The Skrayling Tree (20 page)

“I do not plan to die, but if I do, I doubt if it will be hoping,” I said. “The reason I am in this world is because I search
for life, even now.”

“I search for death. Yet our quest takes us to the same place. We have common interests, Prince Elric, if not desires.”

I could not answer him directly. “You have a place, no doubt, in this dream,” I said. “You are some sort of dream-traveler.
A dreamthief, perhaps?”

“You seem determined to insult me.”

I would not rise to this. I was beginning to get the
man’s measure. He did know a great deal more about me than anyone else in this world. True, when I first entered this realm
I served King Ethelred, known as the Unready. I traveled with a woman I called my sister, and we were both betrayed in the
end.

But my apparent longevity was only the stuff of dreams, not my own reality. Gunnar was enjoying my supposed bafflement. I
had shown him the ring because I had thought it might have meaning for him. It clearly bore more significance for him than
I had guessed. I had acquired the thing in Jerusalem, off the same knight from whom I had taken Solomon.

“Come,” Gunnar said. “I’ve something to show you. It will be interesting to know if you recognize it.” He led me amidships
into the little deckhouse. Inside was a chest which he opened without hesitation, swinging the bronze oil lamp over it so
that I could see inside. There was a sword, some armor, some gauntlets, but on top of these was a round shield whose painted
design was elegantly finished in blues, whites and reds, the pattern suggesting an eight-rayed sun. Was it of African origin?
Had he found it in that famous expedition to the South Seas with the Rose? It was not metal, but hide covering wood, and when
Gunnar put it into my hands it was surprisingly light, though about the same size and proportions as a Viking shield. “Do
you know this plate?” he asked, using the Norse meaning.

“I had a toy like it once perhaps. Something to do with my childhood? What is it?” I balanced it in my hands. It seemed vibrant,
alive. I had a momentary image of a nonhuman friend, a dragon perhaps. But the
workmanship was in no way Melnibonéan. “Some sort of talisman. Were you sold it as a magic shield? That could be the sign
of Chaos as easily as it could be the points of the compass. I think you have placed too high a value on this thing, Earl
Gunnar. Was it meant to enchant me? To persuade me to your cause?”

Gunnar frowned. He simply did not believe me. “I envy you your self-control. You know the nature of that ring! Or is it self-deception?
Lack of memory?”

“I seem to have little else but memory. Far too much memory. Self-deception? I remember the price I pay for slaying my own
betrothed…”

“Ah, well,” said Gunnar, “at least I am not burdened by such depressing and useless emotions. You and I are each going to
die. We both understand the inevitable. It is merely my ambition to achieve that fate for the whole of creation at the same
time. For if Fate thinks she jokes with us, I must teach her the consequences of her delusion. Everything in the multiverse
will die when I die. I cannot bear the idea of life continuing when I know only oblivion.”

I thought he was joking. I laughed. “Kill all of us?” I said. “A hard task.”

“Hard,” he agreed, “but not impossible.” He took the bright “plate” from my hands and placed it back on top of his war hoard.
He was disgruntled, as if he had expected more from me. I almost apologized.

“You’ll have a great desire for that shield one day,” he said. “Perhaps not in this manifestation. But we can hope.”

He expected no real response from me. It seemed he
sought only to pull me down to his level of misery. My own was of a different order. I had no “memory” of the future, and
it was true my memory of the past was often a little dim. My concern was with my own world and an ambitious theocrat who had
summoned forces of Chaos he could not now control. I needed to be free of him. I needed to be able to kill him slowly. I was
still Melnibonéan enough to need the satisfaction of a long and subtle revenge. To achieve this end I must find the Nihrainian
smith who forged the archetype of the black blade. Why it should be here, in a world given over to brutality and hypocrisy,
I did not know.

Having baffled me when he hoped to intrigue me, the faceless captain let an edge creep into his voice. I was reminded of his
essential malevolence.

“I have always envied you your ability to forget,” he said. “And it irks me not to know how you came by it.”

I had never met the man before. His words seemed like the merest nonsense. Eventually I made an excuse, settled myself in
the forward part of the boat and was soon asleep.

