The White Wolf's Son
Elric dreamed of strange lands and stranger creatures. He dreamed of heroes like himself; heroes with a destiny similar to
his own. He dreamed of brutal warriors, of wonderful supernatural beings, of beautiful women, of exotic, secret places where
the destiny of worlds was created. And he dreamed of a boy who, obscurely, he felt might be his son, though he had no son
in this world. He dreamed, too, of a little girl, who played unconsciously and happily around her house, knowing nothing of
the enormous forces of Law and Chaos, of Good and Evil, which clashed in worlds but a shadowed step removed from her own…
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THE WHITE WOLF’S SON
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
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Copyright © 2005 by Michael Moorcock and Linda Moorcock
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Originally published in hardcover by Aspect
First eBook Edition: November 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-57130-2
In memory of
Jerico Radoc:
a generous spirit
who died too young
and for Alan Wall
and all the regulars down
at MWM, with thanks.
Contents
ACCLAIM FOR MICHAEL MOORCOCK’S NOVELS
PART ONE: A MUCH SOUGHT-AFTER YOUNG LADY
PART THREE: THE WHITE WOLF’S SON
And then did Sir Elrik spye Sir Yagrin and say to him “Fast thou, villain. Where goest thou this Daye?” Whereupon Sir Yagrin
saith: “On my Honour, I shall answer ye with arms.” Whereupon one charged the other. Ten speares did they brake until Sir
Elrik had killed Sir Yagrin and lay close to his deathe bedd with none in all that Woode to help him.
—T
HE
R
OMANCE OF
P
RINCE
E
LRIK
tr. from the Portuguese. Anon., London ca. 1525
T
HE ALBINO HUNG
captive in the rigging of the great battle barge, spread-eagled on the mainmast, barely able to open his red, glaring eyes.
He was mumbling to himself, calling out a name, as if he felt that name would save him. Although dreaming, he was at the same
time half-awake. He could see below him the foredeck of the ship, with its massive
catapult whose cup slaves were already filling with flaming pitch. There, too, the White Wolf’s captor strutted in his seething
rosy armor. Upon his head was the glowing scarlet helmet bearing the Merman Crest of Pan Tang, the island of the theocrats
who had long envied Melniboné her power. High-shouldered, black-bearded, full of raging triumph, Jagreen Lern threw up his
face and laughed at his enemy. He was delighting in his power, in the movement of his galley through the water, its huge bulk
pushed by the oars manned by five hundred slaves. He turned to his followers, men made utterly mad by all they had witnessed,
by their own demonic bloodlust, by their own cruel killing.
“Let fly!” he roared. And another shot was discharged, arcing over the water and dropping into the boiling sea just short
of the fleet which had assembled to defend what was left of the world from his conquest.
“We’ll get their measure with the next one,” declared the theocrat, turning again to look up at Elric. He spat on the deck.
There was a terrible, crooked grin on his face. He was full of his victories, swollen like a leech on blood.
“See! The white-face is nothing without that black sword of his. Is this the hero you feared? Is this all Law could summon
against us—a renegade weakling?”
Jagreen Lern strutted beneath the mainmast, jeering up at the man whose crucifixion he had ordered.
“Watch, Elric. Watch! Soon you shall see all your allies destroyed. All that you love turned to heaving Chaos. Lord Arioch
refuses you help. Lord Balan refuses you help. Soon Law and all its feeble creations shall be banished from our world, and
I shall rule in the name of the great Lords of Entropy, with the power to make what I like of inchoate matter and destroy
it again and again at a
whim. Can you hear me, White Wolf? Or are you already dead? Wake him, someone! I would have him know what he loses. He must
learn his lesson well before he dies. He must know that by betraying his patron Chaos lords he has betrayed himself and all
he loves.”
