Michael Moorcock · Del Rey Books, 2010 · Dedicated in memoriam: Jim Cawthorn (1929–2008)
The closing volume of the Chronicles: The Revenge of the Rose — a three-book novel across nomad cities and a leaden sea — the long-lost Stormbringer screenplay, the pulp-styled adventure "Black Petals," and the final essays of a career. The rose blooms last, and in it hides a soul.
After the battle with the Haghan'iin Host and a brief idyll with Countess Guyë, Elric is struck by interdimensional lightning — and his dead father's ghost lays upon him the most personal of all impossible quests
Near the town of Toomoo-Kag-Sanapet, a thunderstorm deposits the Victorian poet Ernest Wheldrake — diminutive, red-haired, pockets crammed with battered volumes — who has been drifting between dimensions since consulting Doctor Dee about Greek metre in Putney. Moments later a jill-dragon (Scarsnout) erupts from the cornfield, having been pulled through the dimensions by sorcery. Elric subdues her with the ancient Melnibonéan dragon-songs his father taught him, and she bears him across dimensional barriers to the ruins of H'hui'shan — Melniboné's first city, destroyed in her only civil war, where no sun rises and time is arrested.
There Elric encounters the ghost of Sadric the Eighty-Sixth, his dead father, who cannot rest because his soul escaped capture by both Lord Arioch and rival Count Mashabak of Chaos — by hiding in a box of black rosewood carved with roses, his late wife's possession. The box passed through the servant Diavon Slar, was taken by Purple Towns sea-raiders, auctioned in Menii, and ultimately left the known world entirely. Sadric has called Scarsnout specifically to send her to Elric; she would either recognise him as kin or kill him — both outcomes would eventually bring Sadric what he needed. Now Sadric lays his ghost's hand upon his son, binding their fates: find the soulbox or be permanently merged with his father's unjust hatred for ever.
Elric and Wheldrake arrive in a world of infinite wheatfields, find the Rose — a woman bent on revenge — and Gaynor the Damned, an immortal ex-Prince of the Balance condemned to seek death for ever
Scarsnout lands on the great smooth causeway — a mile-wide road of beaten mud built by the Gypsy Nation — and leaves. Elric and Wheldrake make their way through vast wheatfields to Agnesh-Val, a prosperous, self-satisfied river town that helps "distressed travelers." In the inn they meet the Rose — pink-gold hair, brooding beauty, both swords at her hip — who also seeks the three sisters. That night by a campfire they are joined by Gaynor the Damned, armour pulsing with living Chaos energy, who also seeks "three sisters." Elric recognises in Gaynor something terrifying and near-kindred: a man who has destroyed everything to satisfy what he wanted most, and is still not satisfied. "I fear him as I have never feared a human creature."
Gaynor, serving Mashabak against Arioch, severs the great bridge to destroy a rival's territory — and thousands of villagers plunge into a Chaos pit while Elric, the Rose, the Phatts and Wheldrake scatter in all directions
Mother Phatt screams in vision: the Gypsy Nation's mile-wide causeway across the bay has been sheared in a single blow by Chaos. Village after village of the endlessly moving settlements, unable to stop, crawl to the broken edge and plunge into a roaring Chaos pit — "One by one, with appalling deliberation, the villages of the Gypsy Nation crawl to the edge and plunge into the abyss." Koropith leads them to the sisters, who have been located in the inner city of Duntrollin. Gaynor seizes the three sisters' loaned treasures. The Rose, near-dead from fighting him alone, is found by Elric. Koropith jumps into the Chaos pit after the sisters. The entire Phatt family follows after him.
Elric surfaces in Arioch's domain, is scolded and released; finds Wheldrake in a harbour town; meets Charion Phatt again — now in Gaynor's service; together they sail Gaynor's black-and-yellow ship past the island reefs into the viscous, pitch-dark Heavy Sea
Elric falls through centuries of anguish and lands in Arioch's own domain, where he is a powerless morsel. Arioch — furious about Mashabak's destruction of the Gypsy Nation (which was Arioch's territory) — reproaches but releases Elric and directs him to Ulshinir, a Norse-flavoured harbour town where the three sisters took ship aboard the Onna Peerthon toward the Heavy Sea — an impossibly viscous ocean between worlds where sounds boom as from a cosmic cavern. In Ulshinir, Elric finds Wheldrake (survived the causeway, stranded for months). Then Charion Phatt appears — now grown, disguised as a boy pirate, in Gaynor's service, believing the alliance will help her find her lost family. She delivers Gaynor's dinner invitation. They dine aboard the black-and-yellow ship with the mysterious grey navigator and a caged passenger: Khorghakh, a gigantic, melancholy, philosophising toad who alone can navigate the Heavy Sea.
