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

and we be but Fate’s whipping-tops

bandied what way she will. Against thee we war not, and I swear to

thee that all our care is to make thee amends.”

 

“O, thine oaths!” said Prezmyra. “What amends canst thou make? Youth I

have and some poor beauty. Wilt thou conjure those three dead men

alive again that ye have slain? For all thy vaunted art, I think this

were too hard a task.”

 

All they were silent, eyeing her as she walked delicately past the

table. She looked with a distant and, to outward seeming,

uncomprehending eye on the dead feasters and their empty cups. Empty

all, save that one passed on by Viglus, whereof Corsus would not

drink; and it stood half drained. Of curious workmanship it was, of

pale green glass, its stand formed of three serpents intertwined, the

one of gold, another of silver, the third of iron. Fingering it

carelessly she raised her glittering eyes once more on the Demons, and

said, “It was ever the wont of you of Demonland to eat the egg and

give away the shell in alms.” And pointing at the lords of Witchland

dead at the feast, she asked, “Were these also your victims in this

day’s hunting, my lords?”

 

“Thou dost us wrong, madam,” cried Goldry. “Never hath Demoniand used

suchlike arts against her enemies.”

 

Lord Brandoch Daha looked swiftly at him, and stepped idly forward,

saying, “I know not what art hath wrought yon goblet, but ‘tis

strangely like to one I saw in Impland. Yet fairer is this, and of

more just proportions.” But Prezmyra forestalled his outstretched

hand, and quietly drew the cup towards her out of reach. As sword

crosses sword, the glance of her green eyes crossed his, and she said,

“Think not that you have a worse enemy left on earth than me. I it was

that sent Corsus and Corinius to trample Demonland in the mire. Had I

but some spark of masculine virtue, some soul at least of you should

yet be loosed squealing to the shades to attend my dear ones ere I set

sail. But I have none. Kill me then, and let me go.”

 

Juss, whose sword was bare in his hand, smote it home in the scabbard

and stepped towards her. But the table was betwixt them, and she drew

back to the dais where Corund lay in state. There, like some

triumphant goddess, she stood above them, the cup of venom in her

hand. “Come not beyond the table, my lords,” she said, “or I drain

this cup to your damnation.”

 

Brandoch Daha said, “The dice are thrown, O Juss. And the Queen hath

won the hazard.”

 

“Madam,” said Juss, “I swear to you there shall no force nor restraint

be put upon you, but honour only and worship shown you, and friendship

if you will. That surely mightest thou take of us for thy brother’s

sake.” Thereat she looked terribly upon him, and he said, “Only on

this wild night lay not hands upon yourself. For their sake, that even

now haply behold us out of the undiscovered barren lands, beyond the

dismal lake, do not this.”

 

Still facing them, the cup still aloft in her right hand, Prezmyra

laid her left hand lightly on the brazen plates of Corund’s byrny that

cased the mighty muscles of his breast. Her hand touched his beard,

and drew back suddenly; but in an instant she laid it gently again on

his breast. Somewhat her orient loveliness seemed to soften for a

passing minute in the altering light, and she said, “I was given to

Corund young. This night I will sleep with him, or reign with him,

among the mighty nations of the dead.”

 

Juss moved as one about to speak, but she stayed him with a look, and

the lines of her body hardened again and the lioness looked forth anew

in her peerless eyes. “Hath your greatness,” she said, “so much

outgrown your wit, that you think I will abide to be your pensioner,

that have been a Princess in Pixyland, a Queen of far-fronted Impland,

and wife to the greatest soldier in this hold of Carcë, which till

this day hath been the only scourge and terror of the world? O my

lords of Demonland, good comfortable fools, speak to me no more, for

your speech is folly. Go, doff your hats to the silly hind that

runneth on the mountain; pray her gently dwell with you amid your

stalled cattle, when you have slain her mate. Shall the blackening

frost, when it hath blasted and starved all the sweet garden flowers,

say to the rose, Abide with us; and shall she harken to such a wolfish

suit?”

 

So speaking she drank the cup; and turning from those lords of

Demonland as a queen turneth her from the unregarded multitude,

kneeled gently down by Corund’s bier, her white arms clasped about his

head, her face pillowed on his breast.

 

When Juss spake, his voice was choked with tears. He commanded Bremery

that they should take up the bodies of Corsus and Zenambria and those

sons of Corund and of Corsus that lay poisoned and dead in that hall

and on the morrow give them reverent burial. “And for the Lord

Corinius I will that ye make a bed of state, that he may lie in this

hall tonight, and tomorrow will we lay him in howe before Carcë, as

is fitting for so renowned a captain. But great Corund and his lady

shall none depart one from the other, but in one grave shall they

rest, side by side, for their love sake. Ere we be gone I will rear

them such a monument as beseemeth great kings and princes when they

die. For royal and lordly was Corund, and a mighty man at arms, and a

fighter clean of hand, albeit our bitter enemy. Wondrous it is with

what cords of love he bound to him this unparagoned Queen of his. Who

bath known her like among women for trueness and highness of heart?

