The Phoorn’s Bargain
“I heard you had found the White Sword,” Elric said to Lady Fernrath as soon as they were alone together.
She laughed easily, with genuine humour. “And that’s why you are here?”
He saw no purpose in lying. “You have it? Oh, I see from your eyes that you do. Or know where it is, at least.” He spoke with quiet humour. But he could feel intimations of what he feared, his energy slipping slowly away and little to replenish it, save Stormbringer.
This time she made no reply. She lay back on her couch and stared up at the stars. Then, after a while, she said: “You have heard of the Eyes of Hemric, otherwise known as the Eyes of the Skaradin?”
“An even vaguer legend than that of the White Sword. Hemric? Skaradin? Some serpent from your world’s hinterland?”
“I know where they can be found. I do not need to search for them, young prince. They are, however, the blade’s price.” She turned in the moonlight and looked at him, suddenly hungry for something. Her eyes had taken on a deeper, harder green, even her voice had changed timbre, was oddly accented. “Red pearls. But you need not win them for me, my lord. They are, however, the price of the blade.” She moved restlessly on her couch. “Blood pearls, they call them…There are two. I desire them…I desire…Do you remember when we first met, Prince Elric?”
“I remember my dreamquest. I was scarcely more than a boy. My father sent me to seek you and bring back my mother’s jade dagger.”
“Oh, Elric, you were a comely lad when I saw you surrounded by three of those golden warriors from another plane entirely, who used to inhabit these parts. We drew so much more energy from those alien places. So much material…You had no famous sword at that time. I gave you the jade dagger…”
“You did not ask me then to pay you for it.”
She smiled reminiscently. “Oh, you paid me. Did your father ever tell you why he wanted it?”
“Never. I think he sought it simply because it had belonged to my mother. But you saved my life.”
“You were ever to my taste.” Her mouth seemed to have widened now, revealing rather too many teeth. They were sharper, too, while her tongue—that tongue…
He roused himself. “So you will sell me the White Sword for those red pearls? Nothing else? You know what that sword means to me. It could free me from my dependency…”
“Just so. Nothing else. I possess the Sword of Law. And I know where to find the pearls.”
“Lady Fernrath, I did not travel this far to bargain. What do you take me for? Like you, I despise merchants. Besides, I know nothing of this world. How could I begin to look for what you want?” Was there, he wondered, some way he could get to Stormbringer? He had come here following a legend, a memory, something he had heard of long before the Black Sword was his. He remembered one of his first dreamquests and the woman he had met here on the other side of the world, whom he remembered as a friend. Since then, Lady Fernrath had changed or, perhaps he had been naïve, too inexperienced to see her for what she was. Now his desire to be independent of Stormbringer could be further destroying his judgement. With that blade he had killed the only other creature he had ever truly loved. A wave of profound regret swept over him. He sighed, turning away from Fernrath. “My lady…”
She rose from the couch and, as she did so, she seemed to grow larger, her gown taking on greater substance. A heat—or it might have been an intense cold—came out of her, strong enough to burn him if he touched her. He remembered those nights. Those terrifying, fascinating nights, when she had introduced him to all the secrets of his ancestors—the real reason, he guessed, why his father had sent him upon his dreamquest. Or so she had told him. Now she said otherwise. He frowned. Why did she lie to him now? Or had she lied to him then? “Madam. I must go. I can’t do what you desire of me.”
That great, reptilian face glared down at him. “You are my sister’s son. Your blood demands you help me! You come here seeking the White Sword when you already possess the Black. And you did not know there would be a price? Have you forgotten all loyalty to your own, Prince Elric?”
“I did not know what you would demand.” He sounded feeble to his own ears.
She drew a strong breath and seemed to grow again.
Elric moved nervously on his couch, wishing he had his sword with him now. He was becoming alarmed. Somehow he needed to renew his energy. He had so few resources left. Lady Fernrath’s skin was no longer white but had taken on a gold-green sheen, while her hair moved under its own volition. He feared her in a way he had not when he first came to Hizss, existing in two worlds at the same time, visiting as a courtesy, he thought, the sister of his mother, whom Sadric had loved to distraction. Elric had learned more than he had wished to know. Of his ancestry. Of the people called the Phoorn, who even now lived on in Melniboné, who had not been scattered as the others had been scattered, or killed as his cousins and his other relatives had almost all been killed, after he had brought the sea reavers to destroy Imrryr.
