The Dragon in the Sword by Michael Moorcock
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Michael Moorcock
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Book One
1
2
3
4
5
Book Two
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Book Three
1
2
3
4
5
Epilogue
About the Author
Also Available from Titan Books
Also available from Michael Moorcock and Titan Books
THE ETERNAL CHAMPION SERIES
The Eternal Champion
Phoenix in Obsidian
THE CORUM SERIES
The Knight of the Swords (May 2015)
The Queen of the Swords (June 2015)
The King of the Swords (July 2015)
The Bull and the Spear (August 2015)
The Oak and the Ram (September 2015)
The Sword and the Stallion (October 2015)
The Dragon in the Sword
Print edition ISBN: 9781783291632
E-book edition ISBN: 9781783291601
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First Titan edition: January 2015
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 1987, 2015 by Michael Moorcock. All rights reserved.
Edited by John Davey
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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For Minerva, the noblest Roman
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled
Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring
The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.
Beauty grown sad with its eternity
Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea.
Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,
For God has bid them share an equal fate;
And when at last defeated in His wars,
They have gone down under the same white stars,
He shall no longer hear the little cry
Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.
—W.B. Yeats,
‘The Rose of War’
PROLOGUE
I AM JOHN Daker, the victim of the whole world’s dreams. I am Erekosë, Champion of Humanity, who slew the human race. I am Urlik Skarsol, Lord of the Frozen Keep, who bore the Black Sword. I am Ilian of Garathorm, Elric Womanslayer, Hawkmoon, Corum and so many others—man, woman or androgyne. I have been them all. And all are warriors in the perpetual War of the Balance, seeking to maintain justice in a universe always threatened by encroaching Chaos, to impose Time upon an existence without beginning or end. Yet even this is not my true doom.
My true doom is to remember, however dimly, each separate incarnation, every moment of an infinity of lives, a multiplicity of ages and worlds, concurrent and sequential.
Time is at once an agony of the Present, a long torment of the Past and the terrible prospect of countless Futures. Time is also a complex of subtly intersecting realities, of unguessable consequences and undiscoverable causes, of profound tensions and dependencies.
I still do not truly know why I was chosen for this fate or how I came to close the circle which, if it did not release me, at least promised to limit my pain.
All I do know is that it is my fate to fight for ever and to possess peace but briefly, for I am the Champion Eternal, at once a defender of justice and its destroyer. In me, all Humanity is at war. In me male and female combine, in me they struggle; in me so many races aspire to make reality of their myths and their dreams…
Yet I am no more or less a human creature than any of my fellows. I can be possessed as easily by love as by despair, by fear as by hatred.
I was and am John Daker and I came at last to find a certain peace, the appearance of conclusion. This is my attempt to put down my final story…
I have described how I was called by King Rigenos to fight against the Eldren and how I fell in love and came to commit a terrible sin. I have told what befell me when (I believed as punishment for my crime) I was called to Rowernarc, how I was induced to wield the Black Sword against my will, how I encountered the Silver Queen and what we did together on the South Ice plains. I believe, too, I have set down somewhere other adventures of mine (or they have been set down by others to whom I recounted them); I have told a little of how I came to voyage on a dark ship captained by a blind man. I am not sure, however, if I ever described how I came to leave the world of the South Ice or my identity as Urlik Skarsol, so I shall begin my story with my final recollections of the dying planet whose lands were slowly falling to the conquest of cold and whose sluggish seas were so thick with salt they could virtually sustain the weight of a grown man. Having succeeded in that world at redressing at least to some degree my earlier sins, I had hoped I might now be united again with my one and only love, the beautiful Eldren princess, Ermizhad.
Although a hero to those whom I had helped, I grew more and more lonely. Increasingly, too, I was subject to fits of almost suicidal melancholy. Sometimes I would fall into senseless raging against my fate, against whatever and whoever separated me from the woman whose face and presence filled my hours, waking and sleeping. Ermizhad! Ermizhad! Had anyone ever loved so thoroughly? So constantly?
In my chariot of silver and bronze, drawn by great white bears, I ranged the South Ice, forever restless, full of my memories, praying to be restored to Ermizhad, aching with longing for her. I slept little. From time to time I would return to the Scarlet Fjord, where there were many who were glad to be my friends and auditors, but I found the ordinary business of people’s lives almost irritating. Hating to appear churlish, I avoided their hospitality and companionship whenever possible. I would confine myself to my chambers and there, half asleep, perpetually exhausted, I would seek to place my soul in limbo, to depart from my body, to quest through the astral plane (as I thought of it) for my lost love. But there were so many planes of existence—an infinite number of worlds in the multiverse, as I knew already, a vast variety of possible chronologies and geographies. How was it possible to quest through all of these and find my Ermizhad?
