Elric — The Sailor on the Seas of Fate

Book One — Sailing to the Future

Identity

Cornered — A Bleak Shore, a Bleak Mind

Elric, one month out of Melniboné, has made a disastrous foray into the world. Offering his services as a mercenary in Pikarayd, he was immediately recognized as a Melnibonéan spy and imprisoned. He escaped with bribery and minor sorcery, but the pursuit has been relentless — dogs, horsemen, the governor himself leading the hunt. He has killed his horse in flight through the Dead Hills. Now he stands on a grim shingle beach under storm-clouds with no horse, almost no food, and almost no drugs, listening to the sea and contemplating whether to walk into the waves. He is not a man in crisis so much as a man who cannot find one good reason not to die. His only companion is Stormbringer, to which he speaks as another man might speak to a dog.

"Well, Stormbringer, shall we walk into the sea and end it now?" His voice was dead, barely a whisper.

The Dark Ship

The Dark Ship & the Blind Captain

A ship emerges from morning mist — baroque, unfamiliar, its dark wood carved with geometric runes, manned by warriors from many nations and many eras. The golden-bearded warrior who greets Elric from the rail consults a parchment list, as if Elric's arrival were expected, then invites him aboard. The captain is blind, yet moves with absolute sureness. He speaks of sailing between the planes of the world, of picking up passengers at crucial moments. He calls Elric one of "the Four." He pours excellent wine. He answers almost nothing directly. Elric accepts passage — not because he trusts the man but because he has no alternative and because something in his Melnibonéan blood responds to the quality of the mystery. He is given a bunk, dry clothes, food. His exhaustion takes him immediately.

"You knew I would be there?" — "You are the last one we need," said the man in the shadows. "I was the first taken aboard."

The Eternal Champion

Three Champions — Four Who Are One

In the aft cabin Elric meets the other two of the Four: Corum Jhaelen Irsei, Prince in the Scarlet Robe, wearing a silver hand and a brocade eye-patch, who insists they have met before and fought together at the Tower of Voilodion Ghagnasdiak; and Dorian Hawkmoon, the Duke of Köln, who seeks his lost children and the Runestaff. Both share with Elric and with the previously encountered Erekosë the same indefinable quality — as if they are the same man seen through four different windows. Erekosë is the most knowing: he has lived many lives and remembers fragments of them all. He knows that each is an incarnation of the same eternal champion. Elric alone denies this and insists he serves no master but himself. The others smile at this in the same strange way.

"We share an identical doom. And possibly we share more than that." — Erekosë. "I serve no master but myself." — Elric. The others smiled.

Erekosë

The first aboard. Has lived all incarnations; remembers fragments. Seeks Tanelorn. The most burdened.

Elric

Last Emperor of Melniboné. Denies the shared destiny. Carries Stormbringer, which the others lack.

Corum

Prince of the Vadhagh. Silver hand, one eye. Claims the Three have fought together before — in Elric's future.

Hawkmoon

Duke of Köln. Seeks children and the Runestaff. Most practical. Most unsettled by the philosophy.

The Island of the Two Sorcerers — Agak & Gagak

The captain sails to an island that may be a graveyard of all versions of Tanelorn — ruins of many cities overlapping, where shadows fall from objects visible only on other planes. At its center stand two identical buildings of glowing tubes and ribbons of metal, connected by pipes: not buildings at all but the bodies of Agak and Gagak, alien sorcerers from another universe entirely who desire to drain all the energy from Elric's cosmos. Mortal weapons are useless against their mindless servants. The captain explains that only the Four can defeat them — in the only way possible. He will not explain what that way is. Twenty warriors die fighting the passage through Gagak's body (one of the buildings). Three of Elric's chosen men survive the baboon-attack and the blind, snapping serpents. One — Terndrik of Hasghan — dies with his head bitten from his shoulders. Then they reach Gagak's intelligence-pool.

"Only we — only that being — could battle Agak and Gagak in anything resembling their own terms." — Erekosë

The Eternal Champion

The Four Who Are One

Each of the Four stands at a corner of Gagak's intelligence-pool. Their four swords rise and their tips meet above the center. Then something enters Elric — a union so total that his atoms fly apart and re-form as part of a single vast being. He is still Elric, yet he is also Corum, Hawkmoon, Erekosë, and something beyond all four combined: an eight-armed, four-faced giant that hovers over Gagak's pool, holding one enormous sword in all eight hands. Stormbringer itself becomes something greater. The being plunges the combined blade into Gagak's pool and absorbs her entirely, then uses her body's form to deceive and confront the waking Agak. With the cosmic blade swung through tens of thousands of dimensions, Agak too is struck and drained. The universe, having briefly died, is restored. The Four returns to four. The survivors of the company are left traumatized. Ashnar the Lynx runs gibbering into the ruins and is never seen again.