Then he had loved the Phoorn as he loved them still. They had made alliances when they first discovered this world, coming as exiles to found a civilisation which would be based on notions of justice until then unknown to most gods or mortals. They had, by some vast supernatural alchemy, interbred, though their offspring usually took one form or the other, not both. It was not always possible to predict what would emerge from a Phoorn egg or, indeed, a human womb. Yet, Lady Fernrath had told him of the shape-changers, those few who could be what they willed themselves to be and who had, for centuries, continued their race. He owed much to her. He was wrong to begin fearing her now.
“My lady, I would help you if I could, not because you would strike a bargain with me, but for the sake of our old alliances. I came here, after all, to ask a favour. And I would gladly do you a favour in return.”
Her great Phoorn eyes softened. Her speech changed. She sounded affectionate again. “I should not have tried to bargain with you, Elric. But life here has changed a great deal since we last met. Though you never met them, I had a brother, a father, other kin. Over many centuries our world has grown corrupt. Wars were fought. You saw those fortified ports. Monstrous treacheries were conceived. Such appalling treachery…” Her tone became sad, reminiscent. “I need your help, Elric. There is something I have to do. One task before I die. A duty…” Perhaps she cast an enchantment on him, but he found himself sympathizing with her.
Yet he was still wary, still unsure. “No need to bargain with me, my lady. We have an ancient blood pact. I would help you without reward if I could. But could you not have found a warrior here to help you?”
“No. For none possesses what you own.”
“You mean Stormbringer? I will fetch it from the ship. And my armour. I will tell Princess Nauha where I am going—”
“My servant has already brought both sword and armour. No need to disturb the Princess of Uyt.”
A darkness was filling the sky as deep clouds sailed in from the south. The night grew colder and the albino shivered, fearing further for Nauha’s safety.
“Nobody here will harm her,” said the Phoorn. “But now I must venture into—take more substance—from—the—netherworld…” A noise like a whirlpool, running fast in high seas.
He had difficulty seeing her now. His mind was less clear than before. The table seemed to have disappeared. The house was a black shadow, unlit.
The sounds of the night had faded when her voice came again. He turned, peering into a void. Above him were two green-gold staring stars: passionless, cold. Her voice was still recognisable, yet hissed like waves on shingle:
“Are you ready to go with me, Elric?”
“You have my word.”
Something fell at his feet then. He knew what it was and bent to pick it up. He buckled on his breastplate and greaves, settled his helmet on his head, attached the scabbard to his belt. When he straightened, scaled flesh, long and sinuous, stretched down out of the sky and he looked deeper into those green-gold eyes, knowing them for what and whose they were. At the base of her long, reptilian neck was a natural indentation in which a man might sit. It had not been long since, in the great Dragon Caves of his people, he had taken a carved Vilmirian saddle and placed it in just such an indentation. The Lady Fernrath, a shape-changer of a very specific kind, touched him affectionately with her long claw. While Elric had experienced her strange powers before, reliving the first coming together of their related races, he had never seen her change so rapidly. Nor, in all his adventures and his dreams, had he seen movement so rapid in any shape-changer from mammal to reptile, though the Phoorn were not true reptiles, any more than Melnibonéans were true humans. Both had come into being in other worlds under different gods and philosophies. Both had learned the virtues of the other. And then, at last, they had mated, though still in many ways alien one to the other. And these were the folk whom the Dragon Kings of Melniboné claimed as their ancestors. This was not the first time he had seen why in his world dragons were called “brother” or “sister” and treated with such complete respect, each conversing with the other, when they lived on altered time, so that it seemed to Melnibonéans that their dragons slept for years or decades.
There were no further traces of the human about the Lady Fernrath. She was completely Phoorn, speaking in the ancient language used between Phoorn and Melnibonéan. Completely Phoorn as she bent that beautiful serrated neck to let him mount, turning her head so that residues of fiery venom from her mouth-sacs fell bursting upon the tiled terrace and did not harm him.
