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

sent me, O Queen Sophonisba,

through the gate of horn, and it bade me inquire hither after him I

most desire, for want of whom my whole soul languisheth in sorrow this

year gone by: even after my dear brother, the Lord Goldry Bluszco.”

 

His words ceased in his throat. For with the speaking of that name the

firm fabric of the palace quivered like the leaves of a forest under a

sudden squall. Colour went from the scene, like the blood chased from

a man’s face by fear, and all was of a pallid hue, like the landscape

which one beholds of a bright summer day after lying with eyes closed

for a space face-upward under the blazing sun: all gray and cold, the

warm colours burnt to ashes. Withal, followed the appearance of

hateful little creatures issuing from the joints of the paving stones

and the great blocks of the walls and pillars: some like grasshoppers

with human heads and wings of flies, some like fishes with stings in

their tails, some fat like toads, some like eels a-wriggling with

puppy-dogs’ heads and asses’ ears: loathly ones, exiles of glory,

scaly and obscene.

 

The horror passed. Colour returned. The Queen sat like a graven

statue, her lips parted. After a while she said with a shaken voice,

low and with downcast eyes, “Sirs, you demand of me a very strange

matter, such as wherewith never hitherto I have been acquainted. As

you are noble, I beseech you speak not that name again. In the name of

the blessed Gods, speak it not again.”

 

Lord Juss was silent. Nought good were his thoughts within him.

 

In due time a little martlet by the Queen’s command brought them to

their bedchambers. And there in great beds soft and fragrant they

went to rest.

 

Juss waked long in the doubtful light, troubled at heart. At length he

fell into a troubled sleep. The glimmer of the lamps mingled with his

dreams and his dreams with it, so that scarce he wist whether asleep

or waking he beheld the walls of the bedchamber dispart in sunder,

disclosing a prospect of vast paths of moonlight, and a solitary

mountain peak standing naked out of a sea of cloud that gleamed white

beneath the moon. It seemed to him that the power of flight was upon

him, and that he flew to that mountain and hung in air beholding it

near at hand, and a circle as the appearance of fire round about it,

and on the summit of the mountain the likeness of a burg or citadel of

brass that was green with eld and surface-battered by the frosts and

winds of ages. On the battlements was the appearance of a great

company both men and women, never still, now walking on the wall with

hands lifted up as in supplication to the crystal lamps of heaven, now

flinging themselves on their knees or leaning against the brazen

battlements to bury their faces in their hands, or standing at gaze as

nightwalkers gazing into the void. Some seemed men of war, and some

great courtiers by their costly apparel, rulers and kings and kings’

daughters, grave bearded counsellors, youths and maidens and crowned

queens. And when they went, and when they stood, and when they seemed

to cry aloud bitterly, all was noiseless even as the tomb, and the

faces of those mourners pallid as a dead corpse is pallid.

 

Then it seemed to Juss that he beheld a keep of brass flatroofed

standing on the right, a little higher than the walls, with

battlements about the roof. He strove to cry aloud, but it was as if

some devil gripped his throat stifling him, for no sound came. For in

the midst of the roof, as it were on a bench of stone, was the

appearance of one reclining; his chin resting in his great right hand,

his elbow on an arm of the bench, his cloak about him gorgeous with

cloth of gold, his ponderous two-handed sword beside him with its

heart-shaped ruby pommel darkly resplendent in the moonlight. Nought

otherwise looked he than when Juss last beheld him, on their ship

before the darkness swallowed them; only the ruddy hues of life seemed

departed from him, and his brow seemed clouded with sorrow. His eye

met his brother’s, but with no look of recognition, gazing as if on

some far point in the deeps beyond the star-shine. It seemed to Juss

that even so would he have looked to find his brother Goldry as he now

found him; his head unbent for all the tyranny of those dark powers

that held him in captivity: keeping like a God his patient vigil,

heedless alike of the laments of them that shared his prison and of

the menace of the houseless night about him.

 

The vision passed; and Lord Juss perceived himself in his bed again,

the cold morning light stealing between the hangings of the windows

and dimming the soft radiance of the lamps.

 

Now for seven days they dwelt in that palace. No living thing they

encountered save only the Queen and her little martlets, but all

things desirous were ministered unto them by unseen hands and all

royal entertainment. Yet was Lord Juss heavy at heart, for as often as

he would question the Queen of Goldry, so she would ever put him by,

praying him earnestly not a second time to pronounce that name of

terror. At last, walking with her alone in the cool of the evening on

a trodden path of a meadow where asphodel grew and other holy flowers

beside a quiet stream, he said, “So it is, O Queen Sophonisba, that

when first I came hither and spake with thee I well thought that by

thee my matter should be well sped. And didst not thou them promise me

thy goodness and grace from thee thereafter?”

