Michael Moorcock - Elric 2 - Sailor on the Sea of Fate

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BOOK ONE
SAILING TO THE FUTURE
... and leaving his cousin Yyrkoon sitting as Regent upon
the Ruby Throne of Melnibone, leaving his cousin Cymoril
weeping for him and despairing of his ever returning, Elric
sailed from Imrryr, the Dreaming City, and went to seek
an unknown goal in the worlds of the Young Kingdoms
where Melniboneans were, at best, disliked.
- The Chronicle of the Black Sword
1
It was as if the man stood in a vast cavern whose walls and
roof were comprised of gloomy, unstable colours which
would occasionally break and admit rays of light from the
moon. That these walls were mere clouds massed above
mountains and ocean was hard to believe, for all that the
moonlight pierced them, stained them and revealed the
black and turbulent sea washing the shore on which the
man now stood.
Distant thunder rolled; distant lightning flickered. A
thin rain fell. And the clouds were never still. From dusky
jet to deadly white they swirled slowly, like the cloaks of
men and women engaged in a trancelike and formalistic
minuet: the man standing on the shingle of the grim beach
was reminded of giants dancing to the music of the far-
away storm and felt as one must feel who walks unwittingly
into a hall where the gods are at play. He turned his gaze
from the clouds to the ocean.
The sea seemed weary. Great waves heaved themselves
together with difficulty and collapsed as if in relief,
gasping as they struck sharp rocks.
The man pulled his hood closer about his face and he
looked over his leathern shoulder more than once as he
trudged closer to the sea and let the surf spill upon the toes
of his knee-length black boots. He tried to peer into the
cavern formed by the clouds but could see only a short
distance. There was no way of telling what lay on the other
side of the ocean or, indeed, how far the water extended.
He put his head on one side, listening carefully, but could
hear nothing but the sounds of the sky and the sea. He
sighed. For a moment a moonbeam touched him and from
the white flesh of his face there glowed two crimson,
tormented eyes; then darkness came back. Again the man
turned, plainly fearing that the light had revealed him to
some enemy. Making as little sound as possible, he headed
towards the shelter of the rock on his left.
Elric was tired. In the city of Ryfel in the land of
Pikarayd he had naively sought acceptance by offering his
services as a mercenary in the army of the governor of that
place. For his foolishness he had been imprisoned as a
Melnibonean spy (it was obvious to the governor that Elric
could be nothing else) and had but recently escaped with
the aid of bribes and some minor sorcery.
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The pursuit, however, had been almost immediate. Dogs
of great cunning had been employed and the governor
himself had led the hunt beyond the borders of Pikarayd
and into the lonely, uninhabited shale valleys of a world
locally called the Dead Hills, in which little grew or tried to
live.
Up the steep sides of small mountains, whose slopes
consisted of grey, crumbling slate, which made a clatter to
be heard a mile or more away, the white-faced one had
ridden. Along dales all but grassless and whose river-
bottoms had seen no water for scores of years, through
cave-tunnels bare of even a stalactite, over plateaux from
which rose cairns of stones erected by a forgotten folk, he
had sought to escape his pursuers, and soon it seemed to
him that he had left the world he knew forever, that he had
crossed a supernatural frontier and had arrived in one of
those bleak places of which he had read in the legends of
his people, where once Law and Chaos had fought each
other to a stalemate, leaving their battle-ground empty of
life and the possibility of life.
And at last he had ridden his horse so hard that its heart
had burst and he had abandoned its corpse and continued
on foot, panting, to the sea, to this narrow beach, unable
to go further forward and fearing to return lest his enemies
should be lying in wait for him.
He thought that he would give much for a boat now. It
would not be long before the dogs discovered his scent and
led their masters to the beach. He shrugged. Best to die
here alone, perhaps, slaughtered by those who did not even
know his name. His only regret would be that Cymoril
would wonder why he had not returned at the end of the
year.