As if suspicious of pursuit, the lady firedrake peered this way and that into the night, her great claws clattering on the terra cotta, her wings stretching, wide, wide as she prepared to lift into the darkness of the night, giving voice with wild, beautiful music to the Phoorn’s ancient Song of Flight. Springing off the terrace, she began to gallop across the lawn, her sharp senses noting the obstacles as she approached that obsidian sea.
And then she was aloft.
And Elric, seated astride her gigantic, exquisite body, found himself flinging back his head, letting the cool air stream through his long white hair as he lifted his own voice to join in harmony with that complex melody, as natural to him and his kind as when the Phoorn and his own people first came to this sweet, glorious world and determined to take stewardship of it in the name of their ideals.
What had gone wrong between the time when he had enjoyed a long idyll with her and fallen in love in a new way? Then their faith in the Great Balance translated into so many practical notions of order and justice. Now? Now he had become used to lies, secrecies, political and other bargains. The whole world was a darker, more threatening place. If he had known how the changes in the World Below were mirrored in the World Above, he would not have had his friends come with him.
But all such thoughts were dissipating, for he rode a dragon again, bonding, as his genes remembered, with that monstrous, thumping heart, the deep, slow pulse, the beating of vast wings and the sweeping from side to side of that long, muscular tail. He relished the comfort of his heavy black armour but missed his great dragon spear, through which his thoughts were transmitted back and forth.
Now all he could tell was that he was heading west and inland. As dawn sunlight streaked the blue-black horizon, they flew over a forest, spired by great pines, towards a turreted fortress of gold-veined white marble, woven in a way to show both artistic elegance and sturdy practicality—and also, somehow, a faint sense of menace.
Fernrath dived into the depth of the forest, wings close together, claws extended, and neck hunched. She landed perfectly in a glade through which light had yet to penetrate. She allowed him to descend, then spoke to him in Phoorn. “Now we must roost until this afternoon when they begin their tournament. The targets have yet to be chosen and assembled in the castle grounds, within the central bailiwick.” And, cocooning him in her folded wings, she perched on a massive lower branch of one of the tallest trees, and went to sleep.
A Question of Ancestry
That evening, when the sun was still high enough in the sky to burn a bright orange, and she told him of her plans, Prince Elric and Lady Fernrath made their way along a hard-beaten red earthen road towards the unsuspected magnificence of the White Fort, which rose like a fantastic cloud of clear-edged smoke from the sharp green of the almost impenetrable forest.
Reaching the six-foot-thick ironbound timber of the white-painted gates, she called out with such authority that the gates swung open at once, the huge iron bars rising on balancing machinery. They were recognised by their race and this gave them unquestioned admission.
The fort was formed as a series of large towers, one inside the other, to be defended to the death. Each tower had land, which could, if necessary, grow its own food. Elric realised it existed on the same principles as Imrryr, built to impress and to be impregnable at the same time. His people had used an island and an ocean for this. Addric Heed used a trackless forest.
She led him through one walled area after another, through towers and halls and finally up a flight of steps to a short gallery and out into the upper tiers of an amphitheatre, the stone seats arranged to look down onto a long oval green where targets had been arranged for an archery contest. Elric recognised this as something his own ancestors used to play. At Fernrath’s signal, he sat down with her well above the occupied tiers. She began to tell him again what she planned and what he must do. From the archery green, drifting in on the light, late-morning air, came the distant screams of the targets, the heavy thunk of arrows into bodies, and the applause as an archer made a good score in one of the marked parts of the slave’s upper body.
Sitting in a tall, carved chair was the slender pirate slaver Addric Heed, clad in light-yellow robes, an orange scarf swathing his head and shoulders. Surrounded by his captains, of his own kind as well as human, and by others, lightly armed or bearing no weapons at all, he was unmistakeably Elric’s and Fernrath’s kin. Elric recognized one of the men as the saturnine trader on the ship. Fernrath nodded when he murmured this information to her. “He raids up and down this coast, as he has done for two centuries. The slaves will be sold in Hizss, which depends upon the trade for her subsistence. Those traders inspect the stock here and know roughly what they’ll bid when they return to Hizss. They keep their own bands of soldiers in Hizss. You know the place of which I told you?”
