Elric of Melnibone

'Blind?' Yyrkoon spoke almost pathetically, refusing to understand. 'Blind?'

'Aye. Blind warriors--men wounded in earlier wars, but good fighters nonetheless. That is how Elric defeats our mirror, my lord.'

'Agh! No! No! ' Yyrkoon beat heavily on his captain's back and the man shrank away. 'Elric is not cu

'Perhaps, my lord. But are there demons more powerful than those who have aided you?'

'No, " said Yyrkoon. 'There are none. Oh, that I could summon some of them now. But I have expended my powers in opening the Shade Gate. I should have anticipated... I could not anticipate... Oh Elric! I shall yet destroy you, when the runeblades are mine! ' Then Yyrkoon frowned. 'But how could he have been prepared? What demon .... ? Unless he summoned Arioch himself? But he has not the power to summon Arioch. I could not summon him..."

And then, as if in reply, Yyrkoon heard Elric's battle song sounding from the nearby streets. And that song answered the question.

'Arioch! Arioch! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch !'

'Then I must have the runeblades. I must pass through the Shade Gate. There I still have allies--supernatural allies who shall deal easily with Elric, if need be. But I need time...' Yyrkoon mumbled to himself as he paced about the room. Valharik continued to watch the fighting.

'They come closer, ' said the captain.

Cymoril smiled. 'Closer, Yyrkoon? Who is the fool now? Elric? Or you?'

'Be still! I think. I think...' Yyrkoon fingered his lips.

Then a light came into his eye and he looked cu

'Valharik, you must destroy the Mirror of Memory.'

'Destroy it? But it is our only weapon, my lord?' 'Exactly--but is it not useless now?'

'Aye.'

'Destroy it and it will serve us again.' Yyrkoon flicked a long finger in the direction of the door. 'Go. Destroy the mirror.'

'But, Prince Yyrkoon--emperor, I mean--will that not have the effect of robbing us of our only weapon?'

'Do as I say, Valharik! Or perish! '

'But how shall I destroy it, my lord?'

'Your sword. You must climb the column behind the face of the mirror. Then, without looking into the mirror itself, you must swing your sword against it and smash it. It will break easily. You know the precautions I have had to take to make sure that it was not harmed.'

'Is that all I must do?'

'Aye. Then you are free from my service--you may escape or do whatever else you wish to do.'

'Do we not sail against Melnibone?'

'Of course not. I have devised another method of taking the Dragon Isle.'

Valharik shrugged. His expression showed that he had never really believed Yyrkoon's assurances. But what else had he to do but follow Yyrkoon, when fearful torture awaited him at Elric's hands? With shoulders bowed, the captain slunk away to do his prince's work.

'And now, Cymoril...' Yyrkoon gri

One of the blind warriors cried: 'They no longer resist us, my lord. They are limp and allow themselves to be cut down where they stand. Why is this?'

* 'The mirror has robbed them of their memories, ' Elric called, turning his own blind head towards the sound of the warrior's voice. 'You can lead us into a building now--where, with luck, we shall not glimpse the mirror.'

At last they stood within what appeared to Elric, as he lifted his helm, to be a warehouse of some kind. Luckily it was large enough to hold their entire force and when they were all inside Elric had the doors shut while they debated their next action.

'We should find Yyrkoon, ' Dyvim Tvar said. 'Let us interrogate one of those warriors...'

'There'll be little point in that, my friend, ' Elric reminded him. 'Their minds are gone. They'll remember nothing at all. They do not at present remember even what they are, let alone who. Go to the shutters yonder, where the mirror's influence ca

Dyvim Tvar crossed swiftly to the shutters and looked cautiously out. 'Aye--there's a building larger than the rest and I see some movement within, as if the surviving warriors were regrouping. It's likely that's Yyrkoon's stronghold. It should be easily taken.'

Elric joined him. 'Aye. I agree with you. We'll find Yyrkoon there. But we must hurry, lest he decides to slay Cymoril. We must work out the best means of reaching the place and instruct our blind warriors as to how many streets, how many houses and so forth, we must pass.'

'What is that strange sound?' One of the blind warriors raised his head. 'Like the distant ringing of a gong.'

'I hear it too, ' said another blind man.

And now Elric heard it. A sinister noise. It came from the air above them. It shivered through the atmosphere.

'The mirror! ' Dyvim Tvar looked up. 'Has the mirror some property we did not anticipate?'

'Possibly...' Elric tried to remember what Arioch had told him. But Arioch had been vague. He had said nothing of this dreadful, mighty sound, this shattering clangour as if... 'He is breaking the mirror! ' he said. 'But why?' There was something more now, something brushing at his brain. As if the sound were, itself, sentient.

'Perhaps Yyrkoon is dead and his magic dies with him, ' Dyvim Tvar began. And then he broke off with a groan.

The noise was louder, more intense, bringing sharp pain to his ears.

And now Elric knew. He blocked his ears with his gauntleted hands. The memories in the mirror. They were flooding into his mind. The mirror had been smashed and was releasing all the memories it had stolen over the centuries--the aeons, perhaps. Many of those memories were not mortal. Many were the memories of beasts and intelligent creatures which had existed even before Melnibone. And the memories warred for a place in Elric's skull--in the skulls of all the Imrryrians--in the poor, tortured skulls of the men outside whose pitiful screams could be heard rising from the streets--and in the skull of Captain Valharik, the turncoat, as he lost his footing on the great column and fell with the shards from the mirror to the ground far below.

But Elric did not hear Captain Valharik scream and he did not hear Valharik's body crash first to a roof-top and then into the street where it lay all broken beneath the broken mirror.

Elric lay upon the stone floor of the warehouse and he writhed, as his comrades writhed, trying to clear his head of a million memories that were not his own--of loves, of hatreds, of strange experiences and ordinary experiences, of wars and journeys, of the faces of relatives who were not his relatives, of men and women and children, of animals, of ships and cities; of fights, of lovemaking, of fears and desires--and the memories fought each other for possession of his crowded skull, threatening to drive his own memories (and thus his own character) from his head. And as Elric writhed upon the ground, clutching at his ears, he spoke a word over and over again in an effort to cling to his own identity.

'Elric. Elric. Elric.'

And gradually, by an effort which he had experienced only once before when he had summoned Arioch to the plane of the Earth, he managed to extinguish all those alien memories and assert his own until, shaken and feeble, he lowered his hands from his ears and no longer shouted his own name. And then he stood up and looked about him.

More than two thirds of his men were dead, blind or otherwise. The big bosun was dead, his eyes wide and staring, his lips frozen in a scream, his right eye-socket raw and bleeding from where he had tried to drag his eye from it. All the corpses lay in u