Revenge of the Rose (2 page)

 
          
“You
have the advantage of me, sir,” said Elric, dismounting. He felt drawn to this
birdlike man. “I am called Elric of Melniboné and I am a wanderer.”

 
          
“My
name is Wheldrake, sir. Ernest Wheldrake. I have been traveling somewhat
reluctantly since I left Albion, first to Victoria’s England, where I made
something of a name, before being drawn on to Elizabeth’s. I am growing used to
sudden departures. What would your business be, Master Elric, if it is not
theatrical?”

 
          
Elric,
finding half what the man said nonsense, shook his head. “I have practised the
trade of mercenary sword for some while. And you, sir?”

 
          
“I,
sir, am a poet!” Master Wheldrake bristled and felt about his pockets for a
certain volume, failed to find it, made a movement of the fingers as if to say
he needed no affidavits, anyway, and settled his scrawny arms across his chest.
“I have been a poet of the Court and of the Gutter, it’s alleged. I should
still be at Court had it not been for Doctor Dee’s attempts to show me our
Graecian past. Impossible, I have since learned.”

 
          
“You
do not know how you came here?”

 
          
“Only
the vaguest notion, sir. Aha! But I have placed you.” A snap of the long
fingers. “A subject, I recall!”

 
          
Elric
had lost interest in this vein of enquiry. “I am on my way to yonder
metropolis, sir, and if you’d ride one of my pack animals, I’d be honoured to
take you there. If you have no money, I’ll buy you a room and a meal for the
night.”

 
          
“I
would be glad of that, sir. Thanks.” And the poet hopped nimbly up onto the
furthest horse, settling himself amongst the packs and sacks with which Elric
had equipped himself for a journey of indeterminate length. “I had feared it
would rain and I am prone, these days, to chills …”

 
          
Elric
continued down the long, winding track towards the churned mud streets and
filthy log walls of Toomoo-Kag-Sanapet-of-the-Invincible-Temple while in a
high-pitched yet oddly beautiful voice, reminiscent of a trilling bird,
Wheldrake uttered some lines which Elric guessed were his own composition. “
With purpose fierce his heart was gripped,
and blade gripped tighter, still. And honour struggling within, ’gainst
vengeance, cold and cruel. Old Night and a New Age warred in him; all the
ancient power, and all the new. Yet he did not stop his slaughtering
. And
there is more, sir. He believes that he has conquered himself and his sword. He
cries out: ‘See, my masters! I force my moral will upon this hellblade and
Chaos is no longer served by it! True purpose shall triumph and Justice rule in
Harmony with Romance in this most perfect of worlds.’ And that, sir, was where
my drama ended. Is your own story in any way the same, sir? Perhaps a little?”

 
          
“Perhaps
a little, sir. I hope you will soon be taken back to whatever demon realm you’ve
escaped from.”

 
          
“You
are offended, sir. In my verse you are a hero! I assure you I had the bones of
the tale from a reliable source. A lady. And discretion demands I not reveal
her name. Oh, sir! Oh, sir! What a magnificent moment this is for us, when
metaphor becomes commonplace reality and the daily round runs into a thing of
Fantasy and Myth …”

 
          
Scarcely
hearing the little man’s nonsense, Elric continued towards the town.

 
          
“Why,
sir, what an extraordinary depression in yonder field,” said Wheldrake
suddenly, interrupting his own verse. “Do you see it, sir? That shape, as if
some huge beast presses the corn? Is such a phenomenon common in these parts,
sir?”

 
          
Elric
glanced casually across the corn and was bound to agree that it had, indeed,
been forced down across quite a broad area, and not by any obvious human
agency. He reined in again, frowning. “I’m a stranger here, also. Perhaps some
ceremony takes place, which causes the corn to bend so …”

 
          
At
which there came a sudden snort, which shook the ground under their feet and
half-deafened them. It was as if the field itself had discovered a voice.

 
          
“Is
this odd, to you, sir?” Wheldrake asked, his fingers upon his chin. “It’s
damned odd to me.”

 
          
Elric
found his hand straying towards the hilt of his runesword. There was a stink in
the air which he recognized yet could not at that moment place.

 
          
Then
there came a kind of crack, a roll like distant thunder, a sigh that filled the
air and must have been heard by the whole town below, and then Elric knew
suddenly how Wheldrake had entered this realm when he had no real business in
it, for here was the creature who had actually created the lightning, bringing
Wheldrake in its wake. Here was something supernatural broken through the
dimensions to confront him.

 
          
The
horses began to dance and scream. The mare carrying Wheldrake reared and tried
to break from her harness, tangling with the reins of her partner and sending
Wheldrake once more tumbling to the ground, while out of the unripe corn, like
some sentient manifestation of the Earth herself, all tumbling stones and rich
soil and clots of poppies and half the contents of the field, growing taller
and taller and shaking itself free of what had buried it, rose an enormous
reptile, with slender snout, gleaming greens and reds; razor teeth; saliva
hissing as it struck the ground; faint smoky breath streaming from its flaring
nostrils, while a long, thick scaly tail lashed behind it, uprooting shrubs and
further ruining the crop upon which that metropolitan wealth was based. There
came another clap like thunder and a leathery wing stretched upwards then
descended with a noise only a little more bearable than the accompanying stink;
then the other wing rose; then fell. It was as if the dragon were being forced
from some great, earthen womb—forced through the dimensions, through walls
which were physical as well as supernatural; it struggled and raged to be free.
It lifted its strangely beautiful head and it shrieked again and heaved again;
and its slender claws, sharper and longer than any sword, clashed and flickered
in the fading light.

