The Land Leviathan (A Nomad of the Time Streams Novel) by Michael Moorcock Page B

recognized my own name written in faded brown ink on yellow paper! Just the word “Moorcock”. I did not know the handwriting, but I felt fully justified in tearing off the wrappings to reveal a great heap of closely written foolscap pages.
    It was the manuscript which you, its rediscoverer (for I have no intention of making a fool of myself again), are about to read.
    There was a note addressed to me from Bastable—brief and pointed—and the manuscript itself was in the same writing.
    This must be, of course, what Una Persson had been referring to when she had told me that Bastable had left something of himself behind in the Valley of the Morning. I felt, too, that it was reasonable to surmise that she had meant to give the manuscript to me before she left (if she had actually known she was going to leave so suddenly).
    I took the table, a stool and the manuscript onto the balcony, seating myself so that I was looking out over the mysteriously deserted village and the distant hills containing the valley I had sought for so long, and I settled down to read a story which was, if anything, stranger than the first Bastable had told me...

BOOK ONE

THE WORLD IN ANARCHY

CHAPTER ONE
The Return to Teku Benga
    A fter I left you that morning, Moorcock, I had no intention of departing Rowe Island so hastily. I genuinely intended to do no more than take a stroll and clear my head. But I was very tired, as you know, and inclined to act impulsively. As I walked along the quayside I saw that a steamer was leaving; I observed an opportunity to stow away, did so, was undiscovered, and eventually reached the mainland of India, whereupon I made my way inland, got to Teku Benga (still hoping to get back to what I was convinced was my ‘real’ time), discovered that the way across remained impassable and considered the possibility of chucking myself off the cliff and having done with the whole mystery. But I hadn’t the courage for that, nor the heart to go back to your world, Moorcock—that world that was so subtly different from the one I had originally left.
    I suppose I must have gone into a decline of some sort (perhaps the shock, perhaps the sudden cessation of supplies of opium to my system, I don’t know). I remained near the abyss separating me from what might have been the fountainhead of that particular knowledge I sought. I stared for hours at the dimly seen ruins of that ancient and squalid mountain fortress and I believe I must have prayed to it, begging it to release me from the awful fate it (or Sharan Kang, its dead priest-king) had condemned me to.
    For some time (do not ask me how long) I lived the life of a wild beast, eating the small vermin I was able to trap, almost relishing the slow erosion of my mind and my civilized instincts.
    When the snows came I was forced to look for shelter and was driven slowly down the mountainside until I discovered a cave which provided more than adequate shelter. The cave bore evidence that it had until recently been the lair of some wild beast, for there were many bones—of goats, wild sheep, hill dogs and the like (as well as the remains of more than one human being)—but there was no sign that its previous occupant was still in evidence. The cave was long and narrow, stretching so far back and becoming so dark that I never explored its whole extent and was content to establish myself close to the mouth, building no fire, but wrapping myself in the inadequately cured skins of my prey as the winter grew steadily colder.
    The previous resident of the cave had been a huge tiger. I found this out one morning when I heard a peculiar snuffling noise and woke up to see the entrance blocked by a massive striped head and the beginnings of a pair of monstrous feline shoulders. The tiger regarded this cave as his winter home and plainly would not think much of the idea of sharing it equably with me. I leapt up and began to retreat into the depths of the cave, since my exit was completely