Michael Moorcock · Del Rey Collected Edition, 2008
The Pearl at the Heart of the World hides within a child's dreaming mind in the Sighing Desert — and Elric's dream-couch education in Melniboné reveals how his people became what they are. This volume holds The Fortress of the Pearl (1989), the graphic novel script Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer (DC Comics, 2004–06), Neil Gaiman's tribute story, and the first publication of an Earl Aubec novel proposal.
Elric, near death from lack of his sustaining drugs, arrives in the ancient sealed city of the Sighing Desert — and is immediately ensnared by a scheming nobleman
Quarzhasaat — a sealed city whose empire was swallowed by sand two thousand years ago due to a Melnibonéan spell, yet whose citizens still consider themselves masters of the world — finds Elric collapsed near death in a hovel, discovered by a desert boy named Anigh. A richly clothed agent of the ambitious Lord Gho Fhaazi revives Elric with a mysterious elixir and brings him to Goshasiz, the lord's palace. Lord Gho believes Elric to be a dreamthief from Nadsokor, and sets him a task: find the Pearl at the Heart of the World — a legendary jewel whose delivery to the nameless Seventh of the Council of Six would purchase Lord Gho a seat on Quarzhasaat's ruling body.
The trap is revealed slowly. The reviving elixir is a slow poison that feeds off the user's own life-force, giving only an illusion of health. It is addictive. Only Lord Gho has the antidote. Anigh is imprisoned as a hostage. The Blood Moon rises in less than three weeks — after which both Elric and Anigh will die. Elric departs along the Red Road through the desert with a flask of poison, a horse, a map, and three weeks to live.
The oasis is a vast nomad gathering place; the Holy Girl of the Bauradim lies in an enchanted coma; the dreamthief Alnac Kreb dies trying to save her
The Silver Flower Oasis proves a city of tents and a fortified kashbeh carved from living rock, sheltering tens of thousands from across all the desert clans. At its ceremonial centre, the Bauradim are conducting a funeral — an empty coffin for Lord Gho Fhaazi, their enemy, whose men drugged and attempted to abduct their Holy Child. Elric meets Raik Na Seem, First Elder of the Bauradim: an old man of great dignity who becomes a father figure to the albino. In the Bronze Tent beyond the Ragged Pillars, Raik Na Seem's thirteen-year-old daughter Varadia lies in an open-eyed, unblinking coma — the Holy Girl, who carries the entire accumulated wisdom, history and identity of the Bauradim within her, having been drugged by Sorcerer Adventurers in their attempt to find the Pearl.
Alnac Kreb attempts to enter Varadia's dream and steal the entrapping spell. He lies beside her, links their hands with his hooked dreamwand — and the wand begins to consume him. His body shrivels as his substance pours into the dream-world. He revives once, murmuring: "I've learned where the Pearl lies. But these dreams are defeating me." Then he dies horribly as the dream absorbs him entirely.
Elric and Oone enter the child's dreaming mind and cross six named lands toward the Fortress of the Pearl, guided by a navigator who is more than she seems
Sunless red desert under leaning "Shark's Jaw" mountains. The comically exotic Jaspar Colinadous appears with his winged cat Whiskers, provides a map, and saves them from the three-headed crow Jack Three Beaks. The Pearl Warrior — pale, armoured in ivory and mother-of-pearl, glassy dead-fish eyes, a hint of Alnac Kreb in his face — first attacks at the bridge over the chasm. Whiskers saves them; the Warrior falls into the torrent.
Glowing caverns of melancholy beauty. Elric nearly succumbs to the sweet pull of forgotten desires and lost dreams of a reformed Melniboné. Oone drives him forward with fierce words about the reality of justice vs. the seduction of beautiful longing. They pass through the City of Inventive Cowardice — a magnificent jade city whose walls contain living people frozen like flies in amber, preserved by their abandoned beliefs.
