The Skrayling Tree (34 page)

Lobkowitz rode in close now, stirrup to stirrup, so that we should not lose each other in the weather. Every so often he tried
to speak over the wind, but it was impossible. I was sleeping intermittently in my saddle when the horses slowed to a walk.
My body ached, yet they were almost tireless. This seemed to be the nearest they came to resting.

Mile by mile the prairie became low hills, rolling towards the mountains, slowly transferring into the range that rose tall
and ragged into the soughing sky. The wind seemed to give up once we reached the foothills. Suddenly the clouds parted just
as the sun was sinking, and the mountains were a vivid glow of ocher, russet, sienna and deep purple shot through with bands
of darker yellows and crimsons. All mountain ranges have their characteristic beauty. I had seen such magnificent color only
in the Rockies.

“Now we must be
more
than careful.” Prince Lobkowitz dismounted on the slope and was leading his horse up towards a wide cave mouth above. “We’ll
shelter
here tonight and ensure our sleep. We shall need to be alert. Perhaps take watches.”

“At least that damned wind has dropped.”

“Aye,” said Lobkowitz, “but he remains our main enemy here. He is cunning, often seeming to depart, then licking around at
you from a fresh point on the compass. He loves to kill. The more he can devour at a sitting the more content he is.”

“My dear Lobkowitz, ‘he’ is an insentient force of nature. ‘He’ no more plans and schemes than do those rocks over there.”

Lobkowitz looked with some mild alarm towards the rocks. Then he shook his head. “They are benign,” he said. “They follow
the Balance.”

I was becoming convinced that my cousin was a little eccentric. While he could lead me to Oona, however, and back to the safety
of our home and children, I would continue to humor him. As it was, I could not always tell what he saw or how. I was reminded
of visionaries like Blake, who inhabited a world quite as real as that of those who mocked him. Certainly I judged people
like Blake with a different and greater respect once I understood that his world had been as vividly real to him as this world
was to me. I was still a sufficiently modern gentleman, however, not to relish the social circumstances of meeting and speaking
with an angel.

Lobkowitz built a little fire deep inside the cave. The smoke was drawn to a narrow crack at the back which doubtless led
into some larger system.

Like all experienced travelers, he was economical with what he carried and yet seemed to want for nothing.
With ease he prepared a kind of savory pancake from various dried powders he carried in a small cabinet which fit, with a
little forcing, into one of the big gun pockets in his coat.

I asked him why he was so anxious about the wind. True, it was bitter cold, but it had not, after all, turned into a tornado
and blown us away. I took my first bite of the food. It was excellent.

“It is because Lord Shoashooan dissipates his power in various strategies. Had he drawn upon his power and concentrated it,
we should doubtless be dead by now. But his main strength is elsewhere.”

“Who is this entity who commands the wind?”

“He once had a pact with your family, for mutual defense, but that was on another plane altogether. Lord Shoashooan is an
elemental who serves neither Law nor Chaos. At this time, he seems to have chosen to ally himself with our enemies, which
means inevitably we shall soon be challenging him. Meanwhile the White Buffalo struggles against him on our behalf, which
is why he is so weak. Yet for all the White Buffalo is his most powerful enemy, Lord Shoashooan will not be held for much
longer. His allies grow strong, both in numbers and in the range of powers they command. Lord Shoashooan tastes his new freedom.”

He spoke with such knowing familiarity of this high lord that I wondered for a moment if I should suspect him of being in
the creature’s service. Meanwhile, it would be wise to take care what I asked him. I then decided he was speaking of a person,
or a totem, and asked no more questions.

I was becoming used to this kind of patience. We were situationalists, of sorts, he said, responding to whatever opportunities
were presented to us by Fate and making the most of them. That was why, as Pushkin knew, the gambler’s instinct was so important.

I had become distracted. The thought that we were only a short distance from Oona made my sleep intermittent. I kept waking
and wanting to get back in the saddle, to reach her as soon as possible, but Lobkowitz had already pointed out how ordinary
time meant little in this business. It was more a matter of choosing to act when the right coordinates presented themselves.
He remarked again that Pushkin would have made a good member of the League of Time, though he was something of an amateur.
The best gamblers, like himself, were careful professionals who earned their livings by winning.

