Michael Moorcock - Elric: The Sleeping Sorceress

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

This is the tale of Elric before he was called Womanslayer, before the final collapse of Melnibon. This is the tale of his rivalry with his cousin Yyrkoon and his love for his cousin Cymoril, before that rivalry and that love brought Imrryr, the Dreaming City, crashing in flames, raped by the reavers from the Young Kingdoms. This is the tale of the two black swords, Stormbringer and Mournblade, and how they were discovered and what part they played in the destiny of Elric and Melnibona destiny which was to shape a larger destiny: that of the world itself. This is the tale of when Elric was a king, the commander of dragons, fleets and all the folk of that half-human race which had ruled the world for ten thousand years.

This is a tale of tragedy, this tale of Melnibon, the Dragon Isle. This is a tale of monstrous emotions and high ambitions. This is a tale of sorceries and treacheries and worthy ideals, of agonies and fearful pleasures, of bitter love and sweet hatred. This is the tale of Elric of Melnibon. Much of it Elric himself was to remember only in his nightmares.

The Chronicle of the Black Sword

BOOK THREE

And now there is no turning back at all. Elrics destiny has been forged and fixed as surely as the hellswords were forged and fixed aeons before. Was there ever a point where he might have turned off this road to despair, damnation and destruction? Or has he been doomed since before his birth? Doomed through a thousand incarnations to know little else but sadness and struggle, loneliness and remorseeternally the champion of some unknown cause?

BOOK TWO

Less certain of himself or his destiny than ever, the albino king must perforce bring his powers of sorcery into play, conscious of embarking on actions which will make of his life something other than he might have wished it to be. And now matters must be settled. He must begin to rule. He must become cruel. But even in this he will find himself thwarted.

BOOK ONE

On the island kingdom of Melnibon all the old rituals are still observed, though the nations power has waned for five hundred years, and now her way of life is maintained only by her trade with the Young Kingdoms and by the fact that the city of Imrryr has become the meeting place of merchants. Are those rituals no longer useful; can the rituals be denied and doom avoided? One who would rule in Emperor Elrics stead prefers to think not. He says that Elric will bring destruction to Melnibon by his refusal to honour all the rituals (Elric honours many). And now opens the tragedy which will close many years from now and precipitate the destruction of this world.

BOOK THREE

THREE HEROES WITH A SINGLE AIM

... Elric, of all the manifestations of the Champion Eternal, was to find Tanelorn without effort. And of all those manifestations he was the only one to choose to leave that city of myriad incarnations ..

The Chronicle of the Black Sword

BOOK TWO

TO SNARE THE PALE PRINCE

... but it was in Nadsokor, City of Beggars, that Elric found an old friend and learned something concerning an old enemy...

The Chronicle of the Black Sword

BOOK ONE

THE TORMENT OF THE LAST LORD

... and then did Elric leave Jharkor in pursuit of a certain sorcerer who had, so Elric claimed, caused him some inconvenience...

The Chronicle of the Black Sword

INTRODUCTION

By 1970 the Elric stories had become so popular that I was under considerable pressure from publishers to produce more. Given that I had killed Elric off in Stormbringer, all I could do was offer the public a prequel or two, drawing on events preceding the first magazine story (The Dreaming City) or taking place between events published in The Stealer of Souls.

The first of these, The Singing Citadel, was done for L. Sprague de Camps The Fantastic Swordsmen anthology, and when my good friend Kenneth Bulmer, himself a fine writer of fantasy and science fiction, was asked to edit a new magazine called Sword and Sorcery the first thing he thought to do was phone me and ask if I could write a new Elric series. I sketched out an idea for three long linked novellas that would take place between early events in the series. He liked the idea, and I had completed the first and begun work on the second when the publisher, who had second thoughts about backing a fantasy magazine, canceled on him, leaving Ken with an inventory and no magazine.

To be honest, since I had publishers very keen to get new Elric stories from me, I was not especially put out by the news, but I felt very sorry for Ken, who had high hopes of producing a magazine in the literary tradition of the U.S. Weird Tales or U.K. Science Fantasy, where the Elric stories had first appeared. I think he would have done a first-class job, given the authors and illustrators he had lined up. His time had been wasted, and I completed the project as a novel, filling in some of the events between the stories.

Elric of Melnibon followed very shortly afterward. In writing The Sleeping Sorceress I had begun to think about Elrics early life and what old Melnibon might have been like, so I was ready to do this book. This was the first time I had written directly for book publication and

had not been commissioned by a magazine editor. I wrote it for a publisher that had no previous policy of doing heroic fantasy, Hutchinson, but that had had some success with a series by Jane Gaskell and approached me for a novel.

Thus Elric of Melnibon came out only a year after The Sleeping Sorceress. I think this was the closest together any of the Elric books were published. I sent it to my old paperback publisher in the U.S., Lancer Books, since I felt I owed them a certain loyalty (they had published all the Elric and Hawkmoon books up to that time), but it was with some hesitation, since by then I was already being offered much larger advances elsewhere. I rather regretted it when they altered the early chapters and changed the title from Elric of Melnibon to, of all things, The Dreaming City. This seemed to show a singular stupidity, since, of course, the first published story in The Stealer of Souls had appeared under that title.

As soon as I could I got the rights back from Lancer (who in the meantime had gone bankrupt, taking most of my early titles with them), and when eventually Don Wollheim of DAW Books suggested reprinting the whole series with some brilliant new covers, I was at last able to publish the book as was originally intended. These are the books that most of my early readers from the 1970s remember best, with the matching Michael Whelan covers and matching type designs. I wrote a novella for my friend Bill Butlers Unicorn Books (The Jade Mans Eyes), which became part of a further addition to the series for DAW, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate. The Sleeping Sorceress was also at that time retitled as The Vanishing Tower.

These books went through many editions, establishing the chronology of the series, until Berkley Books made me an offer I couldnt refuse, together with the chance to use the work of Robert Gould on the covers, which is how those books and their later sequels appeared through the 1980s, again going into many editions. I wrote two new novels for Berkley. In the 1990s I again rearranged the sequence for the uniform omnibus editions of the Eternal Champion stories I published with Orion in the U.K. and White Wolf in the U.S., once more with some outstanding new covers. With the collapse of White Wolfs publishing program, I decided to rest my Eternal Champion books, including Elric, in the U.S. for a while and made no attempt to republish the books until Del Reys publication of the Robert E. Howard titles inspired the present editions, published in the order the stories were originally done. As stated before, these, with their beautiful illustrations, are the definitive editions of the stories. One of the reasons I responded to Ken Bulmers request for some new Elric adventures years ago was because he planned to ask Jim Cawthorn, with whom I had worked since the 1950s, to illustrate them. The chance of having these stories illustrated as I originally meant them to appear was too good to pass up! This will be the first time I have worked with Steve Ellis, a fine illustrator.