I had been told I might discover her in Tanelorn. But where was Tanelorn? I knew from my memories of other e
Exhaustion gradually took its toll on me. Some thought I might die of it, others that I might go mad from it. I assured them my will was too strong for that. I agreed, however, to accept their medicines and these at last sent me into deep sleep where, almost to my joy, I began to experience the strangest dreams.
At first I seemed to be adrift in a formless ocean of colour and light which swirled in every direction. Gradually I realised that what I witnessed was something of the entire multiverse. To a degree at least I was perceiving every individual layer, every period, at once. Therefore my senses were incapable of selecting any particular detail from this astonishing vision.
Then I became aware that I was falling, very slowly, through all these ages and realms of reality, through whole worlds, cities, groups of men and women, forests, mountains, oceans, until I saw ahead of me a small flat island of green which offered a reassuring appearance of solidity. As my feet touched it I smelled fresh grass, saw little clumps of turf, some wild flowers. Everything looked wonderfully simple, though it existed in that churning chaos of pure colour, of tides of light which constantly changed in intensity. Upon this fragment of reality another figure stood. It was armoured all of a piece, in chequered yellow and black, from crown to heel, and its face was visored so that I could see nothing of the creature within.
I knew him already, however, for we had met before. I knew him as the Knight in Black and Yellow. I greeted him, but he did not answer. I wondered if he had frozen to death within his armour. Between us there fluttered a pale flag, bereft of insignia. It might have been a truce flag save that he and I were not enemies. He was a huge man, taller even than myself. When we had last met we had stood together on a hill and watched the armies of Humanity fighting back and forth across the valleys. Now we watched nothing. I wanted him to raise his helm and reveal his face. He would not. I wanted him to speak to me. He would not. I wanted him to reassure me that he was not dead. He offered no such reassurance.
This dream was repeated many times. Night after night I begged him to reveal himself, made the identical demands I had always made and received no response.
Then one night there came at last a change. Before I could begin my ritual of requests the Knight in Black and Yellow spoke to me…
– I have told you before. I will answer any question you put to me. It was as if he continued a conversation whose beginning I had forgotten.
– How can I rejoin Ermizhad?
– By taking passage on the Dark Ship.
– Where shall I find the Dark Ship?
– The ship will come to you.
– How long must I wait?
– Longer than you wish. You must curb your impatience.
– That is an insubstantial answer.
– I promise you it is the only one I can offer.
– What is your name?
– Like you, I am endowed with a great many names. I am the Knight in Black and Yellow. I am the Warrior Who Cannot Fight. I am sometimes called The Black Flag.
– Let me see your face.
– No.
– Why so?
– Ah, now, this is delicate. I think it is because the time has not come. If I showed you too much it would affect too many other chronologies. You must know that Chaos threatens everything in all the realms of the multiverse. The Balance tilts too heavily in its favour. Law must be supported. We must be careful to do no further harm. You shall hear my name soon, I am certain of that. Soon, that is, in terms of your own time span. In terms of mine ten thousand years could pass…
– Can you help me return to Ermizhad?
– I have already explained that you must wait for the ship.
– When shall I have peace of mind?
– When all your tasks are done. Or before there are tasks for you to do.
– You are cruel, Knight in Black and Yellow, to answer me so vaguely.
– I assure you, John Daker, I have no clearer answers. You are not the only one to accuse me of cruelty…
He gestured and now I could see a cliff. On it, lined at the very edge, some on foot, some on mounts (not all by any means ordinary horses), were rank upon rank of fighters in battered armour. I was close enough, somehow, to observe their faces. They had blank eyes which had become used to too much agony. They could not see us, yet it seemed to me they prayed to us—or at least to the Knight in Black and Yellow.
I cried out to them: Who are you?
And they answered me, lifting their heads to chant a frightful litany. We are the lost. We are the last. We are the unkind. We are the Warriors at the Edge of Time. We are the ravaged, we are the despairing, we are the betrayed. We are the veterans of a thousand psychic wars.
