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

southern shore of

Switchwater. So dropped they into Gashterndale, and thence rounding

the western slopes of Erngate End came up on the Krothering Side when

the shadows were lengthening in the golden summer evening. The Side

ran gently west for a league or more to where Thunderfirth lay like

beaten gold beneath the sun. Across the Firth the pine-forests of

Westmark, old as the world, rose toward Brocksty Edge and Gemsar Edge:

a far-flung amphitheatre of bare cliff and scree shutting in the

prospect to the north. High on the left towered the precipices of

Erngate End; southward and south-eastward lay the sea. So rode they

down the Side, through deep peaceful meadows fair with white ox-eye

daisies, bluebells and yellow goatsbeard and sea campion, deep-blue

gentians, agrimony and wild marjoram, and pink clover and bindweed and

great yellow buttercups feasting on the sun. And on an eminence beyond

which the land fell away more steeply toward the sea, the onyx towers

of Krothering standing above woods and gardens showed milk-white

against heaven and the clear hyaline.

 

When they were now but half a mile from the castle Juss said, “Behold

and see. The Lady Mevrian hath espied us from afar, and rideth forth

to bring thee home.”

 

Brandoch Daha cantered ahead to meet her: a lady light of build and

exceeding fair to look upon, brave of carriage like a warhorse, soft

of feature, clear-browed, gray-eyed and proud-eyed: sweet-mouthed, but

not as one who can speak nought but sweetness. Her robe was of pale

buff-coloured silk, with corsage covered as by a spider’s web with

fine golden threads; and she wore a point-lace ruffle stiffened with

gold and silver wire and spangled with little diamonds. Her deep hair,

black as the raven’s wing, was fastened with pins of gold, and a

yellow rose that nestled in its coils was as the moon looking forth

among thick clouds of night.

 

“Doings be afoot, my lady sister,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “One King

of Witchland have we done down since we sailed hence; and guested in

Carcë with another, little to our content. All which things I’ll tell

thee anon. Now lieth our road south for Impland, and Krothering is but

our caravanserai.”

 

She turned her horse, and they rode all in company into the shadow of

the ancient cedars that clustered to the north of the home-meads and

pleasure gardens, stately, gaunt-limbed, flat-browed, bleak against

the sky. On the left a lily-paven lake slept cool beneath mighty elms,

with a black swan near the bank and her four cygnets dozing in a row,

their heads tucked beneath their wings, so that they looked like balls

of gray-brown froth floating on the water. The path leading to the

bridge-gate zig-zagged steeply up the mound between low broad

balustrades of white onyx bearing at intervals square onyx pots,

planted some with yellow roses and some with wondrous flowers, great

and delicate, with frail white shell-like petals. Deep, mysterious

centres had those flowers, thick with soft hairs within, and dark

within with velvety purple streaked with black and blood colour and

dust of gold.

 

The castle of Lord Brandoch Daha standing at the top of the mound was

circled by a ditch both broad and deep. The gate before the drawbridge

was of iron gilded and richly wrought. The towers and gatehouse were

of white onyx like the castle itself, and on either hand before the

gate was a colossal marble hippogriff, standing more than thirty feet

high at the withers; and the wings and hooves and talons of the

hippogriffs and their manes and forelocks were overlaid with gold, and

their eyes carbuncles of purest lustre. Over the gate was written in

letters of gold:

 

Ye braggers an ‘a’.

Be skeered and awa’

Frae Brandoch Daha.

 

But to tell even a tenth part of the marvels rich and beautiful that

were in the house of Krothering: its cool courts and colonnades rich

with gems and fragrant with costly spices and strange blooms: its bedchambers where, caught like Aphrodite in her golden net, the spirit of

sleep seemed ever to shake slumber from its plumes, and none might be

waking long in those chambers but sweet sleep overcame their eyelids:

the Chamber of the Sun and the Chamber of the Moon, and the great

middle hall with its high gallery and ivory stair: to tell of all

these were but to cloy imagination with picturing in one while of

overmuch glory and splendour.

 

Nought befell that night save the coming of Zigg before sundown, and

of those brethren Volle and Vizz in the night, having ridden hard in

obedience to the word of Juss. In the morning when they had eaten

their daymeal the lords of Demonland went down into pleasaunces, and

with them the Lady Mevrian. And in an alley that was roofed with beams

of cedar resting on marble pillars, the beams and pillars smothered

with dark-red roses, they sat looking eastward across a sunk garden.

The weather was sweet and gracious, and thick dew lay on the pale

terraced lawns that led down among flower beds to the fishpond in the

midst. The water made a cool mirror whereon floated yellow and crimson

waterlilies opening to the sky. All the greens and flower-colours

glowed warm and clean, but soft withal and shadowy, veiled in the gray

haze of the summer morning.

 

They sat here and there as they listed on chairs and benches, near a

huge tank or vase of dark green jade where sulphur-coloured lilies

grew in languorous beauty, their back-curled petals showing the

scarlet anthers; and all the air was heavy with their sweetness. The

great jade vase was round and flat like the body of a tortoise, open

at the top where the lilies grew. It was carved with scales, as it

were the body of a dragon, and a dragon’s head agaping reared itself

at one end, and at the other the tail curved up and over like the

handle of a basket, and the tail had little fore and hind feet with

claws, and a smaller head at the end of the tail gaped downwards

biting at the large head. Four legs supported the body, and each leg

was a small dragon standing on its hind feet, its head growing into

the parent body as the thigh or shoulder joint should join the trunk.