Paranor: Elric sees his own city of Imrryr transfigured by possibility — then nearly trapped by the City of Inventive Cowardice. They fight phantom Sorcerer Adventurers who have been absorbed by this realm. In Celador's forest, the Count of Magnes Doar (rabbit-faced warrior) blocks the path; the Pearl Warrior kills him. Elric sees his father Sadric's ghost. Elric and Oone become lovers in the soft leaves beside the path — a union without guilt, each giving the other strength they would need for what lay ahead.
A vast staircase crowded with increasingly magnificent people, descending to an empty plain. The Pearl Warrior attacks again with a bone-tipped lance. Lady Sough appears — veiled, dignified, speaking in cryptic fractured phrases — and commands the Pearl Warrior to stop. She calls herself a navigator and takes them on her golden barge down a canal toward the Falador Gate. A veiled woman of extraordinary grace, clearly she knows both Varadia and the Dream Realm as no one else does.
A pestilential canyon under a pewter sky, diseased foliage, and the stench of rot. Balis Jamon, Lord of the Blood (a heart-less Chaos creature) demands kidneys as toll; Oone tricks him with a large bean. The Pearl Warrior appears again — and this time rescues them from a Chaos mob, then vanishes uttering prophecies. Giant rainbow moths carry them past the waterfall. Elric screams and raves as madness overtakes him; Oone slaps him back to himself. "You betray us all!" / "Aye, madam — that is so. I betray you all. Have you not heard? It is my destiny to betray!"
Pastoral paradise: pale cypresses, meadows, snow mountains. They meet Chamog Borm — legendary hero of Quarzhasaat, banished from the Fortress by a failed enchantment — who gives them his armour, horses (Taron and Tadia), and his blessing. He knows who Elric is. In the silver armour, riding to the Fortress, Elric understands: "A hero knows another, Prince Elric."
The child has been both captive and architect of her own prison; to free her requires demonstrating that what she fears is already defeated
The Fortress of the Pearl is a palace of impossible ivory beauty — spires and cupolas carved from a single gigantic pearl. Oone defeats the Pearl Warrior at the gate with an extraordinary simultaneous sword-and-spear strike. Inside: courtyard after courtyard of wonders, blood showering from galleries, the aged Seneschal offering bags of gold to leave. At the heart: a glowing globe containing a fist-sized pearl, surrounded by hundreds of Quarzhasaatim and nomads frozen in suspended animation.
Oone summons the last of the Sorcerer Adventurers' dream-shades — which she had been drawing into the realm deliberately — and she and Elric cut them down effortlessly. These were never real. With that demonstration complete, Queen Sough (the veiled navigator) removes her veil — and Elric recognizes the face. The "queen" is Varadia herself, older by years' worth of dreaming, who had been simultaneously prisoner and protector, building a palace around herself to keep the Sorcerer Adventurers from her wisdom, disguising herself as a queen to retain some power. When Varadia throws the pearl globe to the ground, its glass shatters. She catches the pearl and tosses it to Oone. The Fortress begins to dissolve.
Elric fulfills the Bauradim prophecy: the lord who sent killers against their Holy Girl dies, and his city learns what cruelty earns
Elric returns to Quarzhasaat in the guise of a dying man. He frees Anigh and presents the Pearl to Lord Gho — who reaches for it with naked greed. Then Elric forces the Pearl into Lord Gho's mouth. The poisonous irony of the device Lord Gho built to control others now controls him: the pearl lodges in his throat and he chokes to death, his face contorted, unable to swallow the dream he most desired. Elric carries the corpse to the Council of Six and One Other, offers to auction the Pearl to all of them at once. When the Council tries to kill him, Stormbringer is unsheathed.
In a dream set in the age before Melniboné, the young Elric discovers his people's origin myth — and why the Black Sword cannot be separated from Melnibonéan history
At the Tower of D'a'rputna, young Elric is prepared by Doctor Tanglebones for the first of four dream-quests on the Melnibonéan dream couches. While he dreams, Yyrkoon schemes with the human woman Arisand to destroy him. In the dream, Elric becomes White Crow — prince of the Mernii, proto-Melnibonéans stranded in an inland sea when the earth-lord King Grome buries their ships because his people traded away the Black Sword. White Crow strikes a bargain: return the Sword (the lance-blade with the Actorios stone missing) to Grome after its use, and Grome will free the ships.