It was as if I had given them a signal, an opportunity to express their terrors, their longings and their agony of centuries. They chanted in a single cold, melancholy voice. I felt that they had been standing on the cliff’s edge for eternity, speaking only when asked my question. Their chant did not pause but grew steadily louder…
We are the Warriors at the Edge of Time. Where is our joy? Where is our sorrow? Where is our fear? We are the deaf, the dumb, the blind. We are the undying. It is so cold at the Edge of Time. Where are our mothers and our fathers? Where are our children? It is too cold at the Edge of Time! We are the unborn, the unknown, the undying. It is too cold at the Edge of Time! We are tired. We are so tired. We are tired at the Edge of Time…
Their pain was so intense I tried to cover my ears. – No! I screamed. – No! You must not call to me. You must go away!
And then there was silence. They were gone.
I turned to speak to the Knight in Black and Yellow, but he, too, had vanished. Had he been one of those warriors? Did he lead them, perhaps? Or, I wondered, were they all aspects of a single being—myself?
Not only could I not answer any of these questions, I did not really wish to have the answers.
I am not sure if it was at that point, or at some later time, in another dream, that I found myself standing upon a rocky beach looking out into an ocean shrouded in thick mist.
At first I saw nothing in the mist, then gradually I perceived a dark outline, a ship heaving at anchor close to the shore.
I knew this was the Dark Ship.
Aboard this ship, dotted here and there, orange light glowed. It was a warm, reassuring light. Also I thought I heard deep voices calling from the deck to the yards and back again. I believe I hailed the ship and that she responded, for soon—perhaps brought there in a longboat—I was standing on her main deck, confronting a tall, gaunt man in a soft leather sea-coat which reached below his knees. He touched my shoulder as if in greeting.
My other recollection is that the ship was carved, every inch of her, with peculiar designs, many geometrical, many representing bizarre creatures, entire stories or incidents from all manner of unguessable histories.
– You’ll sail with us again, the Captain said.
– Again, I agreed, though I could not recall, just then, when I had sailed with him before.
Thereafter I left the ship several times, in several different guises, and pursued all manner of adventures. One came to memory sharper than the others and I even remembered my name. It was Clen of Clen Gar. I remembered some kind of war between Heaven and Hell. I remembered deceit and treachery and some kind of victory. Then I was aboard the ship again.
– Ermizhad! Tanelorn! Do we sail there?
The Captain put the tips of his long fingers to my face and touched my tears. – Not yet.
– Then I’ll spend no more time aboard this vessel… I grew angry. I warned the Captain he could not hold me prisoner. I would not be bound to his ship. I would de
He did not resist my leaving, though he seemed sad to see me depart.
And I was awake again, in my bed, in my chambers at the Scarlet Fjord. I had a fever, I believe. I was surrounded by servants who had come at my shouting. Through them pushed handsome, red-headed Bladrak Morningspear, who had once saved my life. He was concerned. I remember screaming at him to help me, to take his knife and release me from my body.
– Kill me, Bladrak, if you value our comradeship!
But he would not. Long nights came and went. In some of them I thought I was upon the ship again. At other times I felt I was being called. Ermizhad? Was it she who called? I sensed a woman present…
But when I next set eyes upon a fresh visitation it was a sharpfaced dwarf I saw. He was dancing and capering, apparently oblivious of me, humming to himself. I thought I recognised him, but could not remember his name. – Who are you? Are you sent by the blind captain? Or do you come from the Knight in Black and Yellow?
I seemed to have surprised the dwarf, who turned sardonic features on me for the first time, pushed back his cap and grinned. – Who am I? I had not meant to have you at a disadvantage. We were old friends, you and I, John Daker.
– You know me by that old name? As John Daker?
– I know you by all your names. But you shall be only two of those names more than once. Is that a riddle?
– It is. Must I now find the answer?
– If you feel you need one. You ask many questions, John Daker.
– I would prefer it if you called me Erekosë.
– You’ll have your wish again. Now, there’s a straight answer for you, after all! I’m not such a bad dwarf, am I?
– I remember! You’re called Jermays the Crooked. You are like me—the incarnation of many aspects of the same creature. We met at the sea-stag’s cave.
I recalled our conversation. Had he been the first to tell me of the Black Sword?
– We were old friends, Sir Champion, but you failed to remember me then, just as you fail to remember me now. Perhaps you have too much to remember, eh? You have not offended me. I note you appear to have lost your sword…