimpsed the Kakatanawa below as they were flung backwards, their ring broken. Lord Shoashooan attacked me and the Phoorn with all his strength.
I heard the pure whistle of Ayanawatta’s flute cutting through the roar and bluster. Again I was gripped by the tendrils of wind as Lord Shoashooan tried to pry me loose. Without the strength of my avatars, I should surely have been lost.
But the sound of the flute came clearer and sweeter through all that cacophony and joined with another sound coming from far below, equally high but by no means sweet. This sound writhed around the tree’s roots. The sound was the other Lord of Winds. If the Lords succeeded in joining, there would be no overwhelming their combined strength.
With that thought came the energy to force myself up the trunk. At last I stood in the swaying upper branches looking out across a world at night, at the frozen lake, at the rubble to which the great city had been reduced. At my will the sword sprang into my hand. I held the blade high above my head as power flooded into it. I offered myself as a conduit for this huge, supernatural force.
Then I reversed the sword and aimed it at the topmost tip of the tree, plunging it down, down into the soul of all-time, the heart of all-space, down into the center of the Skrayling Tree.
Immediately the sword left my hand and remained in the tree, its point driving deep through the inner wood to the soul of the Skrayling Oak. As it moved down the tree, it did not split but rather expanded the trunk until sword and tree had merged, and a great, black blade lay at the core of the ancient oak.
Then I lurched backwards, grabbing frantically at boughs to stop myself falling towards the faraway ice and the inevitable death of all my avatars. If I fell, we might never know if our sacrifice had been worth anything. Even now I heard the wind rising, higher and higher, ever more vicious. I was losing my grip on the bough. I was surely about to fall, and I had given up my weapon.
A shadow passed fleetingly through the whirlwind’s dusty crown. It was Oona, and she was riding the Phoorn.
The great white-gold spread of a Phoorn rising on his wide peacock wings into the air above a storm was a breathtaking sight! On my reptilian relative’s broad back, merged with his gleaming iridescent skefla’a but clearly visible, was my wife Oona, vibrantly alive, her head thrown forward in the sheer pleasure of the flight, a bowstave clutched in her right hand and the redstone smoking bowl balanced in her left.
When I fell, the Phoorn fell beside me, almost playfully. His soft breath slowed my descent, and he slid underneath me. I landed gently, painlessly, in his skefla’a. I lay prone just behind my wife. I could see the tree outlined in a golden glare. Within the spreading oak was the deep black of the sword blade, the guard stretching out across the branches, the pommel pulsing like a star. The black blade had completely merged with the oak and become part of the tree’s life force.
I was held within the membrane, only able to watch as Oona put down her box, took the redstone pipe bowl and spread her hands in a magical gesture that produced two bowls, one on each palm. I saw her reach out and put a smoking redstone bowl at each end of the black sword’s guard. They hung suspended there as she lifted both hands to her head and took something from it. She then placed this object on the sword hilt between the bowls. The ritual was done, and I looked upon the Cosmic Balance.
Oona began to laugh with joy as Shoashooan redoubled his attack. The storm raged on and shot up cold tendrils wrapping around us, still trying to draw us back. Yet she turned towards me, laughed again, and embraced me.
The Balance still swung erratically. It could destroy itself if its movement back and forth became too violent. Nothing seemed to have even the promise of stability as yet.
Below us, seemingly even more powerful, the great plume of the tornado fanned out, gathering stronger and stronger substance. The limbs of the tree began to thrash uncontrollably again as Lord Shoashooan unleashed a desperate anger.
Once more I heard the clear note of the flute. Oona heard it, too. The Phoorn began to bank through the dirty light, sweeping through the edges of the whirlwind, down through the green-gold haze of the tree, down past the slender black shaft which glowed at the center of the trunk. Down towards the greedy Lord of Winds.
I had done everything I could do. I prepared myself for the death Lord Shoashooan undoubtedly planned for us. If I could have thrown myself into his center and saved Oona I would have done so, but the membrane prevented any dramatic movement.