 

“This is very true,” said the Queen.

 

“Them why,” said he, “when I would question thee of that I make most

store of, wilt thou always daff me and put me by?”

 

She was silent, hanging her head. He looked sidelong for a minute at

her sweet profile, the grave clear limes of her mouth and chin. “Of

whom must I inquire,” he said, “if not of thee, which art Queen in

Koshtra Belorn and must know this thing?”

 

She stopped and faced him with dark eyes that were like a child’s for

innocence and like a God’s for splendour. “My lord, that I have put

thee off, ascribe it not to evil intent. That were am unnatural part

indeed in me unto you of Demonland who have fulfilled the weird and

set me free again to visit again the world of men which I so much

desire, despite all my sorrows I there fulfilled in elder time. Or

shall I forget you are at enmity with the wicked house of Witchland,

and therefore doubly pledged my friends?”

 

“That the event must prove, O Queen,” said Lord Juss.

 

“O saw ye Morna Moruna?” cried she. “Saw ye it in the wilderness?” And

when he looked on her still dark and mistrustful, she said, “Is this

forgot? And methought it should be mention and remembrance made

thereof unto the end of the world. I pray thee, my lord, what age art

thou?”

 

“I have looked upon this world,” answered Lord Juss, “for thrice ten

years.”

 

“And I,” said the Queen, “but seventeen summers. Yet that same age had

I when thou wast born, and thy grandsire before thee, and his before

him. For the Gods gave me youth for ever more, when they brought me

hither after the realm-rape that befell our house, and lodged me in

this mountain.”

 

She paused, and stood motionless, her hands clasped lightly before

her, her head bent, her face turned a little away so that he saw only

the white curve of her neck and her cheek’s soft outline. All the air

was full of sunset, though no sun was there, but a scattered splendour

only, shed from the high roof of rock that was like a sky above them,

self-effulgent. Very softly she began again to speak, the crystal

accents of her voice sounding like the faint motes of a bell borne

from a great way off on the quiet air of a summer evening. “Surely

time past is gone by like a shadow since those days, when I was Queen

in Morna Moruna, dwelling there with my lady mother and the princes my

cousins in peace and joy. Until Gorice III. came out of the north, the

great King of Witchland, desiring to explore these mountains, for his

pride’s sake and his insolent heart; which cost him dear. ‘Twas on am

evening of early summer we beheld him and his folk ride over the

flowering meadows of the Moruna. Nobly was he entertained by us, and

when we knew what way he meant to go, we counselled him turn back, and

the mantichores must tear him if he went. But he mocked at our

advisoes, and on the morrow departed, he and his, by way of Omprenne

Edge. And never again were they seen of living man.

 

“That had been small loss; but hereof there befell a great and

horrible mischief. For in the spring of the year came Gorice IV. with

a great army out of waterish Witchlamd, saying with open mouth of

defamation that we were the dead King’s murtherers: we that were

peaceful folk, and would not entertain an action should call us

villain for all the wealth of Impland. In the night they came, when

all we save the sentinels upon the walls were in our beds secure in a

quiet conscience. They took the princes my cousins and all our men,

and before our eyes most cruelly murthered them. So that my mother

seeing these things fell suddenly into deadly swoonings and was

presently dead. And the King commanded them burn the house with fire,

and he brake down the holy altars of the Gods, and defiled their high

places. And unto me that was young and fair to look on he gave this

choice: to go with him and be his slave, other else to be cast down

from the Edge and all my bones be broken. Surely I chose this rather.

But the Gods, that do help every rightful true cause, made light my

fall, and guided me hither safe through all perils of height and cold

and ravening beasts, granting me youth and peaceful days for ever,

here on the borderland between the living and the dead.

 

“And the Gods blew upon all the land of the Moruna in the fire of

their wrath, to make it desolate, and man and beast cut off therefrom,

for a witness of the wicked deeds of Gorice the King, even as Gorice

the King made desolate our little castle and our pleasant places. The

face of the land was lifted up to high airs where frosts do dwell, so

that the cliffs of Omprenne Edge down which ye came are ten times the

height they were when Gorice III. came down them. So was an end of

flowers on the Moruna, and an end there of spring and of summer days

for ever.”

 

The Queen ceased speaking, and Lord Juss was silent for a space,

greatly marvelling.

 

“Judge now,” said she, “if your foes be not my foes. It is not hidden

from me, my lord, that you deem me but a lukewarm friend and no helper

at all in your enterprise. Yet have I ceased not since ye were here to

search and to inquire, and sent my little martlets west and east and

south and north after tidings of him thou mamedst. They