I was suddenly too weak to continue after them. My own legs buckled. I was paying the price for all that unexpected power.

I tried to keep my senses, knowing that Gaynor would immediately take advantage of me if he knew that I, like Elric, had collapsed.

I could do nothing to save myself.

I stumbled deeper into the cavern, now a charnel house of dead horses and human corpses, and tried to reach Elric, to revive him, to warn him of what was happening.

My pale hand reached out towards his white, unresponsive face, and then I was absorbed by darkness, vulnerable to anything that now desired my life. I heard my name being called. I guessed it was Gaynor, returning to have his revenge upon me.

I took a fresh grip on the sword, but the energy no longer filled me. I had paid my price for what it had given me. It had paid its price to me.

I remember thinking, sardonically, that the account was now fully closed. But I looked up into Oona's face, not Gaynor's. Had any time passed? I could still smell the blood and torn flesh, the ordure of savage battling. I could feel cold iron against my hand. But I was too weak to rise. She lifted me. She gave me water and some kind of drug which set my veins to shaking before I drew a long, deep breath and was able to get to my feet.

"Gaynor?"

"Already witnessing the destruction of his army, " she said. She had an air of satisfaction. I had the impression her lips were bloody. Then she licked them, like a cat, and they were clean.

"How so? The Off-Moo?"

"Meerclar's children, " she said. "All the panthers were revived. They wasted no time hunting down their favorite prey. The troogs are dead or fled and most of the savages have gone back to their old territories. Gaynor can no longer protect them against their traditional enemies. They would be going to their instant doom if they followed him into the Grey Fees."

"So he cannot conquer the Grey Fees?"

"He believes he has the power to do it without his army. For he has the white sword and he has the cup. These he believes contain the power of Law, and he believes the power of Law will give him the Grey Fees."

"Even I know that's madness! " I began to walk unsteadily to where the Melnibonean was still lying. Now, however, he had the air of a man experiencing ordinary sleep. "What can we do to stop him?"

"There's a chance, " she said quietly, "that he cannot be stopped. Just by introducing those two great objects of power into the Grey Fees he could unbalance the entire multiverse, sending it spinning to its eternal destruction and all living, feeling creatures with it."

"One man?" I said. "One mortal?"

"Whatever happens, " she said, "it is predicted that the fate of the multiverse shall depend upon the actions of one mortal man. That encourages Gaynor. He thinks he is the mortal chosen for that honor."

"Why should he not be?"

"Because another has already been chosen, " she said.

"Do you know who it is?"

"Yes."

I waited, but she said no more. She leaned over her father, testing for his pulse, checking his eyes, just as I had earlier. She shook her head.

"Exhausted, " she said. "Nothing else. Too much sorcery, even for him." She rolled up a cloak and put it under his head. It was a strange, rather touching gesture. All around us was death and destruction. Spilled blood was everywhere, yet Elric's daughter behaved almost as if she kissed a child good night in its own bed.

She picked up Stormbringer and resheathed it for him. Only then did I realize I still held Ravenbrand in my hand. Oona had found Elric's sword where Gaynor had hurled it when it turned on him and instead of giving him strength, burned up what remained of his energy.

"Well, " I said, "at least we have the stolen sword back."

Oona nodded reflectively. "Yes, " she said, "Gaynor must change his plans." "Why didn't Stormbringer feed off him earlier?"

"By betraying Miggea, he also lost her help. He seemed to think he would be able to keep it, in spite of her being a prisoner. She has to be able to exert her will in order to aid him, and he ensured that she could not."

I heard a mumble and looked to where Elric lay. He stirred. His lips formed words, tiny sounds. Troubled sounds. The sounds of a distant nightmare. Oona laid her cool hand upon her father's forehead. The Melnibonean immediately breathed more regularly and his body no longer twitched and trembled.

When, eventually, he opened his eyes, they were full of wise intelligence.

"At last, " he said. "The tide can be turned." His hand went to the handle of his runesword and caressed it. I had the feeling she had somehow communicated everything that had happened to him. Or did he get it telepathically from me? "Perhaps it can be, Father." Oona looked around her, as if seeing the signs of battle for the first time. "But I fear it will take more resources than we can summon now."

The Prince of Melnibone began to rise. I offered him my arm. He hesitated, then took it with an expression of profound irony on his face.

"So now we are both whole men again, " he said. I was impatient with this. "I need to know what unique qualities that staff or cup or whatever it is and that white sword have. Why are we fighting for possession of them? What do they represent to Gaynor?"

Elric and Oona stared at me in some surprise. They had concealed nothing deliberately from me. They had simply not thought to tell me.

"They exist in your own legends, " said Oona. "Your family protected them on your plane. That is your traditional duty. According to your legends the Grail is a cup with magical properties, which can restore life and can only be beheld in its true, pure form by a knight of equally true and pure soul. The sword is the traditional sword which bestows great nobility upon its wielder, if used in a noble cause. It has been called many names. It was lost and Gaynor sought it. Klosterheim got it from Bek. Miggea told him that if he bore both the black sword and the white and took them, together with the Grail, into the Grey Fees, he would be able to set his will upon existence. He could re-create the multiverse." I found this incredible. "He believed such nonsense?"

Oona hesitated. Then she said: "He believed it."

I thought for a moment. I was a twentieth-century man. How could I give any credibility to such mythical tomfoolery? Perhaps all I was doing was dreaming after hearing some overblown piece of Sturm und Drang. Was I trapped in the story of Parsifal, The Flying Dutchman and Gotterdammerung all at the same time? Of course it was impossible to pursue such logic. Not only had I been party to Elric's past, his entire experience of the sorcerous realms, but I recollected everything I had seen since escaping from the Nazi concentration camp. From the moment my sword clove the cliff of Hameln, I had accepted the laws of wizardry. I began to laugh. Not the mad laughter I'd offered Gaynor, but natural, goodhumored self-mockery.

"And why should he not have done?" I said. "Why should he not believe anything he chooses?"