“I did not understand you to be a sorceress as well as a swordswoman,” Elric said, helping her to sit.
“Our magic is of a natural order,” she said, “but not all of us chose to practise it. Chaos has fewer weapons against it, which proved an advantage to me, though I had hoped to imprison him and learn more from him.”
“He is in Count Mashabak’s employ still, I think,” said Elric.
“That much, sir, I know,” said the Rose softly and with a significance only clear to herself.
Soon they had her seated on a cushioned settle, her skin pale pink in the gentle light of the blue hall, her hair folding about her delicate skull like petals.
It was some while, after Koropith had returned with Wheldrake and Mother Phatt, through tunnels easier to climb than the outer steps, before the Rose was ready to tell them what had occurred after she had reached this cave (“slithering through the dimensions like sneak-thieves”). She had found the sisters hidden, having failed in a quest of their own, which had taken them so far afield. Not for the first time she had offered them her aid, and they had been glad to accept it, but some rupturing of the cosmic fabric had been detected by Gaynor, whose own stronghold lay not fifty miles from here, and he had arrived with a small army to seize the sisters and their treasure. He had not expected to be resisted, especially by the singular magic commanded by the Rose, which was of a nature too subtle for Chaos easily to understand.
“My magic draws neither from Law nor from Chaos,” she said, “but from the natural world. Sometimes it takes a century for one of our spells to stifle the roots of some spectacular tyranny, but when it is dead, it is thoroughly dead. It was our vocation to seek out tyranny and destroy it. So successful were we that we began to anger certain Lords of the Higher Worlds, who ruled through such people.”
“You are the Daughters of the Garden,” said Wheldrake, breaking in and then stopping apologetically. “There is an old Persian tale which speaks of you, I think. Or perhaps it is from Baghdad. The Daughters of Justice was another name … But you were Martyred … Forgive me, madam. There was a tale …
“Came cruel Count Malcolm to that land,
With fire and steel in either hand,
And a curse which fouled his breath;
I seek the Flowers of Bannon Brae;
I bring them pain and death.
“Good heavens, madam, sometimes I feel I am trapped in some vast, unending epic of my own invention!”
“You recall the old ballad’s ending, Master Wheldrake?”
“There are one or two,” said Wheldrake diplomatically.
“You recall a certain ending, however, do you not?”
“I recall it, madam,” said Wheldrake in dawning horror. “Oh, madam! No!”
“Aye,” said the Rose. And she spoke slowly, with great, weary strength …
“Each brand that burn’d in Bannon Brae,
Was a soul in cruel torment.
Count Malcolm who cut the bright flowers down,
Left but one to sing Lament.
“I,” said the Rose, “was the only flower not, eventually, cut down by him whom the ballad calls ‘Count Malcolm’. The one whom Gaynor had preceded, with his lies to us concerning his own heroic struggles against the forces of the Dark.” And she paused, as if she stilled a tear. “That was how we were caught unawares of the invasion. We trusted Gaynor. Indeed, I spoke for him! He is economical in his methods, I learned. He deceives us all with the same few tales. Our valley was a wasteland within hours. You can imagine the upheavals, for we were unprepared for Chaos, which could only enter our realm through mortal agency. Through Gaynor’s agency. And that of the unwitting fools he deceived …”
“Oh, madam!” says Wheldrake again. At which she reaches out a friendly hand to comfort him. But he would comfort her. “The only flower …”
“Save one,” she said, “but she resorted to desperate sorcery and died an unholy death …”
“The sisters are not your kinswomen, then?” murmured Fallogard Phatt. “I had assumed …”
“Sisters in spirit, perhaps, though they are not of my vocation. They seek to resist a common enemy, which is why I have aided them until now. For they, among others, possess the key to my own particular goal.”
“But where has Gaynor taken them?” Charion Phatt wished to know. “His stronghold is only fifty miles from here, you say?”
“And it is surrounded by a Chaos army awaiting only his order to march against us. But I do not know yet if he has the sisters.”
