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

are swift,

even as wingy thoughts circling the stablished world; and they

returned to me on weary wings, yet with never a word of thy great

kinsman.”

 

Juss looked at her eyes that were moist with tears. Truth sat in them

like an angel. “O Queen,” he cried, “why need thy little minions scour

the world, when my brother is here in Koshtra Belorn?”

 

She shook her head, saying, “This I will swear to thee, there hath no

mortal come up into Koshtra Belorn save only thee and thy companions

these two hundred years.”

 

But Juss said again, “My brother is here in Koshtra Belorn. Mine eyes

beheld him that first might, hedged about with fires. And he is held

captive on a tower of brass on a peak of a mountain.”

 

“There be no mountains here,” said she, “save this in whose womb we

have our dwelling.”

 

“Yet so I beheld my brother,” said Juss, “under the white beams of the

full moon.”

 

“There is no moon here,” said the Queen.

 

So Lord Juss rehearsed to her his vision of the night, telling her

point to point of everything. She harkened gravely, and when he had

done, trembled a little and said, “This is a mystery, my lord, beyond

my resolution.”

 

She fell silent awhile. Then she began to say in a hushed voice, as if

the very words and breath might breed some dreadful matter: “Taken up

in a sending maleficial by King Gorice XII. So it hath ever been, that

whensoever there dieth one of the house of Gorice there riseth up

another in his stead, and so from strength to strength. And death

weakeneth not this house of Witchland, but like the dandelion weed

being cut down and bruised it springeth up the stronger. Dost thou

know why?”

 

He answered, “No.”

 

“The blessed Gods,” said she, speaking yet lower, “have shown me many

hidden matters which the sons of men know not neither imagine. Behold

this mystery. There is but One Gorice. And by the favour of heaven

(that moveth sometimes in a manner our weak judgement seeketh in vain

to justify) this cruel and evil One, every time whether by the sword

or in the fulmess of his years he cometh to die, departeth the living

soul and spirit of him into a new and sound body, and liveth yet

another lifetime to vex and to oppress the world, until that body die,

and the next in his turn, and so continually; having thus in a manner

life eternal.”

 

Juss said, “Thy discourse, O Queen Sophonisba, is in a strain above

mortality. This is a great wonder thou tellest me; whereof some little

part I guessed aforetime, but the main I knew not. Rightfully, having

such a timeless life, this King weareth on his thumb that worm

Ouroboros which doctors have from of old made for an ensample of

eternity, whereof the end is ever at the beginning and the beginning

at the end for ever more.”

 

“See them the hardness of the thing,” said the Queen. “But I forget

not, my lord, that thou hast a matter nearer thine heart than this: to

set free him (name him not!) concerning whom thou didst inquire of me.

Touching this, know it for thy comfort, some ray of light I see.

Question me no more till I have made trial thereof, lest it prove but

a false dawn. If it be as I think, ‘tis a trial yet abideth thee

should make the stoutest blench.”

XIV THE LAKE OF RAVARY

Of the furtherance given by Queen Sophonisba,

fosterling of the Gods, to Lord Juss and Lord

Brandoch Daha; with how the Hippogrif’s egg

was hatched beside the enchanted lake, and

what ensued therefrom.

 

NEXT day the Queen came to Lord Juss and Lord Bramdoch Daha and made

them go with her, and Mivarsh with them to serve them, over the

meadows and down a passage like that whereby they had entered the

mountain, but this led downward. “Ye may marvel,” she said, “to see

daylight in the heart of this great mountain. Yet it is but the hidden

work of Nature. For the rays of the sun, striking all day upon Koshtra

Belorn and upon her robe of snow, sink into the snow like water, and

so soaking through the secret places of the rocks shine again in this

hollow chamber where we dwell and in these passages cleft by the Gods

to give us our goings out and our comings in. And as sunset followeth

broad day with coloured fires, and moonlight or darkness followeth

sunset, and dawn followeth night ushering the bright day once more, so

these changes of the dark and light succeed one another within the

mountain.”

 

They passed on, ever downward, till after many hours they came

suddenly forth into dazzling sunlight. They stood at a cave’s mouth on

a beach of sand white and clean, that was lapped by the ripples of a

sapphire lake: a great lake, sown with islets craggy and luxuriant

with trees and flowering growths. Many-armed was the lake, winding

everywhere in secret reaches behind promontories that were spurs of

the mountains that held it in their bosom: some wooded or green with

lush flower-spangled turf to the water’s edge, some with bare rocks

abrupt from the water, some crowned with rugged lines of crag that

sent down scree-slopes into the lake below. It was mid-afternoon,

sweet-aired, a day of dappled cloud-shadows and changing lights. White

birds circled above the lake, and now and them a kingfisher flashed by

like a streak of azure flame. That was a westward facing beach, at the

end of a headland that ran down clothed with pine-forests with open

primrose glades from a spur of Koshtra Belorn. Northward the two great

mountains stood at the head of a straight narrow valley that ran up to

the Gates of Zimiamvia. Vaster they seemed than the Demons had yet

beheld them, showing at but six or seven miles’ distance a clear

sixteen thousand feet above the lake. Nor from any other point of

prospect were they more lovely to behold: Koshtra Pivrarcha like an

eagle armed, shadowing with wings, and Koshtra Belorn as a Goddess

fallen a-dreaming, gracious as the morning star of heaven. Wondrous

bright were their snows in the sunshine, yet ghostly and unsubstantial

to view seen through the hazy summer air. Olive trees, gray and soft-outlined like embodied mist, grew in the lower valleys; woods of oak

