Phoenix in Obsidian
Michael Moorcock
Contents
Cover
Also by Michael Moorcock
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Book One: Premonitions
1: Of an Earth Reborn
2: Of a Growing Doom
3: Of a Visitation
Book Two: The Champion’s Road
1: The Ice Wastes
2: The Obsidian City
3: The Lord Spiritual
4: The Lord Temporal
5: The Black Sword
6: The Great Salt Sea
7: The Bell and the Chalice
8: The Sea-Stag’s Lair
9: The Slaughtering in the Cave
Book Three: Visions and Revelations
1: The Laughing Dwarf
2: The Scarlet Fjord
3: The Raid on Nalanarc
4: The Lady of the Chalice
5: The Waking of the Sword
6: The Black Blade’s Fief
Book Four: The Blood of the Sun
1: Siege of the Scarlet Fjord
2: The City Called Moon
3: The Phoenix and the Queen
4: The Knife and the Cup
About the Author
Also Available from Titan Books
Also available from Michael Moorcock and Titan Books
THE ETERNAL CHAMPION SERIES
The Eternal Champion
The Dragon in the Sword (January 2015)
THE CORUM SERIES
The Knight of the Swords (May 2015)
The Queen of the Swords (June 2015)
The King of the Swords (July 2015)
The Bull and the Spear (August 2015)
The Oak and the Ram (September 2015)
The Sword and the Stallion (October 2015)
Phoenix in Obsidian
Print edition ISBN: 9781783291625
E-book edition ISBN: 9781783291595
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First Titan edition: December 2014
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 1970, 2014 by Michael Moorcock. All rights reserved.
Edited by John Davey
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For Doug and Gaila Hill
PROLOGUE
A BRIGHT PLAIN without horizons. The plain is the colour of raw, red gold. The sky is a faded purple. Two figures stand on the plain: a man and a woman. The man, dressed in dented armour, is tall with weary angular features. The woman is beautiful—dark-haired and delicate, clad in a gown of blue silk. He is ISARDA OF TANELORN. THE WOMAN is nameless.
THE WOMAN
What are Time and Space but clay for the hand that holds the Cosmic Balance? This Age is moulded—that one squeezed from existence. All is flux. Lords of Law and Chaos struggle in eternal battle and neither ever completely wins or loses. The Balance tilts this way and that. Time upon Time the Hand destroys its creations and begins anew. And the Earth is forever changing. The Eternal War is the only constant in Earth’s many histories, taking a multitude of forms and names.
ISARDA OF TANELORN
And those who are involved in this struggle? Can they ever realise the true nature of their strivings?
WOMAN
Rarely.
ISARDA
And will the world at length be granted rest from this state of flux?
WOMAN
We shall never know, for we shall never come face to face with the One who guides the Hand.
ISARDA
(He spreads his arms.) But surely some things are constant…
WOMAN
Even the meandering river of Time can be dammed or rechanneled at the will of the Cosmic Hand. We are as uncertain of the shape of the future as we are of the validity of our reported history. Perhaps we only exist for this instant of Time? Perhaps we are immortal and will exist for ever? Nothing is known for certain, Isarda. All knowledge is illusion—purpose is a meaningless word, a mere sound, a reassuring fragment of melody in a cacophony of clashing chords. All is flux—matter is like these jewels. (She throws a handful of gleaming gems upon the golden surface; they scatter. When the last jewel has ceased to move, she looks up at him.) Sometimes they fall into a rough pattern, usually they do not. So at this moment, a pattern has been formed—you and I stand here speaking. But at any moment that which constitutes our beings may be scattered again.
ISARDA
Not if we resist. Legends speak of those who forced Chaos into shape by effort of will. Aubec’s hand formed your land and, indirectly, you.
WOMAN
(Wistfully.) Perhaps there are such people. But they go directly against the will of the One who formed them.
ISARDA
(After a pause.) And what if they do exist? What would become of them?
WOMAN
I do not know. But I do not envy them.
ISARDA
(He looks away across the golden plain. He speaks softly.) Nor I.
WOMAN
They say your city Tanelorn is eternal. They say that because of a Hero’s will she has existed through every transformation of the Earth. They say that even the most haunted of folk find peace there.
ISARDA
It is also said that they must first have a will for peace before they can find Tanelorn.
WOMAN
(Bowing her head.) And few have that.