This was how my ancestors had traveled with the Phoorn, protected by the skefla’a which allowed the monsters to sweep like butterflies so delicately between the realms of reality. Few Melnibonéans had made such flights, though my father Sadric was said to have voyaged longest and furthest of any of us, after my mother had died giving birth to me.
It was only now that the realization came. My shame was coupled with a sudden rush of
relief. The Kakatanawa Grail had done its holy work! The wounds I had inflicted upon Oona were thoroughly healed.
With decreasing energy, the Phoorn fought valiantly against the sucking wind drawing us to it. His massive wings beat upon the ether as he strained to escape. Oona became increasingly alarmed. Filling the entire world before us was the spreading bulk of the Skrayling Oak framing the pulsing black sword. Its crosspieces formed the Cosmic Balance, which again began to sway wildly. The conflict was by no means decided.
Looming behind us was the ever-growing presence of Lord Shoashooan. The Kakatanawa warriors were nowhere to be seen. Lord Sepiriz, Ayanawatta and Prince Lobkowitz had disappeared. Neither was there any sign of Gaynor or Klosterheim.
Then I heard the flute’s refrain. Ayanawatta’s clear, pure tones cut through all the raging turmoil.
The Phoorn lurched this way and that in the force of the tornado. The air grew colder and colder. We were slowly freezing into immobility. I became drowsy with the cold.
Again the flute piped.
The Phoorn’s wings could no longer beat against the thinning ether. His breath began to stream like gaseous ivory from his nostrils. Slowly we were losing height, being pulled deeper and deeper into the heart of the whirlwind.
The voice of the Phoorn sounded again in my mind. We have no strength to escape him…
I prayed that I could die with Oona in my arms. I pushed with all my strength against the clinging membrane, too weak now to reach her. She was holding tight to the scales as the freezing wind sought to dislodge her from the Phoorn.
I was now convinced that Sepiriz, Lobkowitz and the Kakatanawa had all perished. Somehow Ayanawatta continued to play his flute, but I guessed he could not survive for long.
I love you. Father—Ulric—I love you both.
Oona’s voice. I saw her turn, seeking me, yearning towards me with her eyes. She could not loose her grip, or she would be torn from the back of the Phoorn. Again I strained against the membrane. It flickered with scarlet and turquoise and a soft pewter brilliance. It did not resist me, but neither did it allow me to break free.
Oona!
From below something roared and spat at us. The whole of the surface erupted, fragmenting into millions of spores which spun away past us into the infinite cosmos. Scarlet and black streamed up at us, as if the whole world exploded. Searing hot air was a sudden wall against the cold. Silence fell.
I heard a distant rumbling. A roaring. I knew what this meant. What shot upwards towards us was magma. Rock as swift and lively as a roaring river and far more deadly. We were directly above an erupting volcano. We would burn to death before the whirlwind destroyed us!
But Oona was pointing excitedly up towards the distant Balance, clearly visible now on the staff that had replaced the black sword. I knew then that this was the original iron which Sepiriz and his people had stolen to make Stormbringer. This was the metal the Kakatanawa had told the Pukawatchi to fashion. She was what whole nations had died to possess. Her magic was the magic of the Cosmic Balance itself. Her power was strong enough to challenge that Balance. Those who mastered her, mastered Fate. Those who did not master her, were mastered by her.
What Oona showed me was not significant at first, but then I realized why she was elated. The bowls that formed the twin weights of the Balance were gradually finding equilibrium.
The boiling air struck hard against Lord Shoashooan’s cold turbulence. I saw his face, closer this time, as his teeth snapped at us and his flailing claws grasped and held the Phoorn. The beast beat his wonderful wings helplessly and would surely perish.
But the hot air was consuming Lord Shoashooan. He was collapsing in it. Slowly his grip loosened, and he began to wail. I felt my head would burst with the volume. What I had taken for another aspect of Lord Shoashooan’s strength had been his opposite, conjured from the benign Underworld whose denizens had helped us in the past. A counterforce as powerful as the Lord of Winds, which could only be rising from the core of the Grey Fees.