I remarked that I could not see Prince Lobkowitz as a cardsharp. He laughed. I would be surprised, he said, at his reputation
in the coffeehouses of London, where every kind of game was played. Putting away his cleaned utensils he suggested that I
get as much sleep as possible and prepare myself for whatever the coming days would bring.

I was up soon after dawn. I stepped from the cave into the cold autumn morning. The mist had lifted, and I looked out into
stunning natural beauty whose wonderful shapes and colors were all touched by the rising sun. I felt like opening my arms
to the east and chanting one of those songs with which Indians were said to greet the return of the Sun.

Lobkowitz arose soon after me. With his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, he cooked a piece of bacon and some beans. The
fresh dawn air made me hungry, and the smell was delicious. He apologized for what he called his “cowboy breakfast,” but I
found it excellent and would have eaten another portion had there been one. I asked him if he knew how much longer it would
be before we saw Oona. He could not say. First he had some scouting to do.

Only then did I notice that the horses were gone. Our saddlebags and weapons lay just inside the cavern. It was as if a thoughtful
thief had led them away in the night.

Lobkowitz reassured me. “They have returned to Nihrain, where they will be needed for another adventure involving your ancestor
and alter ego Elric of Melniboné. We cannot ride horses into the territory we now explore. No horses exist there.”

“Are you telling me we are in pre-Columbian America?”

“Something like that.” He put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “You are an exemplary companion for a man like myself, Count
Ulric. I know that you are impatient for more information, but understand how I can only reveal it to you a little at a time,
lest we change our future and further weaken the branch. Believe me in this: my affection for your wife is, in its own way,
as great as yours. And what is more, her survival depends upon our success quite as much as our survival depends on hers.
Many branches are being woven together to make a stronger one, Count Ulric. But the weaving involves considerable skill and
good fortune.”

“It is taking me a little while,” I told him, “to think of myself as a strand.”

“Ah, well,” he said with the suggestion of a wink, “imagine instead that you are lending the weight of your soul to the souls
of a small company who together might save the Cosmic Balance and rescue the multiverse from complete oblivion. Does that
make you feel more important?”

I said that it did and, laughing, we picked up our kit and with a spring in our steps, set off along the high mountain trail,
admiring the peaks and forests which lay below us and reveling in all the wildlife that now inhabited them. Such scenery eased
my soul. I was strengthened by it more, I suspected, than I was strengthened by the sword.

Lobkowitz walked with the aid of a crooked staff. I wore the big blade balanced on my back. It was so beautifully forged that
it felt far lighter than it actually was. I must admit I had always thought a Luger or a Walther a more reliable weapon in
a pinch, but also I had once seen what happens when someone attempts to fire such a weapon in a realm where it should not
exist.

We were comfortable while we walked, but when we stopped, we felt the chill in the wind. Before the end of that first day,
a little light snow had touched my face. We were steadily moving towards winter.

The season seemed to be coming upon us rather swiftly, I said.

“Yes,” said Lobkowitz. “We are walking against what you would usually conceptualize as the flow of time. We could be said
to be walking backwards to Christmas.”

I was about to respond to this whimsicality when a pale face some seven feet high blocked the narrow mountain path ahead.
A giant peered at us from eye level. When I peered back at the face, I realized it was a realistic carving. What mighty force
had placed a great stone head directly in our way, blocking the path? The thing stared at me with a smile which made the Mona
Lisa’s seem broad, and I found myself charmed by it. Indeed I admired its beauty, running my hand over the smooth granite
from which it had been sculpted. “What is it?” I asked Lobkowitz. “And why is it blocking our path?”

“It is a creature called an Onono. A tribe of them used to live in these parts. What you cannot see are the useful legs and
arms hidden within what looks like a singularly thick neck. They are extinct in this realm, everywhere but in Africa, where
they are a distinct species of their own. You should be pleased this one has petrified. They are formidable and savage enemies.
And cannibals to boot.” With his crooked staff Lobkowitz levered the thing towards the edge. It began to rock almost at once
and then suddenly flew over and down. I watched it tumble into the gorge far below. I expected it to land in the river, but
instead, with a snapping crash it went into a stand of dark trees. I found myself hoping it had managed a reasonably soft
landing. The way ahead, though a little chipped and eroded, was now clear.