On the far shore of the Heavy Sea, Elric discovers that Gaynor has secretly imprisoned Count Mashabak himself — and the Northern Werewolf Esbern Snare sacrifices himself to banish Arioch from the plane
The ship beaches on a wintery shore where Elric walks inland through snow to a valley — and there is Wheldrake, arriving from another direction, having survived a year of wandering. The Phatt family are reunited (minus Koropith, who is "somewhere near"). The grey navigator reveals he was Gaynor's prisoner; his "bundle" returned by Gaynor was his werewolf's pelt — he is Esbern Snare, a Norwegian werewolf, a man of considerable honour who despises Gaynor's casual evil. He joins Elric's cause.
Elric discovers Gaynor's audacity: unable to take Mashabak's place himself after being abandoned by the Chaos Lord, Gaynor has somehow imprisoned Count Mashabak in a pulsing ectoplasmic sphere aboard the ship, seeking the four swords to use as leverage to control him. Arioch — furious at the trespass on his territory — descends in force. Esbern Snare, in wolf form, leaps at the Duke of Hell and, seizing him, drags Arioch back through the dimensions. Both vanish. The werewolf leaves behind only his empty wolfskin. He has died a free mortal, releasing Arioch's hold on this plane.
In the ruins of a Vadhagh-descended civilisation besieged for a thousand years by Chaos, the three sisters are at last found — and they reveal that they have been searching for Elric himself, for only he can voice their most powerful spell
Struggling through a Chaos-ravaged landscape, then a forest of organic crystal, Elric, the Phatts, Wheldrake and the recovered Rose reach a great palace carved into cavern rock — half fleshy organic growth, half living crystal — the last holdout of a Vadhagh-descended people who built to follow contours of the earth and have resisted Chaos for over a thousand years. The Rose is found alive — near-dead from battling Gaynor's renewed assault but breathing. Koropith found her and has been guarding her.
The three sisters manifest from three great wolf-hounds the Rose had glamoured for protection: Princess Tayaratuka (golden), Princess Mishiguya (grey-blue) and Princess Shanug'a (white). All three are of Vadhagh descent — distant kin of Elric's own lineage. They exchange the old blood-bond of the Bright Empire's ruling families. The revelation: they have been hunting Elric across millennia. They need not his sword but his voice — only one of his blood can read the Rune of Final Resort, a runestone handed down through their female line. Combined with the runesword's runes, voiced simultaneously, the double-rune will reanimate three ancient swords of great power, hidden within the palace's central fountain.
The four adepts perform the Rune of Final Resort; three ivory, gold and granite swords are born from the fountain; Gaynor's Chaos army is defeated by six riders and an ancient brambly spirit older than gods
In the Garden of the Rune, all four voices join in the double-rune: Elric reading the runestone, the three sisters reading Stormbringer's own runes aloud. Their voices weave together beyond the audible, beyond the dimensions. The fountain bowl splits — and three great swords emerge: one of ivory, one of gold, one of blue-grey granite, each bound to a sister. Each is the equal of Stormbringer. The Chaos army pours through the shattered crystal forest as Gaynor, armed with a leech-blade that drains the energy from any sword it touches, leads his forces in person.
Six riders — Elric, the three sisters, Charion Phatt, the Rose — engage Gaynor's massive Chaos army. Gaynor's leech-blade drains the sisters' swords one by one. All are brought down. Elric alone still fights but is nearly spent. Then the Rose and Elric together sing an ancient calling-song — the language of the Vadhagh who once merged with forest spirits. From deep time, across dimensions, the Tangled Woman stirs — an entity made of braided brambles and rosewood flesh, older than any god, pre-human, unkillable. She reaches calm, enormous brambly hands through the Chaos army and entwines every creature, crushing them in thorns, heedless of pikes and swords. Only Gaynor escapes, his leech-blade knocked from his hand.
