The Worm Ouroboros, Eric Rücker Eddison [epub ebook reader txt] 📗

me

by your questioning. Nevertheless I am utterly obedient to your

majesty’s admonition.”

 

The King rose from his chair and walked towards Gro, slowly. He was

exceeding tall, and lean as a starved cormorant. Laying his hands upon

the shoulders of Gro, and bending his face to Gro’s, “Art not

afeared,” he asked, “to abide me in this chamber, at the close of day?

Or hast not thought on’t, and on these instruments thou seest, their

use and purpose, and the ancient use of this chamber?”

 

Gro blenched never a whit, but stoutly said, “I am not afeared, O my

Lord the King, but rather rejoiced I at your summons. For it jumpeth

with mine own designs, when I took counsel secretly in my heart after

the woes that the Fates fulfilled for Witchland in the Foliot Isles.

For in that day, O King, when I beheld the light of Witchland darkened

and her might abated in the fall of King Gorice XI. of glorious

memory, I thought on you, Lord, the twelfth Gorice raised up King in

Carcë; and there was present to my mind the word of the soothsayer of

old, where he singeth:

 

Ten, eleven, tweif I see

In sequent varietie

Of puissaunce and maistrye

With swerd, sinwes, and grammarie.

In the holde of Carcë

Lordinge it royally.

 

And being minded that he singleth out you, the twelfth, as potent in

grammarie, all my care was that these Demons should be detained within

reach of your spells until we should have time to win home to you and

to apprise you of their farings, that so you might put forth your

power and destroy them by art magic or ever they come safe again to

manymountained Demonland.”

 

The King took Gro to his bosom and kissed him, saying, “Art thou not a

very jewel of wisdom and discretion? Let me embrace thee and love thee

for ever.”

 

Then the King stood back from him, keeping his hands on Gro’s

shoulders, and gazed piercingly upon him for a space in silence. Then

kindled he a taper that stood in an iron candlestick by the table

where the books lay, and held it to Gro’s face. And the King said,

“Ay, wise thou art and of good discretion, and some courage hast thou.

But if thou be to serve me this night, needs must I try thee first

with terrors till thou be inured to them, as tried gold runneth in the

crucible; or if thou be base metal only, till that thou be eaten up by

them.”

 

Gro said unto the King, “For many years, Lord, or ever I came to

Carcë, I fared up and down the world, and I am acquainted with objects

of terror as a child with his toys. I have seen in the southern seas,

by the light of Achernar and Canopus, giant sea-horses battling with

eight-legged cuttle-fishes in the whirlpools of the Korsh. Yet was I

unafraid. I was in the isle Ciona when the first of the pit brast

forth in that isle and split it as a man’s skull is split with an axe,

and the green gulfs of the sea swallowed that isle, and the stench and

the steam hung in the air for days where the burning rock and earth

had sizzled in the ocean. Yet was I unafraid. Also was I with Gaslark

in the flight out of Zajë Zaculo, when the Ghouls took the palace over

our heads, and portents walked in his halls in broad daylight, and the

Ghouls conjured the sun out of heaven. Yet was I unafraid. And for

thirty days and thirty nights wandered I alone on the face of the

Moruna in Upper Impland, where scarce a living soul hath been: and

there the evil wights that people the air of that desert dogged my

steps and gibbered at me in darkness. Yet was I unafraid; and came in

due time to Morna Moruna, and thence, standing on the lip of the

escarpment as it were on the edge of the world, looked southaway where

never mortal eye had gazed aforetime, across the untrodden forests of

the Bhavinan. And in that skyey distance, pre-eminent beyond range on

range of ice-robed mountains, I beheld two peaks throned for ever

between firm land and heaven in unearthly loveliness: the spires and

airy ridges of Koshtra Pivrarcha, and the wild precipices that soar

upward from the abysses to the queenly silent snowdome of Koshtra

Belorn.”

 

When Gro had ended, the King turned him away and, taking from a shelf

a retort filled with a dark blue fluid, set it on a bainmarie, and a

lamp thereunder. Fumes of a faint purple hue came forth from the neck

of the retort, and the King gathered them in a flask. He made signs

over the flask and shook forth into his hand therefrom a fine powder.

Then said he unto Gro, holding out the powder in the open palm of his

hand, “Look narrowly at this powder.” And Gro looked. The King

muttered an incantation, and the powder moved and heaved, and was like

a crawling mass of cheesemites in an overripe cheese. It increased in

volume in the King’s hand, and Gro perceived that each particular

grain had legs. The grains grew before his eyes, and became the size

of mustard seeds, and then of barleycorns, swiftly crawling each over

other. And even as he marvelled, they waxed great as kidney beans, and

now was their shape and seeming clear to him, so that he beheld that

they were small frogs and paddocks; and they overflowed from the

King’s hand as they waxed swiftly in size, pouring on to the floor.

