"The future holds as many traps as the past," she said with a smile. "I am a believer in the present, my lord. In the eternal present." And there was an edge to her voice, as if she had not always held this view.

"Speculation and regret offer many temptations, I suppose," said Elric; then he gasped at what he saw ahead.

Molten gold was cascading down two well-worn channels in the rock, forming a gigantic V-shaped edifice. The metal flowed unchecked and yet as they approached it became obvious that it was not hot. Some other agent had caused the effect, perhaps a chemical in the rock itself. As the gold reached the floor of the cavern it spread into a pool and the pool in turn fed a brook which bubbled, brilliant with the precious stuff, down towards another stream which seemed at first to contain ordinary water. But when Elric looked more carefully he saw that that stream was, in turn, composed of silver and the two elements blended as they met. Following the course of this stream with his eyes he saw that it met, some distance away, with a further river, this one of glistening scarlet, which might be liquid rubies. In all his travels, in the Young Kingdoms and the realms of the supernatural, Elric had seen nothing like it. He made to move towards it, to inspect it further, but she checked him.

"We have reached the next gate, she said. "Ignore that particular wonder, my lord. Look."

She pointed between twin streams of gold and he could just make out something shadowy beyond. "There is Paranor. Are you ready to enter that land?"

Remembering the dreamthieves' term for it, Elric allowed himself an ironic smile. "As ready as I shall ever be, madam."

Then, just as he stepped towards the portal, there came the sound of galloping hoofs behind them. They rang sharply on the rock of the cavern. They echoed through the gloomy roof, through a thousand chambers, and Elric had no time to turn before something heavy struck his shoulder and he was flung to one side. He had the impression of a deathly white horse, of a rider wearing armour of ivory, mother-of-pearl and pale tortoiseshell, and then it was gone through the gate of molten gold and disappearing into the shadows beyond. But there was no doubt in Elric's mind that he had encountered one of the warriors who had already attacked him on the bridge. He had the impression of the same mocking chuckle as the hoofs faded and the sound was absorbed by whatever lay beyond the gate.

"We have an enemy," said Oone. Her face was grim and she clenched her hands to her sides, clearly taking a grip on herself. "We have been identified already. The Fortress of the Pearl does not merely defend. She attacks."

"You know those riders? You have seen them before?"

She shook her head. "I know their kind, that's all."

"And we've no means of avoiding them?"

"Very few." She was frowning to herself again, considering some problem she was not prepared to discuss. Then she seemed to dismiss it and taking his arm led him under the twin cascades of cool gold into a further cavern which this time suddenly filled with a gentle green glow, as if they walked beneath a canopy of leaves in autumn sunlight. And Elric was reminded of Old Melnibone, at the height of her power, when his people were proud enough to take the whole world for granted. When entire nations had been remoulded for their passing pleasure. As they emerged into a further cavern, so vast he did not at first realize they were still underground, he saw the spires and minarets of a city, glowing with the same warm green, which was as beautiful as his own beloved Imrryr, the Dreaming City, which he had explored throughout his boyhood.

"It is like Imrryr and yet it is not like Imrryr at all," he said in surprise.

"No," she said, "it is like London. It is like Tanelorn. It is like Ras-Paloom-Atai." And she did not speak sarcastically. She spoke as if she really did believe the city resembled those other cities, only one of which Elric recognized.

"But you have seen it before. What is it called?"

"It has no name," she said. "It has all names. It is called whatever you desire to call it." And she turned away, as if resting herself, before she led him onwards down the road past the city.

"Should we not visit it? There may be people there who can help us find our way."

Oone gestured. "And there may be those who would hamper us. It is now clear, Prince Elric, that our mission is suspected and that certain forces could well have the intention of stopping us at any cost."

"You think the Sorcerer Adventurers have followed us?"

"Or preceded us. Leaving at least something of themselves here." She was peering cautiously towards the city.

"It seems such a peaceful place," said Elric. The more he looked at the city the more he was impressed by the architecture, all of the same greenish stone but varying from yellow to blue. There were vast buttresses and curving bridges between one tower and another; there were spires as delicate as cobwebs yet so tall they almost disappeared into the roofs of the cavern. It seemed to reflect some part of him which he could not at once recall. He longed to go there. He grew resentful of Oone's guidance, though he had sworn to follow it, and began to believe that she herself was lost, that she was not better suited to discover their goal than was he.

"We must continue," she said. She was speaking more urgently now.

"I know I would find something within that city which would make Imrryr great again. And in her greatness I could lead her to dominate the world. But this time, instead of bringing cruelty and terror, we could bring beauty and good will."

"You are more prone to illusion than I thought, Prince Elric," said Oone.

He turned on her angrily. "What's wrong with such ambitions?"