"Elric-Arioch must have blood and souls…" murmured his sword. And Elric screamed: "No. These are my friends."

The Dark Ship

The Wine That Heals — and Erases

Hawkmoon and Erekosë choose to remain on the island, believing this may be the Tanelorn they seek. Brut of Lashmar, now half-mad, refuses to board the ship because he fears Elric. Corum departs with old friends who arrive by sea-chariot. Otto Blendker, scholar turned soldier, returns aboard with Elric — the only rational man of the party. The captain welcomes them back with his silver cups and his wine. He tells Elric they will reach a point near his home plane. He leads Elric and Corum into his cabin, pours the wine, and says "They will heal, Elric." Elric sleeps. In the morning he remembers almost nothing — only shadows. The captain's wine is not merely warming. It erases what cannot be borne.

"I feel nothing." And that night he dreamed only of shadows, and in the morning he could not understand his dream at all.

Book Two — Sailing to the Present

The Dark Ship

Screams from Another Time

Elric stands at the ship's prow listening to screams — human screams of a kind he recognizes from Yyrkoon's "Pleasure Chambers" in Melniboné. The sea around them carries red-flecked foam, broken timbers, floating corpses of creatures that are partly reptilian, partly human. A great naval battle has occurred, but not in their plane — its wreckage has drifted through. The captain, summoned by the sound, tells Elric this is the aftermath of one of the most decisive battles in the history of the multiverse — fought to decide the fate of all humanity for the coming cosmic cycle. He cannot say more. He tells Elric that the ship approaches an intersection with his own plane of existence and that there is a gateway — crimson in color, rising from the sea. Elric, furious at the captain's endless equivocations, demands to disembark. Otto Blendker elects to sail on. They part with respect.

"You allow a man little faith." — "There are two kinds of faith, Elric. Like freedom, there is a kind easily kept but proves not worth the keeping."

Battle

The Island — Smiorgan Baldhead

Elric rows to a blue-sunned island and sleeps on limestone. Morning: he is approached by a camp of fifteen ruffians — soldiers from wildly different historical eras, gathered here across the Crimson Gate from a dozen different times. A Pan Tangian taunts him. Elric draws Stormbringer. Within moments four men are dead and the rest break. But fighting alongside Elric is a bald-headed bear of a man from the Purple Towns — Count Smiorgan Baldhead — who had been secretly nursing revenge against these same pirates who had murdered his entire crew. Together they kill the rest. Smiorgan grins: "Yoi! But this is worthwhile slaughter!" He produces a Melnibonéan gold wheel — a coin used as passage money by an unknown woman. An immediate, easy friendship forms — the kind Elric rarely knows. Stormbringer eats many souls.

"You saved my life, also, my friend. We are both fortunate." Elric smiled. He had not smiled so easily in some time.

Fate & Destiny

Vassliss of Jharkor — The Golden Galleon

Aboard Smiorgan's wrecked merchantman they discover a stowaway — Vassliss of Jharkor, a merchant's daughter who fled through the Crimson Gate to escape the Melnibonéan sorcerer Earl Saxif D'Aan, Elric's ancestor. She has stolen the earl's Melnibonéan gold wheel (the same coin Smiorgan held as passage money). Before they can sail, the earl's enormous gilded battle-barge appears — a ship of the style Elric knows from Melnibonéan history. Saxif D'Aan is real: Elric's ancestor did not die but followed his guilt to this plane, became its self-proclaimed ruler, and has spent centuries seeking the reincarnation of the girl he tortured to death. He believes Vassliss to be Gratyesha, Princess of Fwem-Omeyo, reborn. A riderless white stallion has been following both ship and girl — Saxif D'Aan fears the horse's rider above all things.

"She is the girl. I know that she is. I mean her soul no harm. I would merely give it back its memory." — Saxif D'Aan

The Stalemate — Elric Summons Prince Carolak

Aboard Saxif D'Aan's galleon, Elric invokes his status as hereditary emperor of Melniboné — speaking the High Tongue that only blood royalty may use. He demands Saxif D'Aan's fealty. The earl refuses, countering that his sovereignty extends only to this plane and Elric is a trespasser here. Neither can act directly: Elric cannot work strong sorcery in this world, Saxif D'Aan cannot seize Vassliss by force (she must come willingly or his spell rebounds). Elric risks all: he attacks Saxif D'Aan physically, stunning him, climbs the rigging, and from the crow's nest calls across the planes in the old Melnibonéan high speech — summoning the rider of the white horse. He intuits this must be Carolak, the rival lover Saxif D'Aan banished to Limbo. Stormbringer kills Saxif D'Aan's demon to power the summoning. The horse explodes from the hold. Prince Carolak arrives, young and scarred, on the white stallion.