White Crow journeys across a mythic continent through all four seasons, battles a mountain lion, takes counsel from wise elders, frees animals in distress, and at last reaches a giant's ziggurat city surrounded by a lake of lava. He conjures a demon to carry him over, uses the Actorios stone to enslave the giant, and escapes across the lava on the dying giant's back. He returns, fits the Actorios into the sword, and defeats Yyrkoon's assassins. His brother Varnik uses the completed Black Sword to split the sky and release the Phoorn — the dragons — from their dimensional prison. Flamefang speaks to White Crow as he passes: "Brother, in a million years Flamefang will not have forgotten your help."
Elric encounters King Straasha of the waters and a treacherous Chaos lord — and stumbles into the Middle March to meet Arioch for the first time, with catastrophic effect
Dream of Water (Book Two): Elric is White Crow in a younger Melniboné where the oceans are receding because a bloated Chaos entity called Artigkern is drinking them dry. On a dragon's back with his companion Dyvim Mar, he discovers that a barbarian horde led by a renegade Melnibonéan (Yyrkoon in this dream) aided by the Falkryn sorcerer Agras Ti is marching to attack. King Straasha holds them captive — but Elric extracts the truth: Straasha's sister is held hostage by Artigkern. Elric promises to free her if Straasha takes them home. The battle for Melniboné. Elric and Dyvim Mar fight together, ultimately winning. Straasha's sister is freed; the oceans begin to return.
Dream of Air (Book Three): Elric is Silverskin, a young Melnibonéan king. The sea-city of Imrryr is raided by the Karasim (green-skinned sky-sailors) in flying ships aided by the winged Myyrrhn people — whose prince holds Elric captive in the mountains rather than kill him. A failed portal spell sends Elric into the Middle March — the limbo between worlds. Here Arioch first manifests: a dandy in alien clothes, carrying the Black Sword, accompanied by the trickster Fenki. Arioch throws Elric the sword in the midst of Night Worm monsters. Elric uses it and is appalled by its power. Arioch reveals that Elric's father is marching into disaster on the far side of the world.
The final, most terrible dream: how Melniboné chose cruelty — and why the Black Sword now exists in Elric's world
The fourth dream-couch quest is contested directly: Yyrkoon's soul, guided by Arisand (who turns out to be a manifestation of Arioch), occupies a historical villain while Elric occupies King Elrik, a wise and pacific Melnibonéan monarch who leaves his just realm in his sister Queen Asrid's hands while he journeys the young world. He finds Tanelorn, is led by King Grome to Sepiriz (leader of the ten Nihrainian brothers), learns the nature of the Cosmic Balance — its two elements being the Black Sword and the Runestaff — and is told his destiny: he and his bloodline must serve the Balance.
Returning after ten years abroad, Elrik finds Melniboné transformed: his gentle sister has been possessed by a demon and the nation turned to conquest. A black-armoured figure on the Ruby Throne wields the Black Sword and uses it to destroy enemies' souls. Elrik raises an alliance of barbarian tribes, rides Flamefang into battle, recaptures the palace. He kills the Black Armour — but when he pulls off the helmet, the face is Asrid's. The demon has fled; his sister dies with the sword in her chest, whispering that she was possessed against her will.
Set after the sack of Imrryr, in the trading city of Seréd-Öma famed for its ivory carvers. The sculptor Rai-u Th'ee — last of an ancient family of artists — approaches Elric in a tavern and asks him to sit for a portrait. Her material: a dragon's tusk, smuggled from Melniboné two centuries ago, which has been in her family's possession ever since. The sitting becomes a meditation on loss. Elric touches the tusk and feels kinship: the Phoorn and the folk of Melniboné share blood. He sits in silence for hours, barely breathing, as she works. The result is a likeness of astonishing precision — every line of grief behind the mask of insouciance captured. Moorcock wrote it when he saw the word "insouciant" at a spelling bee.