— The Chronicle of the Black Sword
(Vol. 1008 Scr. 14: Isarda’s Reckoning)
BOOK ONE
PREMONITIONS
But yesternight I pray’d aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! Maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seem’d guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
— S.T. Coleridge,
‘The Pains of Sleep’
1
OF AN EARTH REBORN
I KNOW GRIEF and I know love and I think I know what death may be, though it is said I am immortal. I have been told I have a destiny, but what that is, save forever to be moved by the tides of chance, to perform miserable deeds, I do not know.
I was called John Daker and perhaps many other names. Then I was called Erekosë, the Eternal Champion, and I slew the human race because it had betrayed what I considered to be my ideals, because I loved a woman of another race, a race I thought nobler and which was called the Eldren. The woman was called Ermizhad and she could never bear me children.
And, having slain my race, I was happy.
With Ermizhad and her brother Arjavh I ruled the Eldren, that graceful people which had existed on Earth well before mankind had come to disrupt its harmony.
The dreams, which had beset my sleeping hours when I had first come to this world, were now rare and hardly remembered at all on waking. Once they had terrified me, made me think that I must be insane. I had experienced fragments of a million incarnations, always as some sort of warrior; I had not known which identity was my “true” one. Torn by divided loyalties, by the stresses in my own brain, I had been mad for a while, of this I was now sure.
But I was mad no longer and I committed myself to restoring the beauty I had destroyed in my warrings—first as the Champion of one side, then of the other—over the Earth.
Where armies had marched we planted shrubs and flowers. Where cities had been we made forests grow. And the Earth became gentle, calm and beautiful.
And my love for Ermizhad did not wane.
It grew. It developed so that I loved each new facet I discovered in her character.
The Earth became harmonious. And Erekosë, the Eternal Champion, and Ermizhad, Paramount Princess of the Eldren, reflected that harmony.
The great, terrifying weapons which we had used to overcome mankind were sealed away, and we swore that we should never use them again.
The Eldren cities, razed by the Marshals of Humanity when I had led them, were restored, and soon Eldren children sang in their streets, flowering shrubs bloomed on their balconies and terraces. Green turf grew over the scars cut with the swords of mankind’s paladins. And the Eldren forgot the men who had once sought to destroy their race.
Only I remembered, for mankind had called me to lead them against the Eldren. Instead I had betrayed mankind—every man, woman and child had died because of me. The Droonaa River had flowed with their blood. Now it flowed with sweet water. But the water could not wash away the guilt that would sometimes consume me.
And yet I was happy. It seemed to me that I had never known such peace of soul, such tranquility of mind.
Ermizhad and I would wander about the walls and terraces of Loos Ptokai, the Eldren capital, and we never tired of each other’s company. Sometimes we would discuss a fine point of philosophy, at other times we were content to sit in silence, breathing in the rich and delicate scents of a garden.
And when the mood took us, we would embark upon a slender Eldren ship and sail about the world to witness its wonders—the Plains of Melting Ice, the Mountains of Sorrow, the mighty forests and gentle hills, the rolling plains of the two continents once inhabited by mankind, Necralala and Zavara. But then, sometimes, a mood of melancholy would sweep over me and we would set sail again for the third continent, the southern continent called Mernadin, where the Eldren had lived since ancient times.
It was at these times that Ermizhad would comfort me, soothing away my memories and my shame.
“You know that I believe all this was preordained,” she would say. Her cool, soft hands would stroke my brow. “Mankind’s purpose was to destroy our race. This ambition destroyed them. You were merely the instrument of their destruction.”
“And yet,” I would reply, “have I no free will? Was the only solution the genocide I committed? I had hoped that mankind and the Eldren could live in peace…”
“And you tried to bring such a thing to pass. But they would have none of it. They tried to destroy you as they tried to destroy the Eldren. They almost succeeded. Do not forget that, Erekosë. They almost succeeded.”
“Sometimes,” I would confide, “I wish that I were back in the world of John Daker. I once thought that world overly complicated and stifling. But now I realise that every world contains the same factors I hated, if in a different form. The Cycles of Time may change, Ermizhad, but the human condition does not. It was that condition I hoped to change. I failed. Perhaps that is my destiny—to strive to change the very nature of Humanity—and fail…”
But Ermizhad was not human and, while she could sympathise and guess at what I meant, she could not understand. It was the one thing she could not understand.
“Your kind had many virtues,” she would say. Then she would pause and frown and be unable to complete her statement.