"I summoned the one who rides the horse. I had so little time — and I could tell you nothing of it, knowing that Saxif D'Aan would read my intention in your mind."

Guilt & Conscience

Saxif D'Aan Falls — The Crimson Gate Opens

Prince Carolak and Saxif D'Aan duel upon the deck — the fight that should have been fought two centuries earlier. Carolak wins cleanly. Saxif D'Aan falls but cannot die — too much sorcery has sustained him, and he has ceased to be entirely mortal. He lies propped against the mast, his blood flowing from a pierced heart, watching Vassliss take the white horse's reins. He says: "She loved me, you know. Not you." And Carolak answers: "The love she gave you was her entire soul." Then the earl's eyes close for the last time. Before dying, he produces a great ruby crystal and tells them it will open the Crimson Gate and bear them through — but warns that the ship, like himself, has been sustained by sorcery and will not survive the crossing to their own plane. Vassliss chooses to ride away with Carolak into whatever strange new land he has found. The rotting galleon is abandoned. Elric and Smiorgan cling to a broken yard as the ship dissolves around them in the gate's storm. They are rescued by a Vilmirian schooner — and Duke Avan Astran of Old Hrolmar.

"He died because Elric of Melnibonč desired a peace and a knowledge he could never find. He died by the Black Sword." — Elric's epitaph for Duke Avan, written later

Book Three — Sailing to the Past

The Western Continent

Duke Avan Astran & the Ancient Map

Duke Avan Astran of Old Hrolmar — forty, handsome, fearless, a renowned explorer who has been to Elwher and the Unmapped Kingdoms — has been hunting Elric for months. He found a sealed casket on Melniboné containing an ancient map of the western continent, inscribed in Old High Melnibonéan, showing a river leading to a circle marked R'lin K'ren A'a — the city said to be the original home of the Melnibonéan people before they settled the Dragon Isle. Embedded in the seal was a tiny ruby containing an image Elric recognizes but cannot quite place. Avan proposes an expedition to find the city, lured by legend of the Jade Man's eyes: two enormous jewels from another plane whose wisdom surpasses anything in the known world. Count Smiorgan, wanting treasure to restore his reputation in the Purple Towns, joins too. Elric agrees — not for the treasure but for something more personal: the ancestors of his ancestors, and the desperate hope that origins might explain destiny.

"I fear that it is all as Duke Avan says." — Elric, asked whether he hopes the legends are true

The Western Continent

The Boiling Sea — The River — The Olab

The crossing of the Boiling Sea kills three of the Vilmirian crew and permanently injures four more. On the far shore they find a nameless river flowing into the interior through a jungle of absolute, eerie silence — no birds, no insects, nothing. The silence is not caused by their presence; the island ahead has been empty of all life for millennia, possibly since the gods themselves met there. Partway upriver the Olab attack — reptilian warriors, seven feet tall on stilt-like hindlegs, with feathery crests and almost-human faces that make Elric's stomach turn in recognition. Their crystalline disk-weapons kill two more men. Stormbringer has little effect against them; they may have no souls. Elric calls on the King of the Insects — Nnuuurrrr'c'c — with whom the Melnibonéan royal line has an ancient pact. Enormous dragonflies descend and devour the Olab. The ship, punctured in a dozen places, barely makes the island.

"By the gods, you work fierce sorcery, Prince Elric! Ugh!" — Duke Avan. "It is effective, Duke Avan." — Elric, sheathing the reluctant sword.

The Western Continent

R'lin K'ren A'a — Where the High Ones Meet

The city is real. It is ruins of colored building material unlike any stone or wood or metal — soft pinks, yellows, blues — with wide streets and low houses built around courtyards. The people who lived here were not like the Melnibonéans who came after: they were sane. They had a different quality. And dominating everything: the Jade Man, hundreds of feet tall — a naked youth of feminine beauty whose face stares sightlessly north. Its eye sockets are empty. Duke Avan's disappointment is complete: the eyes are already gone. But as Elric explores the ruins, a horrifying realization begins to form. The buildings had not lost their elegance to age. Something else happened here. Something ended this people. And then the Olab attack again, driving the party into the labyrinthine crystal domes that were the Jade Man's fallen eyes. In the crystal, Elric encounters phantom after phantom of himself — men who share his face but bear different names, different colors, different histories. The multiverse of the Eternal Champion shows itself in full.

