The Gypsy Prince unfolded himself more slowly, but with considerable grace. “I am glad to see you looking healthier, friend Elric.”
“Here they come,” called Pogokhashman, rising to his full, towering height. “God'damn they’re ugly!”
Having screwed up their courage to face the giant, the beast-men came on now without stopping, a seemingly unending tide of brutal, unthinking bloodlust. Despite their bravery and steadfastness, Uendrijj’s soldiery were dragged down one by one; some of those overcome did not die for hours, and their screams seemed to darken the air like shadows. Before the long afternoon had waned, only Elric, the prince, and the giant youth still stood against the horde.
As the sun fell into the West behind the ceaseless tide of attackers, the albino and the Gypsy Prince fought on, side by side. Elric shouted and roared, siphoning strength from his defeated enemies. Uendrijj chanted, plying his ivory sword with the fierce calm of a warrior monk. The swords gave voice, too, all through the long afternoon, Stormbringer’s exultant howl was capped and counterpointed by Cloudhurler’s complex, cascading song, as though the two weapons performed some arch-exotic concert piece. For hour upon hour the blades sang and their duochrome flicker scythed the awkward beast-men like a field of flowers... but these flowers had fierce thorns: both Elric and Shemei Uendrijj sustained many small wounds.
Pogokhashman retained his giant’s form, although in the few brief glimpses he could snatch, Elric could see that his companion’s strength was flagging. The youth stationed himself just far enough away to avoid treading on his allies by accident, but close enough that he could protect them when they were too hard- pressed. Despite great weariness, he flailed about him with splintering tree trunks, shouting “It’s hit deep to center-field! It could be... yes! It’s a bye-bye baby!” and other incomprehensible battle-cries, and causing vast carnage among the Chaos army. But still the horde came on. Their numbers seemed endless.
Uendrijj had stooped to pick up his ivory sword, which had slipped from his blood-slicked hands. Elric stood over him, keeping a small knot of attackers at bay. Stormbringer had drunk deep of the half-souls of beast-men, but it still thirsted. Elric was almost drunk on stolen vitality. If he were to die, it would be laughing, bathed in the gore of his enemies.
“I think you enjoy this,” Uendrijj shouted above the din as he straightened up. “I wish I could say the same, but it is only horrible, wearisome slaughter.”
Elric brought Stormbringer down in an almost invisibly swift arc, crushing the gray, jackal-eared head of one of their attackers. “War is only life speeding at a faster pace, O Prince!” he cried, although he did not know exactly what he meant. Before he could say more, Pogokhashman’s rumbling voice filled the air.
“The sun! Whoah, man — check it out!”
Elric looked up to the far horizon. The sun hung there, a flat red disc, but something huge and dark had moved across its face. But this was no mere eclipse, unless an eclipse had arms.
“The Chronophage!” screamed Uendrijj, and drove into the beast-men before him, clearing an opening.
“Lift us up, Pogokhashman,” Elric shouted to his companion. The giant youth squelched through the intervening foes and lifted his two allies in a palm the size of a barge.
The many-armed shape on the far horizon was an empty, lightless black that burned at the edges, as though an octopus-shaped hole had been scorched through the substance of reality. As they watched, the tentacles lashed across the sky; where they passed, nothing remained but sucking blackness. Lightning began to flicker all through the firmament.
The beast-men shrieked, a terrible howling that forced Elric to cover his ears, then the whole horde turned and fled down the far side of the hill, swarming and hobbling like scorched ants. They no longer seemed to care whether they destroyed Elric and his allies or not, but were only intent on staying ahead of the all-devouring Chronophage. Within moments the hill was empty but for the giant and the two men in his hand. The Chaos horde had become a fast-diminishing cloud of dust moving toward the eastern horizon.
“The greater enemy is here,” said Uendrijj. “True doom is at hand.”
V
As he gasped, struggling to regain his breath, Pogo decided that jimi’s remark was rather unnecessary. The giant, flaming squid-thing was pretty hard to miss.
But it wasn’t Jimi, though. Not exactly. It was hard to keep that straight when it looked like you were holding Mister Electric Ladyland himself in your sweaty palm, but this guy was some other Hendrix — a reincarnation or something. Still, it had been very satisfying to discover that he had been right after all: the Man had been calling him. Those eyes, that sly smile — however he talked, it was still Jimi.
“So what do we do now?” he asked. He hurt all over and his arm was so tired it trembled. He reflected briefly on how embarrassing it would be to drop the multiverse’s greatest guitar player on his head. “There isn’t any such thing as 911 in this world, is there? I mean, a SWAT unit would be kinda comforting right now.”
