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"Well"-the seaman bent to remove a pendant from around the Pan Tangian's throat-"you'd know more about enchantments and sorceries than I. How came you here, Sir Melnibonиan?"
"I know not. I fled from some who hunted me. I came to a shore and could flee no further. Then I dreamed a great deal. When next I awoke I was on the shore again, but of this island."
"Spirits of some sort-maybe friendly to you-took you to safety, away from your enemies."
"That's just possible, " Elric agreed, "for we have many allies among the elementals. I am called Elric and I am self-exiled from Melnibonи. I travel because I believe I have something to learn from the folk of the Young Kingdoms. I have no power, save what you see...."
The black-bearded man's eyes narrowed in appraisal as he pointed at himself with his thumb. "I'm Smiorgan Baldhead, once a sea-lord of the Purple Towns. I commanded a fleet of merchantmen. Perhaps I still do. I shall not know until I return-if I ever do return."
"Then let us pool our knowledge and our resources, Smiorgan Baldhead, and make plans to leave this island as soon as we can."
Elric walked back to where he saw traces of the abandoned game, trampled into the mud and the blood. From among the dice and the ivory slips, the silver and the bronze coins, he found the gold Melnibonиan wheel. He picked it up and held it in his outstretched palm. The wheel almost covered the whole palm. In the old days, it had been the currency of kings.
"This was yours, friend?" he asked Smiorgan.
Smiorgan Baldhead looked up from where he was still searching the Pan Tangian for his stolen possessions. He nodded.
"Aye. Would you keep it as part of your share?"
Elric shrugged. "I'd rather know from whence it came. Who gave it you?"
"It was not stolen. It's Melnibonиan, then?"
"Yes."
"I guessed it."
"From whom did you obtain it?"
Smiorgan straightened up, having completed his search. He scratched at a slight wound on his forearm. "It was used to buy passage on our ship-before we were lost- before the raiders attacked us."
"Passage? By a Melnibonиan?"
"Maybe, " said Smiorgan. He seemed reluctant to speculate.
"Was he a warrior?"
Smiorgan smiled in his beard. "No. It was a woman gave that to me."
"How came she to take passage?"
Smiorgan began to pick up the rest of the money. "It's a long tale and, in part, a familiar one to most merchant sailors. We were seeking new markets for our goods and had equipped a good-sized fleet, which I commanded as the largest shareholder." He seated himself casually upon the big corpse of the Chalalite and began to count the money. "Would you hear the tale or do I bore you already?"
"I'd be glad to listen."
Reaching behind him, Smiorgan pulled a wine-flask from the belt of the corpse and offered it to Elric, who accepted it and drank sparingly of a wine which was unusually good.
Smiorgan took the flask when Elric had finished. "That's part of our cargo, " he said. "We were proud of it. A good vintage, eh?"
"Excellent. So you set off from the Purple Towns?"
"Aye. Going east toward the Unknown Kingdoms. We sailed due east for a couple of weeks, sighting some of the bleakest coasts I have ever seen, and then we saw no land at all for another week. That was when we entered a stretch of water we came to call the Roaring Rocks-like the Serpent's Teeth off Shazar's coast, but much greater in expanse, and larger, too. Huge volcanic cliffs which rose from the sea on every side and around which the waters heaved and boiled and howled with a fierceness I've rarely experienced. Well, in short, the fleet was dispersed and at least four ships were lost on those rocks. At last we were able to escape those waters and found ourselves becalmed and alone. We searched for our sister ships for a while and then decided to give ourselves another week before turning for home, for we had no liking to go back into the Roaring Rocks again. Low on provisions, we sighted land at last-grassy cliffs and hospitable beaches and, inland, some signs of cultivation, so we knew we had found civilization again. We put into a small fishing port and satisfied the nativeswho spoke no tongue used in the Young Kingdoms-that we were friendly. And that was when the woman approached us."
"The Melnibonиan woman?"
"If Melnibonиan she was. She was a fine-looking woman, I'll say that. We were short of provisions, as I told you, and short of any means of purchasing them, for the fishermen desired little of what we had to trade. Having given up our original quest, we were content to head westward again."
"The woman?"
"She wished to buy passage to the Young Kingdoms- and was content to go with us as far as Menii, our home port. For her passage she gave us two of those wheels. One was used to buy provisions in the town-Graghin, I think it was called-and after making repairs we set off again."
"You never reached the Purple Towns?"
"There were more storms-strange storms. Our instruments were useless, our lodestones were of no help to us at all. We became even more completely lost than before. Some of my men argued that we had gone beyond our own world altogether. Some blamed the woman, saying she was a sorceress who had no intention of going to Menii. But I believed her. Night fell and seemed to last forever until we sailed into a calm dawn beneath a blue sun. My men were close to panic-and it takes much to make my men panic-when we sighted the island. As we headed for it those pirates attacked us in a ship which belonged to historyit should have been on the bottom of the ocean, not on the surface. I've seen pictures of such craft in murals on a temple wall in Tarkesh. In ramming us, she stove in half her port side and was sinking even when they swarmed aboard. They were desperate, savage men, Elric-half-starved and blood-hungry. We were weary after our voyage, but fought well. During the fighting the woman disappeared, killed herself, maybe, when she saw the stamp of our conquerors. After a long fight only myself and one other, who died soon after, were left. That was when I became cu
"The woman had a name?"
"None she would give. I have thought the matter over and suspect that, after all, we were used by her. Perhaps she did not seek Menii and the Young Kingdoms. Perhaps it was this world she sought, and, by sorcery, led us here."
"This world? You think it different from our own?"
"If only because of the sun's strange color. Do you not think so, too? You, with your Melnibonиan knowledge of such things, must believe it."
"I have dreamed of such things, " Elric admitted, but he would say no more.
"Most of the pirates thought as I-they were from all the ages of the Young Kingdoms. That much I discovered. Some were from the earliest years of the era, some from our own time-and some were from the future. Adventurers, most of them, who, at some stage in their lives, sought a legendary land of great riches which lay on the other side of an ancient gateway, rising from the middle of the ocean; but they found themselves trapped here, unable to sail back through this mysterious gate. Others had been involved in sea-fights, thought themselves drowned and woken up on the shores of the island. Many, I suppose, had once had reasonable virtues, but there is little to support life on the island and they had become wolves, living off one another or any ship unfortunate enough to pass, inadvertently, through this gate of theirs."
Elric recalled part of his dream. "Did any call it the 'Crimson Gate'?"
"Several did, aye."
"And yet the theory is unlikely, if you'll forgive my skepticism, " Elric said. "As one who has passed through the Shade Gate to Ameeron ..."
"You know of other worlds, then?"
"I've never heard of this one. And I am versed in such matters. That is why I doubt the reasoning. And yet, there was the dream...."