Revenge of the Rose (9 page)

 
          
So
Elric, Wheldrake and the Rose all three rode back down the white road beside
the river, back to where they had joined the trail on the previous day, but now
they remained on the path, letting it carry them slowly and sinuously
southward, following the lazy flow of the river. And Wheldrake sang his
Song of ’Rabia
to an entranced Rose,
while Elric rode some distance ahead, wondering if he had entered a dream and
fearing he would never find his father’s soul.

 
          
They
had reached a part of the river road Elric did not remember passing over and he
was remarking to himself that this had been close to where the dragon had
headed due south, away from the water’s winding course, when his sensitive ears
caught a distant noise he could not identify. He mentioned it to the others but
neither could hear it. Only after another half-hour had passed did the Rose cup
her hand to her ear and frown. “A kind of rushing. A sort of roar.”

 
          
“I
hear it now,” said Wheldrake, rather obviously piqued that he, the poet, should
be the least well-tuned. “I did not know you meant that rushing, roaring kind
of noise. I had understood it to be a feature of the water.” And then he had
the grace to blush, shrug and take an interest in something at the end of his
beaklike nose.

 
          
It
was another two hours before they saw that the water was now gushing and
leaping with enormous force, through rocks which even the most skilled
navigator could not have negotiated, and sending up such a whistling and
shouting and yelling it might have been a live thing, voicing its furious
discontent. The roadway was slippery with spray and they could scarcely make
themselves heard above the noise, could scarcely see more than a few paces in
front of them, could smell only the angry water. And then the road had dropped
away from the river and entered a hollow which made the noise suddenly distant.

 
          
The
rocks around them still ran with water sprayed from above, but the near-silence
was almost physically welcome to them and they breathed deep sighs of pleasure.
Then Wheldrake rode a little ahead and came back to report that the road curved
off, along what appeared to be a cliff. Perhaps they had reached the ocean.

 
          
They
had left the hollow and were on the open road again where coarse grass
stretched to an horizon which still roared, still sent up clouds of spray, like
a silver wall. Now the road led them to the edge of a cliff and a chasm so deep
the bottom was lost in blackness. It was into this abyss that water poured with
such relentless celebration and when Elric looked up he gasped. Only at that
moment had he seen the causeway overhead—a causeway that curved from the
eastern cliff of a great bay to the western cliff—the same causeway, he was
sure, that he had seen earlier. Yet this could not be made of beaten mud. The
mighty curving span was woven of boughs and bones and strands of metal
supporting a surface that seemed to be made of thousands of animal hides fixed
one on top of another by layers of foul-smelling bone-glue—utterly primitive in
one way, thought Elric, but otherwise a sturdy and sophisticated piece of
engineering. His own people had once possessed similar ingenuity, before magic
began to absorb them. He was admiring the extraordinary structure as they rode
beside it, when Wheldrake spoke up.

 
          
“It’s
no wonder, friend Elric, nobody chooses to consider the river route below what
is, I’m sure, the thing they call the Divide.”

 
          
And
Elric was forced to smile at this irony. “Does that strange causeway lead, do
you think, to the Gypsy Nation?”

 
          
“
Leads to death, disorder and dismay; leads
to the craven Earl of Cray,
” intoned Wheldrake, the association sparking,
as it did so often, snatches of self-quotation. “
Now Ulric takes the Urgent Brand and hand in hand they trembling stand,
to bring the justice of the day, the terrible justice of the day, to evil
Gwandyth, Earl of Cray.
”

 
          
Even
the admiring Rose did not applaud, nor think his verse appropriate to this
somewhat astonishing moment, with the roaring river to one side, the cliffs and
the chasm to another; above that a great causeway of primitive construction
stretching for more than a mile from cliff to cliff, high over the water’s
spray—and some distance off the wide waters of a lake, blue-green and dreamy in
the sun. Elric yearned for the peace it offered. Yet he guessed the peace might
also be illusory.

 
          
“Look,
gentlemen,” says the Rose, letting her horse break into a bit of a canter, “there’s
a settlement ahead. Can it be an inn, by any happy chance?”

 
          
“It
would seem an appropriate place for one, madam. They have a similar
establishment at
Land’s
End
, in my last
situation …” says Wheldrake, cheering.

 
          
The
sky was overclouded now, dark and brooding, and the sun shone only upon the
far-off lake, while from the chasm beside them came unpleasant booming noises,
sounds like wailing human voices, savage and greedy. And all three joked
nervously about this change in the landscape’s mood and said how much they
missed the easy boredom of the river and the wheat and would gladly return to
it.

 
          
The
unpainted, ramshackle collection of buildings—a two-storey house with crooked
gables surrounded by about a dozen half-ruined outhouses—did, indeed, sport a
sign—a crow’s carcass nailed to a board. Presumably the indecipherable
lettering gave a name to the place.

 
          
“ ‘The
Putrefied Crow’ is good enough for me,” says Wheldrake, seemingly in more need
of this hostelry than the other two. “A place for pirate meetings and sinister
executions. What think you?”

 
          
“I’m
bound to agree.” The Rose nods her pale red curls. “I would not choose to visit
it, if there were any choice at all, but you’ll note there’s none. Let’s see,
at least, what information we can gain.”

 
          
In
the shadow of that causeway, on the edge of that abyss, the three unlikely
companions gave their horses somewhat reluctantly up to an ostler of dirty,
though genial, appearance, and stepped inside “the Putrefied Crow,” to look
with surprise upon the six burly men and women who were already enjoying such
hospitality as the place offered.

