Elric of Melniboné

It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh, and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the colour of bone, resting on each arm of a seat which has been carved from a single massive ruby. The crimson eyes are troubled and sometimes one hand will rise to finger the light helm which sits upon the white locks, a helm made from some dark greenish alloy and exquisitely moulded into the likeness of a dragon about to take wing, and on the hand which absently caresses the crown there is a ring in which is set a single rare actorious stone, whose core sometimes shifts sluggishly and reshapes itself, as if it were sentient smoke and as restless in its jewelled prison as the young albino on his ruby throne. He looks down the long flight of quartz steps to where his court disports itself, dancing with such delicacy and whispering grace that it might be a court of ghosts. Mentally he debates moral issues, and in itself this activity divides him from the great majority of his subjects, for these people are not human. These are the people of Melniboné, the Dragon Isle, which ruled the world for ten thousand years and has ceased to rule it for less than five hundred years, and they are cruel and clever, and to them morality means little more than a proper respect for the traditions of a hundred centuries.