“Aye. On the far side and in the furthest tower.”
“He’ll expect no attack if I work my Phoorn sorcery, but you must hurry, Nephew, for it will be hard for me to keep so many engaged.”
Then, as a lull came in the tournament, Lady Fernrath rose in her seat and called: “How goes the game, Brother?”
And saw Addric Heed’s head come up in astonishment as he stopped halfway through a joke with his human visitors. He controlled his features, though a question still hovered in his eyes. “Sister! You should have warned me. I’ll have rooms prepared! Your entourage is below?”
“Beyond the gates,” she said. “I did not know if I’d be welcome.” She swayed a little, the outline of her human shape flickering like a mirage, just enough for the onlookers to narrow their eyes, wondering at their own untrustworthy perceptions. A light mist seemed to escape from her mouth and nostrils.
Addric Heed frowned. “Are you well, Sister?”
“Oh, well enough, Brother. Well enough.” A strange scent drifted upon the air. “Prince Elric and myself have been travelling through a night and a day to find you. He is here to recruit your help, as I understand it. I agreed to bring him to you.”
Addric Heed relaxed a little now he had an explanation he could believe. She made a movement with her hands. Her watchers found it hard to take their attention off her. “Can you help me, Brother? Can you help me, Brother? Can you help our cousin?”
“Gladly, dear Sister.” His words were quite as formal and without warmth, but there was no animosity in them. Elric guessed that both had grown used to keeping secrets, even from themselves. Evidently, Addric Heed had no notion of how disgusting his sister found his trade and why, for other reasons, she should hate him when she and her adopted city did so well from the wealth he brought in. Equally, who knew the resentments and greed her brother fostered in his own soul?
Elric hung back as if in discretion or embarrassment, for Addric Heed had forgotten his manners, his whole attention upon his sister. Elric nodded to his nearest kinfolk and typically ignored the humans, even the one he knew from the ship. He went to loll in a seat some distance away, as if to enjoy on his own the meeting of brother and sister. None offered him any attention.
All eyes but Elric’s were now on the were-dragon as she continued to mesmerise them, her body swaying almost imperceptibly. After some minutes, he rose and slipped away. None noticed when he was no longer in his seat. He crossed an expanse of marble and, lifting a metal bar, stepped swiftly into the doorway she had told him to find.
Within the tower room, the only light came from what stood on a small table. This rosy radiance drew Elric to it immediately. He blinked, holding his hand before his eyes.
At first it seemed the room and its treasure were unguarded. No need for guards when the whole fort was occupied by one’s own men, thought the albino, stepping towards a beautifully carved pedestal. He responded audibly to their beauty. They were just as she had described them on the road to the fort. This was Addric Heed’s most valuable treasure indeed. With these in his possession, he controlled his ship, and with his unique ship, he dominated the seaways. Elric had seen many extraordinary gems in his life and his dreamquests, yet still he was astonished. The bloody light pulsed from two perfect crimson-coloured pearls of magnificent size, depth, and luster, each as large as his fist. Was Addric Heed so certain of his power that he could leave such remarkable gems where anyone might come upon them? The albino reached towards them. He had understood that more than men protected the red pearls.
As he moved to pluck them from the pedestal, there came a movement from the corner of the room. A sound. Something chuckled. Then a voice dry as summer corn spoke. “Good afternoon, stranger. You are an optimist, I see. For all your appearance, no doubt you are another would-be thief who supposes my master grows careless as he watches the competition. Well, Lord Addric Heed might not give his treasure the attention it deserves, but I value it if anything too much.” The unseen guardian uttered a small, squeaking sound, like a mouse. “Oh, I do. I do. But then it’s easier for me, eh?” Squeak, squeak. “For you see I have only one task to perform, after all. And I take much pleasure in performing that task.” Squeak. “While Addric Heed has many things on his mind. Do you fear me yet, mortal?”