The crystal forest battle · The Chaos battlefield · The Tangled Woman's interventionAt Gaynor's dreadful stronghold on the Heavy Sea shore, Arioch is summoned one last time to punish Gaynor; Mashabak's soul is imprisoned in the soulbox controlled by the sisters' rings; the Eternal Rose reveals Sadric's soul, and Elric carries it to his father's ghost
The Ship That Was is a petrified, beached ziggurat-ship swarming with Gaynor's wretched human slaves. Inside, Gaynor has arranged his auction: he holds the three sisters' loaned treasures and offers to trade all of them for the four swords. He reveals that both the rosewood soulbox and the imprisoned Count Mashabak are in his possession. He offers Elric his father's soul for Stormbringer. But Elric refuses — to give Gaynor the sword would be to give him control of Mashabak, unleashing still greater horror. Khorghakh the toad breaks in through the hull. Elric knocks the blackthorn controlling-wand from Gaynor's hand, and drives Stormbringer through his armour.
The Rose reveals the plan she has woven across the whole adventure: she summons Elric to call Arioch. Arioch — weak in this realm — is offered Gaynor instead of the souls he cannot take. Arioch seizes the howling Gaynor and drags him into hell for an unsleeping eternal torment unimaginable even to his two-thousand-year consciousness. The sisters place their three briar rings on the tips of their three swords and, with Stormbringer as the apex conductor, drive Mashabak's demon-soul down into the open rosewood soulbox. The Rose then reveals the truth: Sadric's soul was never in the box. It has been sheltered, all along, in the Eternal Rose bloom — "only a mortal who loved another better than itself could be housed in the living rose." The three briar rings controlled the demon, not the father.
The first and only complete Elric film script, written at the request of John Goldstone (producer of The Final Programme), uses Stormbringer itself as the linking device between episodes — opening in the Sahara Desert with a crashed alien airship
Commissioned around 1975–76 when the producers of the Jerry Cornelius film The Final Programme suggested a supernatural adventure series. Moorcock proposed the Black Sword as the thread connecting films — Stormbringer as both object and protagonist. Had the film been made, an Elric sequel would have followed. Jim Cawthorn produced a series of wash drawings to accompany the script.
The script opens in the Sahara Desert where Arab horsemen encounter a damaged alien airship decorated with Sumerian-style pictograms, its gondola of carved polished wood. The hero is named Urlik Skarsol, a displaced Eternal Champion, found holding the sword. The script uses Moorcock's whole Eternal Champion framework to place Stormbringer in contemporary reality — the sword a weapon from before history, sought across ages. Cawthorn's wash drawings accompanied the script and are reproduced here in what Moorcock calls this volume's extended archive tribute to his friend.
Sahara Desert · Moorcock's multiverse · Contemporary EarthWritten in deliberate homage to the original 1961 pulp-era Elric stories, Black Petals follows Elric and Moonglum to the far south-eastern continent, where a blood-drinking plant that blooms once per century offers the only possible remedy for Elric's condition — if they can survive to find it
The port of Nassea-Tiki (the most beautiful city on four continents after Melniboné) is celebrating its new civic police force when Elric and Moonglum dock. Elric is near death — his sustaining drugs exhausted. He has tracked down the noibuluscus, the "Black Anemonë," a plant with all the properties he needs to sustain his rare albinism without the sword. But it blooms only once a century, only in moonlight, in the ruins of Soom, an ancient jungle city upriver. It is surrounded by cannibal dwarfs called the Soomians who feed victims to it.
At the Council House they meet: Dyvim Mar (Dragon Master, survivor of Imrryr, who hates Elric with controlled Melnibonéan precision), King Tilus Kreek of the Uyt (lost in Soom), and his twin princesses Nahuaduar and Semleedaor. Their combined party travels upriver. The ruins of Soom are occupied by the cannibal dwarfs, who have been feeding prisoners to the noibuluscus for years. The Black Anemonë feeds on blood, grows to terrifying manlike size on the night of the full moon, and in its human-skin shape begins to hunt the party.
