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

of Koshtra Pivrarcha, that must first be scaled

by him that would go up to Koshtra Belorn. But beyond those rocks not

even a dream hath ever climbed. Ere the light fades, I’ll show thee

our pass over the nearer range.” He pointed where a glacier crawled

betwixt shadowy walls down from a torn snowfield that rose steeply to

a saddle. East of it stood two white peaks, and west of it a sheer-faced

and long-backed mountain like a citadel, squat and dark beneath

the wild skyline of Koshtra Pivrarcha that hung in air beyond it.

 

“The Zia valley,” said Juss, “that runneth into Bhavinan. There lieth

our way: under that dark bastion called by the Gods Tetrachnampf.”

 

On the morrow Lord Brandoch Daha came to Mivarsh Faz and said, “It is

needful that this day we go down from Omprenne Edge. I would for no

sake leave thee on the Moruna, but ‘tis no walking matter to descend

this wall. Art thou a cragsman?”

 

“I was born,” answered he, “in the high valley of Perarshyn by the

upper waters of the Beirun in Impland. There boys scarce toddle ere

they can climb a rock. This climb affrights me not, nor those

mountains. But the land is unknown and terrible, and many loathly ones

inhabit it, ghosts and eaters of men. O devils transmarine, and my

friends, is it not enough? Let us turn again, and if the Gods save our

lives we shall be famous for ever, that came unto Morna Moruna and

returned alive.”

 

But Juss answered and said, “O Mivarsh Faz, know that not for fame are

we come on this journey. Our greatness already shadoweth all the

world, as a great cedar tree spreading his shadow in a garden; and

this enterprise, mighty though it be, shall add to our glory only so

much as thou mightest add to these forests of the Bhavinan by planting

of one more tree. But so it is, that the great King of Witchiand,

practising in darkness in his royal palace of Carcë such arts of

grammarie and sendings magical as the world hath not been grieved with

until now, sent an ill thing to take my brother, the Lord Goldry

Bluszco, who is dear to me as mine own soul. And They that dwell in

secret sent me word in a dream, bidding me, if I would have tidings of

my dear brother, inquire in Koshtra Belorn. Therefore, O Mivarsh, go

with us if thou wilt, but if thou wilt not, why, fare thee well. For

nought but my death shall stay me from going thither.”

 

And Mivarsh, bethinking him that if the mantichores of the mountains

should devour him along with those two lords, that were yet a kindlier

fate than all alone to abide those things he wist of on the Moruna,

put on the rope, and after commending himself to the protection of his

gods followed Lord Brandoch Daha down the rotten slopes of rock and

frozen earth at the head of a gully leading down the cliff.

 

For all that they were early afoot, yet was it high noon ere they were

off the rocks. For the peril of falling stones drove them out from the

gully’s bed first on to the eastern buttress and after, when that grew

too sheer, back to the western wall. And in an hour or twain the

gully’s bed grew shallow and it narrowed to an end, whence Brandoch

Daha gazed between his feet to where, a few spear’s lengths below, the

smooth slabs curved downward out of sight and the eye leapt straight

from their clean-cut edge to shimmering tree-tops that showed tiny as

mosses beyond the unseen gulf of air. So they rested awhile; then

returning a little up the gully forced a way out on to the face and

made a hazardous traverse to a mew gully westward of the first, and so

at last plunged down a long fan of scree and rested on soft fine turf

at the foot of the cliffs.

 

Little mountain gentians grew at their feet; the pathless forest lay

like the sea below them; before them the mountains of the Zia stood

supreme: the white gables of Islargyn, the lean dark finger of

Tetrachnampf nan Tshark lying back above the Zia Pass pointing to the

sky, and west of it, jutting above the valley, the square bastion of

Tetrachnampf nan Tsurm. The greater mountains were for the most part

sunk behind this nearer range, but Koshtra Belorn still towered above

the Pass. As a queen looking down from her high window, so she

overlooked those green woods sleeping in the noon-day; and on her

forehead was beauty like a star. Behind them where they sat, the

escarpment reared back in cramped perspective, a pile of massive

buttresses cleft with ravines leading upward from that land of leaves

and waters to the hidden wintry flats of the Moruna.

 

That night they slept on the fell under the stars, and next day, going

down into the woods, came at dusk to an open glade by the waters of

the broad-bosomed Bhavinan. The turf was like a cushion, a place for

elves to dance in. The far bank full half a mile away was wooded to

the water with silver birches, dainty as mountain nymphs, their limbs

gleaming through the twilight, their reflections quivering in the

depths of the mighty river. In the high air day lingered yet, a faint

warmth tingeing the great outlines of the mountains, and westward up

the river the young moon stooped above the trees. East of the glade a

little wooded eminence, no higher than a house, ran back from the

river bank, and in its shoulder a hollow cave.

 

“How smiles it to thee?” said Juss. “Be sure we shall find no better

place than this thou seest to dwell in until the snows melt and we may

on. For though it be summer all the year round in this fortunate

valley, it is winter on the great hills, and until the spring we were

mad to essay our enterprise.”

