enough to risk the destruction of the Balance itself. But in my heart I knew there were always such beings. We had already defended the city against them once. But it would be madness to assume Chaos would attack again, so soon after we had driven her back. I refused to become anxious. I intended to make the most of my stay, I said, and restore myself as best I could.
Most of our talk was reminiscence. It was the nature of the place. We discussed old fights, old threats, legendary battles of the past and speculated upon the nature of our sanctuary.
We were in Tanelorn less than a week, however, before the city came under direct threat. And, of course, I had not sniffed Chaos. I had never anticipated that Law would be taking her turn as aggressor. My world had little stability. Did it go back to that one moment in my past, that moment when I killed the only woman I truly loved? Had I set these events in motion, all that long time ago? Meanwhile, again Tanelorn was threatened. And by Law gone mad. That these besieging powers must be particularly corrupt and manipulated by a creature whose ambitions were unusually determined was no comfort. Such mindlessness was always the most destructive. It had nothing to lose but its own threatened oblivion.
I knew we were being challenged by unusual wizardry one afternoon when the whole surrounding landscape melted even as we watched from the battlements and old walls. The land turned to glaring ash flats studded with wind-carved limestone crags-a world of crystalline whiteness. The inhabitants of Tanelorn were astonished and alarmed. This was the work of the gods. Or demons. Even I was not capable of such sorcery.
What fresh interest did the Lords of the Higher Worlds have in Tanelorn?
Everything but Tanelorn was now the color of wind-scarred bone. Her gentle trees and pretty houses were made vulgar by all that starkness.
The moon must look like this, I said. Everything scoured away. Was that where we were now? Tanelorn's wise men thought we had merely been shifted to an alternative world from our own, which had already been conquered.
I was capable of one last Summoning. I begged the Earth ele-mentals to dig a defensive moat around the city walls. It was the best I could do and it exhausted me.
We could not imagine the madness of a creature capable of reducing a world to such barren horror.
There were scholars of every kind in Tanelorn. I sought their best wisdom. Who had moved us to this world?
'My Lady Miggea of Law, ' I was told. 'Almost certainly. She has already reduced several more realms to similar nothingness.' She had immense supernatural resources and commanded more. I knew my gods and goddesses. I knew she had her own cycle of myth and legend which empowered her on earth, but she had to have mortal agents or she could not break through into these spheres.
At least one mortal was serving her here. My Lord Arioch of Chaos was equally helpless without mortal compliance. My patron, impulsive as he could be, had learned never to attempt the conquest of Tanelorn.
Our first attackers were mostly half-armored foot soldiers, oddly identical. They marched out of nowhere and did not stop marching until they reached our moat and then did not stop marching, over the backs of drowning comrades, until they were at our walls. Thousands and thousands were thrown against us daily and were so incapable of individual decision that we killed them effortlessly with few losses to our side.
The soldiers attacked again. We defended Tanelorn. We debated plans for her salvation. But we hardly knew what we were defending against, who our enemy really was. None knew how far the ash desert extended. A manifestation of Lady Miggea had been seen by some who recognized it, confirming that she was indeed in this realm now and watching from afar. At least this is what I was told. Some of our newer inhabitants had fled realms where she already ruled, had come here because of the terror they had left behind. But we still did not know the name of the mortal who served the Lady Miggea. And we wondered why the city did not shift herself away from danger, as we thought she could.
The marching minions of Law were easy enough to defeat. They had no true will and seemed almost drugged. They were mechanically predictable. They used identical tactics every time they tried to take the city. It was nothing to slaughter them in hundreds as they swam over or attempted to bridge the moat. I began to believe that their only function was to distract us while larger plans were hatched.
Warfare at its most boring.
Then Lady Miggea herself came to look at Tanelorn.
At first even I didn't understand the significance of the visit.
One morning I took my usual walk around the wall and to my astonishment saw that the surrounding horizon was filled with the pennants and lances of a vast mounted army. Everywhere their outlines signified our annihilation. These were not Law's cannon fodder, but her finest knights, drawn from all over the multiverse.
I threw up my hand to defend my eyes and saw, as if emerging from a shimmering mirage, a massive she- wolf, the size of a large mare, all caparisoned with pretty silks and beaded leather, with painted leather saddle, with brass and silver and glinting diamonds in her harness. Her deep-set eyes were mysterious as she came racing towards the city at the head of a pack of human knights. Her white, fanged muzzle twitched a little, as if she scented prey. Perhaps the wolf had been caught in Melnibone, I thought, for like me she was a pure albino. Her red eyes glared from bone-white fur, streaming behind her as she ran.
Even more bizarre was her rider. An armored man whose glittering silver helm completely hid his face. Whose lance shimmered the color of pewter. Whose metal was festooned with fluttering silks, with cloaks and scarves of a thousand colors.
I saw him turn, stand in his stirrups, and raise something to his helm. I heard the sound of his horn.
They came on and on. Thousands of white horses and their silver-armored riders. Surely they meant to trample Tanelorn beneath their hooves.
Then I saw what the wolf pursued.
A hare, as white as winter, raced over the pale ash ahead of that whole thundering army. Racing for our gates. A thousand spears poised to pierce her. Too late.
The hare reached the moat and plunged into the water. She swam to the city gates and sped through a narrow gap, disappearing at once into the streets.
Only when the little animal found the safety of the city, did the hunt quickly disperse, fanning to both sides around Tanelorn's wide moat. They had lost their prey. A distant horn called them away.
But they had impressed us with their armor. Their shining armor. Their faceless, enigmatic helms. And their numbers.
I knew their kind. The Knights of Law served a holy cause. Summoned to the standard of their mistress, the Lady Miggea, I knew they would fight to the death for her. They did not and could not question her. Their nature was to serve the office, no matter how warped it had become. They clung to a single idea, just as she did, unable to imagine more than one thing, one future, which they must create. They disguised their natural rapacity as their quest for Order.
But it had been the hare they intended to destroy that morning, not us. Their horses' hooves churned the ashy desert as from her huge pale throat, the white she-wolf voiced her angry frustration at losing her quarry. A chilling growl.
Again the horn sounded.
The mounted knights began to reorder themselves, turning and moving back towards the horizon.
Moonglum stepped up beside me. He had been commanding a group of fighters farther along the wall.
'What's this?' He sniffed and rubbed at his sleeve, as if to remove a stain. 'Were they simply out for a gallop? Did you see the quarry they followed, my lord? The little hare?'
I had seen her and I wondered why she was so important to a Duchess of Law. What had held them back from pursuing her into the city? Some understanding that by entering eternal Tanelorn they threatened the fundamental order of all our realms?
Madness is what I witnessed. I had seen it more than once when Law became corrupted and decadent. For that reason alone my people preferred the uncertainties and wildness of Chaos. Law gone rotten was a far more perilous prospect. Chaos did not pretend to logic, save the logic of temperament, of feeling.
The she-wolf had turned and was loping back towards us, bearing her arrogant rider, who now, apparently relaxed, held his lance easily in its stirrup.
I heard a noise from within the helm. I heard a voice. I heard my own name.
'Prince Elric, called Traitor. Is that you?'