At this question, Elric laughed, knowing a sudden exhilaration as his hand flew to his left hip. He seized the hilt of his sword and began slowly to slide it from its scabbard.
A responding chuckle from the darkness, almost good-humoured and lazy. “My dear mortal, you had best hear who I am before you waste your time drawing a weapon. You still have time to open that door and leave. Who knows? Perhaps Lord Addric Heed will not notice your visit and you can escape with your life. See? I give you time to turn and just possibly reach the door before I catch you.” Another squeak was followed by a series of little wet ticking noises, as if from tiny rodent lips.
Elric sighed. He continued to unscabbard his great black battle blade, standing his ground, peering into the roseate darkness in the hope of seeing his antagonist. “You are a very assured guard,” he said.
“I would perhaps be more modest had I not caught and punished every thief who ever sought to steal those beautiful pearls. They are living things, you know, the Eyes of Hemric. I have guarded them for the past hundred and fifty years, ever since my master, Lord Addric Heed, brought me up from Hell for the purpose and placed them in my safekeeping.”
Then something large began to rise from the flagstone floor to hover over the crimson pearls. The gems glittered and winked in their own light and Elric had the uncanny sense that they watched him. In that, at least, they certainly resembled eyes. The albino permitted himself a shudder as he continued to draw his sword. What was it that guarded the Eyes of Hemric so confidently?
Then Stormbringer was free at last of the scabbard and writhing like a living thing in its master’s two hands and howling with a profound and horrible hunger. And then Elric let his laughter roar from his throat as all the old lust for death filled him.
Overhead, two black wings spread with a brittle, whispering sound and fluttered up towards the tower room’s roof. Squeak. A kind of invitation.
“Coward,” said Elric. “Do you know who I am now? Do you fear for your life? For your soul, if you have one? Come down and engage me if you dare, for it would give me pleasure. I look forward to the novelty. I have never fought one of your race before.”
From above, there came a further series of squeaks and smackings. “No mortal has ever fought an Asquinux and succeeded in defeating one.” The flying thing opened huge blue eyes, glaring into Elric’s face. “You are dead,” it said. “I have your life now, for I know your secret. You have failed to restore Law to your dissipating world.”
“No doubt you are confusing me with another, Sir Monster, for when I die it will not be in the cause of Law, but in my own cause, or that of Chaos.” With casual familiarity, Elric swung the howling blade this way and that. Its black radiance met the red and flowed into it, throbbing. “But all that will depend on my luck and the Duke of Hell I serve. For my patron is Arioch of Chaos, one of Entropy’s great generals.”
“That hero died in another world. He has no power here.” There was puzzlement in the half-seen creature’s blue eyes. It’s black, flat muzzle twitched. Then it opened a scarlet mouth, glittering with luminous teeth, each sharp as a dagger. Languidly, it licked its oddly shaped lips with a long blue tongue.
“I know not by what crude sorcery your master brought you out of the Far Hell and kept you here, but I warn you, petty demon, to avoid me if you can. I am Elric and the sword I hold was forged in the flames of the burning damned to serve Chaos as I serve Duke Arioch. This blade is called Stormbringer and is quite as hungry as you are. I am very hungry, too.”
The demon squeaked again. Each time the sound grew less audible yet somehow more ominous. It flapped up towards the roof again and hung there for a moment, its dark blue frowning eyes regarding Elric’s own glittering red orbs. It shifted its gaze from Elric’s eyes to the pearls it guarded and it made a small, puzzled sound. Again it opened its mouth and licked its teeth with its blue tongue, one by one, as if counting them. Then, with a high, whistling sound, its long white fangs clashing, its eyes glaring, the thing dropped upon him. Elric whirled, trying to engage the Asquinux face-to-face, but it would not let him. Its slender claws dug through his armoured back, making it impossible for him to stab with any precision.
Eyes blazing with battle hunger, Elric lifted his head and howled.
“Arioch! Arioch! Aid me!”
Roaring the name of his patron, Elric swung the blade back over his left shoulder and there was a crack as it connected with the demon’s bones.