The next day, with a heavy sea mist at last beginning to burn off, we came in sight of the Tripolitanian coast. Gunnar sent
a man up the mast to look for ships and obstacles. Few others would sail in such weather, but most of the ships in the region
were coast-luggers, transporting trade goods from one part of the Moorish Confederacy to another. The richest and most cultured
power in the region, the Arabs had brought unprecedented enlightenment. The Moors despised the Romans as uncouth and provincial
and admired the Greeks as
scholars and poets. It was to those oddly opposed forces that this world owed most of its creativity. The Romans were engineers,
but the Moors were Chaos’s thinkers. Romans had no real notion of balance, only of control. A pattern so at odds with the
rhythms and pulses of the natural and supernatural worlds seemed destined to produce disaster.

Las Cascadas, called by the Moors Hara al Wadim, was a haven in a region too full of ships to be safe for us. I prayed that
the Venetians or Turks had not taken their place in the meantime and were lying in wait for us. It was highly unlikely. Though
nominally under the authority of the Caliphates, the strongest power in the region, Las Cascadas was a law unto herself, with
one easily defended harbor. While the Mussulman Fatimids and their rivals continued to quarrel over stewardship of Mecca,
as the Byzantines quarreled over the stewardship of Rome, and so long as the Matter of Jerusalem was the focus of the world’s
attention, the island remained safe.

The Barbary Rose was prudent. She confined her activities to those waters not claimed by the Caliphates or Empire. First fortified
by Carthage, Las Cascadas was considered safe, too, because she was ruled by a woman. I had sailed with that woman in my time.
Gunnar told me her twin-hulled ship I greatly admired,
The Either/Or,
was wintering in North Africa, probably in Mirador with an old ally of hers and mine, the Welsh sea-robber and semimortal,
Ap Kwelch, who had also been hired by King Ethelred. Ap Kwelch was known in English waters for a cunning foe but an awkward
ally.

I was relieved I would not have to encounter Kwelch. We had an unresolved argument not best settled at Las Cascadas where
all weaponry was collected and put under lock and key at the dock.

Before we ever saw the island, Gunnar ran up his flags, as if they would not recognize
The Swan
for who she was. Perhaps he had a code to let the defenders know he was still captain.

We sighted Las Cascadas at midday, approaching her from the harbor side. At first the island fortress was like a mirage, a
series of silver veins twinkling in the sunlight. Then it became clear those veins ran down the sides of cliffs formed by
the crater of an enormous volcano. There were no evident signs of a harbor entrance, only the still lagoon within. It seemed
to me that this mysterious island could only be occupied from the air or from below, and such supernatural forces were no
longer summonable.

I had seen the fate of those forces of nature and super-nature, exiled to bleak parts of the world like the Devil’s Garden
and slowly dying. When all such souls died, it was thought by our folk, the Earth died also. This war had been going on for
centuries between Law and Chaos. Soon Arabia might be the only region not conquered by thin-lipped puritans.

Gunnar again took the steering sweep. He wrapped his huge arm around one of the sail ropes, guiding his ship as if it were
a skiff. Beyond the rocks which guarded the harbor, I saw a great cluster of houses, churches, mosques, synagogues, public
buildings, markets and all the dense richness of a thriving, almost vertical
city. It was built up the sides of the harbor. The rivers and waterfalls which gave Las Cascadas its name sparkled and gushed
between buildings and rocks. The whole island glinted like a raw silver ingot. Pastel-colored houses were dense with greenery
and late-summer flowers. From their roofs and balconies, their gardens and vineyards, people raised up to look at us as we
came about before the sea-gates of Las Cascadas. Two enormous doors of brass and steel could be drawn over a narrow gap between
the rocks, just wide enough for a single ship to come or go. I was reminded vividly of Melniboné, though this place lacked
the soaring towers of the Dreamers’ City.

I heard shouted greetings. Figures moved about the stonework which housed the doors, levers turned, slaves hauled huge chains
and the sea-gate opened.

Gunnar grunted and touched his steering sweep a little to port, then a little to starboard. Delicately he guided us through
the narrow gaps, swift and smooth as an eel. The gates groaned closed again behind us. We rowed in slowly beneath the gaze
of Las Cascadas’s citizens. Everyone here lived off the proceeds of piracy. They were all devoted subjects of the pirate queen.
The beautiful Barbary Rose had diplomatic skills which made her the equal of Cleopatra.

