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

Lessingham followed his

conductor along the grass walk between the shadowy ranks of Irish

yews, that stood like soldiers mysterious and expectant in the

darkness. The grass was bathed in night-dew, and great white lilies

sleeping in the shadows of the yews loaded the air of that garden with

fragrance. Lessingham felt no touch of the ground beneath his feet,

and when he stretched out his hand to touch a tree his hand passed

through branch and leaves as though they were unsubstantial as a

moonbeam.

 

The little martlet, alighting on his shoulder, laughed in his ear.

“Child of earth,” she said, “dost think we are here in dreamland?”

 

He answered nothing, and she said, “This is no dream. Thou, first of

the children of men, art come to Mercury, where thou and I will

journey up and down for a season to show thee the lands and oceans,

the forests, plains, and ancient mountains, cities and palaces of this

world, Mercury, and the doings of them that dwell therein. But here

thou canst not handle aught, neither make the folk ware of thee, not

though thou shout thy throat hoarse. For thou and I walk here

impalpable and invisible, as it were two dreams walking.”

 

They were now on the marble steps which led from the yew walk to the

terrace opposite the great gate of the castle. “No need to unbar gates

to thee and me,” said the martlet, as they passed beneath the darkness

of that ancient portal, carved with strange devices, and clean through

the massy timbers of the bolted gate thickly riveted with silver, into

the inner court. “Go we into the lofty presence chamber and there

tarry awhile. Morning is kindling the upper air, and folk will soon be

stirring in the castle, for they lie not long abed when day begins in

Demonland. For be it known to thee, O earthborn, that this land is

Demonland, and this castle the castle of Lord Juss, and this day now

dawning his birthday, when the Demons hold high festival in Juss’s

castle to do honour unto him and to his brethren, Spitfire and Goldry

Bluszco; and these and their fathers before them bear rule from time

immemorial in Demonland, and have the lordship over all the Demons.”

 

She spoke, and the first low beams of the sun smote javelinlike

through the eastern windows, and the freshness of morning breathed and

shimmered in that lofty chamber, chasing the blue and dusky shades of

departed night to the corners and recesses, and to the rafters of the

vaulted roof. Surely no potentate of earth, not Croesus, not the great

King, not Minos in his royal palace in Crete, not all the Pharaohs,

not Queen Semiramis, nor all the Kings of Babylon and Nineveh had ever

a throne room to compare in glory with that high presence chamber of

the lords of Demonland. Its walls and pillars were of snow-white

marble, every vein whereof was set with small gems: rubies, corals,

garnets, and pink topaz. Seven pillars on either side bore up the

shadowy vault of the roof; the roof-tree and the beams were of gold,

curiously carved, the roof itself of mother-of-pearl. A side aisle ran

behind each row of pillars, and seven paintings on the western side

faced seven spacious windows on the east. At the end of the hall upon

a dais stood three high seats, the arms of each composed of two

hippogriffs wrought in gold, with wings spread, and the legs of the

seats the legs of the hippogriffs; but the body of each high seat was

a single jewel of monstrous size: the lefthand seat a black opal,

asparkle with steel-blue fire, the next a fire-opal, as it were a

burning coal, the third seat an alexandrite, purple like wine by night

but deep sea-green by day. Ten more pillars stood in semicircle behind

the high seats, bearing up above them and the dais a canopy of gold.

The benches that ran from end to end of the lofty chamber were of

cedar, inlaid with coral and ivory, and so were the tables that stood

before the benches. The floor of the chamber was tessellated, of

marble and green tourmaline, and on every square of tourmaline was

carven the image of a fish: as the dolphin, the conger, the cat-fish,

the salmon, the tunny, the squid, and other wonders of the deep.

Hangings of tapestry were behind the high seats, worked with flowers,

snake’s-head, snapdragon, dragonmouth, and their kind; and on the dado

below the windows were sculptures of birds and beasts and creeping

things.

 

But a great wonder of this chamber, and a marvel to behold, was how

the capital of every one of the four-and-twenty pillars was hewn from

a single precious stone, carved by the hand of some sculptor of long

ago into the living form of a monster: here was a harpy with screaming

mouth, so wondrously cut in ochre-tinted jade it was a marvel to hear

no scream from her: here in wine-yellow topaz a flying fire-drake:

there a cockatrice made of a single ruby: there a star sapphire the

colour of moonlight, cut for a cyclops, so that the rays of the star

trembled from his single eye: salamanders, mermaids, chimaeras, wild

men o’ the woods, leviathans, all hewn from faultless gems, thrice the

bulk of a big man’s body, velvet-dark sapphires, crystolite, beryl,

amethyst, and the yellow zircon that is like transparent gold.

 

To give light to the presence chamber were seven escarbuncles, great

as pumpkins, hung in order down the length of it, and nine fair

moonstones standing in order on silver pedestals between the pillars

on the dais. These jewels, drinking in the sunshine by day, gave it

forth during the hours of darkness in a radiance of pink light and a

soft effulgence as of moonbeams. And yet another marvel, the nether

side of the canopy over the high seats was encrusted with lapis

lazuhi, and in that feigned dome of heaven burned the twelve signs of

the zodiac, every star a diamond that shone with its own light.

