Elric had become impatient as his body's demand for the drug grew unbearable. "Very well, Lady Gone. Whatever you decide, I shall agree to."

She took a step back from him and looked at him coolly. "You had best return to your tent and find your elixir," she said softly.

Familiar desperation filled the albino's mind. "I shall, madam. I shall." And turning he strode swiftly back towards the gathered tents of the Bauradim.

He scarcely spoke to any of those who greeted him as he passed. Raik Na Seem had moved nothing from the tent Elric had last shared with Alnac Kreb, and the albino hastily drew the flask from his saddle-bag, taking a deep draft and feeling, for a short while at least, the relief, the resurgence of energy, the illusion of health which the Quarzhasaati's drug gave him. He sighed and turned towards the entrance of the tent as Raik Na Seem came up, his brow furrowed, his eyes full of pain which he tried to disguise. "Have you agreed to help the dreamthief, Elric? Will you attempt to achieve what the prophecy predicted? Bring our Holy Girl back to us? There is now less time than there ever was. Soon the Blood Moon will be gone."

Elric dropped the flask onto the carpet which covered the ground. He bent and picked up the Black Sword, which he had unbuckled while he walked with Oone. The thing thrilled in his fingers and he felt vaguely nauseated. "I will do whatever is required of me," the albino said.

"Good." The older man gripped Elric by the shoulders. "Oone has told me that you are a great man with a great destiny and that this time is one of considerable moment in your life. We are honoured to be part of that destiny and grateful for your concern..."

Elric accepted Raik Na Seem's words with all his old grace. He bowed. "I believe that the health of your Holy Girl is more important than any fate of mine. I will do whatever is possible to bring her back to you."

Oone had entered behind the Bauradim's First Elder. She smiled at the albino. "You are ready now?"

Elric nodded and began to buckle on the Black Sword, but Oone stopped him with a gesture. "You'll find the weapons you need where we travel."

"But the sword is more than a weapon, Lady Oone!" The albino knew a kind of panic.

She held out Alnac's dreamwand to him. "This is all you need for our venture, my lord Emperor."

Stormbringer murmured violently as Elric let the sword fall back to the cushions of the tent. It seemed almost to threaten him.

"I am dependent..." he began.

She shook her head gently. "You are not. You believe that sword to be part of your identity but it is not. It is your nemesis. It is the part of you which represents your weakness, not your strength."

Elric sighed. "I do not understand you, my lady, but if you do not wish me to bring the sword, I'll leave it."

Another sound, a peculiar growl, from the blade, but Elric ignored it. He left both flask and sword in the tent and strode to where horses awaited them to carry them from the Silver Flower Oasis back to the Bronze Tent.

As they rode a little distance behind Raik Na Seem, Gone told Elric something more of what the Holy Girl meant to the Bauradim.

"As you perhaps have already realised, the child holds in trust the history and the aspirations of the Bauradim-their collected wisdom. Everything they know to be true and of value is contained within her. She is the living representation of her people's learning-what is the essence of their history-of a time before they became desert dwellers even. If they lose her, there is every chance, they believe, that they must begin their history all over again-relearn hard-won lessons, relive experience and make the mistakes and blunders which so painfully informed their people's understanding down the centuries. She is Tune, if you like-their library, museum, religion and culture personified in a single human being. Can you imagine, Prince Elric, what her loss means to them? She is the very soul of the Bauradim. And that soul is imprisoned where only those of a certain skill can even find her, let alone free her."

Elric fingered the dreamwand which now replaced his runesword at his hip. "If she were only an ordinary child, bringing sorrow to her family through her condition, I would be inclined to help if I could," he said. "For I like this people and their leader."

"Her fate and yours are intertwined," said Gone. "Whatever your sentiments, my lord, you probably have little real choice in the matter."

He did not wish to hear this. "It seems to me, madam, that you dreamthieves are altogether too familiar with myself, my family, my people and my destiny. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Yet I cannot deny you know more than anyone, save my betrothed, about my inner conflicts. How come you by this power of divination and prophecy?"

She spoke almost casually. "There is a land all dreamthieves have visited. It is a place where all dreams intersect, where all that we have in common meets. And we call that land the Birthplace of the Bone, where mankind first assumed reality."

"This is legend! And primitive legend at that!"

"Legend to you. Truth to us. As one day you'll discover."

"If Alnac could foretell the future, why did he not wait for you to come to help him?"

"We rarely know our own destinies, only the general movements of the tides and of the figures who stand out in their world's histories. All dreamthieves, it is true, know the future, for half their lives are spent without Time. For us there is no past or future, only a changing present. We are free of those particular chains while bound as strongly by others."

"I have read of such ideas, but they mean very little to me." "Because you lack experience to make sense of them." "You have already spoken of the Land of Dreams-in-Common. Is that the same as the Birthplace of the Bone?" "Perhaps. Our people are undecided on the point." Temporarily invigorated by the drug, Elric began to enjoy the conversation, much of which he saw as mere pleasant abstraction. Free of his runesword he knew a kind of lightness of spirit which he had not experienced since the first months of his courtship of Cymoril in those relatively untroubled years before Yyrkoon's growing ambition had begun to contaminate life at the Melnibonéan Court.

He recalled something from one of his own people's histories. "I have seen it said that the world is no more than what its denizens agree it is. I remember reading something to that effect in The Gabbling Sphere which said, 'For who is to say which is the inner world and which the outer? What we make reality may be what will alone decides, and what we define as dreams may be the greater truth.' Is that a philosophy close to your own, Lady Gone?" "Close enough," she said. "Though it seems a little airy." They rode like this, almost like two children on a picnic, until they reached the Bronze Tent when the sun was setting and were led, once more, into the place where men and women sat or lay around the great raised bed on which rested the little girl who symbolised their entire existence.

It seemed to Elric that the illuminating braziers and lamps were burning lower than when last he was here, and that the child looked even paler than before, but he forced an expression of confidence when he turned to Raik Na Seem. "This time we shall not fail her," he said.

Oone appeared to approve of Elric's words and watched carefully as, on her instructions, Varadia's frail body was lifted from the bed and placed this time upon a huge cushion which, in its turn, was set between two other cushions, also of great size. She signed to the albino to lay his body down on the far side of the child while she herself took up her position on the girl's left.

"Grasp her hand, my lord Emperor," said Oone ironically, "and place the crook of the dreamwand over both yours and hers, as you saw Alnac do."