and birch and every forest tree clothed the slopes; and in the warmer

folds of the mountain sides belts of creamy rhododendrons straggled

upwards even to the moraimes above the lower glaciers and the very

margin of the snows.

 

The Queen watched Lord Juss as his gaze moved to the left past Koshtra

Pivrarcha, past the blunt lower crest of Goglio, to a great lonely

peak many miles distant that frowned over the rich maze of nearer

ridges which stood above the lake. Its southern shoulder swept in a

long majestic line of cliffs up to a clean sharp summit; northward it

fell steeplier away. Little snow hung on the sheer rock faces, save

where the gullies cleft them. For grace and beauty scarce might

Koshtra Belorn herself surpass that peak: but terrible it looked, and

as a mansion of old night, that not high noon-day could wholly

dispossess of darkness.

 

“There standeth a mountain great and fair,” said Lord Brandoch Daha,

“which was hid in a cloud when we were on the high ridges. It hath the

look of a great beast couchant.”

 

Still the Queen watched Lord Juss, who looked still on that peak. Then

he turned to her, his hands clenched on the buckles of his

breastplates. She said, “Was it as I think?”

 

He took a great breath. “It was so I beheld it in the beginning,” he

said, “as from this place. But here are we too far off to see the

citadel of brass, or know if it be truly there.” And he said to

Brandoch Daha, “This remaineth, that we climb that mountain.”

 

“That can ye never do,” said the Queen.

 

“That shall be shown,” said Brandoch Daha.

 

“List,” said she. “Nameless is yonder mountain upon earth, for until

this hour, save only for me and you, the eye of living man hath not

looked upon it. But unto the Gods it hath a name, and unto the spirits

of the blest that do inhabit this land, and unto those unhappy souls

that are held in captivity on that cold mountain top: Zora Rach nam

Psarrion, standing apart above the noiseless lifeless snowfields that

feed the Psarrion glaciers; loneliest and secretest of all earth’s

mountains, and most accursed. O my lords,” she said, “think not to

climb up Zora. Emchantments ring round Zora, so that ye should not get

so near as to the edges of the snowfields at her feet ere ruin

gathered you.”

 

Juss smiled. “O Queen Sophonisba, little thou knowest our mind, if

thou think this shall turn us back.”

 

“I say it,” said the Queen, “with no such vain purpose; but to show

you the necessity of that way I shall now tell you of, since well I

know ye will not give over this attempt. To none save to a Demon durst

I have told it, lest heaven should hold me answerable for his death.

But unto you I may with the less danger commit this dangerous counsel

if it be true, as I was taught long ago, that the hippogruff was seen

of old in Demonland.”

 

“The hippogriff?” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “What else is it than the

emblem of our greatness? A thousand years ago they nested on Neverdale

Hause, and there abide unto this day in the rocks the prints of their

hooves and talons. He that rode it was a forefather of mine and of

Lord Juss.”

 

“He that shall ride it again,” said Queen Sophomisba, “he only of

mortal men may win to Zora Rach, and if he be man enough of his hands

may deliver him we wot of out of bondage.”

 

“O Queen,” said Juss, “somewhat I know of grammarie and divine

philosophy, yet must I bow to thee for such learning, that dwellest

here from generation to generation and dost commune with the dead. How

shall we find this steed? Few they be, and high they fly above the

world, and come to birth but one in three hundred years.”

 

She answered, “I have an egg. In all lands else must such an egg lie

barren and sterile, save in this land of Zimiamvia which is sacred to

the lordly races of the dead. And thus cometh this steed to the birth:

when one of might and heart beyond the wont of man sleepeth in this

land with the egg in his bosom, greatly desiring some high

achievement, the fire of his great longing hatcheth the egg, and the

hippogriffcometh out therefrom, weak-winged at first as thou hast seem

a butterfly new-hatched out his chrysalis. Then only mayst thou mount

him, and if thou be man enow to turn him to thy will he shall bear

thee to the uttermost parts of earth unto thine heart’s desire. But if

thou be aught less than greatest, beware that steed, and mount only

earthly coursers. For if there be aught of dross within thee, and

thine heart falter, or thy purpose cool, or thou forget the level aim

of thy glory, then will he toss thee to thy ruin.”

 

“Thou hast this thing, O Queen?” said Lord Juss.

 

“My lord,” she said softly, “more than an hundred years ago I found

it, while I rambled on the cliffs that