Oone, too, stood up quickly and there were tears in her eyes. The tears were not for the Count of Magnes Doar. Elric took her in his arms. He was suddenly full of longing for someone he barely remembered from old dreams, the dreams of his youth; someone who, perhaps, had never existed.

He thought he felt a slight shudder run through Oone as he embraced her. He reached out for a memory of a little boat, of a fair-haired girl sleeping at the bottom of the vessel as it drifted out to open sea, of himself sailing a skiff towards her, full of pride that he might be her rescuer. Yet he had never known such a girl, he was sure, though Oone reminded him of that girl grown up.

With a gasp Oone moved away from him. "I thought you were... It's as if I'd always known you..." She put her hands to her face. "Oh, this damned land is well-called, Elric!"

Elric could only agree.

"Yet what danger is there to us?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Who knows? Much or little. None? The dreamthieves say that it is in the Land of Forgotten Love that the most important decisions are made. Decisions which can have the most monumental consequences."

"So one should do nothing here? Make no decisions?"

She passed her fingers through her hair. "At least we should be aware that the consequences might not manifest themselves for a long while yet."

Together they left the dead rabbit-warrior behind them and continued down the tunnel of trees. Now from time to time Elric thought he saw faces peering at bun from the green shadows. Once he was sure he saw the figure of his dead father, Sadric, mourning for Elric's mother, the only creature he had ever truly loved. So strong was the image that Elric called out:

"Sadric! Father! Is this your Limbo?"

At this Oone cried urgently. "No! Do not address him. Do not bring him to you. Do not make him real! It is a trap, Elric. Another trap."

"My father?"

"Did you love him?"

"Aye. Though it was an unhappy land of love."

"Remember that. Do not bring him here. It would be obscene to recall him to this gallery of illusions."

Elric understood her and used all his habits of self-discipline to rid himself of his father's shade. "I tried to tell him, Oone, how much I grieved for him in his loss and his sorrow." He was weeping. His body was shaking with an emotion from which he believed he had long since freed himself. "Ah, Oone. I would have died myself to let him have his wife returned to him. Is there no way...?"

"Such sacrifices are meaningless," she said, gripping him hi both her hands and holding him to her. "Especially here. Remember your quest. We have already crossed three of the seven lands which will bring us to the Fortress of the Pearl. We have crossed half this. That means we have already accomplished more than most. Hold on to yourself, Prince of Melniboné. Remember who and what depends upon your success!"

"But if I have the opportunity to make something right that was so wrong...?"

"That is to do with your own feelings, not what is and what can be. Would you invent shadows and make them play out your dreams? Would that bring happiness to your tragic mother and father?"

Elric looked over his shoulder into the forest. There was no sign of his father now. "He seemed so real. Of such solid flesh!"

"You must believe that you and I are the only solid flesh in this entire land. And even we are-" She stopped herself. She reached up to his face and kissed it. "We will rest for a little, if only to restore our psychic strength."

And Oone drew Elric down into the soft leaves at the side of the path. And she kissed him and she moved her lovely hands over his body and slowly she became all that he had lost in his love of women and he knew that he, in turn, became everything she had ever refused to allow herself to desire hi a man. And he knew, without guilt or regret, that their love-making had no past and that its only future lay somewhere beyond their own lives, beyond any realm they would ever visit, and that neither would ever witness the consequences.

And in spite of this knowledge they were careless and they were happy and they gave each other the strength they would need if they ever hoped to fulfill their quest and reach the Fortress of the Pearl.

Surprised by his own lack of confusion, filled with an apparent clarity, Elric stepped, side by side with Gone, through the shimmering silver gateway into Imador, called mysteriously by the dreamthieves the Land of New Ambition, and found himself at the top of an heroic flight of steps which curved downward towards a plain which stretched towards a horizon turned a pale, misty blue and which he could almost have mistaken for the sky. For a moment he thought that he and Gone were alone on that vast stairway and then he saw that it was crowded with people. Some were engaged in hectic conversation, some bartering, some embracing, while others were gathered around holy men, speech-makers, priestesses, story-tellers, either listening avidly or arguing.

The steps down to the plain were alive with every manner of human intercourse. Elric saw snake-charmers, bear-baiters, jugglers and acrobats. They were dressed in costumes typical of the desert lands-enormous silk pantaloons of green, blue, gold, vermilion and amber; coats of brocade or velvet; turbans, burnooses and caps of the most intricate needlework; burnished metal and silver, gold, precious jewels of every kind. And there was an abundance of animals, stalls, baskets overflowing with produce, with fabrics, with goods of leather and copper and brass.

"How handsome they are!" he remarked. It was true that though they were of all shapes and sizes the people had a beauty which was not easily defined. Their skins were all healthy, their eyes bright, their movements dignified and easy. They bore themselves with confidence and good humour and while it was clear they noticed Oone and Elric walking down the steps, they acknowledged them without making any great effort to greet them or ask them their business. Dogs, cats and monkeys ran about in the crowd and children played the cryptic games all children play. The air was warm and balmy and full of the scents of fruit, flowers and the other goods being sold. "Would that all worlds were like this," Elric added, smiling at a young woman who offered him embroidered cloth.

Oone bought oranges from a boy who ran up to her. She handed one to Elric. "This is a sweet realm indeed. I had not expected it to be so pleasant." But when she bit into the fruit she spat it into her hand. "It has no taste!"

Elric tried his own orange and he, too, found it a dry, flavourless thing.

The disappointment he felt at this was out of all proportion to the occurrence. He threw the orange from him. It struck a step below and bounced until it was out of sight.

The grey-green plain appeared unpopulated. There was a road sweeping across it, wide and well-paved, but there was not a single traveller visible, in spite of the great crowd. "I wonder why the road is empty," he said to Oone. "Do all these people sleep at nights on these steps? Or do they disappear into another realm when then-business here is done?"

"Doubtless that question will be answered for us soon enough, my lord."

She linked her arm in his own. Since their love-making in the wood, a sense of considerable comradeship and mutual liking had grown up between them. He knew no guilt; he knew in his heart that he had betrayed no one and it was clear Oone was equally untroubled. In some strange way they had restored each other, making their combined energy something more than the sum. This was the kind of friendship he had never really known before and he was grateful for it. He believed that he had learned much from Oone and that the dreamthief would teach him more that would be valuable to him when he returned to Melniboné to claim his throne back from Yyrkoon.