"They are unrealistic. As unreal as that city."

"The city looks solid enough to me."

"Solid? Aye, in its way. Once you enter its gate it will embrace you as thoroughly as any long-lost lover! Come then, sir. Come!" She seemed seized by an equally poor temper and strode on up an obsidian road which twisted along the hill towards the city.

Startled by her sudden change, Elric followed. But now his own anger was dissipating. "I'll abide, madam, by your judgment. I am sorry..."

She was not listening to him. Moment by moment the city came closer until soon they were overshadowed by it, looking up at walls and domes and towers whose size was so tremendous it was almost impossible to guess at their true extent.

"There's a gate," she said. "There! Go through and I'll say farewell. I'll try to save the child myself and you can give yourself up to lost beliefs and so lose the beliefs you currently hold!"

And now Elric looked closer at the walls, which were like jade, and he saw dark shapes within the walls and he saw that the dark shapes were the figures of men, women and children. He gasped as he stepped forward to peer at them, observing living faces, eyes which were undying, lips frozen in expressions of terror, of anguish, of misery. They were like so many flies in amber.

"That's the unchanging past, Prince Elric," said Oone. "That's the fate of those who seek to reclaim their lost beliefs without first experiencing the search for new ones. This city has another name. Dreamthieves call it the City of Inventive Cowardice. You would not understand the twists of logic which brought so many to this pass! Which made them force those they loved to share their fate. Would you stay with them, Prince Elric, and nurse your lost beliefs?"

The albino turned away with a shudder. "But if they could see what had happened to earlier travelers, why did they continue into the city?"

"They blinded themselves to the obvious. That is the great triumph of mindless need over intelligence and the human spirit."

Together the two returned to the path below the city and Elric was relieved when the beautiful towers were far behind and they had passed through several more great caverns, each with its own city, though none as magnificent as the first. These he had felt no desire to visit, though he had detected movement in some and Oone had said she suspected not all were as dangerous as the City of Inventive Cowardice.

"You called this world the Dream Realm," he said, "and indeed it's well-named, madam, for it seems to contain a catalogue of dreams, and not a few nightmares. It's almost as if the place was born of a poet's brain, so strange are some of the sights."

"I told you," she said, speaking more warmly now that he had acknowledged the danger, "much of what you witness here is the semi-formed stuff of realities other worlds, such as yours and mine, are yet to witness. To what extent they will come to exist elsewhere I do not know. These places have been fashioned over centuries by a succession of dreamthieves, imposing form on what is otherwise formless."

Elric was now beginning to understand better what he had been told by Oone. "Rather than making a map of what exists, you impose your own map upon it!"

"To a degree. We do not invent. We merely describe in a particular way. By that means we can make pathways through each of the myriad Dream Realms for, in this alone, the realms comply one with the other."

"In reality there could be a thousand different lands in each realm?"

"If you would see it so. Or an infinity of lands. Or one with an infinity of aspects. Roads are made so that the traveler without a compass may not wander too far from their destination." She laughed almost gaily. "The fanciful names we give these places are not from any poetical impulse, nor from whim, but from a certain necessity. Our survival depends on accurate descriptions!"

"Your words have a profundity to them, madam. Though my survival has also tended to depend on a good, sharp blade!"

"While you depend upon your blade, Prince Elric, you condemn yourself to a singular fate."

"You predict my death, eh, madam?"

Oone shook her head, her beautiful lips forming an expression of utmost sympathy and tenderness. "Death is inevitable to almost all of us, in some shape or another. And I'll admit, if Chaos ever conquered Chaos, then you would be the instrument of that remarkable conquest. It would be sad indeed, Prince Elric, if in taming Chaos you destroyed yourself and all you loved into the bargain!"

"I promise you, Lady Oone, to do my best to avoid such a fate." And Elric wondered at the look in the dreamthief's eyes and then chose not to speculate further.

They walked through a forest of stalagmites and stalactites now, all of the same glowing colours, dark greens and dark blues and rich reds, and there was a musical sound as water splashed from roof to floor. Every so often a huge drop would fall on one or the other of them but such was the nature of the caverns that they were soon dry again. They had begun to relax and walked arm in arm, almost merry, and it was only then that they saw the figures flitting between the upward-thrusting fangs of rock.

"Swordsmen," murmured Elric. He added ironically, "This is when a weapon would be useful ..." His mind was half with the situation, half feeling its way out through the worlds of the elementals, seeking some kind of spell, some supernatural aid, but he was baffled. It seemed that the mental paths he was used to following were blocked to him.

