“Agreement?” Elric knew that the Gods of the Balance rarely made bargains not to their advantage.
Then Cita Tine was calling out. “Where? The slaves? Are they still in the pens?”
Elric shrugged. “Some are. Others set off through the forest.” He was puzzled by her interest.
She sheathed her blades and peered down. Then she moved away in the direction from which Elric and the Lady Fernrath had come.
Elric turned enquiring eyes on his friend. Moonglum sighed and scratched his head. “That’s why she came with us. Her plan all along was to sell valuables here and use the money to buy her husband back from the traders. He was taken a voyage ago.”
Elric frowned. “So—?”
“Aye. She used me and now she’s off to see if her spouse survived.” Moonglum sighed. “Still, for a few weeks, I have to say, she was happy to have me as his substitute.” He cast a hopeful eye upon one of the acolytes, who moved closer to her colleague. And he sighed again.
“So Xiombarg’s the cause of all this destruction?” Elric wiped other men’s life-stuff from his face.
“We fought hard and well, but we could not have succeeded without her ghastly help.” Nauha stepped closer, “We certainly enjoyed a little sword work of our own.” She noticed that blood was crusting on both her blades and, glancing around her, saw a useful cloak. Bending, she ripped the garment away from its former owner and began to wipe first one sword and then the other.
“Addric Heed?” asked Fernrath, looking about her at the devastation. “Does he live?”
“After a fashion,” said the Princess of Uyt. “Knowing your relationship, I begged him spared. But I was almost too late. Xiombarg—”
“Where is he?”
Nauha frowned, thinking. “Two floors below and…” She shook her head. “Two to the left. His banners and his horse are there. He barely lives, however. Xiombarg was eating him.”
Lady Fernrath was already running from the hall seeking the downward staircase and calling her father’s and her brother’s names.
“There has been a feasting here today.” From curiosity, Elric followed her, the others coming in his wake. “Was this Xiombarg’s only payment?” He indicated the mounded dead.
Nauha laughed. “I think not. I recruited the priestesses when it became clear the supernatural was involved. Moonglum and the girl came up from the town, ready to defend you, but Fernrath had already—already transformed herself. And carried you off.”
“You knew where we went?” He moved down a staircase covered in corpses. “How so?”
“We were in time to see you leave. Cita Tine knew of the White Fort and how to get there.”
“But you arrived so swiftly!”
“Xiombarg was enlisted for that, too. The priestesses summoned their goddess and she transported us here.”
“Yet no sacrifice was made?”
“Oh, she feasted very well. And there was some trinket at Fernrath’s house, which Xiombarg valued. All she did, she did for that.”
They came upon Fernrath then, amongst all the blood and dismembered bodies, amber-coloured armour discarded like the remains of shrimp sucked clean of their shells. She crouched on the marble floor, her shoulders shaking in grief. In her arms, she held something ragged and red. Elric saw that it was all that was left of a man. Addric Heed, proud pirate prince and dealer in slaves lay there, taking great gasps, his lifeblood bubbling from his chest. Little was left of his face. His legs and an arm were missing. One side of him looked as if it had been gnawed upon. Xiombarg had been interrupted in her feasting. He tried to speak, but failed.
Suddenly a bulky form appeared in the nearest window. It clung uncertainly to the sill, then flapped awkwardly into the gallery, its huge wings slapping and snapping in the sunlight, its bulk vast and white as it turned, its massive tail swinging, its long, pale neck stretched out and topped by a massive reptilian head from which blazed two eyes as brilliant and crimson as Elric’s own. The so-called red pearls, now animated with a new life-force, gazed up into the pale gold clouds passing high above. The Eyes of Hemric had returned to the possession of he from whom Addric Heed had stolen them.
The old Phoorn’s red eyes blazed for a moment and his long, wizened snout grunted as he made his way forwards on stiff legs. At last, he stood over the body of the son who had enslaved him and suddenly all the anger left him. His great, pale wings folded themselves around his son’s remains and he lifted the dying thing in his foreclaws, a strange, soft keening coming from somewhere deep in his chest.
“I cannot,” murmured Hemric. “I cannot.” Then he moved towards the window, still carrying what was left of Addric Heed. With considerable difficulty, he hopped again onto the sill and then he had flapped into the air, the long keening note rising as he flew low over the far forest, making a peace with himself and his kin which the onlookers honoured but could scarcely understand.
When Elric next looked at Fernrath, he saw that she wept silently, her eyes following her father, her head on one side, the better to hear that melancholy music. Then she turned, straightening herself. She saw Elric but walked away from him, to stare through one of the tall, broken windows at her disappearing father and what was left of her wretched brother.
When, after some moments, she looked back to glare at the albino, her eyes blazed green and the tongue, which flickered across her teeth, was not human. “He has paid a fair price for what he did. His blood and the blood of his followers shall feed the forest and soon nothing will be seen of the White Fort. It is all he deserves. But now I am the last of my kind, at least on this side of the world.” She let out a deep, hissing breath.
“Anywhere,” said Elric. “There are none of us who are fully Phoorn and non-Phoorn at once. None who bridge the history of both races. None, save your father.”
She sighed. All the anger was gone from her. “And now we are both avenged.”
Hemric, most ancient of the Phoorn race; father to both Lady Fernrath and the renegade Addric Heed, who had blinded him and forced him under water to drive the last of the slaver’s ships, flew against the golden horizon, his voice still keening, deep-throated and full of the joy of flight, the anguish of death.
“Addric Heed was ever jealous of his father,” murmured Lady Fernrath. “For years he and his fellow Dukes of the Blood plotted to enslave the true Phoorn who were not Halflings like me. And when the time came, and their eyes were stolen, I lacked the courage or the character to resist. I saw the great runes cast and the great sorcery made and then the Phoorn were robbed of their eyes and forced into servitude. First they were harnessed to the ships and made to fly just above the water, guided by sharp goads. As they grew old and too feeble for that task, Addric Heed determined how he might have ships built around them, using their wings to drive those vessels at enormous speeds, terrifying and mystifying all they claimed as prey. I could do nothing but help my brother. He swore that if I did not, then he would torture my father to death. Thus I acted between him and the slave merchants of Hizss.”
“That is why Hizss is the only unfortified city along this coast,” murmured Elric in clear understanding. “Hizss did not defend herself because Addric Heed never attacked there. Indeed, he preferred only to prey on ships and left the well-armed cities alone as his dragon allies died, one by one. But his own father!” He spoke almost in admiration. “This is treachery even I could not match…”
Her smile was tragic, her voice sardonic. “Few could,” she said.
Elric watched the albino dragon as he returned, no longer bearing his son’s remains. He saw Hemric twisting and turning high above them, then diving to sail across the tops of the trees, and for a moment he envied the creature, his own ancestor, who had existed for as long as the bright empire of Melniboné, who had seen its birth and lived to learn of its end.