 

Folk now began to be astir in the castle, and there came a score of

serving men into the presence chamber with brooms and brushes, cloths

and leathers, to sweep and garnish it, and burnish the gold and jewels

of the chamber. Lissome they were and sprightly of gait, of fresh

complexion and fair-haired. Horns grew on their heads. When their

tasks were accomplished they departed, and the presence began to fill

with guests. Ajoy it was to see such a shifting maze of velvets, furs,

curious needleworks and cloth of tissue, tiffanies, laces, ruffs,

goodly chains and carcanets of gold: such glitter of jewels and

weapons: such nodding of the plumes the Demons wore in their hair,

half veiling the horns that grew upon their heads. Some were sitting

on the benches or leaning on the polished tables, some walking forth

and back upon the shining floor. Here and there were women among them,

women so fair one had said: it is surely white-armed Helen this one;

this, Arcadian Atalanta; this, Phryne that stood to Praxiteles for

Aphrodite’s picture; this, Thals, for whom great Alexander to pleasure

her fantasy did burn Persepolis like a candle; this, she that was rapt

by the Dark God from the flowering fields of Enna, to be Queen for

ever among the dead that be departed.

 

Now came a stir near the stately doorway, and Lessingham beheld a

Demon of burly frame and noble port, richly attired. His face was

ruddy and somewhat freckled, his forehead wide, his eyes calm and blue

like the sea. His beard, thick and tawny, was parted and brushed back

and upwards on either side.

 

“Tell me, my little martlet,” said Lessingham, “is this Lord Juss?”

 

“This is not Lord Juss,” answered the martlet, “nor aught so

worshipful as he. The lord thou seest is Volle, who dwelleth under

Kartadza, by the salt sea. A great sea-captain is he, and one that did

service to the cause of Demonland, and of the whole world besides, in

the late wars against the Ghouls.

 

“But cast thine eyes again towards the door, where one standeth amid a

knot of friends, tall and somewhat stooping, in a corselet of silver,

and a cloak of old brocaded silk coloured like tarnished gold;

something like to Volle in feature, but swarthy, and with bristling

black moustachios.”

 

“I see him,” said Lessingham. “This then is Lord Juss!”

 

“Not so,” said martlet. “‘Tis but Vizz, brother to Volle. He is

wealthiest in goods of all the Demons, save the three brethren only

and Lord Brandoch Daha.”

 

“And who is this?” asked Lessingham, pointing to one of light and brisk

step and humorous eye, who in that moment met Volle and engaged him in

converse apart. Handsome of face he was, albeit somewhat long-nosed and

sharp-nosed: keen and hard and filled with life and the joy of it.

 

“Here thou beholdest,” answered she, “Lord Zigg, the farfamed tamer of

horses. Well loved is he among the Demons, for he is merry of mood,

and a mighty man of his hands withal when he leadeth his horsemen

against the enemy.”

 

Volle threw up his beard and laughed a great laugh at some jest that

Zigg whispered in his ear, and Lessingham leaned forward into the hail

if haply he might catch what was said. The hum of talk drowned the

words, but leaning forward Lessingham saw where the arras curtains

behind the dais parted for a moment, and one of princely bearing

advanced past the high seats down the body of the hall. His gait was

delicate, as of some lithe beast of prey newly wakened out of slumber,

and he greeted with lazy grace the many friends who hailed his

entrance. Very tall was that lord, and slender of build, like a girl.

His tunic was of silk coloured like the wild rose, and embroidered in

gold with representations of flowers and thunderbolts. Jewels

glittered on his left hand and on the golden bracelets on his arms,

and on the fillet twined among the golden curls of his hair, set with

plumes of the king-bird of Paradise. His horns were dyed with saffron,

and inlaid with filigree work of gold. His buskins were laced with

gold, and from his belt hung a sword, narrow of blade and keen, the

hilt rough with beryls and black diamonds. Strangely light and

delicate was his frame and seeming, yet with a sense of slumbering

power beneath, as the delicate peak of a snow mountain seen afar in

the low red rays of morning. His face was beautiful to look upon, and

softly coloured like a girl’s face, and his expression one of gentle

melancholy, mixed with some disdain; but fiery glints awoke at

intervals in his eyes, and the lines of swift determination hovered

round the mouth below his curled moustachios.

 

“At last,” murmured Lessingham, “at last, Lord Juss!”

 

“Little art thou to blame,” said the martlet, “for this misprision,

for scarce could a lordlier sight have joyed thine eyes. Yet is this

not Juss, but Lord Brandoch Daha, to whom all Demonland west of

Shalgreth and Stropardon oweth allegiance: the rich vineyards of

Krothering, the broad pasture lands of Failze, and all the western

islands and their cragbound fastnesses. Think not, because he

affecteth silks and jewels like a queen, and carrieth himself light

and dainty as a silver birch tree on the mountain, that his hand is

light or his courage doubtful in war. For years was he held for the

third best man-at-arms in all Mercury, along with these, Goldry

Bluszco and Gorice X. of Witchland. And Gorice he slew, nine summers

back, in single combat, when the Witches harried in Goblinland