He had no food and few of the drugs which had of late
sustained his energy. Without renewed energy he could not
contemplate working a sorcery which might conjure for
him some means of crossing the sea and making, perhaps,
for the Isle of the Purple Towns where the people were
least unfriendly to Melniboneans.
It had been only a month since he had left behind his
court and his queen-to-be, letting Yyrkoon sit on the
throne of Melnibone until his return. He had thought he
might learn more of the human folk of the Young Kingdoms
by mixing with them, but they had rejected him either with
outright hatred or wary and insincere humility. Nowhere
had he found one willing to believe that a Melnibonean
(and they did not know he was the Emperor) would willingly
throw in his lot with the human beings who had once been
in thrall to that cruel and ancient race. And now, as he
stood beside a bleak sea feeling trapped and already
defeated, he knew himself to be alone in a malevolent
universe, bereft of friends and purpose, a useless, sickly
anachronism, a fool brought low by his own insufficiencies
of character, by his profound inability to believe wholly in
the rightness or wrongness of anything at all. He lacked
faith in his race, in his birthright, in gods or men; and
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above all he lacked faith in himself.
His pace slackened; his hand fell upon the pommel of his
black runesword Stormbringer, the blade which had so
recently defeated its twin, Mournblade, in the fleshy
chamber within a sunless world of Limbo. Stormbringer,
seemingly half-sentient, was now his only companion, his
only confidant, and it had become his neurotic habit to
talk to the sword as another might talk to his horse or as a
prisoner might share his thoughts with a cockroach in his
cell.
'Well, Stormbringer, shall we walk into the sea and end
it now?' His voice was dead, barely a whisper. 'At least we
shall have the pleasure of thwarting those who follow us.'
He made a half-hearted movement towards the sea, but
to his fatigued brain it seemed that the sword murmured,
stirred against his hip, pulled back. The albino chuckled.
'You exist to live and to take lives. Do I exist, then, to die
and bring both those I love and hate the mercy of death?
Sometimes I think so. A sad pattern, if that should be the
pattern. Yet there must be more to all this...'
He turned his back upon the sea, peering upwards at
the clouds forming and reforming above his head, letting
the rain fall upon his face, listening to the complex,
melancholy music which the sea made as it washed over
rocks and shingle and was carried this way and that by
conflicting currents. The rain did little to refresh him. He
had not slept at all for two nights and had slept hardly at
all for several more. He must have ridden for almost a
week before his horse collapsed.
At the base of a damp granite crag which rose nearly thirty
feet above his head, he found a depression in the ground in
which he could squat and be protected from the worst of
the wind and the rain. Wrapping his heavy cloak tightly
about him, he eased himself into the hole and was
immediately asleep. Let them find him while he slept. He
wanted no warning of his death.
Harsh, grey light struck his eyes as he stirred. He raised his
neck, holding back a groan at the stiffness of his muscles,
and he opened his eyes. He blinked. It was morning
- perhaps even later, for the sun was invisible - and a cold
mist covered the beach. Through the mist the darker clouds
could still be seen above, increasing the effect of his being
inside a huge cavern. Muffled a little, the sea continued to
splash and hiss, though it seemed calmer than it had done
on the previous night, and there were now no sounds of a
storm. The air was very cold.
Elric began to stand up, leaning on his sword for support,
listening carefully, but there was no sign that his enemies
were close by. Doubtless they had given up the chase,
perhaps after finding his dead horse.
He reached into his belt pouch and took from it a sliver
of smoked bacon and a vial of yellowish liquid. He sipped
from the vial, replaced the stopper and returned the vial to
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his pouch as he chewed on the meat. He was thirsty. He
trudged further up the beach and found a pool of rainwater
not too tainted with salt. He drank his fill, staring around
him. The mist was fairly thick and if he moved too far from
the beach he knew he would become immediately lost. Yet
did that matter? He had nowhere to go. Those who had
pursued him must have realized that. Without a horse he
could not cross back to Pikarayd, the most easterly of the
Young Kingdoms. Without a boat he could not venture
onto that sea and try to steer a course back to the Isle of
the Purple Towns. He recalled no map which showed an
eastern sea and he had little idea of how far he had
travelled from Pikarayd. He decided that his only hope of
surviving was to go north, following the coast in the trust
that sooner or later he would come upon a port or a fishing
village where he might trade his few remaining belongings
for a passage on a boat. Yet that hope was a small one for
his food and his drugs could hardly last more than a day or
so.