"I have so many names. The one I favor is Erekosë." A thousand phantoms, each bearing Elric's face, each murmuring a different name.

Fate & Destiny

J'osui C'reln Reyr — The Creature Doomed to Live

Emerging from the crystal maze, they encounter a naked man with white hair and pale skin who resembles Elric closely: J'osui C'reln Reyr, the Creature Doomed to Live. He is ten thousand years old. He refused to leave R'lin K'ren A'a when the gods came — when Arioch-as-Jade-Man strode from the forest and told the citizens they must abandon their city so that the Lords of the Higher Worlds could meet there. He stayed hidden, and heard the terms under which Law and Chaos would fight their eternal struggle. For this, when found, he was cursed by Arioch to live forever — carrying the knowledge of those terms in his head but unable to write or speak them. He has an arrow shaft protruding from his side — a wound that cannot kill him. He has been waiting ten thousand years for someone of the royal Melnibonéan bloodline bearing the Image in the Gem to come and use it to command Arioch to leave. Only then can he die.

"Do you not know all my story? … I can only remember what passed between the High Lords — but when I try to tell my knowledge aloud or write it down, I cannot."

The Summoning — Duke Avan Dies — The Jade Man Walks

Elric stands beneath the Jade Man in the central square and calls on Arioch using the Image in the Gem. Arioch speaks — his soft, purring, tender voice — and suggests Elric flee alone and let the others perish, claiming a destiny awaits elsewhere. Elric refuses. Arioch says only blood and souls will bring him fully. Stormbringer, acting on its own will, twists from Elric's grip and plunges into Duke Avan's heart — the man who trusted and employed Elric, who saved his life from the sea. The blade drinks his soul. A crewman dies next, also against Elric's wishes. Now Arioch has his blood. Elric commands: Arioch must enter the Jade Man, recover its crystal eyes, and walk forever from R'lin K'ren A'a. Arioch warns this will trigger the great struggle between Law and Chaos on the mortal plane. Elric commands him again. The Jade Man stoops, collects its fallen eyes, and strides away — crashing through the jungle, gone. The Olab flee in terror.

"You are an obstinate creature, Elric." — Arioch. "Go." — Elric. The ground shook. The Jade Man began to move.

Guilt & Conscience

Ten Thousand Years of Waiting — Ended

The curse is lifted. J'osui C'reln Reyr now laughs — a strange, pure joy. He shouts that the black blade must take his life; he can die at last. Elric hesitates, says he cannot. Stormbringer flies from his hand and buries itself in the old man's chest. As he falls, J'osui whispers: "The sword has my knowledge now. My burden has left me." He dies. The body turns to dust within the hour, mixed with the dust of the ruins. Elric stands over where Duke Avan's corpse now lies in the underground room, writes an epitaph on the wall with a dagger dipped in blood, then crosses it out and writes another: "He died because Elric of Melnibonč desired a peace and a knowledge he could never find. He died by the Black Sword."

"Another man has been destroyed by me, Smiorgan. Am I forever to be tied to this cursed sword? I must discover a way to rid myself of it or my heavy conscience will bear me down so that I cannot rise at all."

Identity & Purpose

The Boat of the Creature — Heading Home

Avan's schooner has been destroyed by the Olab while they were in the city. The entire surviving crew is dead. But the Creature Doomed to Live had, long ago, built a boat of the same indestructible multicolored material as the city's buildings, hidden it on the island's east coast, loaded it with treasure. It will never rot. Elric and Smiorgan find it, load the lockers (now full of Melnibonéan jewels that will restore Smiorgan's fortune and honor), and sail home. Smiorgan offers Elric permanent guest right in his house in the Purple Towns — and means it sincerely. When Elric asks if Smiorgan still trusts him after what the sword has done, the sea-lord answers simply: "You are loyal, Prince Elric. You feign cynicism, yet I think I've rarely met a man so much in need of a little real cynicism." Elric heads home — not to Melniboné, but to Smiorgan's house, and afterward back to Cymoril.

"Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think." And the runesword trembled, as if disturbed.

"You feign cynicism, yet I think I've rarely met a man
so much in need of a little real cynicism."

Stormbringer trembled at Elric's side
and moaned very faintly
as if it were disturbed by Count Smiorgan's words.

— Count Smiorgan Baldhead · End of The Sailor on the Seas of Fate