to reason.
'By recruiting the help of a powerful Duke of Law or Chaos. There are elements in either camp who believe that if they control everything, the multiverse will accord better with their own vision and temperament. The lives of the gods have cycles when senility and bigotry replace sense and responsibility. Such is the case with Gaynor's ally in our realm.'
'A god, you said?'
'A goddess, as it happens.' Lord Blare uttered an unruly laugh. 'The famous Duchess Miggea of Dolwic. One of the most ancient of Law's aristocrats.'
'Law? Surely Law resists such injustice?'
'Aggressive senility isn't only a characteristic of Chaos in its decline. Both forces obey the laws of the multiverse. They grow strong and virile, then decline and die. And, in their dying, they are often desperate for life. At any price. All past loyalties and understanding disappear, and they become little more than appetites, preying upon the living in order to sustain their own corrupted souls. Even the noblest Lords and Ladies of Law can suffer this corruption, often when Chaos is at her most vigorous and dynamic.'
'Don't make my mistake,' murmured Fromental to me, 'and confuse Law and Chaos with Good and Evil. Both have their virtues and vices, their heroes and villains. They represent the warring temperaments of mankind as well as the best we might become, when the virtues of both camps are combined in a single individual.'
'Are there such individuals?'
'A few,' said Lord Bray. 'They tend to arise as the occasion demands.'
'Gaynor's not one of those?'
'He's the opposite!' Lord Renyard yapped indignantly. 'He combines the vices of both sides. He damns himself to eternal despair and hatred. But it's in his nature to believe he acts from practical necessity.'
'And he has supernatural help?'
'In our world, yes.' Lord Bragg's long face became briefly animated. 'At his side rides Lady Miggea. The Duchess of Law has all the powers of her great constituency at her command. She could destroy whole planets if she wished. The hand of Law is deadly when it serves unthinking destruction rather than justice and creativity. We had hoped Lord Elric ...'
Lord Blare had begun to pace about the room. He was all urgent blue eyes, rattling spurs and jingling harness. 'Much as I enjoy a good chin-wag, gents, I'd remind ye that we're all in immediate danger and our journey here was to seek the help of the Grey Lords, whom we understood these Off-Moo fellers to be.'
'But they can't offer much in the way of practical help, I gather. Gaynor threatens your world, too.' Lord Bragg fingered his mut-tonchops. 'So we must look elsewhere for salvation.'
'Where would you go?' asked Fromental.
'Wherever the moonbeam roads lead us. They are the only way we know to travel between the realms.' Lord Bray seemed almost apologetic. 'With Elric duped and charmed ...'
'Would you teach me to walk those roads if I came with you?' Fromental asked quietly.
'Of course, my friend!' Lord Renyard responded with a generous yap. A clap of his paw upon Fromental's vast arm. 'I for one would be proud to have the company of a fellow citizen of France!'
'Then I'm your man, monsieur!' The legionnaire straightened his cap and saluted. He turned to me. 'I hope, my friend, that you don't feel I desert you. My quest was always for Tanelorn. Perhaps in my search I will learn something that will help us all fight Gaynor. Be assured, my friend, if you are ever in danger, I will help you if I can.'
I told him much the same. We shook hands. 'I'd go with you,' I said, 'only I have sworn to return home as soon as possible. So much is threatened at this moment.'
'We have our separate destinies,' said Lord Renyard, as if to console us. 'All are threads in the same tapestry. I suspect we shall all meet again. Perhaps in happier circumstances.'
'The Off-Moo are populous and resourceful, even when supernatural forces are brought against them.' Oona stepped amongst the huge, beastlike military dandies to make her own farewells. 'We each serve the Balance best by serving our own realms.' She, too, shook Fromental's hand.
'Do you think Gaynor will attack the city?' asked the big legionnaire.
'This is his story,' she said a little mysteriously, 'his dream. I would not be entirely surprised if his great campaign has already begun. This is the adventure which will earn him his best-known sobriquet.'
'And what is that?' asked Fromental, trying to smile.
'The Damned,' she said.
When we had parted from the Tanelornians (of whom I could not help thinking in my own mind as 'the Three Hussars'), I asked Oona how she understood so much.
She smiled and again settled her small body comfortably against mine as we walked through the twilight canyons in which so many commonplace activities were no doubt taking place.
'I am a dreamthief's daughter,' she said. 'My mother was a famous one. She stole some mighty dreams.'
'And how are dreams stolen?'
'Only a dreamthief knows how. And only a dreamthief can safely carry one dream into another. Use one dream against another. But that is how she earned her riches.'
'You could steal a dream in which I was emperor and place me in another where I was a pauper?'
'It's a little more complicated than that, I understand. But I did not receive my mother's training. The great school in Cairo was closed during my time in the city. Besides, I lacked the patience.'
She paused in her step, bringing me to a halt. She said nothing, merely stared up into my face. Ruby eyes met my own. I smiled at her and she smiled back. But she seemed a little disappointed.
'So you are not the thief your mother was?'
'I didn't say I was a thief at all. I inherited some of her gifts, not her vocation.'
'And your father?'
'Ah,' she said, and began to laugh to herself, looking down at the jade-green street which reflected our shadowy figures. 'Ah, my father.'
She'd not be drawn further on that matter, so instead I asked her about her journeyings in other worlds.
'I've traveled very little compared to Mother,' she said. 'I spent some while in England and Germany, though not in your history. I must say I have something of a fascination with the worlds that would be most familiar to you, perhaps because my mother had such affection for them. And you, Count von Bek, do you miss your own family?'
'My mother died giving birth to me. I was her last child. Her hardest to bear.'
'And your father?'
'A scholar. A student of Kierkegaard. I think he blamed me for my mother's death. Spent most of his time in the old tower of our house. He had a huge library. He died in the fire which destroyed it. Dark hints of madness and worse. I was away at school, but there were some strange tales told of that night and what the people of Bek believed they witnessed. There was a grotesque and sensational story spread about my father's refusing to honor some family 'pact with the devil' and losing an heirloom that was his trust.'
I laughed, but not with my companion's spontaneity. I found it difficult to grieve for a man so remote from me, who would not, I suspect, have grieved if I had died in that fire. He found my albinism repulsive. Disturbing, at least. Yet my attempts to distance myself from my parents and their problems had never been wholly successful. He expected me to carry the family duty but could not love me as he loved my brothers. Oona did not press me further. I was always surprised by the levels of emotion such memories revealed.
'We share a complicated family life,' she murmured sympathetically.
'For all that,' I insisted, 'I still intend to return to Bek. Is there no way you can get me home soon?'
She was regretful. 'I journey between dreams. I inhabit the stories, they say, which ensure the growth and regeneration of the multiverse. Some believe we dream ourselves into reality. That we are yearnings, desires, ideals and appetites made concrete. Another theory suggests the multiverse dreams us. Another that we dream it. Do you have a theory, Count von Bek?'
'I fear I'm too new to these ideas. I'm having some trouble believing the basic notions behind them.' I put my arm around her because I sensed a kind of desperation in her. 'If I have a faith, it's in humankind. In our
