Revenge of the Rose by Michael Moorcock Page A

nothing divine about Gaynor the Damned.”
                 Murmuring
that he still did not understand the significance of the prince’s title, Wheldrake
subsided. “If we could help, sir, we would—”
                 “Who
are these women you seek?” Elric asked.
                 “Three
sisters, similar in looks and upon a quest or errand of some singular urgency
to themselves. They are searching, I gather, for a lost countryman or perhaps
even a brother and had asked hereabouts for the Gypsy Nation. When the people
heard they sought the Nation they put them on their way but refused all further
intercourse. My only advice to you would be to avoid the subject completely,
unless it is raised by them! I have a suspicion, moreover, that once you
encounter this band of nomads, you have precious little chance of leaving their
ranks unscathed.”
                 “I
am grateful for your advice, Prince Gaynor,” said Elric. “And did you learn who
grows so much wheat, and why?”
                 “Fixed
tenants they are called, and when I asked the same question I was told with a
somewhat humourless laugh that it was to feed the locusts. I have heard of
stranger practices. There is some tension with the gypsies, I gather. They will
not speak much of any of this but become unsettled. The realm’s called by them
Salish-Kwoonn, which, you’ll recall, is the name of the city in the Ivory Book.
An odd irony, that. I was amused.” And he turned his horse away from them as if
he escaped wholly into the abstract, his natural environment, and rode slowly
towards that distant depression, those hills of refuse, whose presence was
already marked on the horizon by crows and kites, by masses of flies swarming
like black smoke.
                 “A
scholar,” said Wheldrake, “if a little on the cryptic side. You understand him
better than do I, Prince Elric. But I wish he had traveled our way. What do you
make of the fellow?”
                 Elric
paused, choosing his words, fiddling with the buckle of his belt. Then he said:
“I am afraid of him. I fear him as I have never feared a human creature, mortal
or immortal. His doom is terrible, indeed, for he has known the Sanctuary of
the Balance, and that is what I yearn for. To have had it—and lost it …”
                 “Come,
now, sir. You must exaggerate. Odd, he was, to be sure. But affable, I thought.
Given his circumstances.”
                 Elric
shuddered, glad to see Prince Gaynor gone. “Yet I fear him as I fear nothing
else.”
                 “As
you fear yourself, maybe, sir?” And then Wheldrake looked with regret upon the
face of his new friend. “I beg you, sir, I did not wish to seem forward.”
                 “You
are too intelligent for me, Master Wheldrake. Your poet’s eye is perhaps
sharper than I would like.”
                 “Random
instinct, sir, I assure you. I understand nothing and say everything. That’s my doom, sir! Not as grand as some, no
doubt, but it gets me in and out of trouble in roughly equal proportions.”
                 And
with that Master Wheldrake assures himself of a dead fire, breaks down his spit
and buries it with regret, keeps hold of his snare, which he tucks in his
pocket with a volume which has lost its binding to reveal some vulgar marbling,
throws his frock-coat over his shoulder and plunges through the wheat in Elric’s
wake. “Did I recite my verse epic, sir, concerning the love and death of Sir
Tancred and Lady Mary? In the form of the Northumberland ballad, which was the
first poetry I ever heard. The family estates were remote, but I was not lonely
there.”
                 His
voice chirruping and trilling the cadences of a primitive dirge, the red-combed
scrivener skipped and scampered to keep up with the tall albino.
                 Four
hours later, they