Fantastic Metropolis

Elric of Melniboné, last of the Bright Emperors, cried out, and then his body collapsed, a sprawled husk beside its comrade, and he lay beneath the mighty balance that still hung in the sky. Then Stormbringer’s shape began to change, writhing and curling above the body of the albino, finally to stand astraddle it. The entity that was Stormbringer, last manifestation of Chaos which would remain with this new world as it grew, looked down on the corpse of Elric of Melniboné and smiled. “Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou.” And then it leapt from the Earth and went spearing upwards, its wild voice laughing mockery at the Cosmic Balance, filling the universe with its unholy joy.

—Michael Moorcock, Stormbringer

The constant battle between Law and Chaos is inherent in the human heart, and the creation of any city is an act of artifice unifying, joining, balancing those two essentials. Tanelorn, the Eternal City, is a manifestation of balance, a state of mind, a trick of the heart making a city possible, viable, livable by humans. These ancient cities play Tanelorn’s game and are grown from Tanelorn’s seed, and always they must balance against the Chaos that seeks to overwhelm them. It becomes possible to imagine the constantly resurrected Eternal Champion, sometimes a pawn of the Bringer of Storms, sometimes its foe, always fighting to maintain the balance, leading his people from ruined Harappa west, looking for Tanelorn. Dying, being reborn as Sargon, as Apepi, as Akhenaten, as Moses, as Sharru-Kin and seeking to find, and if not to find, then to build Tanelorn, to bring about that endless victory of the balance over the mad, impish, necessary force of Chaos that helped create the world and seeks always to destroy that which man creates, that bears no love in its heart for Tanelorn. Was the spirit that led Moses north from Egypt and into the desert, away from cities, to wander for forty years and die without ever seeing one again really the God of his fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac? Or was it a sinister, sly, foreigner god, a god of scorpions and sand and storms? Why did it lead Joshua to destroy the walls of Jericho? All cities are the Eternal City, and the Eternal City is not beloved by Law or Chaos, for it seeks to use them both. A battle that will rage forever.

Looking out on the city I live in now, I see mankind forever looking for Tanelorn.

Discuss this and other heresies at Matthew Rossi’s message board.

Matthew Rossi is the author of Things That Never Were (MonkeyBrain, 2003). He has work forthcoming in Peter Crowther’s Postscripts magazine, and a new collection of essays, titled Bottled Demons, will be out next summer from Prime Books.