Shoashooan had weakened himself in his pursuit of us. At last we felt his grip relax, and we were free. And he in turn was now pursued. One great Lord of Winds gave chase to another! We watched the turquoise-and-crimson air, foamy masses of creamy smoke roiling in its wake, as it enclosed and absorbed its filthy opposite. It purified the Lord of Winds with its grace alone and brought at last, against Lord Shoashooan’s will, a kind of uneasy harmony. With the tornado still grumbling from within, the flute’s simple tune faded into one single note of resolution.
We stood looking up at the Skrayling Tree, looking up at the great black staff of the Balance, at the cups which must surely be the Grail, which had restored Oona to life. At the central pivot of the Balance Oona had placed the blue jewel of Jerusalem, my ring. The same Templar ring which Elric had carried from Jerusalem. The ring which resembled our small, ordinary planet, seen from space. The ring which had helped us restore the Balance.
The Kakatanawa resumed their watch, again immobile. The great Phoorn settled near the roots of the tree, and my wife and I dismounted and embraced at last. Almost at once the huge beast curled himself about the base of the tree. He returned peacefully to his stewardship. The roots were already restoring themselves.
At the moment of our embrace, we stood beneath a sharp, blue sky, with a sweet wind blowing surrounded by ruins. The tree grew larger and larger as the Balance grew stronger, until it filled the entire firmament, and the roots were green and fresh again, winding out from the ruined Kakatanawa city, out through the deep, deep ice—
Where the surviving avatars of Gaynor, Klosterheim and their men still moved with weary determination towards us.
The Vikings’ eyes stared sightlessly. Their lips moved wordlessly. They held their weapons tightly, the only reality the Vikings could be certain of. It was clear they longed for the release of a slaughtering. They no longer cared how they died.
It was still not over. I looked around for a sword but found nothing. Instead I saw the prone bodies of Elric and White Crow. I saw Prince Lobkowitz, Lord Sepiriz and Ayanawatta, all unarmed, standing together around Bes, the mammoth. The great Phoorn seemed to have immersed himself in the trunk of the tree.
We did not have a weapon among us, and Gaynor and his men were still armed to the teeth. They understood their advantage, because their pace quickened. Like hungry dogs scenting blood, they hurried towards us. Elric and White Crow slowly revived only to become aware of their threatened destruction.
Had I survived so much to see my wife cut down before my eyes? I dug around among the rubble for a sword. There was nothing. Lord Shoashooan had reduced the entire great city to dust.
They were almost on our island. I urged Oona to flee, but she held her ground. Ayanawatta had come to stand with us. His handsome, tattooed features were calm, resolute. He slipped his bone flute from his bag in one fluid movement and placed it to his lips. We watched Gaynor and his men advance across the ice.
As Ayanawatta played, no note issued from the flute itself, but I began to hear a strange, subterranean sound. Groaning, creaking and cracking. A distant rushing. And another eruption of warm air at our feet. Things burst upwards through the shattering ice. They glistened with fresh life.
Gaynor saw them, too. He yelled to his men, instantly understanding the danger, and began to dash towards us, sword drawn. But the fresh, green roots of the Skrayling Oak spread everywhere, smashing up through the ice, overturning great blocks and collapsing back into what was rapidly becoming water once more.
Desperate now, Gaynor persevered. He labored to the edge of the ice, our island shore only a few paces away.
And there he stopped.
Bes the mammoth stood facing him. She shook her tusks, menacing him, all the while her mild eyes regarding him with a terrifying calm.
He turned. Hesitated.
Further up the shore Klosterheim and several of his men leaped to our island as the last of the ice around them melted. Sheets of clear,
pale water appeared beneath the winter sky. A great fissure had torn apart the remaining ice sheets and was widening rapidly as Gaynor, trapped between two dangers, still hesitated, not knowing how to avoid defeat. Bes stomped relentlessly towards him, and he was forced back onto the ice. He began to run, slipping and sliding, towards a nearby spur of rock jutting out from the beach.
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?”