To Rescue Tanelorn (54 page)

“So—you’d betray me, after all,” he growled, lurching to seize her wrist, but she was too swift for him. He yelled in sudden, extraordinary pain as the cold knife sliced through his wrist and she held the cup to catch his gushing blood. “You hell-bitch! I’ll—”

She grinned into his face. “You’ll do nothing. I am saving your life, Red Archer!”

With the speed of a striking snake she sliced through her own wrist and her blood mingled with his in the cup.

“The Seed needs our nourishment. It will take us home!”

The warriors were regrouping now. He saw them through the trees.

“Look,” she murmured. He saw that, even as he staunched his own blood with his kerchief, some crimson shape was forming in the cup. The Seed was glowing like a ruby and pulsing within the beaker. It was growing bigger. Her widening eyes reflected its light.

He heard a creaking groan as a huge tree fell suddenly into the glade, pinning several warriors to the ground. Before his sickened gaze the men began to sink into the earth, absorbed like the water. Then another tree fell. Then another. And this time when a tree collapsed it sent up a vast cloud of dust into the rainy air. The dust danced like freed souls. The trees around him were petrifying, crumbling. In what should have taken centuries, the whole forest was dying before their eyes.

O’Indura looked down. He followed her gaze. The grass itself was turning to dust. The blood which had kept the forest alive had lost all power. Whatever she had done to the Seed had sucked the very essence from the predatory forest and its creatures.

Then the Melnibonéan woman dashed the cup through the air and the liquid within streamed out in a great arc, turning from scarlet to green and then to gold before their eyes.

The thing spread into the air and hung there like a long-veined leaf, shimmering and curling in the cool rain. The forest continued to collapse, slowly becoming as tangible as smoke. The great leaf, however, remained, almost more substantial than themselves.

“Climb onto it,” she said. “Help me.”

With his remaining strength, he handed her up until she was standing on the leaf, which curled its edges to support her. Then with her help, letting the axe and the sword fall into the grey dust, he clambered to join her. She said something quietly in a language he did not recognize and made a motion with her hand causing the world around him to fade while the leaf stretched further and further ahead of them until it was like a long, many-tendrilled vine sending its shoots into the dark blue depths surrounding them.

Rackhir, the Warrior Priest of Phum, looked ahead at the wide tendrils, thick as the thickest tree trunks, which now stretched in all directions.

“Lady,” he murmured, “what sorcery is this? What have you created?”

She smiled, linking her arm in his. “I have made a path,” she said. “With a little luck, Red Archer, it will carry us to the moonbeam roads and from there we shall find a way which, with inspiration, courage and intelligence, will take me to Melniboné and you to your Tana Lorn…See?”

And he saw indeed that there were many more long roads, like tendrils of a vine spreading in all directions through the dark blue depths. And there were other beings, not every one of them human, walking on those wide, thick vines, back and forth at every level, above and below, walking through the multiverse.

“We have reached the moonbeam paths,” she said. “We have found the roads between the worlds. Now comes the final task.”

His face grew taut with weariness, with something close to despair, for he could fight no more. “What is that, lady?”

Seeing his expression, she laughed and pressed her warmth and her softness against his hard warrior’s body. “To discover which of these roads, Rackhir the Red Archer, will carry us home.”

ORIGINS

Early artwork associated with Elric’s first appearances in magazines and books

Cover artwork by Gerard Quinn, for
Science Fantasy,
no. 53, June 1962; lead story: “The Eternal Champion”

“Captains of Chaos” sketch by James Cawthorn, 1963, previously unpublished

Title-page illustration by Virgil Finlay for “Master of Chaos,”
Fantastic Stories of Imagination,
May 1964

Cover artwork by Bob Haberfield for
The Singing Citadel,
first edition, Mayflower Books, 1970, comprising “The Singing Citadel,” “Master of Chaos,” “The Greater Conqueror” and “To Rescue Tanelorn…”

Front and back cover artwork by James Cawthorn for
The Jade Man’s Eyes,
Unicorn Books, 1973

Interior artwork by Rodney Matthews from
Elric at the End of Time
, Paper Tiger, 1987

Cover artwork by Eric Parker for “Zenith the Albino!” by Anthony Skene,
Detective Weekly,
no. 323, April 1939

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M
ICHAEL
J
OHN
M
OORCOCK
is the author of a number of science fiction, fantasy, and literary novels, including the Elric novels, the Cornelius Quartet,
Gloriana, King of the City,
and many more. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine
New Worlds,
Moorcock fostered the development of the New Wave in the U.K. and indirectly in the U.S. He won the Nebula Award for his novella
Behold the Man.
He has also won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and many others.