In the curve of the creature’s neck, his back propped against its

head, sat the Lord Brandoch Daha in graceful ease, one foot touching

the ground, the other swinging free; and in his hands was the book,

bound in dark puce-coloured goatskin and gold, given him by Gaslark in

years gone by. Zigg watched him idly turn the pages while the others

talked. Leaning toward Mevrian he whispered in her ear, “Is not he

able and shapen for to subdue and put under him all the world: thy

brother? A man of blood and peril, and yet so fair to behold that it

is a marvel?”

 

Her eyes danced. She said, “It is pure truth, my lord.”

 

Now spake Spitfire saying, “Read forth to us, I pray thee, the book of

Gro; for my soul is afire to set forth on this faring.”

 

“‘Tis writ somewhat crabbedly,” said Brandoch Daha, “and most damnably

long. I spent half last night a-searching on’t, and ‘tis most apparent

no other way lieth to these mountains save by the Moruna, and across

the Moruna is (if Gro say true) but one way, and that from the Gulf of

Muelva: ‘a xx dayes journeye from northe by south-est.’ For here he

telleth of watersprings by the way, but he saith in other parts of the

desert be no watersprings, save only springs venomous, where ‘The

water riketh like a sething potte continually, having sumwhat a

sulphureous and sumwhat onpleasant savor,’ and, ‘The grownd nurysheth

here no plante nor herbe except yt bee venomous champinions or tode

stooles.’”

 

“If he say true?” said Spitfire. “He is a turncoat and a renegado.

Wherefore not therefore a liar?”

 

“But a philosopher,” answered Juss. “I knew him well of old in

Goblinland, and I judge him to be one who is not false save only in

policy. Subtle of mind he is, and dearly loveth plotting and scheming,

and, as I think, perversely affecteth ever the losing side if he be

brought into any quarrel; and this hath dragged him ofttimes to

misfortune. But in this book of his travels he must needs speak truth,

as it seemeth to me, to be true to his own self.”

 

The Lady Mevrian looked approvingly on Lord Juss and her eye twinkled.

For well it liked her humour to hear men’s natures so divined.

 

“O Juss, friend of my heart,” said Lord Brandoch Daha, “thy words

proceed, as ever they did, from the true fount of wisdom, and I

embrace them and thee. This book is a guide which we shall follow not

helter-skelter but as old men of war. If then the right road to Morna

Moruna lie from the Gulf of Muelva, were we not best sail straight

thitherward and lay up our ships in that Gulf where the coast and the

country side be without habitation, rather than fare to some nearer

haven of Outer Impland such as Arlan Mouth whither thou and Spitfire

fared six summers ago?”

 

“Not Arlan Mouth, o’ this journey,” said Juss. “Some sport perchance

we might obtain there had we leisure for fighting with the accursed

inhabitants, but every day’s delay we now do make holdeth my brother

another day in bondage. The princes and Fazes of the Imps have many

strong walled towns and towers in all those coastlands, and hard by in

a mediamnis of the river Arlan, in Orpish, is the great castle of Fax

Fay Faz, whereto Goldry and I drave him home from Lida Nanguna.”

 

“‘Tis an ill coast too, to find a landing,” said Brandoch Daha,

turning the leaves of the book. “As he saith, ‘Ymplande the More

beginnith at the west syde of the mowth of Arlan and occupiethe all

the lond unto the hedeland Sibrion, and therefro sowth awaye to the

Corshe, by gesse a vii hundered myles, wherby the se is not ther of

nature favorable nor no haven is or cumming yn meete for shippes.’”

 

So after some talk and searching of that book of Gro they determined

this should be their plan: to fare to Impland by way of the Straits of

Melikaphkhaz and the Didornian Sea, and so lay up their ships in the

Gulf of Muelva, and landing there start straightway across the

wilderness to Morna Moruna, even as Gro had described the way.

 

“Ere we leave it,” said Brandoch Daha, “hear what he speaketh

concerning Koshtra Belorn. This he beheld from Morna Moruna, whereof

he saith: ‘The contery is hylly, sandy, and baren of wood and come, as

forest ful of lynge, mores, and mosses, with stony hilles. Here is a

mighty stronge and usid borow for flying serpens in sum baren, hethy,

and sandy grownd, and thereby the litle round castel of Morna Moruna

stondith on Omprenne Edge, as on the limit of the worlde, sore wether

beten and yn ruine. This castelle was brent in tyme of warre, spoyled

and razyd by Kynge Goriyse the fourt of Wytchlande in ancient dayes.

And they say there was blamelesse folke dwellid therein and ryghte

gentle, nor was ther any need for Goriyse to have usid them so

cruellie, when bee cawsyd the hole howsholde there to appere before

hym and then slawe sum owt of hande, and the residew he throughe all

downe the steep cliffe. And but few supervivid after the gret falle,

and these fled awaye thorough the untrodden forests of Bayvynaune and

withoute question perysht ther yn great