The concluding essay of Moorcock's 1963–64 series for Science Fantasy, written as the magazine was folding. Argues that fantasy (not SF) is the primary literary form from which all speculative fiction descends. Traces the Gothic and Romantic origins of sword-and-sorcery, contrasts Tolkien with Peake (firmly preferring Peake's character depth and imagistic power). Defines the Elric stories as his own attempt to use sword-and-sorcery as a vehicle for adult ideas rather than mere escapism. A valediction to Science Fantasy as the finest magazine of the field.
Written for the opening of The Skrayling Tree (second in the Dreamthief's Daughter trilogy), Moorcock explains why, after resolving never to continue Elric, he returned. Drawing on his life in Texas and love of American landscape, myth and literature — Longfellow, Fenimore Cooper, Bret Harte, Fritz Leiber — he explains The Skrayling Tree as his attempt to engage "the Matter of America" rather than yet another retelling of Arthurian legend; to place Elric alongside Hiawatha, Vikings, and desert peoples in a story about what America was before it was named.
Moorcock reveals for the first time in detail that Elric's direct inspiration was Monsieur Zenith — the pink-eyed albino villain of the Sexton Blake Library pulps, created by Anthony Skene. He traces Elric from those 1918 origins through his own teenage immersion in the Romantics, Existentialists and Dunsany, to the first Science Fantasy story (1961). France published Elric almost as early as England — the first Opta editions remain "probably the most beautiful books ever to feature him." Discusses his intention not to write further Elric novels, offering this omnibus as a farewell.
General editor John Davey — who assembled the entire six-volume Chronicles series and is "the best bibliographer of Moorcock's work" according to Moorcock himself — provides the definitive guide to Elric's publication history. Covers all original magazine appearances, the Del Rey collected editions, graphic novels, Simonson's DC run, the three Dreamthief's Daughter trilogy novels, and the relationship between in-world chronology and real-world publication order. Includes coverage of art, adaptations, gaming, and international editions.
| Work | First Published | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The Revenge of the Rose — Book One | Grafton Books, UK, 1991 | Post-Tanelorn; Scarsnout; Sadric's ghost; H'hui'shan; Wheldrake; the wheat world; Agnesh-Val |
| Revenge — Book One cont.: The Gypsy Nation | As above | The Rose; Gaynor the Damned; Family Phatt; the great causeway; the Chaos pit; Elric falls |
| Revenge — Book Two: The Heavy Sea | As above | Arioch's domain; Ulshinir; Charion Phatt; the grey navigator; Khorghakh the toad; pirates; Gaynor holds Stormbringer |
| Revenge — Book Two cont.: Esbern Snare | As above | The Northerner werewolf; Mashabak imprisoned; Arioch banished; Stormbringer returns |
| Revenge — Book Three: Rose Redeemed | As above | Crystal palace; three sisters revealed; the Rune of Final Resort; three swords born; the Tangled Woman; six riders |
| Revenge — Book Three: The Ship That Was + Epilogue | As above | Gaynor captured by Arioch; Mashabak imprisoned in soulbox; Eternal Rose hides Sadric's soul; Sadric freed; dragon epilogue |
| Stormbringer: First Draft Screenplay | First publication here, 2010 | Written 1976 at John Goldstone's request; Cawthorn wash drawings; Sahara opening; Urlik Skarsol |
| Black Petals | Weird Tales #349, March/April 2008 | Nassea-Tiki; Moonglum; Dyvim Mar; Soom; the noibuluscus; Kalakak; Tilus Kreek and twin princesses |
| Aspects of Fantasy, Part 4 (Conclusion) | Science Fantasy #64, April 1964 | Final instalment; fantasy vs. SF; Tolkien/Peake comparison; valediction to Science Fantasy magazine |
| Introduction to The Skrayling Tree | Borders, Inc., 2003 | On returning to Elric; the Matter of America; Hiawatha; Texas; Fritz Leiber |
| Introduction to the French Edition of Elric | Éditions Omnibus, France, 2006 | Monsieur Zenith as Elric's origin; Druillet; French publication history; farewell to the series |
| Elric: A New Reader's Guide (by John Davey) | First publication here, 2009 | Complete bibliography, chronology, art and adaptation guide; closes the Chronicles series |