Some part of the albino heard his enemy. But Elric of Melniboné was desperately sending his mind out into the unseen worlds
around him, the myriad worlds of the multi-verse, where he believed he might find the one thing which could help him. He had
deliberately fallen into a dream, a slumber known by his sorcerer ancestors as the Sleep of a Thousand Years, by which he
had earlier learned his wizard’s craft. He was now too weak to do anything else but send his failing spirit out into the astral
worlds beyond his own. By this means he sought his sword, Stormbringer, calling its name as he slept, knowing that if he died
on this, his last desperate dream quest, he would die here, also.
He dreamed of vast upheavals and forces as powerful as those which now captured him. He dreamed of strange lands and stranger
creatures. He dreamed of heroes like himself, heroes with a destiny similar to his own. He dreamed of brutal warriors, of
wonderful supernatural beings, of beautiful women, of exotic, secret places where the destiny of worlds was created. In this
dream he crossed whole continents, negotiated vast oceans, fought men and monsters, gods and demons. And he dreamed of a boy
who, obscurely, he felt might be his son, though he had no son in this world. He dreamed, too, of a little girl, who played
unconsciously and happily around her house, knowing nothing of the enormous forces of Law and Chaos, of Good and Evil, which
clashed in worlds but a shadowed step removed from her own…
The albino groaned. The bearded theocrat pushed back
his pulsing scarlet helm, looked up at Elric and laughed again.
“He lives, right enough. Wake him, someone, so that I might relish his agony all the better.”
A crewman obeyed. Knife in belt, he began his ascent of the rigging. “I’ll tickle his toes with my dagger, master. That’ll
bring him round.”
“Oh, draw a little of his thin, deficient blood. Maybe I’ll drink a cup of it to celebrate his final agonies.” Jagreen Lern,
master of all the once-human creatures who now gibbered and slavered and anticipated their final triumph over Law, reached
out his red gauntleted hand, as if to receive a goblet from one of his minions. “A libation to the Lords of Chaos!”
Elric muttered and stirred in his bonds, high above the ship’s main deck. A word formed on his lips.
“Stormbringer!” he gasped. “Stormbringer, aid me now!”
But Stormbringer, that unholy black sword which had preserved his life so many times before, did not materialize.
Stormbringer was
elsewhere,
imprisoned by powerful sorcery, manipulated by men and supernatural monsters whose ambitions were even darker, even more
dangerous than those of the creatures of Chaos who sought to rule Elric’s world.
Stormbringer was being used in a summoning powerful enough to challenge the combined might of Law and Chaos and to bring about
the end of everything, of the multiverse itself.
Again the albino whispered his sword’s name. But there was no reply.
“Stormbringer
…”
Nothing but the silence of the cold, unpopulated ether. The silence of death.
And into that silence came laughter, cruel laughter full of the cold joy of slaughter.
“Open his eyes for him, you scum! Watch, Elric! Watch all that you love perish!”
The laughter blended with the crashing noise of the sea, the terrible sounds of the war-catapults, the groaning of the slaves,
the creaking of the oars.
The pale lips parted, perhaps for the last time, barely able to utter the word again:
“Stormbringer!”
ART
O
NE
Lord Elrik sate in his own red bludde
His vanquished foe beside him;
Saith he, “Thou kepst my Treasure near
In Castle Lorn do ye reside in. “
“Take all, take all,” cried his noble foe,
“Take all that I have defended
My souls now Carrion for the bold black Crowe
But my Conscience hast thou mended.”
IV
Heal’d and alone, Lord Elrik rode,
Till Castle Lorn lay behind him
“No Gold shall I need in Manor Bonne,
Where I’ll finde my fair, forlorne one. “
—"LORD ELRIK AND SYTHORIL,” CA. 1340
Coll. Wheldrake,
Ballads and Lays of the Britons,
1856
Then Elric sped out of Tanelorn, seeking Mirenburg, where the next step of his destiny must be taken. And he knew that the
doom of ten thousand years lay upon him; and that of himself he’d made bloody sacrifice, having found the Stealer of Souls.
Now his true dream began to resume; now his destiny marched to remorseless resolution.