“He took them, surely?” Charion Phatt said.
But the Rose shook her head. Gradually, she was restoring herself and was now able to walk unaided. “I had to hide them from him. There was so little time. I could not hide their treasures with them. But I do not know if I acted swiftly enough.”
It was evident she did not want to be asked further questions about that incident, so they asked her and Koropith what had happened on the Gypsy causeway. She told them how she had found Gaynor and the sisters at the very moment Mashabak was about to cut the bridge. He had been summoned, of course, by Gaynor. “I sought to stop Mashabak and save as many lives as I could. But in so doing I allowed Gaynor to escape—though not with the sisters, who had managed to free themselves from him. I had tried to warn the gypsies and when that failed I went in search of Gaynor—or Mashabak. We have come close, Koropith and I, to finding them at different times, but now we know they have returned here, as have the sisters. Chaos gathers strength. This realm is almost theirs, save for the resistance provided by ourselves, and the sisters.”
“I have little stomach for a journey to a Court of Chaos, madam,” said Wheldrake slowly, “but if I can be of any assistance to you in this matter, please feel free to make use of me however you wish.” He offered her a grave little bow.
And Charion, at her intended’s side, donated her own sword and wits in the Rose’s service.
All of which was accepted graciously but with lifted hand. “We do not yet know what we must do,” she said and then she raised herself to her feet, the velvet robe falling in folds upon the marble couch, and, lifting her marvelous head, pursed her lips in a whistle.
There came the sound of padded feet upon those marble floors and a hot panting, as if the Rose had summoned the Hounds of Hell to aid them; then into the hall bounded three huge dogs—great wolf-hounds with lolling red tongues and fangs of pre-human heritage—a white hound, a blue-grey hound and a pale golden hound, ready, it seemed, to do battle with any enemy, pursue any prey. And they grouped at the Rose’s side and looked up into her face as if ready to obey her slightest order.
But then one of the dogs glanced to one side and saw Elric. Immediately it became agitated, growling softly and attracting the attention of the other two hounds, until Elric began to wonder if these were not some close relatives of Esbern Snare who did not approve of the werewolf’s act of sacrifice on Elric’s behalf.
Next they were up and moving towards the albino while the Rose cried out in surprise; cried for them to return to heel.
But they would not.
Elric did not fear the great hounds as they approached him. Indeed, there was something about them which reassured him. But he was deeply puzzled.
Now they came closer, prowling around him, sniffing, quizzing, with the soft growls forever being exchanged between them until at last they seemed satisfied and returned, passively, to the Rose’s side.
The Rose was mystified. “I was about to explain,” she said, “why we must wait before we take further action. These hounds are the three sisters. I put a glamour on them to protect them from Gaynor’s sorcery, as well as to give them a means of defending themselves, for they are spent, you see, of magic and all ingenuity. They have failed in their quest.”
“What was that quest?” asked Elric softly, stepping from behind the others and looking with a new curiosity at the dogs, who returned his gaze with a kind of abstracted longing.
“It was
for thee,” said the golden hound as she rose from all fours and in a single flowing motion became a woman clad in silk the colour that her fur had been, and her face was of that long, refined sort which Elric recognized at once as belonging to his own people. Grey-blue fur turned to grey-blue silk, white to white, until all three sisters were standing there before him, tiny figures, yet unmistakably of Melnibonéan stock. “It was for thee, Elric of Melniboné, that we sought,” they said again.
They had black hair framing their exquisite features like helmets, large slanting violet eyes, fair skin like the palest brass, their lips were perfect bows—
—and they had spoken to him alone. They had used the old High Speech of Melniboné which even Wheldrake found hard to understand.
Confronted by this unexpected turn of events, Elric had taken an unwitting step backward. Then he steadied himself, bowed briefly and discovered himself, in spite of all he’d ever sworn, making the old blood greeting of the Bright Empire’s ruling families. “I am bonded to thee and thine interests …”
“… and we to thine, Elric of Melniboné,” said the golden woman. “I am the Princess Tayaratuka and these are my sisters, also of the Caste, Princess Mishiguya and Princess Shanug’a. Prince Elric, we have hunted thee through millennia and across a thousand Spheres!”
