Varadia said deliberately: "You are free to travel where you will, great Chamog Borm. But know only this-you must continue to fight evil wherever you find it and you must never again allow the Sorcerer Adventurers to attack the Fortress of the Pearl."

"I swear."

With a bow to Oone and Elric, the legendary hero rode slowly from the Court, his head high with pride and noble purpose.

Varadia was content. "I have made him again what he was before I called him. I now know that legends in themselves have no power. The power comes from the uses that the living make of the legend. The legends merely represent an ideal."

"You are a wise child," said Oone admiringly.

"Should I not be, madam? I am the Holy Girl of the Bauradim." Varadia spoke with considerable irony and good humour. "Am I not the Oracle of the Bronze Tent?" She lowered her eyes, perhaps in sudden melancholy. "I shall be a child only a little longer. I think I shall miss my palace and all its kingdoms..."

"Something is always lost here." Oone placed a comforting hand on the child's shoulder. "But much is gained also."

Varadia looked back at the Pearl. Following her gaze, Elric saw that the entire Court had now vanished, just as the crowds had vanished on the great staircase when they had been attacked by the Pearl Warrior just before they first met Lady Sough. He now realised that in that guise she herself had guided them to her own rescue, as best she could. She had reached out to them. She had shown them the way in which they could, with their wits and courage, accomplish her salvation.

Varadia was ascending the steps, her hands outstretched towards the Pearl. 'This is the cause of all our misfortune," she said. "What can we do with it?"

"Destroy it, perhaps," said Elric.

But Oone shook her head. "While it remains an undiscovered treasure thieves will constantly seek it. This is the cause of Varadia's imprisonment in the Dream Realm. This is what brought the Sorcerer Adventurers to her. It is why they drugged and attempted to abduct her. All the evil comes not from the Pearl itself but what evil men have made of it."

"What shall you do?" asked Elric. "Trade it in the Dream Market when you next go?"

"Perhaps that is what I should do. But it would not be the means of ensuring Varadia's safety in the future. Do you understand?"

"While the Pearl is a legend, there will always be those who will pursue the legend?"

"Exactly, Prince Elric. So we shall not destroy it, I think. Not here."

Elric did not care. So absorbed had he become in the dream itself, the revealing of the levels of reality existing in the Dream Realm, that he had forgotten his original quest, the threat to his life and that of Anigh in Quarzhasaat.

It was for Oone to remind him. "Remember, there are those in Quarzhasaat who are not only your enemies, Elric of Melniboné. They are the enemies of this girl. The enemies of the Bauradim. You have still a further task to accomplish, even when we return to the Bronze Tent."

"Then you must advise me, Lady Oone," said Elric simply, "for I am a novice here."

"I cannot advise you with any great clarity." She turned her eyes away from him, almost in modesty, perhaps in pain. "But I can make a decision here. We must claim the Pearl."

"As I understand it, the Pearl did not exist before the lords of Quarzhasaat conceived of it, before someone discovered the legend, before the Sorcerer Adventurers came."

"But it exists now," said Oone. "Lady Varadia, would you give the Pearl to me?"

"Willingly," said the Holy Girl, and she ran up the remaining steps and took the globe from the plinth and threw it to the ground so that shards of milky glass shattered everywhere, mingling with the bones and the armour of the Pearl Warrior, and she took the Pearl in one hand, as an ordinary child might grasp a lost ball. And she tossed it from palm to palm in delight, fearing it no longer. "It is very beautiful. No wonder they sought it."

"They made it, then they used it to trap you." Oone reached up and caught it as Varadia threw it to her. "What a shame those who could conceive of such beauty would go to such evil lengths to own it..." She frowned, looking about her in sudden concern.

The light was fading in the Court of the Pearl.

From all around them came an appalling noise, an anguished groaning; a great creaking and keening, a tortured screaming, as if all the tormented souls in all the multiverse had suddenly given voice.

It pierced their brains. They covered their ears. They stared in terror, watching as the floor of the Court erupted and undulated, as the ivory walls with all their wonderful mosaics and carvings began to rot before their eyes, crumbling and falling, like the fabric in a tomb suddenly exposed to daylight.

And then, over all the other noises, they heard the laughter.

It was sweet laughter. It was the unaffected laughter of a child.

It was the laughter of a freed spirit. It was Varadia's.

"It is dissolving at last. It is all dissolving! Oh, my friends, I am a slave no longer!"

Through all the falling filthy stuff, through all the decay and dissolution which tumbled upon them, through the destroyed carcass of the Fortress of the Pearl, Oone came towards them. She was hasty but she was careful. She held one of Varadia's hands.

"Not yet! Too soon! We could all dissolve in this!"

She made Elric take the child's other hand and they led her through the crashing, shrieking darkness, out of the chamber, down through the swaying corridors, out past the courtyards where fountains now gushed detritus and where the very walls were constructed of putrefying flesh which began to rot to nothing even as they went by. Then Oone made them run, until the final gateway lay ahead of them.

They reached the causeway and the marble road. There was a bridge ahead of them. Oone almost dragged the other two towards it, running as fast as she could possibly run, with the Fortress of the Pearl tumbling into nothing, roaring like a dying beast as it did so.

The bridge seemed infinite. Elric could not see to the further side. But at length Oone stopped running and allowed them to walk, for they had reached a gateway.

The gateway was carved of red sandstone. It was decorated with geometrical tiles and pictures of gazelles, leopards and wild camels. It had an almost prosaic appearance after so many monumental doorways, yet Elric felt some trepidation hi passing through it.

"I am afraid, Oone," he said.

"You fear mortality, I think." She pressed on. "You have great courage, Prince Elric. Make use of it now, I beg you."

He quelled his terrors. His grip on the child's hand was firm and reassuring.

"We go home, do we not?" said the Holy Girl. "What is it you do not want to find there, Prince Elric?"

He smiled down at her, grateful for her question. "Nothing much, Lady Varadia. Perhaps nothing more than myself."

They stepped together into the gateway.