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

and there

sat her down, saying, “I pray thee, my Lord Corinius, unsay that word.

Thou knowest it dislikes me.”

 

He looked on her in silence for a minute, leaned forward across the

board, his lips parted a little and between them his breath coming and

going thick and swift. “Well,” he said, “sit there, and it like thee,

madam, and manage my delights by stages. Last year the wide world

betwixt us: this year the mountains: yestereve Krothering walls:

tonight a table’s breadth: and ere night be done, not so much as–”

 

Gro saw the wild-deer look in Lady Mevrian’s eyes. She said, “This is

talk I have not learned to understand, my lord.”

 

“I shall learn it thee,” said Corinius, his face aflame. “Lovers live

by love as larks by leeks. By Satan, I do love thee as thou wert the

heart out of my body.”

 

“My Lord Corinius,” said she, “we ladies of the north have little

stomach for these fashions, howe’er they commend them in waterish

Witchland. If thou’lt have my friendship, bring me service therefor,

and that in season. This is no fit table-talk.”

 

“Why there,” said he, “we’re in fast agreement. I’ll blithely show

thee all this, and a quainter thing beside, in thine own chamber. But

‘twas beyond my hopes thou’dst grant me that so suddenly. Are we so

happy?”

 

In great shame and anger the Lady Mevrian stood up from the table.

Corinius, something unsteadily, leaped to his feet. For all his

bigness, so tall she was she looked him level in the eye. And he, as

when in the face of a night-ranging beast suddenly a man brandishes a

bright light, stood stupid under that gaze, the springs of action

strangely frozen in him on a sudden, and said sullenly, “Madam, I am a

soldier. Truly mine affection standeth not upon compliment. That I am

impatient, put the wite on thy beauty not on me. Pray you, be seated.”

 

But Mevrian answered, “Thy language, my lord, is too bold and vicious.

Come to me tomorrow if thou wilt; but I’ll have thee know, patience

only and courtesy shall get good of me.”

 

She turned to the door. He, as if with the turning away of that lady’s

eyes the spell was broke, cried loudly upon his folk to stay her. But

there was none stirred. Therewith he, as one that cannot command his

own indecent appetites, o’ersetting bench and board in eager haste to

lay hands on her, it so betided that he tripped up with one of these

and fell a-sprawling. And ere he was gotten again on his feet, the

Lady Mevrian was gone from the hall.

 

He rose up painfully, proffering from his lips a mudspring of

barbarous and filthy imprecations; so that Laxus who helped raise him

up was fain to chide him, saying, “My lord, unman not thyself by such

a bestial transformation. Are not we yet with harness on our backs in

a kingdom newly gained, the old lords thereof discomfited in deed but

not yet ta’en nor slain, studying belike to raise new powers against

us? And above such and so many affairs wilt thou make place for the

allurements of love?”

 

“Ay!” answered he. “Nor shall such a sapless ninny as thou avail to

cross me therein. Ask thy little gamesome Sriva, when thou comest home

to wed her, if I be not better able than thou to please a woman.

She’ll tell thee! I’ the main season meddle not in matters that be too

high for such as thou.”

 

Both Gro and the sons of Corund were by and heard those words. The

Lord Laxus schooled himself to laugh. He turned toward Gro, saying,

“The general is far gone in wine.”

 

Gro, marking Laxus’s face flushed red to the ears for all his studied

carelessness, answered him softly, “‘Tis so, my lord. And in wine is

truth.”

 

Now Corinius, bethinking him that it was yet early and the feast

barely well begun, let set a guard on all the passages which led to

Mevrian’s lodgings, to the end that she might not issue therefrom but

there wait on his pleasure. That done, he bade renew their feasting.

 

No stint of luscious meats and wines was there, and the lords of

Witchiand sat them down again right eagerly to the good banquet. Laxus

spoke secretly to Gro: “I wot well thou takest in very ill part these

doings. Let it stand firm in thy mind that if thou shouldst deem it

fitting to play him a trick and steal the lady from him, I’ll not

stand i’ the way on’t.”

 

“In a bunch of cards,” said Gro, “knaves wait upon the kings. It were

not so ill done and we made it so here. I heard a bird sing lately

thou hadst a quarrel to him.”

 

“Thou must not think so,” answered Laxus. “I’ll give thee still a

Roland for thine Oliver, and tell thee ‘tis most apparent thyself dost

love this lady.”

 

Gro said, “Thou chargest me with a sweet folly is foreign to my

nature, being a grave scholar that if ever I did frequent such toys

have long eschewed them. Only meseems ‘tis an ill thing if she must be

given over unto him against her will. Thou knowest him of a rough and

mere soldierly mind, besides his dissolute company with other women.”

 

“Tush,” said Laxus, “he may go his gate for me, and be as close as a

butterfly with the lady. But out of policy, ‘twere best rid her hence.

I’d not be seen in’t. That provided, I’ll second thee allways. If he

lie here the summer long in amorous dalliance, justly might the King

abraid us that midst o’ the day’s sport we gave his good hawk a gorge,

and so lost him the game.”

