Duke Elric

"Michael Moorcock's work as a critic, as an editor and as a writer has made it easier for me and a whole generation of us to roam the 'moonbeam roads' of the literary multiverse." from the Foreword by Michael Chabon Has there ever been a heroor anti-heroto match Elric of Melnibone, last emperor of an ancient civilization sunk into decadence and inhuman cruelty? Elric the albino, weary of life and enamored of death, bearer of the soul-devouring black sword Stormbringer, cursed to betray all he loves and to save that which he despises: In the unending battle between the forces of Law and Chaos, he is the wildest card of all. Del Rey proudly presents the fourth in its definitive collection of stories featuring fantasy Grand Master Michael Moorcock's greatest creation. Here is the full novel The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, the script of the DC comic Duke Elric, the new story "The Flaneur des Arcades de l'Opera," essays by Moorcock and others, and a selection of classic artwork. Lavishly illustrated by Justin Sweet, with a Foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, Duke Elric is essential for all fans of the fantastic. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Michael John Moorcock (born 1939) is a prolific British writer primarily of science fiction and science fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels. His most popular works by far have been the Elric novels. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, Moorcock fostered the development of the New Wave in the UK and indirectly in the U.S. He won the Nebula Award for his novella Behold the Man,which tells the story of a time traveler who takes on the role of Christ. He has also won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and many others, and in 2008 was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Book One

Sailing to the Future


Chapter One  

IT WAS AS IF the man stood in a vast cavern whose walls and roof were composed of gloomy, unstable colours which would occasionally break and admit rays of light from the moon. That these walls were mere clouds massed above mountains and ocean was hard to believe, for all that the moonlight pierced them, stained them and revealed the black and turbulent sea washing the shore on which the man now stood. 

Distant thunder rolled; distant lightning flickered. A thin rain fell. And the clouds were never still. From dusky jet to deadly white they swirled slowly, like the cloaks of men and women engaged in a trancelike and formalistic minuet; the man standing on the shingle of the grim beach was reminded of giants dancing to the music of the faraway storm and felt as one must feel who walks unwittingly into a hall where the gods are at play. He turned his gaze from the clouds to the ocean. The sea seemed weary. Great waves heaved themselves together with difficulty and collapsed as if in relief, gasping as they struck sharp rocks. 

The man pulled his hood closer about his face and he looked over his leathern shoulder more than once as he trudged closer to the sea and let the surf spill upon the toes of his knee-length black boots. He tried to peer into the cavern formed by the clouds but could see only a short distance. There was no way of telling what lay on the other side of the ocean or, indeed, how far the water extended. He put his head on one side, listening carefully, but could hear nothing but the sounds of the sky and the sea. He sighed. For a moment a moonbeam touched him and from the white flesh of his face there glowed two crimson, tormented eyes; then darkness came back. Again the man turned, plainly fearing that the light had revealed him to some enemy. Making as little sound as possible, he headed towards the shelter of the rocks on his left. Elric was tired. In the city of Ryfel in the land of Pikarayd he had naïvely sought acceptance by offering his services as a mercenary in the army of the governor of that place. For his foolishness he had been imprisoned as a Melnibonéan spy (it was obvious to the governor that Elric could be nothing else) and had but recently escaped with the aid of bribes and some minor sorcery. 

The pursuit, however, had been almost immediate. Dogs of great cunning had been employed and the governor himself had led the hunt beyond the borders of Pikarayd and into the lonely, uninhabited shale valleys of a world locally called the Dead Hills, in which little grew or tried to live. 

Up the steep sides of small mountains, whose slopes consisted of grey, crumbling slate, which made a clatter to be heard a mile or more away, the white-faced one had ridden. Along dales all but grassless and whose river-bottoms had seen no water for scores of years, through cave-tunnels bare of even a stalactite, over plateaux from which rose cairns of stones erected by a forgotten folk, he had sought to escape his pursuers, and soon it seemed to him that he had left the world he knew for ever, that he had crossed a supernatural frontier and had arrived in one of those bleak places of which he had read in the legends of his people, where once Law and Chaos had fought each other to a stalemate, leaving their battleground empty of life and the possibility of life. And at last he had ridden his horse so hard that its heart had burst and he had abandoned its corpse and continued on foot, panting to the sea, to this narrow beach, unable to go farther forward and fearing to return lest his enemies should be lying in wait for him. 

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Excerpted from Duke Elric by Michael Moorcock
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