“I have hunted thee only a few hundred years and perhaps five hundred Spheres,” said Elric modestly, “but it seems I am the tail that chases the weasel …”
“When Mad Jack Porker staked his leg!” cried Ma Phatt from where she enjoyed the luxury of a fresh couch and luxurious linen. “We have been chasing one another in circles, then? See! I knew there was a pattern to it! Somewhere, there is always a pattern to it. Dongle-my-dingle, the lad’s lost his jingle. It’s the famous race, you know. Porker’s Trial by Accident. His last dash was pure heroism. Everyone said so. Ladies and gentlemen, they are nailing our feet to the ground. That is not fair play!” And she relapsed into some comic dialogue with herself in which she relived her girlhood on the boards. “Buffalo Bill and the Wandering Jew! It was our grand finale. The last touch.”
To which the three sisters listened with perfect patience before continuing …
“We sought thee to ask of thee a boon,” said Princess Tayaratuka, “and to offer thee in exchange for that boon a gift.”
“I am bound to thee as if I were thine own hands,” said Elric automatically.
“And we to thee,” replied the sisters, equally familiar with the ritual.
Then Princess Tayaratuka dropped to one knee, raising her hands to place them on his arms and bring him down to her so that he, too, was kneeling as she kneeled. “My lord, good power to thee,” she said, and offered her forehead for his kiss. This ritual was performed until all had spoken and been kissed in turn.
“How may I help thee, sisters,” said Elric when they had next kissed the triple kiss of kinship. All his old Melnibonéan blood stirred in him and he grew chill with a longing for his homeland and the speech and customs of his own unhuman folk. These women were his peers; already a deep understanding existed between them, stronger than blood, stronger than love, yet in no way encumbering or demanding. Elric knew in his bones that their command of sorcery might well have been the match of his own, before they exhausted all their strength in their search for him. He had known and loved many powerful women, including his lost betrothed Cymoril, and Myshella, the Dark Lady of Kaneloon, the sorceress he had but lately served, but, save for the Rose, the three princesses were the most striking of all the living women he had yet encountered, since he had left Imrryr as the pyre for his beloved’s corpse.
“I am flattered that you should have sought me, your majesties,” he said, relaxing for good manners’ sake into the common tongue. “How may I be of service to you?”
“We would borrow your sword, Elric,” said Princess Shanug’a.
“Borrow it you shall, madam. And myself to wield it for you.” He spoke gallantly, as honour bade him do, but he still feared the threat of his father’s ghost hovering somewhere not too far off, ready to flee at the first threat of extinction and pour his soul into Elric’s being, to blend for ever … And had not Gaynor coveted the Black Sword?
“You do not ask why we would borrow the blade,” said Princess Mishiguya, seating herself beside the Rose and helping herself to the small fruits which had been placed on the arm of the couch. “You would not bargain with us?”
“I would expect you to help me as I help you,” said Elric in a matter-of-fact tone, “but I have sworn the blood-oath, as have you. It is done. We are the same. Our interests are the same.”
“Yet you have a deep fear in you, Elric,” said Charion Phatt suddenly. “You have not told these women what you fear if you allow yourself to aid them!” She spoke out as a child might, for justice, without understanding why the albino did not wish to betray his own anxieties.
“And they have not told me of what they fear if I agree to aid them,” said Elric quietly to the young woman. “We are riding the stallions of terror, every one of us at present, Mistress Phatt, and the best we can hope to do is to keep some kind of grip upon the reins.”
Charion Phatt accepted this and subsided, though she glanced furiously at Wheldrake, as if she wished him to speak on her behalf. But the poet remained a diplomat, unsure of the game he witnessed or of the stakes, but willing to go wherever his almost-betrothed determined.
“Where would you have me bear this blade?” Elric asked again.