 
          
Wheldrake,
scrambling to his feet, began to run unceremoniously towards the town and Elric
could do nothing else but let his pack animals run with him. The albino was
left confronting a monster in no doubt on whom it wished to exercise its anger.
Already its sinuous body moved with a kind of monumental grace as it turned to
glare down at Elric. It snapped suddenly and Elric was crashing to the ground,
blood pumping hugely from his horse’s torso as the beast’s remains collapsed
onto the track. The albino rolled and came up quickly, Stormbringer growling
and whispering in his hand, the black runes glowing the length of the blade and
the black radiance flickering up and down its edges. And now the dragon
hesitated, eyeing him almost warily as its jaws chewed for a few moments upon
the horse’s head and the throat made a single swallowing movement. Elric had no
other course. He began running towards his massive adversary! The great eyes
tried to follow him as he weaved in and out of the corn, and the jaws dripped,
shaking their bloody ichor to sear and kill all it touched. But Elric had been
raised among dragons and knew their vulnerability as well as their power. He
knew, if he could come in close to the beast, there were points at which he
might strike and at least wound it. It would be his only chance of survival.

 
          
As
the monster’s head turned, seeking him, the fangs clashing and the great
breaths rushing from its throat and nostrils, Elric dashed under the neck and
slashed once at the little spot about halfway up its length, where the scales
were always soft, at least in Melnibonéan dragons; yet the dragon seemed to
sense his stroke and reared back, claws slicing ground and crop like some
monstrous scythe, and Elric was flung down by a great clot of earth,
half-buried, so that
he
must now
struggle to free himself.

 
          
It
was at that moment some movement of the beast’s head, some motion of the light
upon its leathery lids, gave him pause and his heart leapt in sudden hope.

 
          
A
memory teased at his lips but would not manifest itself as anything concrete.
He found himself forming the High Speech of old Melniboné, the word for “bondfriend.”
He was beginning to speak the ancient words of the dragon-calling, the cadences
and tunes to which the beasts might, if they chose, respond.

 
          
There
was a tune in his head, a way of speaking, and then came a single word again,
but this was a sound like a breeze through willows, water through stones; a
name.

 
          
At
which the dragon brought her jaws together with a snap and sought the source of
the voice. The iron-sharp wattles on the back of her neck and tail began to
flatten and the corners of her mouth no longer boiled with poison.

 
          
Still
deeply cautious, Elric got slowly to his feet and shook the damp earth from his
flesh, Stormbringer as eager as always in his hand, and took a pace backward.

 
          
“Lady
Scarsnout! I am your kin, I am Little Cat. I am your ward and your guider,
Scarsnout lady, me!”

 
          
The
green-gold muzzle, bearing a long-healed scar down the underside of the jaw,
gave out an enquiring hiss.

 
          
Elric
sheathed his grumbling hellblade and made the complicated and subtle gestures
of kinship which he had been taught by his father for the day when he should be
supreme Dragon Lord of Imrryr, Dragon Emperor of the World.

 
          
The
dragon-she’s brows drew together in something resembling a frown, the massive
lids dropped, half-hiding the huge, cold eyes—the eyes of a beast more ancient
than any mortal being; more ancient, perhaps, than the gods …

 
          
The
nostrils, into which Elric could have crawled without much difficulty, quivered
and sniffed—a tongue flickered—a great, wet leathery thing, long and slender
and forked at the end. Once it almost touched Elric’s face, then flickered over
his body before the head was drawn back and the eyes stared down in fierce
enquiry. For the moment, at least, the monster was calm.

 
          
Elric,
virtually in a trance by now, as all the old incantations came flooding into
his brain, stood swaying before the dragon. Soon her own head swayed, too,
following the albino’s movements.

 
          
And
then, all at once, the dragon made a small noise deep in her belly and lowered
her head to stretch her neck along the ground, down upon the torn and ruined
corn. The eyes followed him as he stepped closer, murmuring the Song of
Approach which his father had taught him when he was eleven and first taken to
Melniboné’s
Dragon
Caves
. Her dragons slept there to this day. A
dragon must sleep a hundred years for every day of activity, to regenerate that
strange metabolism which could create fiery saliva strong enough to destroy
cities.

 
          
How
this jill-dragon had awakened and how she had come here was a mystery. Sorcery
had brought her, without doubt. But had there been any reason for her arrival,
or had it been, like Wheldrake’s, a mere incidental to some other
spell-working?

 
          
Elric
had no time to debate that question now as he moved in gradual, ritualized
steps towards the natural ridge just above the place where the leading part of
her wing joined her shoulder. It was where the Dragon Masters of Melniboné had
placed their saddles and where, as a youth, he had ridden naked, with only his
skill and the good will of the dragon to keep him safe.

 
          
It
had been many years, and a shattering sequence of events, which had led him to
this moment, when all the world was on the change, when he no longer trusted
even his memories … The dragon almost called now, almost purred,
awaiting his next command, as if a mother tolerated the games of her children.

 
          
“Scarsnout,
sister, Scarsnout kin, your dragon blood is mixed in ours and ours in yours and
we are coupled, we are kind; we are one, the dragon rider and the dragon steed;
one ambition, mutual need. Dragon sister, dragon matron, dragon honour, dragon
pride …” The Old Speech rolled, trilled and clicked from his tongue; it
came without conscious thought; it came without effort, without hesitation, for
blood recalled blood and all else was natural. It was natural to climb upon the
dragon’s back and utter the ancient, joyful songs of command, the complex
Dragon Lays of his remote predecessors which combined their highest arts with
their most practical needs. Elric was recollecting what was best and noblest in
his own people and in himself, and even as he celebrated this he mourned the
self-obsessed creatures they had become, using their power merely to preserve
their power and that, he supposed, was true decay …