The Asquinux shouted suddenly, shockingly, red mouth widening, the noise filling the tower. One claw came free. A swinging cut over his head and Elric’s blade bit into the monster’s knotted flesh. There came a terrible shrieking sound as the demon dragged those claws from the metal protecting Elric’s shoulder. It flapped back into the shadows. Its white mouth was panting now and it turned its head, lapping its own foaming wounds, its blood dripping like rain.
“You are more powerful than I, it is true,” said the demon in a quiet, deadly voice. “But I must try to kill you or break my compact with Addric Heed, in which case I should perish all the more painfully. Soon his army will come and you will perish on the points of a thousand swords.”
With evident reluctance, the demon flapped down, attempting again to get purchase with its claws in Elric’s body. This time, however, Elric understood its intent and ducked, throwing up Stormbringer so that the demon fell back, yelling curses in its own tongue. Then Elric leapt forwards, stabbing, and the thing flapped further up the tower, trying to work its way around so that it could make another attack on the albino’s back, clearly its only manoeuvre. So Elric deliberately turned his back until he heard the demon begin to drop down, then whirled, swinging the great blade with all its wild momentum and striking the demon in its hip, which cracked and made the Asquinux scream and keep screaming. A flood of ichor gushed from its wound as it wheeled, its wings smacking at the crimson air.
Again Elric ducked and threw himself to one side, dodging the attack. The thing’s fluids splashed on the floor, narrowly missing the albino. He leapt this time, stabbing. The blade slipped through flesh and met bone. Now a foul stench began to fill the tower room, and black blood boiled as the demon gave its sudden attention to the two great pearls, its claws reaching for them desperately.
“You’ll not save them from me, little monster!”
Elric swung Stormbringer again. The sword wailed with pleasure as its hunger began to be satiated. Elric felt the dark, supernatural energy flowing into him. He shuddered, for the stuff made every nerve tense, every muscle threaten to cramp. Savagely, he swung at one of the grasping claws and sliced it off.
The claw began to inch by its own volition towards the pulsing red pearls. The demon shouted and its teeth clashed in fury. Elric grinned and swept the claw into a corner. Then he stabbed once more.
The Asquinux whimpered, understanding its defeat as Stormbringer purred to itself, like a satisfied cat, feasting. The albino drew a deep, shuddering breath. Now the wounded Asquinux flapped about in the air just above the pearls, still struggling to fulfill the duty of its compact, knowing that the penalty of failure was worse than death. Something like a plea for mercy filled those huge blue eyes. But Elric was never merciful. The notion was alien to him and his kind.
Elric chopped off the demon’s other grasping claw. Raging, it span in the air overhead, its teeth clashing, the ichor spraying. “You are a poor wretch of a guardian,” he said, “but you are doubtless all that Addric Heed could afford.”
And when the creature turned its blue, despairing eyes upon him, the long teeth shuddering and clashing in its mouth, the red tongue flicking up and down, it said: “My weird said I could never be slain by a living mortal. But I did not know I could be killed by a dead man, nor by one as powerful as the thing dwelling in your blade.” The last of its energy throbbed out of it, pulsing through the sword, which took its due and passed the rest of the foul stuff on to its wielder. “Which is the master? You or the blade?”
The wounds from the demon’s claws had burned into him and though he now had extra energy, he was losing blood. He stumbled to the table and picked up first one heavy pearl and then another, slipping them into his shirt beneath his breastplate and tightening the laces with one hand.
It was as well that Stormbringer remained unsheathed. Next moment, the door had burst open and there stood the saturnine man from the ship with about a dozen of his fellow slave-traders. All of them were fully armed with a miscellaneous collection of weapons. They had not expected to find Elric standing, let alone observe him delivering a death blow to the still-writhing body of the guardian Asquinux.
If the doorway had not been so narrow, they would have backed off, but that was not easily done. Warily, they edged towards the albino, beginning to form a half-circle, closing in on him. He smiled at them as if in welcome, holding Stormbringer almost lazily. He was breathing heavily from his exertions but otherwise the creature’s own tainted energy still sustained him. He was vaguely aware of the blood running down inside his armour from his wounded back.
“I am glad to see you gentlemen.” The albino offered them a brief bow. “I cannot tell you how famished I have been.”
