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

like unto the Gods in beauty and in

power, who of their own might and main, unholpen by magic arts, shall

force a passage up to her silent snows.”

 

Brandoch Daha laughed. “Not the eagle?” he cried, “but thou, little

flitter-jack?”

 

“Nought that hath feet,” said the martlet. “I have none.”

 

The Lord Brandoch Daha took it tenderly in his hand and held it high

in the air, looking to the high lands in the south. The birches

swaying by the Bhavinan were not more graceful nor the distant

mountain-crags behind them more untameable to behold than he. “Fly to

thy Queen,” he said, “and say thou spakest with Lord Juss beside the

Bhavinan and with Lord Brandoch Daha of Demonland. Say unto her that

we be they that were for to come; and that we, of our own might and

main, ere spring be well turned summer, will come up to her in Koshtra

Belorn to thank her for her gracious sendings.”

 

Now when it was April, and the sun moving among the signs of heaven

was about departing out of Aries and entering into Taurus, and the

melting of the snows in the high mountains had swollen all the streams

to spate, filling the mighty river so that he brimmed his banks and

swept by like a tide-race, Lord Juss said, “Now is the season

propitious for our crossing of the flood of Bhavinan and setting forth

into the mountains.”

 

“Willingly,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “But shall’s walk it, or swim

it, or take to us wings? To me, that have many a time swum back and

forth over Thunderfirth to whet mine appetite ere I brake my fast,

‘tis a small matter of this river stream howso swift it runneth. But

with our harness and weapons and all our gear, that were far other

matter.”

 

“Is it for nought we are grown friends with them that do inhabit these

woods?” said Juss. “The crocodile shall bear us over Bhavinan for the

asking.”

 

“It is an ill fish,” said Mivarsh; “and it sore dislikes me.”

 

“Then here thou must abide,” said Brandoch Daha. “But be not dismayed,

I will go with thee. The fish may bear us both at a draught and not

founder.”

 

“It was a wise woman foretold it me,” answered Mivarsh, “that such a

kind of serpent must be my bane. Yet be it according to your will.”

 

So they whistled them up the crocodile; and first the Lord Juss fared

over Bhavinan, riding on the back of that serpent with all his gear

and weapons of war, and landed several hundred paces down stream for

the stream was very strong; and thereafter the crocodile returning to

the north bank took the Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz and put

them across in like manner. Mivarsh put on a gallant face, but rode as

near the tail as might be, fingering certain herbs from his wallet

that were good against serpents, his lips moving in urgent

supplication to his gods. When they were come ashore they thanked the

crocodile and bade him farewell and went their way swiftly through the

woods. And Mivarsh, as one new loosed from prison, went before them

with a light step, singing and snapping his fingers.

 

Now had they for three days or four a deviousjourney through the foothills, and thereafter made their dwelling for forty days’ space in the

Zia valley, above the gorges. Here the valley widens to a flat-floored

amphitheatre, and lean limestone crags tower heavenward on every side.

High in the south, couched above great gray moraines, the Zia glacier,

wrinkle-backed like some dragon survived out of the elder chaos,

thrusts his snout into the valley. Here out of his caves of ice the

young river thunders, casting up a spray where rainbows hover in

bright weather. The air blows sharp from the glacier, and alpine

flowers and shrubs feed on the sunlight.

 

Here they gathered them good store of food. And every morning they

were afoot before the sunrise, to ascend the mountains and make sure

their practice ere they should attempt the greater peaks. So they

explored all the spurs of Tetrachnampf and Islargyn, and those peaks

themselves; the rock peaks of the lower Nuanner range overlooking

Bhavinan; the snow peaks east of Islargyn: Avsek, Kiurmsur, Myrsu,

Byrshnargyn, and Borch Mehephtharsk, loftiest of the range, by all his

ridges, dwelling a week on the moraines of the Mehephtharsk glacier

above the upland valley of Foana; and westward the dolomite group of

Burdjazarshra and the great wall of Shilack.

 

Now were their muscles by these exercises grown like bands of iron,

and they hardy as mountain bears and sure of foot as mountain goats.

So on the ninth day of May they crossed the Zia Pass and camped on the

rocks under the south wall of Tetrachnampf nan Tshark. The sun went

down, like blood, in a cloudless sky. On either hand and before them,

the snows stretched blue and silent. The air of those high snowfields

was bitter cold. A league and more to the south a line of black cliffs

bounded the glacier-basin. Over that black wall, twelve miles away,

Koshtra Belorn and Koshtra Pivrarcha towered against an opal heaven.

 

While they supped in the fading light, Juss said, “The wall thou seest

is called the Bamers of Emshir. Though over it lieth the straight way

to Koshtra Pivrarcha, yet is it not our way, but an ill way. For,

first, that barrier hath till now been held unclimbable, and so proven

even by half-gods that alone assayed it.”

 

“I await not thy second reason,” said Brandoch Daha. “Thou hast had

thy way until now, and now thou shalt give me mine in this, to come

with me tomorrow and show how thou and I make of such barriers a puff

of smoke if they stand in the path between us and our fixed ends.”