He took a deep breath to steel himself for the march and
then regretted it: the mist cut at his throat and his lungs
like a thousand tiny knives. He coughed. He spat upon the
shingle.
And he heard something: something other than the
moody whisperings of the sea; a regular creaking sound, as
of a man walking in a stiff leather. His right hand went to
his left hip and the sword which rested there. He turned
about, peering in every direction for the source of the
noise, but the mist distorted it. It could have come from
anywhere.
Elric crept back to the rock where he had sheltered. He
leant against it so that no swordsman could take him
unawares from behind. He waited.
The creaking came again, but other sounds were added.
He heard a clanking; a splash; perhaps a voice, perhaps a
footfall on timber; and he guessed that either he was
experiencing a hallucination as a side effect of the drug he
had just swallowed or he had heard a ship coming towards
the beach and dropping its anchor.
He felt relieved and he was tempted to laugh at himself
for assuming so readily that this coast must be uninhabited.
He had thought that the bleak cliffs stretched for miles -
perhaps hundreds of miles - in all directions. The
assumption could easily have been the subjective result of
his depression, his weariness. It occurred to him that he
might as easily have discovered a land not shown on maps
yet with a sophisticated culture of its own: with sailing
ships, for instance, and harbours for them. Yet still he did
not reveal himself.
Instead he withdrew behind the rock, peering into the
mist towards the sea. And at last he discerned a shadow
which had not been there the previous night. A black,
angular shadow which could only be a ship. He made out
the suggestion of ropes, he heard men grunting, he heard
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the creak and the rasp of a yard as it travelled up a mast.
The sail was being furled,
Elric waited at least an hour, expecting the crew of the
ship to disembark. They could have no other reason for
entering this treacherous bay. But a silence had descended,
as if the whole ship slept.
Cautiously Elric emerged from behind the rock and
walked down to the edge of the sea. Now he could see the
ship a little more clearly. Red sunlight was behind it, thin
and watery, diffused by the mist. It was a good-sized ship
and fashioned throughout of the same dark wood. Its
design was baroque and unfamiliar, with high decks fore
and aft and no evidence of rowing ports. This was unusual
in a ship either of Melnibonean or Young Kingdoms design
and it tended to prove his theory that he had stumbled
upon a civilization for some reason cut off from the rest of
the world, just as Elwher and the Unmapped Kingdoms
were cut off by the vast stretches of the Sighing Desert and
the Weeping Waste. He saw no movement aboard, heard
none of the sounds one might usually expect to hear on a
sea-going ship, even if the larger part of the crew was
resting. The mist eddied and more of the red light poured
through to illuminate the vessel, revealing the large wheels
on both the foredeck and the reardeck, the slender mast
with its furled sail, the complicated geometrical carvings of
its rails and its figurehead, the great, curving prow which
gave the ship its main impression of power and strength
and made Elric think it must be a warship rather than a
trading vessel. But who was there to fight in such waters as
these?
He cast aside his weariness and cupped his hands about
his mouth, calling out:
'Hail, the ship!'
The answering silence seemed to him to take on a
peculiar hesitancy as if those on board heard him and
wondered if they should answer.
'Hail, the ship!'
Then a figure appeared on the port rail and, leaning
over, looked casually towards him. The figure had on
armour as dark and as strange as the design of his ship; he
had a helmet obscuring most of his face and the main
feature that Elric could distinguish was a thick, golden
beard and sharp, blue eyes.
'Hail, the shore,' said the armoured man. His accent
was unknown to Elric, his tone was as casual as his manner.