The warriors were veiled. They were dressed in heavy flowing cloaks and their heads were protected by helms of metal and leather. Elric had the impression of cold, hard eyes with tattooed lids and knew at once that these were members of the Sorcerer Assassin Guild from Quarzhasaat, left behind when their fellows had retreated from the Dream Realms. Doubtless they were trapped here. It was clear, however, that they did not intend to parley with Elric and Oone, but were closing in, following a familiar pattern of attack.

Elric was struck by a strangeness about these men. They lacked a certain fluidity of movement and, the closer they came, the more he realized that it was almost possible to see past their eyes and into the hollows of their skulls. These were not ordinary mortals. He had seen men like them in Imrryr once, when he had gone with his father on one of those rare times when Sadric chose to take him upon some local expedition, out to an old arena whose high walls imprisoned certain Melniboneans who had lost their souls in pursuit of sorcerous knowledge, but whose bodies still lived. They, too, had seemed to be possessed of a cold, raging hatred against any not like themselves.

Oone cried out and moved rapidly, dropping to one knee as a sword struck at her, then clattered against one of the great pointed pillars. So close together were the stalagmites that it was difficult for the swordsmen to swing or to stab and for a while both the albino and the dreamthief ducked and dodged the blades until one cut Elric's arm and he saw, almost in surprise, that the man had drawn blood.

The Prince of Melnibone knew that it was just a matter of time before they were both killed and, as he fell back against one of the great rocky teeth, he felt the stalagmite move behind him. Some trick of the cavern had weakened the rock and it was loose. He flung all of his weight forward against it. It began to topple. Quickly he got his body in front of it, supporting the thing on his shoulder, then, with all his energy he ran with the great rocky spear at his nearest assailant.

The point of the rock drove full into the veiled man's chest. The Sorcerer Assassin uttered a bleak, agonized shout, and strange, unnatural blood began to well up around the stone, gushing down and soaking into the warrior's bones, almost reabsorbed by him. Elric sprang forward and dragged the sabre and the poignard from his hands even as another of the attackers came upon him from the rear. All his battle cunning and his war skills returned to Elric. Long before he had come by Stormbringer he had learned the arts of the sword and the dagger, of the bow and the lance, and now he had no need of an enchanted blade to make short work of the second Sorcerer Assassin, then a third. Shouting to Oone to help herself to weapons, he darted from rock to rock, taking one of the warriors at a time. They moved sluggishly, uncertainly now, yet none ran from him.

Soon Oone had joined him, showing that she was as accomplished a fighter as he. He admired the delicacy of her technique, the sureness of her hands as she parried and thrust, striking with the utmost efficiency and piling up her corpses with all the economy of a cat in a nest of rats.

Elric took time to grin over his shoulder. "For one who so recently extolled the virtues of words over the sword, you show yourself well-accomplished with a blade, madam!"

"It is often as well to have the experience of both before one makes the choice," she said. She despatched another of their assailants. "And there are times, Prince Elric, I'll admit, when a decent piece of steel has a certain advantage over a neatly turned phrase!"

They fought together like two old friends. Their techniques were complementary but not dissimilar. Both fought as the best soldiers fight, with neither cruelty nor pleasure in the killing, but with the intention of winning as quickly as possible, while causing as little pain to their opponents.

These opponents appeared to suffer no pain, as such, but every time one died he offered up the same disturbing wail of anguish and the blood which poured from the wounds was strange stuff indeed.

At last the man and the woman were done and stood leaning on their borrowed blades panting and seeking to control that nausea which so often follows a battle.

Then, as Elric watched, the corpses around them swiftly faded, leaving only a few swords behind. The blood too disappeared. There was virtually nothing to say that a fight had taken place in that great cavern.

"Where have they gone?"

Oone picked up a sheath and fitted her new sabre into it. For all her words, she clearly had no intention of proceeding any further without arms. She placed two daggers in her belt. "Gone? Ah." She hesitated. "To whatever pool of half-living ectoplasm they came from." She shook her head. "They were almost phantasms, Prince Elric, but not quite. They were, as I told you, what the Sorcerer Adventurers left behind."

"You mean part of them returned to our own world, as part of Alnac returned?"

"Exactly." She drew a breath and made as if to continue.

"Then why shall we not find Alnac here? Still alive?"

"Because we do not seek him," she said. And she spoke with all her old firmness, enough to make Elric proceed only a degree further with the subject.

"And perhaps anyway we would not find him here, as we found the Sorcerer Adventurers, in the Land of Lost Beliefs," said the albino quietly.

"True," she said.

Then Elric took her in his arms for a moment and they remained, embracing, for a few seconds, until they were ready to continue forward, seeking the Celador Gate.

Later, as Elric helped his ally across another natural bridge, below which flowed a river of dull brown stuff, Oone said to him, "This is no ordinary adventure for me, Prince Elric. That is why I needed you to come with me."

A little puzzled as to why she should, after all, say something which they had both taken for granted, Elric did not reply.