 

“Were it only this,” answered Juss, “I would not gainsay thee. But not

senseless rocks alone are we set to deal with if we take this road.

Seest thou where the Barriers end in the east against yonder monstrous

pyramid of tumbled crags and hanging glaciers that shuts out our

prospect eastaway? Menksur men call it, but in heaven it hath a more

dreadful name: Ela Mantissera, which is to say, the Bed of the

Mantichores. O Brandoch Daha, I will climb with thee what unscaled

cliff thou list, and I will fight with thee against the most

grisfullest beasts that ever grazed by the Tartarian streams. But both

these things in one moment of time, that were a rash part and a

foolish.”

 

But Brandoch Daha laughed, and answered him, “To nought else may I

liken thee, O Juss, but to the sparrow-camel. To whom they said,

‘Fly,’ and it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a camel’; and when they

said, ‘Carry,’ it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a bird.’”

 

“Wilt thou egg me on so much?” said Juss.

 

“Ay,” said Brandoch Daha, “if thou wilt be assish.”

 

“Wilt thou quarrel?” said Juss.

 

“Thou knowest me,” said Brandoch Daha.

 

“Well,” said Juss, “thy counsel hath been right once and saved us, for

nine times that it hath been wrong, and my counsel saved thee from an

evil end. If ill behap us, it shall be set down that it had from thy

peevish will original.” And they wrapped them in their cloaks and

slept.

 

On the morrow they rose betimes and set forth south across the snows

that were crisp and hard from the frosts of the night. The Barriers,

as it were but a stone’s-throw removed, stood black before them;

starlight swallowed up size and distance that showed only by walking,

as still they walked and still that wall seemed no nearer nor no

larger. Twice and thrice they dipped into a valley or crossed a

raised-up fold of the glacier; till they stood at break of day below

the smooth blank wall frozen and bleak, with never a ledge in sight

great enough to bear snow, barring their passage southward.

 

They halted and ate and scanned the wall before them. And ill to do

with it seemed. So they searched for an ascent, and found at last a

spot where the glacier swelled higher, a mile or less from the western

shoulder of Ela Mantissera. Here the cliff was but four or five

hundred feet high; yet smooth enow and ill enow to look on; yet their

likeliest choice.

 

Some while it was ere they might get a footing on that wall, but at

length Brandoch Daha, standing on Juss’s shoulder, found him a hold

where no hold showed from below, and with great travail fought a

passage up the rock to a stance some hundred feet above them, whence

sitting sure on a broad ledge great enough to hold six or seven folk

at a time he played up Lord Juss on the rope and after him Mivarsh. An

hour and a half it cost them for that short climb.

 

“The northeast buttress of Ill Stack was children’s gruel to this,”

said Lord Juss.

 

“There’s more aloft,” said Lord Brandoch Daha, lying back against the

precipice, his hands clasped behind his head, his feet a-dangle over

the ledge. “In thine ear, Juss: I would not go first on the rope again

on such a pitch for all the wealth of Impland.”

 

“Wilt repent and return?” said Juss.

 

“If thou’lt be last down,” he answered. “If not, I’d liever risk what

waits untried above us. If it prove worse, I am confirmed atheist.”

 

Lord Juss leaned out, holding by the rock with his right hand, scanning

the wall beside and above them. An instant he hung so, then drew back.

His square jaw was set, and his teeth glinted under his dark moustachios

something fiercely, as a thunder-beam betwixt dark sky and sea in a

night of thunder. His nostrils widened, as of a warhorse at the call of

battle; his eyes were like the violet levin-brand, and all his body

hardened like a bowstring drawn as he grasped his sharp sword and pulled

it forth grating and singing from its sheath.

 

Brandoch Daha sprang afoot and drew his sword, Zeldornius’s loom.

“What stirreth?” he cried. “Thou look’st ghastly. That look thou hadst

when thou tookest the helm and our prows swung westward toward

Kartadza Sound, and the fate of Demonland and all the world beside

hung in thine hand for wail or bliss.”

 

“There’s little sword-room,” said Juss. And again he looked forth

eastward and upward along the cliff. Brandoch Daha looked over his

shoulder. Mivarsh took his bow and set an arrow on the string.

 

“It hath scented us down the wind,” said Brandoch Daha.

 

Small time was there to ponder. Swinging from hold to hold across the

dizzy precipice, as an ape swingeth from bough to bough, the beast

drew near. The shape of it was as a lion, but bigger and taller, the

colour a dull red, and it had prickles lancing out behind, as of a

porcupine; its face a man’s face, if aught so hideous might be

conceived of human kind, with staring eyeballs, low wrinkled brow,

elephant ears, some wispy mangy likeness of a lion’s mane, huge bony

chaps, brown blood-stained gubber-tushes grinning betwixt bristly

lips. Straight for the ledge it made, and as they braced them to

receive it, with a great swing heaved a man’s height above them and

leaped down upon their ledge from aloft betwixt Juss and Brandoch Daha

ere they were well aware of its changed course. Brandoch Daha smote at

it a great swashing blow and cut off its scorpion tail; but it clawed

Juss’s shoulder,