 

“I see,” said Gro, smiling in himself, “thou art a man of sober

government and understanding, and thinkest first of Witchland. And

that is both just and right.”

 

Now went the feast forward with great surfeiting and swigging of wine.

Mevrian’s women that were there, much against their own good will, to

serve the banquet, set ever fresh dishes before the feasters and

poured forth fresh wines, golden and tawny and rubyred, in the goblets

of jade and crystal and hammered gold. The air in the fair chamber was

thick with the steam of bakemeats and the vinons breath of the

feasters, so that the lustre of the opal lamps burned coppery, and

about each lamp was a bush of coppery beams like the beams about a

torch that burns in a fog. Great was the clatter of cups, and great

the clinking of glass as in their drunkenness the Witches cast down

the priceless beakers on the floor, smashing them in shivers. And huge

din there was of laughter and song; and amidst of it, women’s voices

singing, albeit near drowned in the hurly burly. For they constrained

Mevrian’s damosels in Krothering to sing and dance before them,

howsoever woeful at heart. And to other entertainment than this of

dance and song was many a black-bearded reveller willing to constrain

them; and sought occasion thereto, but this by stealth only, and out

of eye-shot of their general. For heavily enow was his wrath fallen on

some who rashly flaunted in his face their light disports, presuming

to hunt in such fields while their lord went still a-fasting.

 

After a while Heming, who sat next to Gro, began to say to him in a

whisper, “This is an ill banquet.”

 

“Meseems rather ‘tis a very good banquet,” said Gro.

 

“Would I saw some other issue thereof,” said Heming, “than that he

purposeth. Or how thinkest thou?”

 

“I scarce can blame him,” answered Gro. “‘Tis a most lovesome lady.”

 

“Is not the man a most horrible open swine? And is it to be endured

that he should work his lewd purpose on so sweet a lady?”

 

“What have I to do with it?” said Gro.

 

“What less than I?” said Heming.

 

“It dislikes thee?” said Gro.

 

“Art thou a man?” said Heming. “And she that hateth him besides as

bloody Atropos!”

 

Gro looked him a swift searching look in the eye. Then he whispered,

his head bowed over some raisins he was a-picking: “If this is thy

mind, ‘tis well.” And speaking softly, with here and there some snatch

of louder discourse or jest between whiles lest he should seem too

earnestly engaged in secret talk, he taught Heming orderly and clearly

what he had to do, discovering to him that Laxus also, being bit with

jealousy, was of their accord. “Thy brother Cargo is aptest for this.

He standeth about her height, and by reason of his youth is yet

beardless. Go find him out. Rehearse unto him word by word all this

talking that hath been between me and thee. Corinius holdeth me too

deep suspect to suffer me out of his eye tonight. Unto you sons of

Corund therefore is the task; and I biding at his elbow may avail to

hold him here i’ the hall till it be performed. Go; and wise counsel

and good speed wait on your attempts.”

 

The Lady Mevrian, being escaped to her own chamber in the south tower,

sat by an eastern window that looked across the gardens and the lake,

past the sea-lochs of Stropardon and the dark hills of Eastmark, to

the stately ranges afar which overhang in mid-air Mosedale and

Murkdale and Swartriverdale and the inland sea of Throwater. The last

lights of day still lingered on their loftier summits: on Ironbeak, on

the gaunt wall of Skarta, and on the distant twin towers of Dina seen

beyond the lower Mosedale range in the depression of Neverdale Hause.

Behind them rolled up the ascent of heaven the wheels of quiet Night:

holy Night, mother of the Gods, mother of sleep, tender nurse of all

little birds and beasts that dwell in the field and all tired hearts

and weary: mother besides of strange children, affrights, and rapes,

and midnight murders bold.

 

Mevrian sat there till all the earth was blurred in darkness and the

sky a-throb with starlight, for it was yet an hour until the rising of

the moon. And she prayed to Lady Artemis, calling her by her secret

names and saying, “Goddess and Maiden chaste and holy; triune Goddess,

Which in heaven art, and on the earth Huntress divine, and also hast

in the veiled sunless places below earth Thy dwelling, viewing the

large stations of the dead: save me and keep me that am Thy maiden

still.”

 

She turned the ring upon her finger and scanned in the gathering gloom

the bezel thereof, which was of that chrysoprase that is hid in light

and seen in darkness, being as a flame by night but in the day-time

yellow or wan. And behold, it palpitated with splendour from

withinward, and was as if a thousand golden sparks danced and swirled

within the stone.

 

While she pondered what interpretation lay likeliest on this sudden

flowering of unaccustomed splendour within the chrysoprase, behold,

one of her women of the bedchamber who brought lights said, standing

before her, “Twain of those lords of Witchland would speak with your

ladyship in private.”

 

“Two?” said Mevrian. “There’s safety yet in numbers. Which be they?”

 

“Highness, they be tall and slim of body. They be blackadvised. They

bear them discreet as dormice, and most commendably sober.”

 

Mevrian asked, “Is it the Lord Gro? Hath he a great black beard, much

curled and perfumed?”

 

“Highness, I marked not that either weareth a beard,” said the woman,

“nor their names I know not.”

 

“Well,” said