about itself, the tips of its branches lost in the distance. I had never seen anything so delicate, so intricate. I stood outside existence and looked upon all the branches of all the branches of the multiverse, constantly growing, constantly dying. Like a piece of the most intricate filigree, that silver tree, the complexity so great that it was impossible to see and understand the whole. I knew that what I looked upon was immeasurable, infinite. And what if this were only one of many such trees? I began to move towards it until I could no longer see the tree itself, but only the nearest branches, on which figures moved, back and forth, walking between the worlds.
At last I was standing on a branch, and I felt the comfort of familiarity. I had no memory, either as Elric or Ulric, of these roads. Instead I had a sense of connection with countless other selves with endless pain, with indescribable joy, and I felt that I was walking home.
One branch met a wider branch and then wider still and I met more and more people walking, like me, on the silver roads between the worlds, seeking, like me, some desperate goal, some lost reality. Our greetings were brief. Few lasting friendships were ever made on the silver roads.
After walking awhile, I began to notice a certain familiarity about those I passed. In some it was striking, in others subtle. Every one of these solitary men and women was myself. Thousands upon thousands of versions of myself. As if I were drawing in the vast single personality that was the sum of our parts, swiftly losing my own identity to the greater whole, performing some mysterious dance or ritual, making patterns which would ultimately determine the fate of all.
In this second journey, my dream quest did not take me to Oona's cottage on the borderland. It took me step by step towards a number of circular branches curving around one upon the other, evidently in an agitated condition. Using the disciplines I had learned in the art of sorcery, I made myself advance.
The silver threads broadened to ribbons and then to wide roads so complicated in their design that it was impossible to guess which direction they would take. All seemed ultimately to return to wherever I happened to pause. I was glad, therefore, to find a fellow traveler, but a little astonished to look on a face that bore no resemblance to my own yet which was familiar.
As happens in dreams, I felt no special surprise at meeting Prince Lobkowitz here. The distinguished older man, who used the nom de guerre of Herr El, gravely shook hands with me, as if we had met on a country road. He seemed comfortable in his natural environment. I remember the warmth and firmness of his grip, his reassuring presence.
- My dear Count! Lobkowitz seemed casually delighted - I was told I might run across you out here. Are you familiar with these crossroads?
- Not at all, Prince Lobkowitz. And I'll admit I don't seek to become familiar with them. I am merely trying to get home. I have, as I'm sure you're aware, many reasons for returning to Germany.
- But you cannot return, can you, without the sword? - The sword is in better hands than mine now. I shall not have any particular need of it, I suspect, in my fight against Hitlerism, which is why I wish to return home.
Lobkowitz's sad, wise eyes took on an ironic glint.
- I think we are all wishing that, my lord. Here, on the moonbeam roads, we occasionally encounter this phenomenon, where branches appear to curve in on themselves, swallow themselves, reproduce themselves in peculiar ways and grow increasingly complex and dysfunctional. The theory goes that such places are a kind of cancer, where Law and Chaos are no longer in equilibrium but maintain form in their mutually destructive conflict. They can be dangerous to us - their paradoxes are perverse, unnatural and have age not wisdom. They only lead towards further confusion.
- But my path takes me this way. How can I avoid it?
- You can't - but I can help you, if you wish. Quite naturally, I accepted his offer and he fell in beside me, staring up at the lattice of silvery roads all around us and remarking on their beauty. I asked him if these were the Grey Fees. He shook his head.
- These are roads we ourselves make between the realms. Just as generations tread footpaths across familiar countryside until those footpaths turn to highways, so do our desires and inventions create familiar paths through the multiverse. You could say we create a linear way of traveling through nonlinearity, that our roads are entirely imaginary, that any form we believe we see is simply an illusion or a partial vision of the whole. The human psyche organizes Time, for instance, to make it navigably linear. They say human intelligence and human dreams are the true creators of what we see. I have great faith in the benign power of dreams and am myself partial to that notion -that in effect we create ourselves and our surroundings. Another of the paradoxes which bring us closer to an understanding of our condition.
The maze of roads had tangled all around us now and I knew a slight sense of alarm.
- Then what does this nest of silver threads represent?
- Linearity turned in on itself? Law gone mad? Chaos unchecked? At this stage it scarcely matters. Or perhaps these shapes are like blossoms on a tree, creating in turn whole new dimensions? I believe some call this junction The Chrysanthemum and avoid it.
- Why so?
- Because you become truly lost, truly cut off from any familiar reality. Or perhaps if they are cancers..?
- Does no one know their true origin or function?
- Who can? They could be all of those things or none of those things.
- So we could be trapped. Is that what you're saying?
- I did not insist on it as a certainty. Here the philosophical idea can turn out to be a concrete reality. And vice versa ...
Lobkowitz smiled a thin smile.
- Here it is best to have only informed theories-realities and certainties are unreliable at best. It is harder to be betrayed by a theory. They say that if you would understand the multiverse, you must change from the conceptual state to the perceptual-from manipulation to understanding, and from understanding to action.
I was taught something similar as a young student of sorcery. Yet I feared to let this silvery tangle of roads absorb me. The Austrian seemed almost amused.
- What were you hoping to find here?
I laughed.
- Myself, - I said.
- Look. - Lobkowitz pointed. A small straight branch led out of the tangle into glinting blackness. - Would you go this way?
- Where does it lead?
- Where you have the will and the courage to go. Whatever you have the will and the courage to make.
I had hoped for rather more specific advice, but understood why it was not possible in a multiverse so malleable, so susceptible to mortal demands and so treacherously unstable. Nonetheless I had an uneasy feeling I had become trapped in some peculiar parable.
These dreams I dreamed as both von Bek and Elric. They were profound dreams, hard to recollect. Elric's dreams were the deepest and he would come to remember them only as nightmares amongst other, equally disturbing, nightmares. The kind that made him wake screaming in the night. That drove him to more and more desperate adventuring as he sought to escape the faintest memory of them.
Now, however, links with von Bek seemed increasingly tenuous as I stepped onto the new straight road. 'You ultimately need to reach the Isle of Morn.' Prince Lobkowitz wished me good-bye and turned back towards the dense tangle of paths. I drew further away and looked over my shoulder. 'Morn?' I could no longer see the mysterious Prince Lobkowitz, Herr El. The great complex now resembled an impeccably carved ivory chrysanthemum, so perfect it was possible to imagine it made by a mortal craftsman. I understood why it had acquired the name. Were there people who actually mapped these routes? Who could make identical journeys over and over again?
Why had Lobkowitz set me on this path to risk the danger he had described? Why had he, too, mentioned Morn? For a moment it occurred to me to wonder if he had deceived me, but I put the thought aside. I must trust the few I had learned to trust or I would be truly lost.
My road joined with another and another until I was again on a main branch of the multiverse, approaching a place where a silvery bough had turned upwards and then down to form a rough arch.
I had no choice but to go under this and find myself staring upwards into a glowing cauldron of white fire, which turned suddenly to shower me with flames the color of bone and pewter, absorbing me even as they fell and I
