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

hath no essence to do me a

hurt. If o’ the contrary these be very essential beings, needs must

they joyfully welcome me and use me well, being themselves the true

vital spirits of manymountained Demonland; unto whose comfort and the

restorement of her old renown and praise I have with such a strange

determination bent all my painful thoughts and resolut’on.”

 

So on the motion he discovered himself and hailed them. The wild

things bounded away and were lost among the flanks of the hill. The

capripeds, leaving on the instant their piping or their dancing,

crouched watching him with distrustful startled eyes. Only the Oreads

still in a dazzling drift pursued their round: quiet maiden mouths,

beautiful breasts, slender lithe limbs, hand joined to delicate hand,

parting and closing and parting again, in rhythms of unstaled variety;

here one that, with white arms clasped behind her head where her

braided hair was as burnished gold, circled and swayed with a

langourous motion; here another, that leaped and paused hovering

a-tiptoe, like an arrow of the sun shot through the leafy roof of an old

pine-forest when the warm hill-wind stirs the tree-tops and opens a

tiny window to the sky.

 

Gro went toward them along the grassy hillside. When he was come a

dozen paces the strength was gone from his limbs. He kneeled down

crying out and saying, “Divinities of earth! deny me not, neither

reject me, albeit cruelly have I till now oppressed your land, but

will do so no more. The footsteps of mine overtrodden virtue lie still

as bitter accusations unto me. Bring me of your mercy where I may find

out them that possessed this land and offer them atonement, who were

driven forth because of me and mine to be outlaws in the woods and

mountains.”

 

So spake he, bowing his head in sorrow. And he heard, like the

trembling of a silver lute-string, a voice in the air that cried:

 

North ‘tis and north ‘tis!

 

Why need we further?

 

He raised his eyes. The vision was gone. Only the noon and the

woodland, silent, solitary, dazzling, were about and above him.

 

Lord Gro came now to his horse again, and mounted and rode northaway

through the fells all that summer afternoon, full of cloudy fancies.

When it was eventide his way was high up along the steep side of a

mountain between the screes and the grass, following a little path

made by the wild sheep. Far beneath in the valley was a small river

tortuously flowing along a bouldery bed amid hillocks of old moraines

which were like waves of a sea of grass-clad earth. The July sun

wheeled low, flinging the shadows of the hills far up the westward-facing slopes where Gro was a-riding, but where he rode and above him

the hillside was yet aglow with the warm low sunshine; and the distant

peak that shut in the head of the valley, rearing his huge front like

the gable of a house, with sweeping ribs of bare rock and scree and a

crest of crag like a great breaker frozen to stone in mid career,

bathed yet in a radiance of opalescent light.

 

Turning the shoulder of the hillside at a place where the hill was cut

by a shallow gully, he saw before him a hollow or sheltered nook.

There, protected by the great body of the hill from the blasts of the

east and north, two rowan trees and some hollies grew in the clefts of

the rock above the watercourse. Under their shadow was a cave, not

large but so big as a man might well abide in and be dry in wild

weather, and beyond it on the right a little waterfall, so beautiful

it was a wonder to behold. This was the fashion of it: a slab of rock,

twice a man’s height, tilted a little forward from the hill, so that

the water fell clear from its upper edge in a thin stream into a rocky

basin. The water in the basin was clear and deep, but a-churn always

with bubbles from the plungingjet from above; and over all the rocks

about it grew mosses and lichens and little water-flowers, nourished

by the stream at root and refreshed by the spray.

 

The Lord Gro said in his heart, “Here would I dwell for ever had I but

the art to make myself little as an eft. And I would build me an house

a span high beside yonder cushion of moss emeraldhued, with those pink

foxgloves to shade my door which balance their bells above the foaming

waters. This shy grass of Parnassus should be my drinking cup, with

pure white chalice poised on a hair-thin stem; and the curtains of my

bed that little thirsty sandwort which, like a green heaven sown with

milk-white stars, curtains the shady sides of these rocks.”

 

Resting in this imagination he abode long time looking on that fairy

place, so secretly bestowed in the fold of the naked mountain. Then,

unwilling to depart from so fair a spot, and bethinking him, besides,

that after so many hours his horse was weary, he dismounted and lay

down beside the stream. And in a short while, having his spirits

sublimed with the sweet imagination of those wonders he had beheld, he

was fain to suffer the long dark lashes to droop over his large and

liquid eyes. And deep sleep overcame him.

 

When he awoke, all the sky was afire with the red of sunset. A shadow

was betwixt him and the western light: the shape of one bending over

him and saying in masterful wise, yet in accents wherein the echoes

and memories of all sweet sounds seemed mingled and laid up at rest

for ever, “Lie still, my lord, nor cry not a rescue. Behold, thine own

sword; and I took it from thee sleeping.” And he was ware of a sharp

sword pointed against his throat where the big veins lie beneath the

tongue.

