Lord Shoashooan's many eyes glared. He gagged. I had caused some sort of convulsion. He scraped at his mouth and clutched his throat, and suddenly the sentient tornado flung me away.
I saw gleaming white all around me as I fell heavily to the ice. I was dazed and barely conscious. I forced myself to gather my strength.
I knew I had no other choice.
For a moment I refused the inevitable, but it was a pointless rebellion. I knew it as I made it. I could still hear the terrible howling and clawing of Lord Shoashooan as he wrestled with the bow-stave I had flung into his maw.
I, too, had a preordained story in this world. A story which I must follow in spite of myself.
I was reconciled to what was expected of me. I had no other choice, even though I risked a terrible death. In one moment of recovered memory, I knew exactly what had led to this moment. I knew why I was here. I knew what I must now do. I understood it in my bones, in my soul.
I knew what I had to become.
I readied myself for the transformation.
THE SECOND BRANCH
ELRICS STORY
CHAPTER EIGHT
This is my Dream of a Thousand Years. In reality it lasted a single night, but I lived every moment of the dream, risked every kind of death in one last attempt to save myself. I describe it here, through Ulric's agency, because of its relevance to his tale. It was a dream I dreamed as I hung crucified on the yardarm of Jagreen Lern's triumphant flagship, the banner of my own defeat. I had lost my much-needed burden, the demon-blade Stormbringer. I was racking my memory for some means of recovering the sword to save myself and Moonglum and if possible stop the tide of Chaos which threatened the Cosmic Balance and would turn the whole of creation inchoate.
In this dream I was searching for the Nihrainian smith who had forged the original black blade. I had heard of one called Volnir. He lived close to the world's northern edge in what some called Cimmeria but which you know better as North America. If I found him, I should then be able to find Stormbringer. By such means I might save myself, my friend and even my world. I knew the price to be paid for following this dream path.
It would be the second time I had undertaken the Dream of a Thousand Years. To a youth of my genesis it is integral training. It must be done several times. You go alone into the wilderness. You fast. You meditate and seek the path to the world of long dreams. These are the worlds which determine and reveal the future. They offer the secrets of your past. In such worlds one serves more than one rules. Certain knowledge is gained by extended experience as well as study. The Dream of a Thousand Years provides that experience. The memory of those lifetimes fades, leaving the instinctive wisdom, the occasional nightmare.
One does not learn how to rule the Bright Empire of Melnibone without such service. Only in the extreme could I use my skills. I knew the danger involved, but I had no choice. The fate of my world depended upon my regaining, for a few moments, control of the black sword.
To attempt this desperate and unlikely magic, I had summoned all my remaining powers of sorcery. I had allowed myself to sink into a familiar trance. Jagreen Lern had already provided me with more than sufficient fasting and physical privations. I sought a supernatural gateway to the dream-worlds, some link to my own youthful past, where our many destinies are already recorded. And it brought me to your world in the year A.D. 900. I would leave it in the year 2001 upon the death of a relative.
Riding from Vienna, having but recently returned from a conquered Jerusalem, by October I found myself in the rocky Balkan mountains, where a tradition of banditry lived side by side with a tradition of hill farming to break the hearts and backs of most other peasants.
While wolf's-heads might covet my fine black steel helmet and armor, they had the sense not to test the great claymore I carried at my side. She was called Ravenbrand, sister to my own Stormbringer. How I came by Ravenbrand in that place is a tale yet to be told.
Until finding temporary peace with my wife, Zarozinia, I had been a mercenary outlaw in the Young Kingdoms. I had no difficulty making a good living here. Both the blade and I had reputations few were ready to challenge. Already I had served in Byzantium, in Egypt, fought Danes in England and Christians in Cadiz. In Jerusalem through a bizarre sequence of events, coveting a particular horse, I had helped create an order of the Knights Templar, founded by Christians, to ensure that no temporal master should ever claim the Holy Sepulchre. My interest was not in their religions, which are primitive, but in their politics, which are complicated. Their prophets constantly make false claims for themselves and their people.
Because their maps put Jerusalem at the heart of the world, I had hoped to find signs of my smith there, but I was following a fading song. The only smiths I found were shoeing crusader horses or repairing crusader arms. In Vienna I heard at last of a Norseman who had explored the farther reaches of the world's edge and might know where to find the Nihrainian smith.
My journey through the Balkans was rarely eventful. I was soon in the Dalmatian hinterland, where the blood feud was the only real law, and neither Roman, Greek nor Ottoman had much influence. The mountains continued to shelter tribes whose only concession to the Iron Age was to steal whatever they could from those who carried any kind of metal. They used old warped crossbows and spears chiefly and were inaccurate with both. But I had no trouble from them. Only one band of hunters attempted to take my sword from me. Their corpses served to enlighten the others.
I found warm and welcoming lodging at the famous Priory of the Sacred Egg in Dalmatia. Their matronly prioress told me how Gunnar the Norseman had anchored a month since to make minor repairs at the safe harbor of Isprit on the protected western coast. She had heard it from one of his homebound sailors. Gunnar, tired of slim pickings in the civilized ports, was determined to sail north to the colonies Ericsson and his followers had established there. He was obsessed with an idea about a city made entirely of gold. The sailor, a hardened sea-robber, swore never again to sail under a captain as evil as Gunnar. The man spent an unlikely amount of the time with the confessor and then left, saying he thought he would try his luck in the Holy Land.