With rather less confidence than they had shown on first entering, their boots slipping in the demon’s dark, stinking blood, they began to close in.
Elric was laughing easily now, enjoying their dismay. He mocked them, feinting with his growling, insatiable blade. The men’s eyes narrowed as they pressed in. Then the albino reached out, almost elegantly, and took the head off the nearest soldier. They backed away, pushing one another aside in their panic. All they wanted to do now was escape, but Elric moved quickly so that he was between them and the dying demon. He reached behind him and drew the door as shut as possible. The severed head had rolled into the aperture and stopped the door from closing completely. From outside, a single bar of light entered the tower room. He feinted again, moving like a herdsman gathering his flock. Then, when the men were grouped together in the light, he swung the great, moaning broadsword so that its blade sliced into one, cutting him so deeply in the torso that half his body fell backwards while the other half fell forwards.
Elric yelled with battle joy as the slaver’s energy filled him. He struck again and two arms flopped in the mess made by the demon’s dying. He stabbed, drawing that man’s life-force deep into himself, and then, when only the saturnine slave-trader was left, he took his sword and slipped it delicately into the man’s chest so that instantly the pumping heart sent energy into the sword and from Stormbringer into Elric’s own glowing body. His white skin blazed like silver and his red eyes glared in triumph. He lifted his head, surrounded by its halo of milk-white hair, and laughed—a sound which filled the tower with anguished triumph and which keened and echoed through all the countless worlds of the multiverse.
When Elric had drawn a quick breath, he stepped through the door and saw the amphitheatre filled with startled faces. Addric Heed and his slavers stared up at him in baffled astonishment and Lady Fernrath ran like the wind towards him, shouting, “The slave quarters! Follow me!”
“The slave quarters? Would you free the slaves?”
“That, too, if we can. It might buy us time.”
Then, while Addric Heed and his baffled warriors began to absorb what had happened, the two albinos dashed down the outer steps of the tower. Panting, she led Elric into the bowels of the White Fort. She had armed herself with a massive, beautifully balanced battle-axe, which she handled with considerable expertise. Together they cut down any who sought to stop them while Stormbringer sang its bloodthirsty song.
Then, at last, they stood in long corridors stinking of human waste and putrifying flesh. There, shackled in every available space, were the choice men, women, and children whom Addric Heed had taken from all the cities and ships of the coast to be sold at the slave markets of Hizss in the coming days. These were the healthiest. The rest had failed to survive. Some corpses still hung in their shackles beside the living. Some slaves raised their heads, hopelessly curious. They were reconciled to their future.
Lady Fernrath did not listen to their questions or answer their hope. She was headed for a large marble enclosure at the far end of the corridor, whose bars were set further apart and were four times the thickness of any others. She dropped the axe, her eyes fixed on that great cage. But, while she ran on, Elric spared time to strike through chains wherever he could and release as many slaves as possible, especially the men. He anticipated rapid pursuit from Addric Heed and his slavers and wanted as many people fighting for their own interests as possible.
By the time he reached her, she had drawn back heavy bolts from the gigantic cage. Within, its empty sockets staring into space, its wings crumpled and awkwardly set, its claws clipped and bound with brass, sat a frail old Phoorn seemingly on the point of death.
Lady Fernrath approached the creature and placed gentle hands upon it, stroking its grey-white leathery scales and crooning to it in the ancient language of her people.
“Father, it is I, your daughter Fernrath. Here to free you.”
“Oh, child, you know I cannot be free. I cannot see to be gone from here. I cannot fly. Your brother will always keep me prisoner. There is no hope, daughter. You should not have risked Addric discovering the truth, of knowing what only we two know.”
“It is different now, Father.”
From the far end of the slave quarters, there came shouts and the noise of fighting. Clearly, now they were free, the slaves were not readily going to lose their liberty again. They understood that this was their last chance. This knowledge gave them the power to fight, even though few of them were professional soldiers. Clashing metal told Elric that some had already seized weapons. But he knew only a miracle would allow them to prevail for long against Addric Heed’s trained warriors.
With a deep, not-unhappy sigh, Elric prepared to do battle with an army.