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

So they

sat down and ate, and drank of the honey-sweet wine, till all thoughts

of war and hardship and the unimagined perils of the wilderness and

Corund’s great army preparing their destruction faded from their

minds, and the spirit of slumber wooed their weary frames.

 

Then a faint music, troublous in its voluptuous wild sweetness,

floated on the air, and they beheld a lady enter on the dais.

Beautiful she seemed beyond the beauty of mortal women. In her dark

hair was the likeness of the horned moon in honey-coloured cymophanes

every stone whereof held a straight beam of light imprisoned that

quivered and gleamed as sunbeams quiver wading in the clear deeps of a

summer sea. She wore a coat-hardy of soft crimson silk, close fitting,

so that she did truly apparel her apparel and with her own loveliness

made it more sumptuous. She said, “My lords and guests in Ishnain

Nemartra, there be beds of down and sheets of lawn for all of you that

be aweary. But know that I keep a sparrowhawk sitting on a perch in

the eastern tower, and he that will wake my sparrowhawk this night

long, alone without any company and without sleep, I shall come to him

at the night’s end and shall grant unto him the first thing that he

will ask me of earthly things.” So saying she departed like a dream.

 

Brandoch Daha said, “Cast we lots for this adventure.”

 

But Juss spake against it, saying, “There’s likely some guile herein.

We must not in this accursed land suffer aught to seduce our minds,

but follow our set purpose. We must not be of those who go forth for

wool and come home shorn.”

 

Brandoch Daha and Spitfire mocked at this, and cast lots between

themselves. And the lot fell upon Lord Brandoch Daha. “Thou shalt not

deny me this,” said he to Lord Juss, “else will I never more do thee

good.”

 

“I never could yet deny thee anything,” answered Juss. “Art not thou

and I finger and thumb? Only forget not, whatsoe’er betide, wherefore

we be come hither.”

 

“Art not thou and I finger and thumb?” said Brandoch Daha. “Fear

nothing, O friend of my heart. I’ll not forget it.”

 

So while the others slept, Brandoch Daha waked the sparrowhawk, night-long in the eastern chamber. For all that the cold hillside without

was rough with hoar-frost the air was warm in that chamber and heavy,

disposing strongly to sleep. Yet he closed not an eye, but still

beheld the sparrowhawk, telling it stories and tweaking it by the

tail ever and anon as it grew drowsy. And it answered shortly and

boorishly, looking upon him malevolently.

 

And with the golden dawn, behold that lady in the shadowy doorway. At

her entering in, the sparrowhawk clicked its wings as in anger, and

without more ado tucked its beak beneath its wing and went to sleep.

But that bright lady, looking on the Lord Brandoch Daha, spake and

said, “Require it of me, my Lord Brandoch Daha, that which thou most

desirest of earthly things.”

 

But he, as one bedazzled, stood up saying, “O lady, is not thy beauty

at the dawn of day an irradiation that might dispel the mists of hell?

My heart is ravished with thy loveliness and only fed with thy sight.

Therefore thy body will I have, and none other thing earthly.”

 

“Thou art a fool,” she cried, “that knowest not what thou askest. Of

all things earthly mightest thou have taken choose; but I am not

earthly.”

 

He answered, “I will have nought else.”

 

“Thou dost embrace then a great danger,” said she, “and loss of all

thy good luck, for thee and thy friends beside.”

 

But Brandoch Daha, seeing how her face became on a sudden such as are

new-blown roses at the dawning, and her eyes wide and dark with love-longing, came to her and took her in his arms and fell to kissing and

embracing of her. On such wise they abode for awhile, that he was ware

of no thing else on earth save only the sense-maddening caress of that

lady’s hair, the perfume of it, the kiss of her mouth, the swell and

fall of that lady’s breast straining against his. She said in his ear

softly, “I see thou art too masterful. I see thou art one who will be

denied nothing, on whatsoever thine heart is set. Come.” And they

passed by a heavy-curtained doorway into an inner chamber, where the

air was filled with the breath of myrrh and nard and ambergris, a

fragrancy as of sleeping loveliness. Here, amid the darkness of rich

hangings and subdued glints of gold, a warm radiance of shaded lamps

watched above a couch, great and broad and downy-pillowed. And here

for a long time they solaced them with love and all delight.

 

Even as all things have an end, he said at the last, “O my lady,

mistress of hearts, here would I abide ever, abandoning all else for

thy love sake. But my companions tarry for me in thine halls below,

and great matters wait on my direction. Give me thy divine mouth once

again, and bid me adieu.”

 

She was lying as if asleep across his breast: smooth-skinned, white,

warm, with shapely throat leaned backward against the spice-odorous

darknesses of her unbound hair; one tress, heavy and splendid like a

python, coiled between white arm and bosom. Swift as a snake she

turned, clinging fiercely about him, pressing fiercely again to his

her insatiable sweet fervent lips, crying that here must he dwell unto

eternity in the intoxication of perfect love and pleasure.