Lobkowitz moved cautiously forward and was wise to do so, for as the path widened and turned we confronted not a stone guardian,
but several living versions of the creature we had just sent over the edge. Long,
spindly, spiderlike arms and legs were extended from within the shoulder area. Their huge heads, filed teeth and great, round
eyes were like something out of Brueghel.

Parleying with the Ononos was not a possibility. Six or seven of them crowded across the pathway. We had to fight them or
retreat. I guessed that retreat would sooner or later involve us in fighting them anyway. Lobkowitz unsheathed the monstrous
cutlass under his coat, and with a guilty sense of relief, I drew Raven-brand from her scabbard. Immediately the black blade
howled with a mixture of joyous delight and horrible bloodlust. I was dragged towards my foes, Lobkowitz in my wake, as we
ran to do battle with these grotesque failures of evolution.

Spindly fingers gripped my legs as I swung my sword full into the face of the first Onono, splitting it like a pumpkin and
covering his companions and myself in a gruesome mixture of blood and brains. The things had massive but relatively delicate
craniums. Two more of the monsters fell to Ravenbrand, who now shrieked with a disgusting and undisguised love for blood and
souls. I heard my voice shouting Elric’s Melnibonéan war cry “Blood and souls! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!” Part of
me shuddered, fearing that to invoke that name might be the worst thing I could do in this world.

Yet it was Elric of Melniboné who dominated now. Wading into the hideous Ononos, I drew their crude life stuff into my own.
Their coarse blood pulsed through me, giving me a foul, virtually invulnerable energy.

Soon they were all dead. Their twitching hands and feet lay strewn everywhere on the path. Some had sailed down towards the
trees. Other parts had landed on the mountainside. The remaining two creatures—who looked like young females—were bounding
away on their knuckles and would offer us no further trouble.

I licked my lips and wiped my blade clean on coarse black Onono hair. Nearby Prince Lobkowitz was examining those corpses
still more or less in one piece. “These were the last of Chaos in this realm, at least until now. I wonder if they will welcome
their cousins.” He sighed. He seemed to feel sympathy for our defeated attackers.

“We are all Fate’s fools,” he said. “Life is not an escape plan. It is an inevitable road. The changes we can make in our
stories are not great.”

“You are a pessimist?”

“Sometimes the smallest of changes can become significant,” said Lobkowitz. “I assure you, Count Ulric, that I am anything
but a pessimist. Do not I and my kind challenge the very condition of the multiverse?”

“Which is?”

“Some believe the only power which makes existence in any way choate is the imagination of man.”

“We created ourselves?”

“There are stranger paradoxes in the multiverse. Without paradox there is no life.”

“You do not believe in God, sir?”

Lobkowitz turned to regard me. He had a strange, pleasant expression on his face. “A question I rarely hear. I believe that
if God exists he has given us the
power of creativity and has left us with it. If we did not exist, it would be necessary for him to create us. While he neither
judges nor plans, he has given us the Balance—or, if you prefer, the
idea
of the Balance. It is the Balance I serve, and in that, perhaps, I am serving God.”

I became embarrassed, of course. I had no wish to pry into another man’s religious beliefs. But, raised as I was in the Lutheran
persuasion, there were certain questions which naturally occurred to me. His was a religion of triumphant moderation, it seemed,
whose purpose was clear and whose rules were easily absorbed. The Balance offered creativity and justice, a combination of
all human qualities in harmony.

A harmony not mirrored in the busy wind which again began to lick at what little flesh we had exposed. It lashed us with rain
and sleet. It blinded us and chilled us to our bones, but we continued to follow the mountain trail. Winding around great
cliffs and across narrow ridges, on both sides were drops of a thousand feet or more. The wind seemed to attack us when we
were most vulnerable.