Princess Tayaratuka glanced at her sisters before getting their unspoken assent to continue. “We do not need you to bear the blade,” she said gently. “We spoke quite literally. We wish to borrow your runesword, Prince Elric. I will explain.”
And she told a tale of a world where all lived in harmony with nature. This world had possessed few cities in the usual sense and its settlements were built to conform with the contours of the hills and valleys, the mountains and the streams, to blend with the forest but not to encroach upon it, so that anyone visiting their plane would have seen virtually no signs of habitation upon the continent where they lived. But Chaos came, led by Gaynor the Damned, who sought their hospitality and betrayed it, as he had betrayed so many other souls through the centuries, summoning in his patron lord who had immediately put the marks of Chaos upon their land.
“Few of our habitations were ever visible to potential enemies from other continents, so well-protected were we by the Heavy Sea, which encircles us. So dense were our forests and wide and winding our rivers that no-one cared to risk their lives on seeking after any legends which might have crept to other parts of the world. It is true we lived in paradise. But it was a paradise achieved at the expense of no other creature, including those of the wild, with whom we lived. Yet within a day or two all that had gone and we were left with a few barricaded outposts like this one, where our sorcery was used to maintain our world as it had been before Chaos came.”
“And Chaos has laid siege here for a long while, madam?” asked Fallogard Phatt sympathetically, and raised his eyebrows at her answer.
“For something over a thousand years there has been a sort of stalemate. Most of our people left this world to found new settlements in other planes, but some of us felt duty-bound to stay and fight Chaos. We are the last of those. While we sought Elric, many of our kinfolk were killed in forays with Chaos attempting to attack the main stronghold.”
“But what achieved the amnesty?” Elric asked.
“A feud between two Dukes of Hell took up their attention, especially after Arioch, employing some complicated strategy which involved Mashabak’s cutting of the gypsy bridge and various other machinations and manipulations of the multiverse, was able to capture Mashabak in the territory he considered his own—our realm. Without demonic aid, Gaynor had to hope that the sisters would lead him back here. However, all that is altered. Some event occurred recently which ended the truce, such as it was. Mashabak has returned here and must soon send all his fo
rces against us. Whoever broke that cosmic stalemate robbed us of whatever time we thought we had left …”
And Elric said nothing, remembering Esbern Snare and his leap at the Duke of Hell; remembering the courage of the Northern Werewolf as he had sought to save his friend—and had unwittingly broken the balance of power which had allowed the sisters some respite in their own palace.
Gaynor, insanely determined, abandoned by Mashabak, battled his own way through the dimensions, sworn to reclaim his conquests not in Mashabak’s name, but his own! He challenged Chaos as he had once challenged the Balance! To him, no master was tolerable! The ex-Prince of the Universal had been lost, forced to spend years of subjective time searching for a way back to this realm. He had employed every strategy, every trick—furious that his cosmic ally had, apparently, deserted him, but determined to establish his rule here! Eventually he decided that he would follow the sisters, since they must eventually return to their own realm. Originally Mashabak had sent him on a quest—to follow the escaping sisters through the dimensions and bring back the living rose. But when Mashabak no longer aided him, the rose had become secondary to Gaynor. He desired Elric’s sword rather more urgently.
Now he had returned, and demonstrated that the palace was no longer proof against him. He had entered and threatened the sisters at sword-point, demanding their now-legendary Three Treasures which they had carried back with them to return to the one who had loaned them. Gaynor’s plan was to force the sisters out of the palace and into the cavern, at the eastern entrance of which his Chaos pack waited, unable themselves to enter that unlikely place.
With Koropith Phatt’s skills stretched to snapping, and almost overwhelmed by a desperate urgency as the young Phatt sensed the sisters’ danger, the Rose at last broke through into this realm—barely in time to place a protective glamour on the sisters and challenge Gaynor, whom she drove back into the palace by her sword-play and her witchcraft. But he, in turn, had found a source of sorcery and had eventually left her for dead, escaping back to his stronghold as Elric and the others arrived.