Arguably the most personal Elric story written by another hand. Twelve-year-old Richard Grey (clearly a version of Gaiman himself) is nearly strangled by a bully's tied necktie and loses consciousness. In that moment he stands with Elric outside a ruined temple. Elric tells him: "You're no companion, boy." Richard enters the temple — and finds a whole life waiting inside it, existence after existence, each drawing him further from the world he came from. He is dragged back to reality by the terrified bully loosening the tie. The story is a precise account of how the Elric books formed Gaiman's imagination during his school years at twelve, his obsession with Stormbringer, his attempts to phone Moorcock's ex-directory number, and his grief when a book's biography claimed Moorcock had died.
Third of Moorcock's 1963–64 critical essay series. Traces the Faustian hero-villain from Marlowe through the Gothic tradition: Schedoni, Ambrosio, Frankenstein, Melmoth the Wanderer. Connects the tradition to Byron, Dorian Gray, Dracula, Jekyll/Hyde, and then to contemporary fantasy — including Peake's Steerpike, Poul Anderson's Scafloc, and his own Elric. Argues that the doomed, brilliant, self-destroying hero resonates not because of its Christian framing but because it depicts the tragedy of intelligence and curiosity consuming themselves. Written while the first Elric stories were being serialised in the same magazine.
A four-novel series proposal Moorcock wrote in 1966 but never developed. Earl Aubec, Champion of Lormyr, first appeared in "Master of Chaos" (1964). His world is the Age of the Bright Empire — same world as Elric's, set earlier. The Lords of Chaos hold most of their ancient power; Chaos Unbound still exists at the world's edges; Imrryr dominates. Aubec is an exile whose lands were seized by his queen's murderous half-brother, who now secretly raises an heir. His companion is a cat. His hopeless love is the sorceress Micella of Kaneloon. The proposal is published here for the first time, as recovered by David Hill of Cornwall. Moorcock explains it belongs in this volume because "my fantasy work has always had an intimate relationship with games, since D&D days."
| Work | First Published | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The Fortress of the Pearl — Book One | Victor Gollancz, UK, 1989 | Quarzhasaat; Lord Gho's trap; the Red Road; Alnac Kreb |
| Fortress — Book Two: The Seven Dream Realms | As above | Oone & Elric traverse Sadanor, Marador, Paranor, Celador, Imador, Falador, Nameless Land |
| Fortress — Book Three: The Fortress & Return | As above | Varadia revealed as Queen Sough; Pearl freed; Quarzhasaat slaughter; Oone's secret |
| Making of a Sorcerer — Book One (Dream of Earth) | DC Comics, 2004 (issue 1 of 4) | White Crow; Grome; Phoorn freed; Black Sword's first appearance |
| Making of a Sorcerer — Book Two (Dream of Water) | DC Comics, 2005 | King Straasha; Falkryn horde; Artigkern drinks the oceans |
| Making of a Sorcerer — Book Three (Dream of Air) | DC Comics, 2005 | Karasim sky-raiders; Myyrrhn; Arioch first appears in Middle March |
| Making of a Sorcerer — Book Four (Dream of Fire) | DC Comics, 2006 | King Elrik; Queen Asrid's possession and death; birth of cruel Melniboné |
| A Portrait in Ivory | Logorrhea, Bantam Books, 2007 | Seréd-Öma; the dragon-ivory portrait; Elric post-Imrryr |
| Aspects of Fantasy, Part 3 (Figures of Faust) | Science Fantasy #63, Feb 1964 | Critical essay on the Faustian hero-villain in fantasy literature |
| Earl Aubec of Malador (novel proposal) | First publication here, 2008 | Unpublished 1966 series outline; recovered by David Hill of Cornwall |
| Introduction to the Taiwan Edition of Elric | Fantasy Foundation Publishing, 2007 | Moorcock introduces non-Anglophone readers to Elric |
| One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock | White Wolf, Elric: Tales of the White Wolf, 1994 | Neil Gaiman's autobiographical tribute; reprinted with P. Craig Russell illustration |