A great variety of ships already stood at anchor in the harbor. I recognized a Chinese junk, several large dhows, a round-hulled
Egyptian ship, and the more sophisticated fighting galleys, most of modified Greek pattern, which were the favorite vessels
of corsair captains. I had a feeling I might meet old friends here,
but not recent acquaintances. Then, as I hauled my gear to the dock, I heard a name being called. “Pielle d’ Argent, is it
you?” I turned.

Laughing, the little redheaded Friar Tristelunne came bustling along a quayside already crowded with the riffraff of Las Cascadas
turning out in hope of casual employment. But whatever booty Gunnar brought to Las Cascadas to pay for his security, it was
not cargo. For a while Tristelunne disappeared in the crowd, then bobbed up again nearby, still smiling. “So you took my advice,”
he said. “You spoke to the old ladies and gentlemen?”

“They spoke to me,” I said. “I thought you headed for Cordova.”

“I was about to disembark. Then I heard Christians and Jews were again out of favor with the caliph. He believes there has
been a fresh conspiracy with the Empire. He’s considering expelling all Franks. Indeed, he is wondering if expelling might
not be too good for them. I thought it wise to wait out the winter here, administering to what faithful I can find. I’ll see
how the weather feels in spring. My alternative, at present, is the Lion-heart’s England, and quite honestly, it’s no place
for a gentleman. The forests are full of outlaws, the monasteries full of Benedictines and worse. Their divinely appointed
king remains a prisoner in Austria, as I understand it, because his people have no particular interest in paying his ransom.
John is an intellectual and therefore not trusted by anyone, especially the Church.” Gossiping continually, Tristelunne guided
me up steep, cobbled streets to the inn, which he insisted was the best on the island.

Behind me Gunnar roared a question. I told him I would see him at the inn.

I sensed his unease with my independence. He was used to control. It was second nature to him. He was baffled, I suspected,
rather than angry.

Amused by all this, Friar Tristelunne led me into the inn’s sunny garden. He sat me down at a bench and went inside, returning
with two large shants of ale. I did my best with this hearty stuff, but yellow wine was the only drink that suited my perhaps
overrefined palate. The fighting friar was not upset by this. He fetched me a cup of good wine and finished the ale himself.
“You got advice, I hope, from the Grandparents?”

“They seemed more in a prophetic mood,” I said. “Some mysterious visions.”

“Follow them,” he said firmly. “They’ll bring you the thing you desire. You know already, in your heart, what the thing you
desire will bring you.” And he sighed.

“I have no interest in foreknowledge,” I said. “My fate is my fate. That I understand. And understanding it releases me to
drift wherever the tides of fate take me, for I trust in my own fortune, good or bad.”

“A true gambler,” he said. “A veritable mukhamir!”

“I’d heard all that before,” I told him. “I belong to no society nor guild. I practice no formal arts, save when necessary,
and I believe in nothing but myself, my sword and my unchangeable destiny.”

“Yet you struggle against it.”

“I am an optimist.”

“We have that in common.” He spoke without irony. He sat back against a post and stared around him at the
flowers which flooded the entire courtyard. These blossoms vied with the bright colors worn by the customers, none of whom
paid us much attention. I knew the people of Las Cascadas thought it ill mannered to show excessive attention to strangers.

On my first visit to Las Cascadas I had had status. The Rose and I were lovers then. On my second visit I had been a captive
and something of her dupe. My ultimate turning of the tables had not made her any less aggrieved. But it was unlikely she
had left any instructions about my fate, since she would hardly expect me to visit her stronghold again.

The friar confirmed that she was away until spring. She had sailed south again, he said. She always returned with exotic spices
and jewels, and the occasional string of exquisite slaves. Ap Kwelch had gone with her. “That twin-prowed ship can sail faster
and further than anything afloat,” said Tristelunne. “She can sail to China and back in a single season. While we winter against
the Atlantic, she’s enjoying the sunshine and spoils of the Indies!”