And sure none was ever more unfortunate.”

 

Now went they forth into the outer ward of Carcë. The night bore still

some signs of that commotion of the skies that had so lately burst

forth and passed away, and some torn palls of thundercloud yet hung

athwart the face of heaven. Betwixt them in the swept places of the

sky a few stars shivered, and the moon, more than half waxen towards

her full, was sinking over Tenemos. Some faint breath of autumn was

abroad, and the Demons shuddered a little, fresh from the heavy air of

the great banquet hall. The ruins of the Iron Tower smoking to the

sky, and the torn and tumbled masses of masonry about it, showed

monstrous in the gloom as fragments of old chaos; and from them and

from the riven earth beneath steamed up pungent fumes as of brimstone

burning. Ever busily, back and forth through those sulphurous vapours,

obscene birds of the night flitted a weary round, and bats on leathern

wing, fitfully and dimly seen in the uncertain mirk, save when their

passage brought them dark against the moon. And from the solitudes of

the mournful fen afar voices of lamentation floated on the night: wild

wailing cries and sobbing noises and long moans rising and falling and

quivering down to silence.

 

Juss laid his hand on Goldry’s arm, saying, “There is nought earthly

in these laments, nor be those that thou seest circling in the reek

very bats or owls. These be his masterless familiars wailing for their

Lord. Many such served him, simple earthy divels and divels of the air

and of the water, held by him in thrail by sorcerous and artificial

practices, coming and going and doing his will.”

 

“These availed him not,” said Goldry, “nor the sword of Witchland

against our might and main, that brake it asunder in his hand and slew

his mighty men of valour.”

 

“Yet true it is,” said Lord Juss, “that none greater hath lived on

earth than King Gorice XII. When after these long wars we held him as

a stag at bay, he feared not to assay a second time, and this time

unaided and alone, what no man else hath so much as once performed and

lived. And well he knew that that which was summoned by him out of the

deep must spill and blast him utterly if he should slip one whit, as

slip he did in former days, but his disciple succoured him. Behold now

with what loud striking of thunder, unconquered by any earthly power,

he hath his parting: with this Carcë black and smoking in ruin for his

monument, these lords of Witchland and hundreds besides of our

soldiers and of the Witches for his funeral bakemeats, and spirits

weeping in the night for his chief mourners.”

 

So came they again to the camp. And in due time the moon set and the

clouds departed and the quiet stars pursued their eternal way until

night’s decline; as if this night had been but as other nights: this

night which had beheld the power and glory that was Witchland by such

a hammer-stroke of destiny smitten in pieces.

XXXIII QUEEN SOPHONISBA IN GALING

Of the entertainment given by Lord Juss in

Demonland to Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the

gods, and of that circumstance which, beyond all

the wonders fair and lovely to behold shown her

in that country, made her most to marvel:

wherein is a rare example how in a fortunate

world, out of all expectation, in the spring of the

year, cometh a new birth.

 

NOW the returning months brought the season of the year when Queen

Sophonisba should come according to her promise to guest with Lord

Juss in Galing. And so it was that in the hush of a windless April

dawn the Zimiamvian caravel that bare the Queen to Demonland rowed up

the firth to Lookinghaven.

 

All the east was a bower for the golden dawn. Kartadza, sharpoutlined

as if cut in bronze, still hid the sun; and in the great shadow of the

mountain the haven and the low hills and the groves of holm-oak and

strawberry tree slumbered in a deep obscurity of blues and purples,

against which the avenues of pink almond blossom and the white marble

quays were bodied forth in pale wakening beauty, imaged as in a

looking-glass in that tranquillity of the sea. Westward across the

firth all the land was aglow with the opening day. Snow lingered still

on the higher summits. Cloudless, bathing in the golden light, they

stood against the blue: Dina, the Forks of Nantreganon, Pike o’

Shards, and all the peaks of the Thornback range and Neverdale.

Morning laughed on their high ridges and kissed the woods that clung

about their lower limbs: billowy woods, where rich hues of brown and

purple told of every twig on all their myriad branches thick and afire

with buds. White mists lay like coverlets on the water-meadows where

Tivarandardale opens to the sea. On the shores of Bothrey and

Scaramsey, and on the mainland near the great bluff of Thremnir’s

Heugh and a little south of Owlswick, clear spaces among the

birchwoods showed golden yellow: daffodils abloom in the spring.

 

They rowed in to the northernmost berth and made fast the caravel. The

sweetness of the almond trees was the sweetness of spring in the air,

and spring was in the face of that Queen as she came with her

attendants up the shining steps, her little martlets circling about

her or perching on her shoulders: she to whom the Gods of old gave

youth everlasting, and peace everlasting in Koshtra