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Title: The Worm Ouroboros
Author: E. R. Eddison
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Title: The Worm Ouroboros
Author: E. R. Eddison
CONTENTS:
THE INDUCTIONI The Castle of Lord Juss
II The Wrastling for Demonland
III The Red Foliot
IV Conjuring in the Iron Tower
V King Gorice’s Sending
VI The Claws of Witchland
VII Guests of the King in Carcë
VIII The First Expedition to Impland
IX Salapanta Hills
X The Marchlands of the Moruna
XI The Burg of Eshgrar Ogo
XII Koshtra Pivrarcha
XIII Koshtra Belorn
XIV The Lake of Ravary
XV Queen Prezmyra
XVI The Lady Sriva’s Embassage
XVII The King Flies His Haggard
XVIII The Murther of Gallandus by Corsus
XIX Thremnir’s Heugh
XX King Corinius
XXI The Parley Before Krothering
XXII Aurwath and Switchwater
XXIII The Weird Begun of Ishnain Nemartra
XXIV A King in Krothering
XXV Lord Gro and the Lady Mevrian
XXVI The Battle of Krothering Side
XXVII The Second Expedition to Impland
XXVIII Zora Rach Nam Psarrion
XXIX The Fleet at Muelva
XXX Tidings of Melikaphkhaz
XXXI The Demons Before Carcë
XXXII The Latter End of All the Lords of Witchland
XXXIII Queen Sophonisba in Galing
ARGUMENT: WITH DATES
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE VERSESTo W.G.E. and to my friends K.H. and G.C.L.M.
I dedicate this book
It is neither allegory nor fable but a Story to be read for its own sake.
The proper names I have tried to spell simply. The e in Carcë is
long, like that in Phryne, the o in Krothering short and the accent
on that syllable: Corund is accented on the first syllable, Prezmyra
on the second, Brandoch Daha on the first and fourth, Gorice on the
last syllable, rhyming with thrice: Corinius rhymes with Flaminius,
Galing with sailing, La Fireez with desire ease: ch is always
guttural, as in loch.
E.R.E.
9th January 1922
THE INDUCTIONTHERE was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wasdale,
set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen
Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time. Lily and rose and larkspur
bloomed in the borders, and begonias with blossoms big as saucers, red
and white and pink and lemon-colour, in the beds before the porch.
Climbing roses, honeysuckle, clematis, and the scarlet flame-flower
scrambled up the walls. Thick woods were on every side without the
garden, with a gap north-eastward opening on the desolate lake and the
great fells beyond it: Gable rearing his cragbound head against the
sky from behind the straight clean outline of the Screes.
Cool long shadows stole across the tennis lawn. The air was golden.
Doves murmured in the trees; two chaffinches played on the near post
of the net; a little water-wagtail scurried along the path. A French
window stood open to the garden, showing darkly a dining-room panelled
with old oak, its Jacobean table bright with flowers and silver and
cut glass and Wedgwood dishes heaped with fruit: greengages, peaches,
and green muscat grapes. Lessingham lay back in a hammock-chair
watching through the blue smoke of an after-dinner cigar the warm
light on the Gloire de Dijon roses that clustered about the bedroom
window overhead. He had her hand in his. This was their House.
“Should we finish that chapter of Njal?” she said.
She took the heavy volume with its faded green cover, and read: “He
went out on the night of the Lord’s day, when nine weeks were still to
winter; he heard a great crash, so that he thought both heaven and
earth shook. Then he looked into the west airt, and he thought he saw
thereabouts a ring of fiery hue, and within the ring a man on a gray
horse. He passed quickly by him, and rode hard. He had a flaming
firebrand in his hand, and he rode so close to him that he could see
him plainly. He was black as pitch, and he sung this song with a
mighty voice—”
Here I ride swift steed.
His flank flecked with rime.
Rain from his mane drips.
Horse mighty for harm;
Flames flare at each end.
Gall glows in the midst.
So fares it with Flosi’s redes
As this flaming brand flies;
And so fares it with Flosi’s redes
As this flaming brand flies.
“‘Then he thought he hurled the firebrand east towards the fells
before him, and such a blaze of fire leapt up to meet it that he could
not see the fells for the blaze. It seemed as though that man rode
east among the flames and vanished there.
“‘After that he went to his bed, and was senseless for a long time,
but at last he came to himself. He bore in mind all that had happened,
and told his father, but he bade him tell it to Hjallti Skeggi’s son.
