Revenge of the Rose (14 page)

 
          
“Then
we
must stop the Nation moving,” said
the Rose simply.

 
          
“Nothing
can do that, madam.” Fallogard Phatt shook a sad and despairing head. “It
exists to move. It moves to exist. That is why the road is never changed, but
rebuilt, even when land has fallen away, as in the bay we shall soon be
crossing. They
cannot
change the
road. I put it to them, when we first arrived. They told me it was too
expensive, that the community could not afford it. But the fact is they can no
more break their orbit than can a planet change her course around the sun. And
if we tried to escape it would be like a pebble attempting to escape gravity.
We were told that our main concern here should be to stay in the villages but
never
below
the villages!”

 
          
“This
is a mere prison,” says Wheldrake, still picking at the cheeses, “not a nation.
It is a foul disturbance in the order of things. It is dead and maintained by
death. Unjust and maintained by injustice. Cruel and sustained by cruelty. And
yet, as we have seen, the folk of Trollon congratulate themselves upon their
urbanity, their humanity, their kindness and their graceful manners: while the
dead stagger under their feet, supporting them in all their self-deceiving
folly! Producing this parody of progress!”

 
          
Mother
Phatt’s old head turned to regard Wheldrake. She chuckled at him, not mockingly
but with affection. “My brother told them as much, and continued to tell them
as much. But he died on the marching boards, nonetheless. I was with him. I
felt him die.”

 
          
“Ah!”
said Wheldrake, as if he shared that death also. “This is an evil parody of
freedom and justice! It is a lie of profound dishonesty! For while
one
soul in this world suffers what
hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, now suffer, they are culpable.”

 
          
“They
are fine fellows all, in Trollon,” said Fallogard Phatt ironically. “They are
persons of good will and charity. They pride themselves on their wisdom and
their equity …”

 
          
“No,”
says Wheldrake with an angry shake of his flaming comb, “they may accept that
they are
lucky
, but cannot believe
themselves either wise or good! For in the end such folk agree to any device
which keeps them in privilege and ease, and so maintain their rulers, electing
them with every show of democratic and republican zeal. It is the way of it,
sir. And they do not ever address the injustice of it, sir. This makes them
hypocrites through and through. If I had my way, sir, I would bring this whole
miserable charade of progress to a halt!”

 
          
“Stop
the progress of the Gypsy Nation!” Fallogard Phatt laughed with considerable
glee, adding with pretended gravity, “Be careful, my dear sir. Here you are
amongst friends—but in other circles such sentiments are the sheerest heresy!
Be silent, sir. For your own sake!”

 
          
“Be
silent! That is the perpetual admonition of Tyranny. Tyranny bellows ‘Be
silent!’ even to the screams of its victims, the pathetic moans and groanings
and supplications of its trampled millions. We are one, sir—or we are
fragmented carrion which worms permit the false appearance of Life—corpses that
twitch and tremble with their weight of maggots—the rotten carcass politic of
an ideal freedom. The Free Gypsy Nation is an enormous falsehood! Movement,
sir, is not Freedom!” Wheldrake drew furious breath.

 
          
From
the corner of his eye, Elric saw the Rose get up from her chair and leave the
room. He guessed that she had grown bored with the debate.

 
          
“The
Wheel of Time groans and turns a million cogs which turn a million cogs again
and so on, through infinity—or near infinity,” said Phatt with a glance at his
mother, who had closed her eyes again. “All mortals are its prisoners and its
stewards. That is the inescapable truth.”

 
          
“One
may mirror the truth or seek to assuage it,” said Elric. “Sometimes one can
even try to change it …”

 
          
Wheldrake
took a sudden pull on his bumper. “I was not raised to a world, sir, where
truth was malleable and reality a question of what you made it. It is hard for
me to hear such notions. Indeed, sir, I will admit to you that it alarms me.
Not that I fail to appreciate the wonder of it, sir, or the optimism which you
are, in your own way, expressing. It is just that I was born to trust and
celebrate certain senses and accept that a great unchanging beauty was the
order of the universe, a set of natural laws which, as it were, coincided in
subtle ways with a mighty machine—intricate and complex but ultimately
rational. This Nature, sir, was what I celebrated and worshipped, as others
might celebrate and worship a Deity. What you suggest, sir, seems to me
retrogressive. These, surely, are closer to the discredited notions of alchemy?”

 
          
And
so the discussion continued until they all grew weary with the sound of their
own voices and were not reluctant to seek their beds.

 
          
As
Elric climbed the stairs, his lamp throwing enormous shadows on the limewashed
walls, he wondered at the Rose’s sudden departure from the table and hoped that
something had not offended her. Normally he would have cared little about such
things, but he had a respect for the woman which went beyond mere appreciation
of her intelligence and beauty. There was also an air of tranquility about her
which reminded him, in an odd way, of his time in Tanelorn. It was hard to
believe that a woman of such evident integrity and wisdom was bent upon the
resolution of a crude blood-feud.

 
          
In
the narrow room he had chosen for himself, little more than a cupboard with a
cot in it, he prepared himself for sleep. The Family Phatt had readily made
them comfortable while involving themselves in only the minimum disruption, and
had agreed to use their psychic powers in the service of the Rose’s quest.
Meanwhile, the albino would rest. He was weary and he was yearning deeply now
for a world he could never know again. A world that he himself had destroyed.

 
          
Now the albino sleeps and his lean, pale
body turns this way and that; a groan escapes the large, sensitive lips and
once, even, the crimson eyes open wide and stare with terror into the darkness
.

