Smiorgan stood beside him. The sun was now touching the taller parts of the ruins. Smiorgan reached out and gripped his friend's shoulder.

"The Olab have vanished. I think they've had their fill of sorcery."

"Another man has been destroyed by me, Smiorgan. Am I forever to be tied to this cursed sword? I must discover a way to rid myself of it or my heavy conscience will bear me down so that I cannot rise at all."

Smiorgan cleared his throat, but was otherwise silent.

"I will lay Duke Avan to rest, " Elric said. "You go back to where we left the ship and tell the men that we come."

Smiorgan began to stride across the square toward the east.

Elric tenderly picked up the body of Duke Avan and went toward the opposite side of the square, to the underground room where the Creature Doomed to Live had lived out his life for ten thousand years.

It seemed so unreal to Elric now, but he knew that it had not been a dream, for the Jade Man had gone. His tracks could be seen through the jungle. Whole clumps of trees had been flattened.

He reached the place and descended the stairs and laid Duke Avan down on the bed of dried grasses. Then he took the duke's dagger and, for want of anything else, dipped it in the duke's blood and wrote on the wall above the corpse:

This was Duke Avan Astran of Old Hrolmar. He explored the world and brought much knowledge and treasure back to Vilmir, his land. He dreamed and became lost in the dream of another and so died. He enriched the Young Kingdoms-and thus encouraged another dream. He died so that the Creature Doomed to Live might die, as he desired....

Elric paused. Then he threw down the dagger. He could not justify his own feelings of guilt by composing a high-sounding epitaph for the man he had slain.

He stood there, breathing heavily, then once again picked up the dagger.

He died because Elric of Melnibonи desired a peace and a knowledge he could never find. He died by the Black Sword.

Outside in the middle of the square, at noon, still lay the lonely body of the last Vilmirian crewman. Nobody had known his name. Nobody felt grief for him or tried to compose an epitaph for him. The dead Vilmirian had died for no high purpose, followed no fabulous dream. Even in death his body would fulfill no function. On this island there was no carrion to feed. In the dust of the city there was no earth to fertilize.

Elric came back into the square and saw the body. For a moment, to Elric it symbolized everything that had transpired here and would transpire later.

"There is no purpose, " he murmured.

Perhaps his remote ancestors had, after all, realized that, but had not cared. It had taken the Jade Man to make them care and then go mad in their anguish. The knowledge had caused them to close their minds to much.

"Elric! "

It was Smiorgan returning. Elric looked up.

"The Olab dealt with the crew and the ship before they came after us. They're all slain. The boat is destroyed."

Elric remembered something the Creature Doomed to Live had told him. "There is another boat, " he said. "On the east side of the island."

It took them the rest of the day and all of that night to discover where J'osui C'reln Reyr had hidden his boat. They pulled it down to the water in the diffused light of the morning and they inspected it.

"It's a sturdy boat, " said Count Smiorgan approvingly. "By the look of it, it's made of that same strange material we saw in the library of R'lin K'ren A'a." He climbed in and searched through the lockers.

Elric was staring back at the city, thinking of a man who might have become his friend, just as Count Smiorgan had become his friend. He had no friends, save Cymoril, in Melnibonи. He sighed.

Smiorgan had opened several lockers and was grinning at what he saw there. "Pray the gods I return safe to the Purple Towns-we have what I sought! Look, Elric! Treasure! We have benefited from this venture, after all! "

"Aye. . . ." Elric's mind was on other things. He forced himself to think of more practical matters. "But the jewels will not feed us, Count Smiorgan, " he said. "It will be a long journey home."

"Home?" Count Smiorgan straightened his great back, a bunch of necklaces in either fist. "Melnibonи?"

"The Young Kingdoms. You offered to guest me in your house, as I recall."

"For the rest of your life, if you wish. You saved my life, friend Elric-now you have helped me save my honor."

"These past events have not disturbed you? You saw what my blade can do-to friends as well as enemies."

"We do not brood, we of the Purple Towns, " said Count Smiorgan seriously. "And we are not fickle in our friendships. You know an anguish, Prince Elric, that I'll never feel-never understand-but I have already given you my trust. Why should I take it away again? That is not how we are taught to behave in the Purple Towns." Count Smiorgan brushed at his black beard and he winked. "I saw some cases of provisions among the wreckage of Avan's schooner. We'll sail around the island and pick them up."

Elric tried to shake the black mood from himself, but it was hard, for he had slain a man who had trusted him, and Smiorgan's talk of trust only made the guilt heavier.

Together they launched the boat into the weed-thick water and Elric looked back once more at the silent forest and a shiver passed through him. He thought of all the hopes he had entertained on the journey upriver and he cursed himself for a fool.

He tried to think back, to work out how he had come to be in this place, but too much of the past was confused with those singularly graphic dreams to which he was prone. Had Saxif D'Aan and the world of the blue sun been real? Even now, it faded. Was this place real? There was something dreamlike about it. It seemed to him he had sailed on many fateful seas since he had fled from Pikarayd. Now the promise of the peace of the Purple Towns was very dear to him.

Soon the time must come when he must return to Cymoril and the Dreaming City, to decide if he was ready to take up the responsibilities of the Bright Empire of Melnibonи, but until that moment he would guest with his new friend, Smiorgan, and learn the ways of the simpler, more direct folk of Menii.

As they raised the sail and began to move with the current, Elric said to Smiorgan suddenly, "You trust me, then, Count Smiorgan?"

The sea-lord was a little surprised by the directness of the question. He fingered his beard. "Aye, " he said at length, "as a man. But we live in cynical times, Prince Elric. Even the gods have lost their innocence, have they not?"

Elric was puzzled. "Do you think that I shall ever betray you-as-as I betrayed Avan, back there?"

Smiorgan shook his head. "It's not in my nature to speculate upon such matters. You are loyal, Prince Elric. You feign cynicism, yet I think I've rarely met a man so much in need of a little real cynicism." He smiled. "Your sword betrayed you, did it not?"

"To serve me, I suppose."

"Aye. There's the irony of it. Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think."

And it seemed to Elric, then, that his runesword trembled at his side, and moaned very faintly, as if it were disturbed by Count Smiorgan's words.

END