Elric and J imi winced. Pogo felt bad; he’d have to remember how loud his voice was in this giant size. Not that he’d be able to stay this way much longer. His muscles were throbbing like the first day of gym class, and he already had the grandaddy of all hangovers.
“We go forward — probably to die,” said Hendrix. It was weird hearing the same Educational TV-type speech that Elric used coming out of Jimi’s mouth, but Pogo had finally gotten used to it.
“We have stood together,” said Elric. “We will fall together, too.”
Pogo made a face. Elric with his strength back was a pretty bitchin’ act — more than a little scary, too — but you could carry this King Arthur stuff too far. “How about we win and we don’t die? I like that idea better.”
Elric’s blood-flecked smile was painful to see. “It has been a rare pleasure knowing you, Pogokhashman. But what the Lords of the Higher Planes themselves cannot defeat....”
“But I was listening! You said those High Plains dudes brought you guys together on purpose, or something like that! Why would they do that if you couldn’t win? Seems like there must be easier ways to get you two rubbed out if that’s all they wanted.”
Hendrix and Elric exchanged glances. “Perhaps there is something in what he says,” Jimi said slowly. “Perhaps....”
“I mean look at you two! You’re like... mirror images, kinda. I mean, maybe you’re supposed to... I don’t know... form a supergroup! Like Blind Faith!” He darted a look at the western horizon. The Chronophage was spreading. Bits of the land itself had begun to disappear, as if they had been gnawed by rats the size of continents.
Elric stared hard at Pogo, then turned to Jimi. “Raise your blade again, Uendrijj,” he said.
Jimi hesitated, then lifted the white sword. Elric pushed Stormbringer forward until the tips touched. “I have long since given up any kind of faith, blind or otherwise,” the albino said, “but perhaps....”
The place where the swords met began to glow with a deep blue light. As Pogo watched, hypnotized, the blue spread and enveloped both men. Pogo could feel a tingling in his palm where they stood. There was a sudden azure flash, bright as a gas-flame turned up to “infinity.” When Pogo could see again, only one figure remained in his hand. It wasn’t Elric.
It wasn’t Jimi, either.
She was tall and slender and absolutely naked, her skin a beautiful coffee- and-cream color, her hair streaked both black and white. Beneath her long lashes were eyes like golden coins. In her hand she held a slim gray sword.
“It is not a moment too soon,” she said in a voice as naturally melodious as birdsong.
Pogo stared, slack-jawed and dry-lipped. He felt big, dumb, and sweaty — and seventy feet tall made for a lot of all three. He had never developed a swifter crush, not even the one on Miss Brinkman, his fifth-grade teacher, who had worn tartan miniskirts. “Um, who... who are you?”
“I am the place where Law and Chaos come together, Pogo Cashman,” she said, “— summoned by the joining of two sundered souls. I am that place, that moment, where seeming opposites are reconciled. Wrong needs right to exist; night must have its sibling day. The red queen and the white are in truth inseparable.” She raised her arms and held the sword over her head. It was oddly unreflective. “You might call me Harmony — or Memory, or even History. I am that which holds the fabric of Time together — its guardian.”
“Kind of like Glinda from the Wizard of Oz?”
“You have played your part. Now I am free to play mine.” As she spoke, she rose from his hand like a wind-tossed dandelion seed, and hovered. He wanted to look at her body — she was exquisite — but it seemed wrong, like wanting to touch up the Virgin Mary or something. She smiled as if she sensed his thought. Just the sight made his heart skip two beats.
“Your time here is almost done,” she said. “But the multiverse holds many adventures for you... if you only look for them.”
Abruptly she turned and was gone, tlying just like a comic-book heroine toward the hideous smear on the horizon, the gray sword lifted before her. Pogo thought she was unutterably, heartbreakingly beautiful. At the same time, she sort of reminded him of the hood ornament on a Rolls Royce.
He quickly lost sight of her against the pulsating black of the Chronophage, although he felt as though a part of him had gone with her. Deciding there was nothing more he could do, Pogo sat down on the ground, then allowed himself to shrink back to his normal size. He sighed with pleasure as his natural stature returned: it was like taking off the world’s tightest pair of shoes.
Something flickered on the horizon. As Pogo stared, still dizzy from changing sizes, the Chronophage writhed; then a searing streak of light moved across one of the tentacles. A soundless howl tremoloed through Pogo, a noiseless vibration that shook his very bones. The great black arm withered and vanished; where it had been, the sun seemed to be growing back.
More streaks of light, like the contrails of science fiction spaceships, ripped across the Chronophage. Pogo found himself back on his feet again and cheering. One by one the other arms shriveled and disappeared, and the blighted sky and earth began to return.
When the arms had all gone, there was a moment when the rest of the Chronophage’s black body began to swell, growing larger and larger against the sky until the sun was once more obscured. Pogo’s