When the snout-faced women attacked them, with nets and spikes, it did not take them long to cut their way free and drive the cowardly creatures off, and neither were they greatly inconvenienced by the vulpine things which loped on their hind-legs and had claws like birds. They even joked together as they despatched packs of snapping beasts which resembled nothing so much as horses the size of dogs and spoke a few words of a human tongue, though without any sense of the meaning.

Now at last they were reaching the borders of Paranor and saw looming ahead of them two enormous towers of carved rock, with little balconies and windows and terraces and crenelations, all covered in old ivy and climbing brambles bearing light yellow fruit.

"It is the Celador Gate," said Oone. She seemed reluctant to approach it. Her hand on the hilt of her sword, her other arm linked with Elric's, she stopped and drew a deep, slow breath. "It is the land of forests."

"You called it the Land of Forgotten Love," said Elric.

"Aye. That's the dreamthieves' name." She laughed a little sardonically.

Elric, uncertain of her mood and not wishing to intrude upon her, held back also, looking from her to the gate and back again.

She reached a hand to his bone-white features. Her own skin was golden, still full of enormous vitality. She stared into his face. Then, with a sigh, she turned away and stepped towards the gate, taking his hand and pulling him after her.

They passed between the towers and here Elric's nostrils immediately were filled with the rich smells of leaf and turf. All around them were massive oak-trees and elms and birches and every other kind of tree, yet all of them, though they formed a canopy, grew not beneath the light of the open sky but were nurtured by the oddly glowing rocks in the cavern ceilings. Elric had thought it impossible for trees to grow underground and he marveled at the health, the very ordinariness, of everything.

It was therefore with some astonishment that he observed a creature emerge from the wood and plant itself firmly on the path along which they must move.

"Halt! I must know your business!" His face was covered in brown fur and his teeth were so prominent, his ears so large, his eyes so large and doelike, he resembled nothing so much as an overgrown rabbit, though he was armoured solidly in battered brass, with a brass cap upon his head and his weapons, a sword and spear of workmanlike steel, were also bound in brass.

"We seek merely to pass through this land without doing harm or being harmed," said Oone.

The rabbit-warrior shook his head. "Too vague," he said, and suddenly he hefted his spear and plunged the point deep into the bole of an oak. The oak tree screamed. "That's what he told me. And many more of these."

"The trees were travelers?" said Elric. "Your name, sir?"

"I am Elric of Melnibone and, like my lady Oone here, I mean you no disturbance. We travel on to Imador."

"I know no 'Elric' or 'Oone.' I am the Count of Magnes Doar and I hold this land as my own. By my conquest. By my ancient right. You must go back through the gate."

"We cannot," said Oone. "To retreat would mean our destruction."

"To proceed, madam, would mean the same thing. What? Shall you camp at the gates for ever?"

"No, sir," she said. She put her hand to the hilt of her sword. "We will hack our way through your forest if need be. We are on urgent business and will accept no halt."

The rabbit-warrior pulled the spear from the oak, which ceased to scream, and flung it into another tree. This, in turn, set up a swirling and a moaning until even the Count of Magnes Doar shook his head in irritation and drew his weapon out of the trunk. "You must fight me, I think," he said.

It was then that they heard a yell from the other side of the right pillar and something white and rearing appeared there. It was another of the pale riders in armour of bone, tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, his horrible eyes slitted with hatred, his horse's hoofs beating at a barrier which had not been there when Oone and Elric passed through.

Then it was down and the warrior was charging.

The albino and the dreamthief made to defend themselves, but it was the Count of Magnes Doar who moved ahead of them and jabbed his spear up at the warrior's body. Steel was deflected by an armour stronger than it looked and the sword rose and fell, almost contemptuously, slicing down through the brass helm into the brain of the rabbit-warrior. He staggered backwards, his hands clutching at his head, his sword and spear abandoned. His round brown eyes seemed to grow still wider and he began to squeal. He turned slowly, round and round, then fell to his knees.

Elric and Oone had positioned themselves behind the bole of one of the oaks, ready to defend themselves when the rider attacked.

The horse reared again, snorting with the same mindless fury as its master, and Elric darted from his cover, seized the dropped spear and stabbed up to where the breastplate and gorget joined, sliding the spearhead expertly into the warrior's throat.

There came a choking sound which in turn grew to a familiar chuckling and the rider had turned his horse and was riding ahead of them again, along the path through the forest, his body swaying and jerking as if in its death agonies, yet still borne on by the horse.

They watched it disappear.

Elric was trembling. "If I had not already seen him die on the bridge from Sadanor I would swear that was the same man who attacked me there. He has a puzzling familiarity."

"You did not see him die," said Oone. "You saw him plunge into the river."