So he went and told Hjallti, but he said he had seen “the Wolf’s Ride,
and that comes ever before great tidings.”’”
They were silent awhile; then Lessingham said suddenly, “Do you mind
if we sleep in the east wing tonight?”
“What, in the Lotus Room?”
“Yes.”
“I’m too much of a lazy-bones tonight, dear,” she answered.
“Do you mind if I go alone, then? I shall be back to breakfast. I like
my lady with me; still, we can go again when next moon wanes. My pet
is not frightened, is she?”
“No!” she said, laughing. But her eyes were a little big. Her fingers
played with his watch-chain. “I’d rather,” she said presently, “you
went later on and took me. All this is so odd still: the House, and
that; and I love it so. And after all, it is a long way and several
years too, sometimes, in the Lotus Room, even though it is all over
next morning. I’d rather we went together. If anything happened then,
well, we’d both be done in, and it wouldn’t matter so much, would it?”
“Both be what?” said Lessingham. “I’m afraid your language is not all
that might be wished.”
“Well, you taught me!” said she; and they laughed.
They sat there till the shadows crept over the lawn and up the trees,
and the high rocks of the mountain shoulder beyond burned red in the
evening rays. He said, “If you like to stroll a bit of way up the
fell-side, Mercury is visible tonight. We might get a glimpse of him
just after sunset.”
A little later, standing on the open hillside below the hawking bats,
they watched for the dim planet that showed at last low down in the
west between the sunset and the dark.
He said, “It is as if Mercury had a finger on me tonight, Mary. It’s
no good my trying to sleep tonight except in the Lotus Room.”
Her arm tightened in his. “Mercury?” she said. “It is another world.
It is too far.”
But he laughed and said, “Nothing is too far.”
They turned back as the shadows deepened. As they stood in the dark of
the arched gate leading from the open fell into the garden, the soft
clear notes of a spinet sounded from the house. She put up a finger.
“Hark,” she said. “Your daughter playing Les Barricades.”
They stood listening. “She loves playing,” he whispered. “I’m glad we
taught her to play.” Presently he whispered again, “_Les Barricades
Mysterieuses_. What inspired Couperin with that enchanted name? And
only you and I know what it really means. _Les Barricades
Mysterieuses_.”
That night Lessingham lay alone in the Lotus Room. Its casements
opened eastward on the sleeping woods and the sleeping bare slopes of
Illgill Head. He slept soft and deep; for that was the House of
Postmeridian, and the House of Peace.
In the deep and dead time of the night, when the waning moon peered
over the mountain shoulder, he woke suddenly. The silver beams shone
through the open window on a form perched at the foot of the bed: a
little bird, black, round-headed, short-beaked, with long sharp wings,
and eyes like two stars shining. It spoke and said, “Time is.”
So Lessingham got up and muffled himself in a great cloak that lay on
a chair beside the bed. He said, “I am ready, my little martlet.” For
that was the House of Heart’s Desire.
Surely the martlet’s eyes filled all the room with starlight. It was
an old room with lotuses carved on the panels and on the bed and
chairs and roofbeams; and in the glamour the carved flowers swayed
like waterlilies in a lazy stream. He went to the window, and the
little martlet sat on his shoulder. A chariot coloured like the halo
about the moon waited by the window, poised in air, harnessed to a
strange steed. A horse it seemed,9 but winged like an eagle, and its
fore-legs feathered and armed with eagle’s claws instead of hooves. He
entered the chariot, and that little martlet sat on his knee.
With a whirr of wings the wild courser sprang skyward. The night about
them was like the tumult of bubbles about a diver’s ears diving in a
deep pool under a smooth steep rock in a mountain cataract. Time was
swallowed up in speed; the world reeled; and it was but as the space
between two deep breaths till that strange courser spread wide his
rainbow wings and slanted down the night over a great island that
slumbered on a slumbering sea, with lesser isles about it: a country
of rock mountains and hill pastures and many waters, all a-glimmer in
the moonshine.
They landed within a gate crowned with golden lions. Lessingham came
down from the chariot, and the little black martlet circled about his
head, showing him a yew avenue leading from the gates. As in a dream,
he followed her.
I THE CASTLE OF LORD JUSSOf the rarities that were in the lofty presence
chamber, fair and lovely to behold, and of the
qualities and conditions of the lords of
Demonland: and of the embassy sent unto them by
King Gorice XI., and of the answer thereto.
THE eastern stars were paling to the dawn as
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