Elric thought he smiled. 'What do you seek with us?'
'Aid,' said Elric. 'I am stranded here. My horse is dead.
I am lost.'
'Lost? Aha!' the man's voice echoed in the mist. 'Lost.
And you wish to come aboard?'
'I can pay a little. I can give my services in return for a
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passage, either to your next port of call or to some land
close to the Young Kingdoms where maps are available so
that I could make my own way thereafter...'
'Well,' said the other slowly, 'there's work for a
swordsman.'
'I have a sword,' said Elric.
'I see it. A good, big battle-blade.'
'Then I can come aboard?'
'We must confer first. If you would be good enough to
wait a while..."
'Of course,' said Elric. He was nonplussed by the man's
manner but the prospect of warmth and food on board the
ship was cheering. He waited patiently until the blond-
bearded warrior came back to the rail.
'Your name, sir?' said the warrior.
'I am Elric of Melnibone.'
The warrior seemed to be consulting a parchment, run-
ning his finger down a list until he nodded, satisfied, and
put the list into his large-buckled belt.
'Well,' he said, 'there was some point in waiting here,
after all. I found it difficult to believe.'
'What was the dispute and why did you wait?'
'For you,' said the warrior, heaving a rope ladder over
the side so that its end fell into the sea. 'Will you board
now, Elric of Melnibone?'
2
Elric was surprised by how shallow the water was and he
wondered by what means such a large vessel could come so
close to the shore. Shoulder-deep in the sea he reached up
to grasp the ebony rungs of the ladder. He had great
difficulty heaving himself from the water and was further
hampered by the swaying of the ship and the weight of his
runesword, but eventually he had clambered awkwardly
over the side and stood on the deck with the water running
from his clothes to the timbers and his body shivering with
cold. He looked about him. Shining, red-tinted mist clung
about the ship's dark yards and rigging, white mist spread
itself over the roofs and sides of the two large cabins set
fore and aft to the mast, and this mist was not of the same
character as the mist beyond the ship. Elric, for a moment,
had the fanciful notion that the mist travelled permanently
wherever the ship travelled. He smiled to himself, putting
the dreamlike quality of his experience down to lack of
food and sleep. When the ship sailed into sunnier waters he
would see it for the relatively ordinary vessel it was.
The blond warrior took Elric's arm. The man was as tall
as Elric and massively built. Within his helm he smiled,
saying:
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'Let us go below.'
They went to the cabin forward of the mast and the
warrior drew back a sliding door, standing aside to let Elric
enter first. Elric ducked his head and went into the warmth
of the cabin. A lamp of red-grey glass gleamed, hanging
from four silver chains attached to the roof, revealing
several more bulky figures, fully dressed in a variety of
armours, seated about a square and sturdy tea-table. All
faces turned to regard Elric as he came in, followed by the
blond warrior who said:
'This is he.'
One of the occupants of the cabin, who sat in the
farthest corner and whose features were completely hidden
by the shadow, nodded, 'Aye,' he said. 'That is he.'
'You know me, sir,' said Elric, seating himself at the end
of the bench and removing his sodden leather cloak. The
warrior nearest him passed him a metal cup of hot wine
and Elric accepted it gratefully, sipping at the spiced liquid
and marvelling at how quickly it dispersed the chill within
him.
'In a sense,' said the man in the shadows. His voice was
sardonic and at the same time had a melancholy ring,
and Elric was not offended, for the bitterness in the
voice seemed directed more at the owner than at any he
addressed.
The blond warrior seated himself opposite Elric. 'I am
Brut,' he said, 'once of Lashmar where my family still
holds land, but it is many a year since I have been there.'
'From the Young Kingdoms, then?' said Elric.
'Aye. Once.'
'This ship journeys nowhere near those nations?' Elric
asked.
'I believe it does not,' said Brut. 'It is not so long, I
think, since I myself came aboard. I was seeking Tanelorn,
but found this craft instead.'
