And when Elric had told his three lies to Cymoril, his betrothed, and had set his ambitious cousin Yyrkoon as Regent on the Ru
heights was as unostentatious as it was lovely. These two, Elric
was told, had elected three members each to the Council, while the
seventh, always nameless and simply called the Sexocrat (who ruled
the Six), maintained a balance, able to sway any vote one way or
the other. The ear of the Sexocrat was most profoundly desired by
all the many rivals in the city, even by Baroness Narfis and Duke
Ral.
Uninterested in Quarzhasaat's ornate politics as he was in his
own, Elric's reason for being here was curiosity and the fact that
Quarzhasaat was clearly the only haven in a great wasteland lying
north of the nameless mountains dividing the Sighing Desert from
the Weeping Waste.
Moving his exhausted bones on the thin straw of his pallet, Elric
wondered sardonically if he would be buried here without the
people ever knowing that the hereditary ruler of their nation's
greatest enemies had died amongst them. He wondered if this had
after all been the fate his gods had in store for him: nothing as
grandiose as he had dreamed of and yet it had its attractions.
When he had left Filkhar in haste and some confusion, he had taken
the first ship out of Raschil and it had brought him to Jadmar,
where he had chosen wilfully to trust an old Ilmioran drunkard who
had sold him a map showing fabled Tanelorn. As the albino had half-
guessed, the map proved a deception, leading him far from any kind
of human habitation. He had considered crossing the mountains to
make for Karlaak by the Weeping Waste but on consulting his own
map, of more reliable Melnibonéan manufacture, he had discovered
Quarzhasaat to be significantly closer. Riding north on a steed
already half-dead from heat and starvation, he had found only
dried river-beds and exhausted oases, for in his wisdom he had
chosen to cross the desert in a time of drought. He had failed to
find fabled Tanelorn and, it seemed, would not even catch sight of
a city which, in his people's histories, was almost as fabulous.
As was usual for them, Melnibonéan chroniclers showed only a
passing interest in defeated rivals, but Elric remembered that
Quarzhasaat's own sorcery was said to have contributed to her
extinction as a threat to her half-human enemies: A misplaced
rune, he understood, uttered by Fophean Dals, the Sorcerer Duke,
ancestor to the present Duke Ral, in a spell meant to flood the
Melnibonéan army with sand and build a bulwark about the entire
nation. Elric was still to discover how this accident was
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