 

“Why then,” said Brandoch Daha, “turn we shepherds awhile. Thou shalt

pipe to me, and I’ll foot thee measures shall make the dryads think

they ne’er went to school. And Mivarsh shall be a goat-foot god to

chase them; for to tell thee truth country wenches are long grown

tedious to me. O, ‘tis a sweet life. But ere we fall to it, bethink

thee, O Juss: time marcheth, and the world waggeth: what goeth forward

in Demonland till summer be come and we home again?”

 

“Also my heart is heavy because of my brother Spitfire,” said Juss.

“Oh, ‘twas an ill storm, and ill delays.”

 

“Away with vain regrettings,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “For thy sake

and thy brother’s fared I on this journey, and it is known to thee

that never yet stretched I out mine hand upon aught that I have not

taken it, and had my will of it.”

 

So they made their dwelling in that cave beside deep-eddying Bhavinan,

and before that cave they ate their Yule feast, the strangest they had

eaten all the days of their lives: seated, not as of old, on their

high seats of ruby or of opal, but on mossy banks where daisies slept

and creeping thyme; lighted not by the charmed escarbuncle of the high

presence chamber in Galing, but by the shifting beams of a brushwood

fire that shone not on those pillars crowned with monsters that were

the wonder of the world but on the mightier pillars of the sleeping

beechwoods. And in place of that feigned heaven of jewels self-effulgent beneath the golden canopy at Galing, they ate pavilioned

under a charmed summer night, where the great stars of winter, Orion,

Sirius, and the Little Dog, were raised up near the zenith, yielding

their known courses in the southern sky to Canopus and the strange

stars of the south. When the trees spake, it was not with their winter

voice of bare boughs creaking, but with whisper of leaves and beetles

droning in the fragrant air. The bushes were white with blossom, not

with hoar-frost, and the dim white patches under the trees were not

snow, but wild lilies and wood anemones sleeping in the night.

 

All the creatures of the forest came to that feast, for they were

without fear, having never looked upon the face of man. Little tree-apes, and popinjays, and titmouses, and coalmouses, and wrens, and

gentle roundeyed lemurs, and rabbits, and badgers, and dormice, and

pied squirrels, and beavers from the streams, and storks, and ravens,

and bustards, and wombats, and the spider-monkey with her baby at her

breast: all these came to gaze with curious eye upon those travellers.

And not these alone, but fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses:

the wild buffalo, the wolf, the tiger with monstrous paws, the bear,

the fiery-eyed unicorn, the elephant, the lion and shelion in their

majesty, came to behold them in the firelight in that quiet glade.

 

“It seems we hold court in the woods tonight,” said Lord Brandoch

Daha. “It is very pleasant. Yet hold thee ready with me to put some

firebrands amongst ‘em if need befall. ‘Tis likely some of these

great beasts are little schooled in court ceremonies.”

 

Juss answered, “And thou lovest me, do no such thing. There lieth this

curse upon all this land of the Bhavinan, that whoso, whether he be

man or beast, slayeth in this land or doeth here any deed of violence,

there cometh down a curse upon him that in that instant must destroy

and blast him for ever off the face of the earth. Therefore it was I

took away from Mivarsh his bow and arrows when we came down from

Omprenne Edge, lest he should kill game for us and so a worse thing

befall him.”

 

Mivarsh harkened not, but sat all a-quake, looking intently on a

crocodile that came ponderously out upon the bank. And mow he began to

scream with terror, crying, “Save me! let me fly! give me my weapons!

It was foretold me by a wise woman that a cocadrill-serpent must

devour me at last!” Whereat the beasts drew back uneasily, and the

crocodile, his small eyes wide, startled by Mivarsh’s cries and

violent gestures, lurched with what speed he might back into the

water.

 

Now in that place Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz

abode for four moons’ space. Nothing they lacked of meat and drink,

for the beasts of the forest, finding them well disposed, brought them

of their store. Moreover, there came flying from the south, about the

ending of the year, a martlet which alighted in Juss’s bosom and said

to him, “The gentle Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the Gods, had news

of your coming. And because she knoweth you both mighty men of your

hands and high of heart, therefore by me she sent you greeting.”

 

Juss said, “O little martlet, we would see thy Queen face to face, and

thank her.”

 

“Ye must thank her,” said the bird, “in Koshtra Belorn.”

 

Brandoch Daha said, “That shall we fulfil. Thither only do our

thoughts intend.”

 

“Your greatness,” said the martlet, “must approve that word. And know

that it is easier to lay under you all the world in arms than to

ascend up afoot into that mountain.”

 

“Thy wings were too weak to lift me, else I’d borrow them,” said

Brandoch Daha.

 

But the martlet answered, “Not the eagle that flieth against the sun

may alight on Koshtra Belorn. No foot may tread her, save of those

blessed ones to whom the Gods gave leave ages ago, till they be come

that the patient years await: men