“Aye, but their very virtues became their vices. It was ever thus with mankind. A young man hating poverty and squalor would seek to change it by destroying something that was beautiful. Seeing people dying in misery, he would kill others. Seeing starvation, he would burn crops. Hating tyranny, he would give himself body and soul to that great tyrant War. Hating disorder, he would invent devices that brought further chaos. Loving peace, he would repress learning, outlaw art, cause conflict. The history of the human race was one prolonged tragedy, Ermizhad.”
And Ermizhad would kiss me lightly. “And now the tragedy is ended.”
“So it seems, for the Eldren know how to live in tranquility and retain their vitality. Yet sometimes I feel that the tragedy is still being played—perhaps played a thousand times in different guises. And the tragedy requires its principal actors. Perhaps I am one such. Perhaps I shall be called again to play my rôle. Perhaps my life with you is merely a pause between scenes…”
And to this statement she could offer no reply, save to take me in her arms and bring me the comfort of her sweet lips.
Gaily coloured birds and graceful beasts played where mankind had once raised its cities and beaten its battle-drums, but within those newborn forests and on the grass of those fresh-healed hills there were ghosts. The ghosts of Iolinda, who had loved me, of her father, the weak king Rigenos, who had sought my help, of Count Roldero, kindly Grand Marshal of Humanity, of all the others who had died because of me.
Yet it had been no choice of my own to come to this world, to take up the sword of Erekosë, the Eternal Champion, to put on Erekosë’s armour, to ride at the head of a bright army as mankind’s chief paladin, to learn that the Eldren were not the Hounds of Evil which King Rigenos had described, that they were, in fact, the victims of mankind’s insensate hatred…
No choice of my own…
At root, that was the phrase most often haunting my moods of melancholy.
Yet those moods came more rarely as the years rolled by and Ermizhad and I did not age and continued to feel the same passion we had felt at our first meeting.
They were years of laughter, fine conversation, ecstasy, beauty, affection. One year blended into another until a hundred or so had passed.
Then the Ghost Worlds—those strange worlds which shifted through Time and Space at an angle to the rest of the universe we knew—came again in conjunction with the Earth.
2
OF A GROWING DOOM
ERMIZHAD’S BROTHER WAS Prince Arjavh. Handsome, in the manner of the slender Eldren, with a pointed golden face and slanting eyes that were milky and blue-flecked, Arjavh had as much affection for me as I had for him. His wit and his wisdom had often inspired me and he was forever laughing.
So it was that I was surprised one day to visit him in his laboratory and find him frowning.
He looked up from his sheets of calculations and tried to alter his expression, but I could tell he was concerned—perhaps about some discovery he had made in his researches.
“What is it, Arjavh?” I asked lightly. “Those look to me like astronomical charts. Is a comet on course for Loos Ptokai? Must w
e all evacuate the city?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Nothing so simple. Perhaps not as dramatic, either. I am not sure there is anything to fear, but we would do well to be prepared, for it seems the Ghost Worlds are about to touch ours again.”
“But the Ghost Worlds offer the Eldren no harm, surely. You have summoned allies from them in the past.”
“True. Yet the last time the Ghost Worlds were in conjunction with Earth—that was the time you came here. Possibly it was coincidental. Possibly you are from one of the Ghost Worlds and that is how it was in Rigenos’s power to call you.”
I frowned. “I understand your concern. It is for me.”
Arjavh nodded his head and said nothing.
“Some say Humanity came originally from the Ghost Worlds, do they not?” I gave him a direct look.
“Aye.”
“Have you any specific fears on my behalf?” I asked him.
He sighed. “No. Though the Eldren invented a means of bridging the dimensions between our Earth and the Ghost Worlds, we never explored them. Our visits could, of necessity, only be brief and our contact was with those dwellers in the Ghost Worlds who were kin to the Eldren.”
“Do you fear that I will be recalled to the world I left?” I became tense. I could not bear the thought of being parted from Ermizhad, from the tranquil world of the Eldren.
“I do not know, Erekosë.”
Was I to become John Daker again?
Though I only dimly remembered my life in that era I for some reason called the Twentieth Century, I knew that I had not felt at ease there, that there had been within me an intense dissatisfaction with my life and circumstances. My naturally passionate and romantic disposition (which I did not regard as a virtue, for it had led me to commit the deeds I have already recounted) had been repressed by my surroundings, by my society and by the work I had done to make a living. I had felt more out of place there, among my own kind, than I did living here with an alien race. I felt that it might be better to kill myself, rather than return to John Daker’s world, perhaps without even the memory of this one.