 

He stirred not at all, neither spake aught, only looking up at her as

at some vision of delight strayed from the fugitive flock of dreams.

 

The lady said, “Where by thy company? And how many? Answer me

swiftly.”

 

He answered her like a dreamer, “How shall I answer thee? How shall I

number them that be beyond all count? Or how name unto your grace

their habitation which are even very now closer to me than hand or

feet, yet o’ the next instant are able to transcend a main wilder

belike than even a starbeam hath journeyed o’er?”

 

She said, “Riddle me no riddles. Answer me, thou wert best.”

 

“Madam,” said Gro, “these that I told thee of be the company of mine

own silent thoughts. And, but for mine horse, this is all the company

that came hither with me.”

 

“Alone?” said she. “And sleep so securely in thine enemies’ country?

That showed a strange confidence.”

 

“Not enemies, if I may,” said he.

 

But she cried, “And thou Lord Gro of Witchland?”

 

“That one sickened long since,” he answered, “of a mortal sickness;

and ‘tis now a day and a night since he is dead thereof.”

 

“What art thou, then?” said she.

 

He answered, “If your grace would so receive me, Lord Gro of

Demonland.”

 

“A very practised turncoat,” said she. “Belike they also are wearied

of thee and thy ways. Alas,” she said in an altered voice, “thy gentle

pardon! when doubtless it was for thy generous deeds to me-ward they

fell out with thee, when thou didst so nobly befriend me.”

 

“I will tell your highness,” answered he, “the pure truth. Never stood

matters better ‘twixt me and all of them than when yesternight I

resolved to leave them.”

 

The Lady Mevrian was silent, a cloud in her face. Then, “I am alone,”

she said. “Therefore think it not little-hearted in me, nor forgetful

of past benefits, if I will be further certified of thee ere I suffer

thee to rise. Swear to me thou wilt not betray me.”

 

But Gro said, “How should an oath from me avail thee, madam? Oaths

bind not an ill man. Were I minded to do thee wrong, lightly should I

swear thee all oaths thou mightest require, and lightly o’ the next

instant be forsworn.”

 

“That is not well said,” said Mevrian. “Nor helpeth not thy safety.

You men do say that women’s hearts be faint and feeble, but I shall

show thee the contrary is in me. Study to satisfy me. Else will I

assuredly smite thee to death with thine own sword.”

 

The Lord Gro lay back, clasping his slender hands behind his head.

“Stand, I pray thee,” said he, “o’ the other side of me, that I may

see thy face.”

 

She did so, still threatening him with the sword. And he said smiling,

“Divine lady, all my days have I had danger for my bedfellow, and

peril of death for my familiar friend; whilom leading a delicate life

in princely court, where murther sitteth in the winecup and in the

alcove; whilom journeying alone in more perilous lands than this, as

witness the Moruna, where the country is full of venomous beasts and

crawling poisoned serpents, and the divels be as abundant there as

grasshoppers on a hot hillside in summer. He that feareth is a slave,

were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is

without fear is king of all the world. Thou hast my sword. Strike.

Death shall be a sweet rest to me. Thraldom, not death, should terrify

me.”

 

She paused awhile, then said unto him, “My Lord Gro, thou didst do me

once a right great good turn. Surely I may build my safety on this,

that never yet did kite bring forth a good flying hawk.” She shifted

her hold on his sword, and very prettily gave it him hilt-foremost,

saying, “I give it thee back, my lord, nothing doubting that that

which was given in honour thou wilt honourably use.”

 

But he, rising up, said, “Madam, this and thy noble words hath given

such rootfastness to the pact of faith betwixt us that it may now

unfold what blossom of oaths thou wilt; for oaths are the blossom of

friendship, not the root. And thou shalt find me a true holder of my

vowed amity unto thee without spot or wrinkle.”

 

For sundry nights and days abode Gro and Mevrian in that place,

hunting at whiles to get their sustenance, drinking of the sweet

spring-water, sleeping anights, she in her cave beneath the holly

bushes and the rowans beside the waterfall, he in a cleft of the rocks

a little below in the gully, where the moss made cushions soft and

resilient as the great stuffed beds in Carcë. In those days she told

him of her farings since that night of April when she escaped out of

Krothering: how first she found harbourage at By in Westmark, but

hearing in a day or two of a hue and cry fled east again, and

sojourning awhile beside Throwater came at length about a month ago

upon this cave beside the little fountain, and here abode. Her mind

had been to win over the mountains to Galing, but she had after the

first attempt given over that design, for fear of companies of the

enemy whose hands she barely escaped when she came forth into the

lower valleys that open on the eastern coastlands. So she had turned

again to this hiding place in the hills, as secret and remote as any

in Demonland. For this dale she let him know was Neverdale, where no

road ran save the way of