 
          
“Greetings
to you, gentlemen. My lady.” One of them doffed a hat so trimmed in feathers,
ribbons, jewels and other finery its outline was completely lost. All these
folk were festooned in lace, velvet, satin, in the most vivid array, with caps
and hats and helmets of every fanciful style, their dark curls oiled to mingle
with the blue-black beards of the men or fall upon the olive shoulders of the
women. All were armed to the teeth and clearly ready to address any argument
with steel. “Have you traveled far?”

 
          
“Far
enough for a day,” said Elric, stripping off his gloves and cloak and taking
them up to the fire. “And you, my friends. Do you come far?”

 
          
“Why,”
says one of the women, “we are the Companions of the
Endless Way
. We are travelers, always. Pledged to it.
We follow the road. We are the free auxiliaries of the Gypsy Nation. Pure-bred
Romans of the Southern Desert, with ancestors who traveled the world before
there were nations of any sort!”

 
          
“Then
I’m delighted to meet you, madam!” Wheldrake shook his hat into the fire,
causing it to hiss and spit. “For it’s the Gypsy Nation we seek.”

 
          
“The
Gypsy Nation requires no seeking,” said the tallest man, in red and white
velvet. “The gypsies will always come to you. All you must do is wait. Put a
sign upon your door and wait. The season is near-ended. Soon begin the seasons
of our passing. Then you shall see the crossing of the
Treaty
Bridge
, by which we keep to our old trail, though
the land has long since fallen away.”

 
          
“The
bridge is yours? And the road?” Wheldrake was puzzled. “Can gypsies own such
things and still be gypsies?”

 
          
“I
smell walkerspew!” One of the women rose, a threatening fist upon her dagger’s
hilt. “I smell the droppings of a professor-bird. There’s nonsense in the air
and the place for nonsense isn’t here.”

 
          
It
was Elric who broke that specific tension, by moving easily between the two. “We
are come to parley and perhaps to trade,” he said, for he could think of no
other excuse they might accept.

 
          
“Trade?”
This caused a general grinning and muttering amongst the gypsies. “Well,
gentlemen, everyone’s welcome in the Gypsy Nation. Everyone who has the taste
for wandering.”

 
          
“You’ll
take us there?”

 
          
Again
they seemed to find this amusing and Elric guessed few residents of this plane
volunteered to travel with the gypsies.

 
          
It
was clear to Elric that the Rose was deeply suspicious of this cutthroat
half-dozen and not at all sure she wished to go with them, yet again she was
determined to find the three sisters and would risk any danger to follow them.

 
          
“There
are friends of ours gone ahead,” said Wheldrake, ever the quickest wit in such
situations. “Three young ladies, all very alike? Would you have made their
acquaintance?”

 
          
“We
are Romans of the Southern Desert and do not as a rule make small-talk with the
diddicoyim.
”

 
          
“Ha!”
exclaims Wheldrake. “Gypsy snobs! The multiverse reveals nothing but
repetitions! And we continue to be surprised by them …”

 
          
“This
is no time for social observation, Master Wheldrake,” says the Rose severely.

 
          
“Madam,
it is always time for that. Or what are we else, but beasts?” He’s offended. He
winks at the tall gypsy and raises his tiny voice in song. “
I’d rather go with the Gypsy Wild; And bear
a Gypsy’s nut-brown child!
” He hums the air. “Are you familiar with the
ballad, good friends?”

 
          
And
he charms them enough to make them ease their bodies more comfortably upon
their benches and tell patronizing jokes about a variety of non-gypsy peoples,
including, of course, Wheldrake’s own, while Elric’s strange appearance soon
gets him nicknamed “the Ermine,” which he accepts with the equanimity with
which he accepts all other names presented by those who find him unnatural and
disturbing. He bides his time with a patience that has become almost physical,
as if it is a shell he can strap around himself, to make himself wait. He knows
he has but to draw Stormbringer for a minute and six gypsies would lie, drained
of life and soul, upon the stained boards of the inn; but also, perhaps that
the Rose would die, or Wheldrake, for Stormbringer is not always satisfied
merely with the lives of enemies. And because he is an adept, and no other
person here, at the roaring edge of the world, has any inkling of his power, he
smiles a little to himself. And if the gypsies take it for a placatory grin and
tell him he’s thin enough to wipe out a whole warren-full of rabbits, then he
cares not. He is Elric of Melniboné, prince of ruins, last of his line, and he
seeks the receptacle of his dead father’s soul. He is a Melnibonéan and he
draws upon this atavistic pride for all the strength it can give him,
remembering the almost sensuous joy that came with the assumption of his
superiority over all other creatures, natural and supernatural, and it armours
him, though it brings back, too sharply, the pain in memory.

 
          
Meanwhile
Wheldrake is teaching four of the gypsies a song with a noisy and vulgar
chorus. The Rose engages the landlord in a discussion of the menu. He offers
them rabbit couscous. It is all he has. She accepts it on their behalf, they
eat as much of the food as they can bear, then retire to a mephitic loft where
they sleep as best they can while a variety of bugs and small vermin search
across their bodies for some worthwhile morsel, and find little. Elric’s blood
is never lusted after by insects.

 
          
Next
morning, before the others wake, Elric creeps down to the kitchen and finds the
water-tub, crumbling a little dragon’s venom into a tankard, and muffling his
own shrieks as the stuff punishes each corpuscle, each cell and atom of his
being, and then his strength and arrogance return. He can almost feel the wings
beating on his body, bearing him up into the skies where his dragon brothers
wait for him. A dragon-song comes to his lips but he stifles that, too. He
wishes to learn, not to draw attention to himself. It is the only way he can
discover the whereabouts of his father’s soul.