And they ceased not to increase and grow; and now were they large as

little dogs, nor might the King retain more than a single one, holding

his hand under its belly while it waved its legs in the air; and they

were walking on the tables and jostling on the floor. Pallid they

were, and permeable to light like thin horn, and their hue a faint

purple, even as the hue of the vapour whence they were engendered. And

now was the room filled with them so that they mounted perforce one on

another’s shoulders, and they were of the bigness of well fatted hogs;

and they goggled their eyes at Gro and croaked. The King looked

narrowly on Gro, who stood in the presence of that spectacle, the

crown of Witchland in his hands; and the King marked that the crown

trembled not a whit in Gro’s hands that held it. So he said a certain

word, and the paddocks and the frogs grew small again, shrinking more

swiftly than they had grown, and so vanished.

 

The King now took from the shelf a ball the size of the egg of an

estridge, of dark green glass. He said unto Gro, “Look well at this

glass and tell me what thou seest.” Gro answered him, “I see a

shifting shadow within.” The King commanded him saying, “Dash it down

with all thy strength upon the floor.” The Lord Gro lifted the ball

with both hands above his head, and it was ponderous as a ball of

lead, and according to the command of Gorice the King he hurled it on

the floor, so that it was pashed in pieces. And, behold, a puff of

thick smoke burst forth from the fragments of the ball and took the

form of one of human shape and dreadful aspect, whose two legs were

two writhing snakes; and it stood in the chamber so tall that the head

of it touched the vaulted ceiling, viewing the King and Gro

malevolently and menacing them. The King caught down a sword that hung

against the wall, and put it in Gro’s hand, shouting, “Smite off the

legs of it! and delay not, or thou art but dead!” Gro smote and cut

off the left leg of the evil wight, easily, as it were cutting of

butter. But from the stump came forth two fresh snakes awrithing; and

so it fared likewise with the right leg, but the King shouted, “Smite

and cease not, or thou art but a dead dog!” and ever as Gro hewed a

snake in twain forth came two more from the wound, till the chamber

was a maze of their wriggling forms. And still Gro hewed with a will,

until the sweat stood on his brow, and he said, panting between the

strokes, “O King, I have made him many-legged as a centipede: must I

make him a myriapod ere night’s decline?” And the King smiled, and

spake a word of hidden meaning; and therewith the turmoil was gone as

a gust of wind departeth, and nought left save the shivered splinters

of the green ball on the chamber floor.

 

“Wast not afeared?” asked the King, and when Gro said nay, “Methinks

these sights of terror should much afflict thee,” said the King,

“since well I know thou art not skilled in art magical.”

 

“Yet am I a philosopher,” answered Lord Gro; “and somewhat know I of

alchymy and the hidden properties of this material world: the virtues

of herbs, plants, stones, and minerals, the ways of the stars in their

courses, and the influences of those heavenly bodies. And I have held

converse with birds and fishes in their degree, and that generation

which creepeth on the earth is not held in scorn by me, but oft talk I

in sweet companionship with the eft of the pond, and the glowworm, and

the lady-bird, and the pismire, and their kind, making them my little

gossips. So have I a certain lore which lighteth me in the outer court

of the secret temple of grammarie and art forbid, albeit I have not

peered within that temple. And by my philosophy, O King, I am

certified concerning these apparitions which you have raised for me,

that they be illusions and phantasms only, able to terrify the soul

indeed of him that knoweth not divine philosophy, but without bodily

power or essence. Nor is aught to fear in such, save the fear itself

wherewith they strike the simple.”

 

Then said the King, “By what token knowest thou this?”

 

And the Lord Gro made answer unto him, “O King, as a child weaveth a

daisy-chain, thus easily did you conjure up these shapes of terror.

Not in such wise fareth he that calleth out of the deep the deadly

terror indeed; but with toil and sweat and with straining of thought,

will, heart, and sinew fareth he.”

 

The King smiled. “Thou sayest true. Now, therefore, since

phantasmagoria maketh not thy heart to quail, I present thee a more

material horror.”

 

And he lighted the candles in the great candlesticks of iron and

opened a little secret door in the wall of the chamber near the floor;

and Gro beheld iron bars within the little door, and heard a hissing

from behind the bars. The King took a key of silver of delicate

construction, the handle slender and three spans in length, and opened

the iron grated door. And the King said, “Behold and see, that which

sprung from the egg of a cock, hatched by the deaf adder. The glance

of its eye sufficeth to turn to stone any living thing that standeth

before it. Were I but for one instant to loose my spells whereby I

hold it in subjection, in that moment would end my life days and

thine. So strong in properties of ill is this serpent which the

ancient Enemy that dwelleth in darkness hath placed upon this earth,

to be a bane unto the children of men, but an instrument of might in

the hand of enchanters and sorcerers.

 

Therewith came forth that offspring of perdition