'Tanelorn?' Elric smiled. 'How many must seek that
mythical place? Do you know of one called Rackhir, once
a Warrior Priest of Phum? We adventured together quite
recently. He left to look for Tanelorn.'
'I do not know him,' said Brut of Lashmar.
'And these waters,' said Elric, 'do they lie far from the
Young Kingdoms?'
'Very far,' said the man in the shadows.
'Are you from Elwher, perhaps?' asked Elric. 'Or from
any other of what we in the west call the Unmapped
Kingdoms?'
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'Most of our lands are not on your maps,' said the man
in the shadows. And he laughed. Again Elric found that he
was not offended. And he was not particularly troubled by
the mysteries hinted at by the man in the shadows. Soldiers
of fortune (as he deemed these men to be) were fond of
their private jokes and references; it was usually all that
united them save a common willingness to hire their
swords to whomever could pay.
Outside the anchor was rattling and the ship rolled. Elric
heard the yard being lowered and he heard the smack of
the sail as it was unfurled. He wondered how they hoped to
leave the bay with so little wind available. He noticed that
the faces of the other warriors (where their faces were
visible) had taken on a rather set look as the ship began to
move. He looked from one grim, haunted face to another
and he wondered if his own features bore the same
cast.
'For where do we sail?' he asked.
Brut shrugged. 'I know only that we had to stop to wait
for you, Elric of Melnibone.'
'You knew I would be there?'
The man in the shadows stirred and helped himself to
more hot wine from the jug set into a hole in the centre of
the table. 'You are the last one we need,' he said. 'I was the
first taken aboard. So far I have not regretted my decision
to make the voyage.'
'Your name, sir?' Elric decided he would no longer be at
that particular disadvantage.
'Oh, names? Names? I have so many. The one I favour is
Erekose. But I have been called Urlik Skarsol and John
Daker and Ilian of Garathorm to my certain knowledge.
Some would have me believe that I have been Elric
Womanslayer...'
'Womanslayer? An unpleasant nickname. Who is this
other Elric?'
'That I cannot completely answer,' said Erekose. 'But I
share a name, it seems, with more than one aboard this
ship. I, like Brut, sought Tanelorn and found myself here
instead.'
'We have that in common,' said another. He was a black-
skinned warrior, the tallest of the company, his features
oddly enhanced by a scar running like an inverted V from
his forehead and over both eyes, down his cheeks to his
jawbones. 'I was in a land called Ghaja-Ki, a most
unpleasant, swampy place, filled with perverse and
diseased life. I had heard of a city said to exist there and I
thought it might be Tanelorn. It was not. And it was
inhabited by a blue-skinned, hermaphroditic race who
determined to cure me of what they considered my malform-
ations of hue and sexuality. This scar you see was their
work. The pain of their operation gave me strength to
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escape them and I ran naked into the swamps, floundering
' for many a mile until the swamp became a lake feeding a
broad river over which hung black clouds of insects which
set upon me hungrily. This ship appeared and I was more
than glad to seek its sanctuary. I am Otto Blendker, once a
scholar of Brunse, now a hireling sword, for my sins.'
'This Brunse. Does it lie near Elwher?' said Elric. He
had never heard of such a place, nor such an outlandish
name, in the Young Kingdoms.
The black man shook his head. 'I know nought of
Elwher.'
'Then the world is a considerably larger place than I
imagined,' said Elric.
'Indeed it is,' said Erekose. 'What would you say if I
offered you the theory that the sea on which we sail spans
more than one world?'
'I would be inclined to believe you.' Elric smiled. 'I have
studied such theories. More, I have experienced adventures
in other worlds than my own.'
'It is a relief to hear it,' said Erekose. 'Not all on board
this ship are willing to accept my theory.'
'I come closer to accepting it,' said Otto Blendker,
'though I find it terrifying.'
'It is that,' agreed Erekose. 'More terrifying than you
can imagine, friend Otto.'
Elric leaned across the table and helped himself to a
further mug of wine. His clothes were already drying and
physically he had a sense of well being. 'I'll be glad to leave
this misty shore behind.'