 
          
“
Elric,” says a voice, full of old rage and
grief so great it has actually become a fixed aspect of the timbre, “my son.
Hast thou found my soul? It is hard for me here. It is cold. It is lonely.
Soon, whether I wish it or no, I must join thee. I must enter thy body and be
forever part of thee …
”

 
          
And Elric wakes with a scream that seems to
fill the void in which he floats and his scream continues in his ears, finding
an echo in another scream, until both are screaming in unison and he looks for
his father’s face, but it is not his father who screams …

 
          
It is an old woman—wise and tactful, full of
extraordinary knowledge—who screams as if demented, as if in the grip of the
most horrible torture, screams out “NO!”—screams “STOP!”—screams “THEY FALL—OH,
DEAR ASTARTE, THEY FALL!
”

 
          
Mother Phatt is screaming. Mother Phatt has
a vision of such unbearable intensity her screaming cannot relieve the pain she
experiences. And she becomes silent
.

 
          
As the world is silent, save for the slow
rumbling of the monstrous wheels, the steady, faraway sound of marching feet,
never stopping, marching around the world …

 
          
“
STOP!” cries the albino prince, but does not
know what he commands. He has had just the merest glimpse of Mother Phatt’s
vision …

 
          
Now there are ordinary sounds outside his
door. He hears Fallogard Phatt calling to his mother, hears Charion Phatt
sobbing and realizes there is uproar close to hand …

 
          
With
his lamp relit and in his borrowed linen, Elric goes out upon the landing and
sees through the open door Mother Phatt, bolt upright in her bed, her old lips
flecked with foam, her eyes staring ahead of her, frightened and sightless. “They
fall!” she moans. “Oh, how they fall. It should not come to this. Poor souls!
Poor souls!”

 
          
Charion
Phatt holds her grandmother in her arms and rocks her a little, as if she seeks
to comfort a child wakened in a nightmare. “
No,
Granny, no! No, Granny, no!
” Yet it is evident from her own expression that
she, too, has seen something utterly terrifying. And her uncle, beside himself—sweating,
red, flustered, pleading, holding his own poor tangled head as if to shield it
from bombardment, cries: “It is not! It cannot! Oh, and she has stolen the boy!”

 
          
“No,
no,” says Charion, shaking her head. “He went willingly. That was why you did
not sense any danger. He did not believe there was any!”

 
          
“She
plans this?” moans Fallogard Phatt in outraged disbelief. “She plans such
death
?”

 
          
“Bring
him back,” says Mother Phatt harshly, her eyes still blind to the world around
her. “Get her back quickly. Find her and you shall save him.”

 
          
“They
went to Duntrollin to seek the sisters,” Charion says. “They found them, but
there was another … A battle? I cannot read in such confusion. Oh,
Uncle Fallogard, they must be stopped.” She grimaces in agony, clutching at her
face. “Uncle! Such psychic disruptions!”

 
          
And
Fallogard Phatt, too, is shaking with the pain of the experience while Elric,
joined by Wheldrake, tries urgently to discover what it is they fear so much. “It
is a wind howling through the multiverse,” says Phatt. “A black wind howling
through the multiverse! Oh, this is the work of Chaos. Who would have guessed
it?”

 
          
“No,”
says Mother Phatt. “She does not serve Chaos, neither does she call on Chaos!
Yet …”

 
          
“Stop
them!” cries Charion.

 
          
And
Fallogard Phatt raises long fingers in helpless despair. “It is too late. We
are already witnessing the destruction!”

 
          
“Not
yet,” says Mother Phatt. “Not yet. There could be time … But it is so
strong …”

 
          
Elric
no longer bothered with thought. The Rose was in danger. Hurriedly the albino
returned to his room and dressed, buckling on his blade. Wheldrake was with him
as they left the house and ran through the wooden streets of Trollon, taking
wrong directions in the unfamiliar darkness, until they found a stairway down
to the marching boards and Elric, to whom caution was only ever a half-learned
lesson, had drawn Stormbringer from its scabbard so that the black blade glowed
with a formidable darkness and the runes writhed and twisted along its length,
and suddenly was killing anyone with a weapon who sought to stop him.

 
          
Wheldrake,
seeing the faces of the slain, shuddered and hardly knew whether to stay close
to the albino or put a safe distance between them while Fallogard Phatt and
what remained of the Family Phatt were themselves attempting to follow,
carrying the old woman in her chair.

 
          
Elric
knew only that the Rose was in certain danger. At last his patience had
deserted him and it was almost with relief that he let the hellsword take its
toll of blood and souls, while he felt a huge, thrilling vitality fill him and
he cried out the impossible names of unlikely gods! He cut at the harnesses
that held the horses, he struck at the chains which pegged the marchers to
their boards, and then he had mounted a great black warhorse which whinnied
with the sheer pleasure of its release and, with Elric clinging to its mane,
reared, striking at the air with its massive hoofs, then galloped towards the
opening.

 
          
From
somewhere now could be heard a new sound—human voices yelling with mindless
panic—and Mother Phatt sobbed still louder. “It is too late! It is too late!”
Wheldrake took hold of one of the horses but it shook itself free and avoided
him. He abandoned any further attempt to find himself a mount and instead ran
in pursuit of the albino. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, Fallogard Phatt
took hold of his mother’s wheelchair while the old woman still opened her mouth
in a wail of grieving terror. His niece covered her ears, running beside the
chair.