 

But when in the end, gently constraining her to loose him and let him

go, he arose and clothed and armed him, that lady caught about her a

translucent robe of silvery sheen, as when the summer moon veils but

not hides with a filmy cloud her beauties’ splendour, and so standing

before him spake and said, “Go then. This is got by casting of pearls

to hogs. I may not slay thee, since over thy body I have no other

power. But because thou shalt not laugh overmuch, having required me

of that which was beyond the pact and being enjoyed is now slighted of

thee and abused, therefore know, proud man, that three gifts I here

will grant thee thereto of mine own choosing. Thou shalt have war and

not peace. He that thou worst hatest shall throw down and ruin thy

fair lordship, Krothering Castle and the mains thereof. And though

vengeance shall overtake him at the last, by another’s hand than thine

shall it come, and to thine hand shall it be denied.”

 

Therewith she fell a-weeping. And the Lord Brandoch Daha, with great

resolution, went forth from the chamber. And looking back from the

threshold he beheld both that and the outer chamber void of lady and

sparrowhawk both. And a great weariness came suddenly upon him. So,

going down, he found Lord Juss and his companions sleeping on the cold

stones, and the banquet ball empty of all gear and dank with moss and

cobwebs, and bats sleeping head-downward among the crumbling

roofbeams; nor was any sign of last night’s banqueting. So Brandoch

Daha roused his companions, and told Juss how he had fared, and of the

weirde laid on him by that lady.

 

And they went greatly wondering forth of the accursed castle of

Ishnain Nemartra, glad to come off so scatheless.

 

On that ninth day of their journey from Salapanta they came through

waste lands of stone and living rock, where not so much as an

earth-louse stirred with life. Gorges split the earth here and there:

rock-walled labyrinths of gloom, unvisited for ever by sunbeam or

moonbeam, turbulent in their depths with waters that leaped and churned

for ever, never still and never silent. So was that day’s journey

tortuous, turning now up now down along those river banks to find

crossing places.

 

When they were halted at noon by the deepest rift they had yet beheld,

there came one hastening to them and fell down by Juss and lay panting

face to earth as breathless from long running. And when they raised

him up, behold Mivarsh Faz, harnessed in the gear of a black rider of

Jalcanaius Fostus and armed with axe and sword. Great was his

agitation, and he speechless for lack of breath. They used him kindly,

and gave him to drink from a great skin of wine, Zeldornius’s gift,

and anon he said, “He bath armed countless hundreds of our folk with

weapons taken from Salapanta field. These, led by the devils his sons,

with Philpritz cursed of the gods, be gone before to hold all the ways

be-east of you. Night and day have I ridden and run to warn you.

Himself, with his main strength of devils ultramontane, rideth hot on

your tracks.”

 

They thanked him well, marvelling much that he should be at such pains

to advertise them of their danger. “I have eat your salt,” answered

he, “and moreover ye are against this naughty wicked baldhead that

came over the mountains to oppress us. Therefore I would do you good.

But I can little. For I am poor, that was rich in land and fee. And I

am alone, that had formerly five hundred spearmen lodging in my halls

to do my pleasure.”

 

“There’s need to do quickly that we do,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “How

great start of him hadst thou?”

 

“He must be upon you in an hour or twain,” said Mivarsh, and fell a-weeping.

 

“To cope him in the open,” said Juss, “were great glory, and our

certain death.”

 

“Give me to think, but a minute’s while,” said Brandoch Daha. And

while they busked them he walked musing by the lip of that ravine,

switching pebbles over the edge with his sword. Then he said, “This is

without doubt that stream Athrashah spoken of by Gro. O Mivarsh,

runneth not this flood of Athrashah south to the salt lakes of Ogo

Morveo, and was there not thereabout a hold named Eshgrar Ogo?”

 

Mivarsh answered, “This is so. But never heard I of any so witless as

go thither. Here where we stand is the land fearsome enough; but

Eshgrar Ogo standeth at the very edge of the Moruna. No man hath

harboured there these hundred years.”

 

“Standeth it yet?” said Brandoch Daha.

 

“For all I wot of,” answered Mivarsh.

 

“Is it strong?” he asked.

 

“In old times it was thought no place stronger,” answered Mivarsh.

“But ye were as well die here by the hand of the devils ultramontane,

as there be torn in pieces by bad spirits.”

 

Brandoch Daha turned him about to Juss. “It is resolved?” said he.

Juss answered, “Yea;” and forthwith they started at a great pace south

along the river.

 

“Methought you should have been gotten clean away ere this,” said

Mivarsh as they went. “This is but nine or ten days’ journey, and ‘tis

now the sixteenth day since ye did leave me on Salapanta Hills.”

 

Brandoch Daha laughed. “Sixteenth!” said he. “Thou’lt be rich,

Mivarsh, if thou reckon gold pieces o’ this fashion thou dost days.

This is but our ninth day’s journey.”

 

But Mivarsh stood stoutly to it, saying that was the seventh day after

their departure when Corund first came to Salapanta, “And I fleeing

now nine days before his face chanced on your tracks, and now out of

all expectation on you.” Nor for all their mocking would he be turned

from this. And when, as they still pressed through the desert

southward, the sun declined and set in a clear sky, behold the moon a

little