'The shore has been left already,' said Brut, 'but as for
the mist, it is ever with us. Mist appears to follow the ship
- or else the ship creates the mist wherever it travels. It is
rare that we see land at all and when we do see it, as we saw
it today, it is usually obscured, like a reflection in a dull
and buckled shield.'
'We sail on a supernatural sea,' said another, holding
out a gloved hand for the jug. Elric passed it to him. 'In
Hasghan, where I come from, we have a legend of a
Bewitched Sea. If a mariner finds himself sailing in those
waters he may never return and will be lost for eternity.'
'Your legend contains at least some truth, I fear,
Terndrik of Hasghan,' Brut said.
'How many warriors are on board?' Elric asked.
'Sixteen other than the Four,' said Erekose. 'Twenty in
all. Here is the Steersman - and then there is the Captain.
You will see him soon, doubtless.'
'The Four? Who are they?'
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Erekose laughed. 'You and I are two of them. The other
two occupy the aft cabin. And if you wish to know why we
are called the Four, you must ask the Captain, though I
warn you his answers are rarely satisfying.'
Elric realized that he was being pressed slightly to one
side. 'The ship makes good speed,' he said laconically,
'considering how poor the wind was.'
'Excellent speed,' agreed Erekose. He rose from his
corner, a broad-shouldered man with an ageless face
bearing the evidence of considerable experience. He was
handsome and he had plainly seen much conflict, for both
his hands and his face were heavily scarred, though not
disfigured. His eyes, though deep-set and dark, seemed of
no particular colour and yet were familiar to Elric. He felt
that he might have seen those eyes in a dream once.
'Have we met before?' Elric asked him.
'Oh, possibly - or shall meet. What does it matter? Our
fates are the same. We share an identical doom. And
possibly we share more than that.'
'More? I hardly comprehend the first part of your
statement.'
'Then it is for the best,' said Erekose, inching past his
comrades and emerging on the other side of the table. He
laid a surprisingly gentle hand on Elric's shoulder. 'Come,
we must seek audience with the Captain. He expressed a
wish to see you shortly after you came aboard.'
Elric nodded and rose. 'This captain - what is his
name?'
'He has none he will reveal to us,' said Erekose'.
Together they emerged onto the deck. The mist was if
anything thicker and of the same deathly whiteness, no
longer tinted by the sun's rays. It was hard to see to the far
ends of the ship and for all that they were evidently moving
rapidly, there was no hint of a wind. Yet it was warmer
than Elric might have expected. He followed Erekose
forward to the cabin set under the deck on which one of
the ship's twin wheels stood, tended by a tall man in sea-
coat and leggings of quilted deerskin who was so still as to
resemble a statue. The red-haired Steersman did not look
round or down as they advanced towards the cabin, but
Elric caught a glimpse of his face.
The door seemed built of some kind of smooth metal
possessing a sheen almost like the healthy coat of an
animal. It was reddish-brown and the most colourful thing
Elric had so far seen on the ship. Erekose knocked softly
upon the door. 'Captain,' he said. 'Elric is here.'
'Enter,' said a voice at once melodious and distant.
The door opened. Rosy light flooded out, half-blinding
Elric as he walked in. As his eyes adapted, he could see a
very tall, pale-clad man standing upon a richly hued carpet
file:///F|/rah/Michael%20Moorcock/Moorcock,%2...The%20Sailor%20On%20The%20Sea%20of%20Fate.txt (10 of 118) [1/19/03 6:29:57 PM]
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file:///F|/rah/Michael%20Moorcock/Moorcock,%20Michael%20-%20Elric%202%20-%20The%20Sailor%20On%20The%20Sea%20of%20Fate.txtBOOKONESAILINGTOTHEFUTURE...andleavinghiscousinYyrkoonsittingasRegentupontheRubyThroneofMelnibone,leavinghiscousinCymorilweepingforhimanddespairingofhiseverreturning,Elricsailedf...

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