"I know him. And I know him for what he is. Is that the man you buried?"

"It is."

"When do you plan his death?"

"We do not plan it. We have been promised it. The Sorcerer Adventurers attempted to use their arts against us, but we have such people of our own and they were easily countered. It is not something we like to use, that power, but sometimes it is necessary. A certain creature was summoned from the netherworld. It devoured the men of the Sparrow Sect and before it left it granted us a prophecy, that their master would die within the year, before the next Blood Moon had faded."

"But Varadia?" said Alnac Kreb urgently. "What became of your daughter, your Holy Girl?"

"She had been drugged, as I said, but she lived. We brought her back."

"And she recovered?"

"She half-wakes, perhaps once a month," said Raik Na Seem, controlling his sadness. "But the sleep will not lift from her. Shortly after we found her she opened her eyes and told us to take her to the Bronze Tent. There she sleeps, as she has slept for almost a year, and we know that only a dreamthief may save her. That was why I have sent word by every traveller and caravan we have encountered, asking for a dreamthief. We are fortunate, Alnac Kreb, that a friend heard our prayer."

The dreamthief shook his handsome head. "It was not your message which brought me hither, Raik Na Seem."

"Still," said the old man philosophically, "you are here. You can help us."

Alnac Kreb seemed disturbed, but disguised his emotions quickly. "I will do my best, that I swear. In the morning we shall visit the Bronze Tent."

"It is well-guarded now, for more Quarzhasaatim have come since those first evil ones, and we have been forced to defend our Holy Girl against them. That has been a simple enough matter. But you spoke of the enemy we have buried, Prince Elric. What do you know of him?"

Elric paused for only a few seconds before he spoke. He told Raik Na Seem everything which had happened: how he had been tricked by Lord Gho, what he had been told to find, the hold which Lord Gho had over bun. He refused to lie to the old man, and the respect he showed Raik Na Seem was apparently reciprocated, for though the First Elder's face darkened with anger at the tale, he reached out with a firm hand when it was finished and gripped Elric's arm in a gesture of sympathy.

"The irony is, my friend, that the Place of the Pearl exists only in our poetry and we have never heard of the Fortress of the Pearl."

"You must know that I would do your Holy Girl no further harm," said Elric, "and that if I can help you and yours in any way, that is what I shall do. My quest is ended here and now."

"But Lord Gho's potion will kill you unless you can find the antidote. Then he'll kill your friend, too. No, no. Let us look more positively at these problems, Prince Elric. We have them in common, I think, for we are all victims of that soon-dead lord. We must consider how to defeat his schemes. It is possible that my daughter does indeed know something about this fabulous Pearl, for she is the vessel of all our wisdom and has already learned more than ever my poor head could hold..."

"Her knowledge and her intelligence are as breathtaking as her beauty and her amiability," said Alnac Kreb, still fuming at the of what the Quarzhasaatim had done to Varadia. "If you had known her, Elric..." He broke off, his voice shaking.

"We are all in need of rest, I think," said the First Elder of the Bauradim. "You shall be our guests and in the morning I shall take you to the Bronze Tent, there to look upon my sleeping daughter and hope, perhaps with the sum of all our wisdom, to find a means of bringing her waking mind back to this realm."

That night, sleeping in the luxury only a wealthy nomad's tent could provide, Elric dreamed again of Cymoril, trapped in a drug slumber by his cousin Yyrkoon, and it seemed that he slept beside her, that they were one and the same, as he had always felt when they lay together. But now he saw the dignified figure of Raik Na Seem standing over him and he knew that this was his father, not the neurotic tyrant, the distant figure of his childhood, and he understood why he was obsessed with questions of morality and justice, for it was this Bauradi who was his true ancestor. He knew a kind of peace then, as well as some kind of new, disturbing emotion, and when he awoke in the morning he was reconciled to the fact that he was craving the elixir which at once brought him life and death, and he reached for his flask and took a small sip before rising, washing himself and joining Alnac and Raik Na Seem at the morning meal.

When this was done, the old man called for the fleet, sturdy mounts for which the Bauradim were famous, and the three of them rode away from the Silver Flower Oasis, which bustled with every kind of activity, where comedians, jugglers and snake-charmers were already performing their skills and storytellers had gathered groups of children whose parents had sent them there while they went about their business, and they rode towards the Ragged Pillars, seen faintly on the morning horizon. These mountains had been eroded by the winds of the Sighing Desert until they did, indeed, resemble huge columns of ragged red stone, as if they should have supported the roof of the sky itself. Elric had thought at first he observed the ruins of some ancient city. But Alnac Kreb had told him the truth.

"There are, indeed, many ruins in these parts. Farms, small villages, whole towns, which the desert sometimes reveals, all engulfed by the sands summoned by the foolish wizards of Quarzhasaat. Many built here, even after the sands came, in the belief that they would disperse after a while. Forlorn dreams, I fear, like so many of the things built by men."

Raik Na Seem continued to lead them across the desert, though he used no map or compass. Apparently he knew the way by habit and instinct alone.

They stopped once at a spot where a tiny growth of cacti had been all but covered by the sand and here Raik Na Seem took his long knife and sliced the plants close to their roots, peeling them swiftly and handing the juicy parts to his friends. "There was once a river here," he said, "and a memory of it remains, far below the surface. The cactus remembers."

The sun had reached zenith. Elric began to feel the heat sapping him and was forced again to drink a little of the elixir, merely in order to keep pace with the other two. And it was not until evening, when the Ragged Pillars were considerably closer, that Raik pointed to something which flashed and glittered hi the last rays of the sun. "There is the Bronze Tent, where the peoples of the desert go when they must meditate."

"It is your temple?" said Elric.

"It is the nearest thing we have to a temple. And there we debate with our inner selves. It is also the nearest thing we have to the religions of the West. And it is there we keep our Holy Girl, the symbol of all our ideals, the vessel of our race's wisdom."

Alnac was surprised. "You keep her there always?"

Raik Na Seem shook his head, almost amused. "Only while she sleeps in this unnatural slumber, my friend. As you know, before this she was a normal little child, a joy to all who met her. Perhaps with your help she will be that child again."

Alnac's brow clouded. "You must not expect too much of me, Raik Na Seem. I am an inexpert dreamthief at best. There are those with whom I learned my craft who would tell you so."

"But you are our dreamthief." Raik Na Seem smiled sadly and put ' his hand on Alnac Kreb's shoulder. "And our good friend."

The sun had set by the time they approached the great tent which resembled those Elric had seen at the Silver Flower Oasis but was several times the size, its walls of pure bronze.

Now the moon made its appearance hi the sky almost directly overhead. It seemed that the sun's rays reached for it even as they began to sink beneath the horizon, touching it with their colour, for it glowed with a richness Elric had never seen in Melniboné or the lands of the Young Kingdoms. He gasped in surprise, realising the specific nature of the prophecy.