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

since thou and my Lord Brandoch Daha came first of mortal men

into Koshtra Belorn, and fulfilled the weird according to

preordainment, this only hath been my desire: to further you and to

enhance you and to obtain for you what you would, so far as in me

lieth. Though I be but a weak maid, yet hath it seemed good to the

blessed Gods to show kindness unto me. One holy prayer may work things

we scarce dream of. Wilt thou that I pray to Them tonight?”

 

“Alas, dear Queen,” said he, “shall those estranged and divided ashes

unite again? Who shall turn back the floodtide of unalterable

necessity?”

 

But she said, “Thou hast crystals and perspectives can show thee

things afar off. I pray bring them, and row me in thy boat up to

Moonmere Head that we may land there about midnight. And let my Lord

Brandoch Daha come with us and thy brothers. But let none else know of

it. For that were but to mock them with a false dawn, if it should

prove at last to be according to thy wisdom, O my lord, and not

according to my prayers.”

 

So the Lord Juss did according to the word of that fair Queen, and

they rowed her up the lake by moonlight. None spake, and the Queen

sate apart in the bows of the boat, in earnest supplication to the

blessed Gods. When they were come to the head of the lake they went

ashore on a little spit of silver sand. The April night was above

them, mild with moonlight. The shadows of the fells rose inky black

and beyond imagination huge against the sky. The Queen kneeled awhile

in silence on the cold ground, and those lords of Demonland stood

together in silence watching her.

 

In a while she raised her eyes to heaven; and behold, between the two

main peaks of the Scarf, a meteor crept slowly out of darkness and

across the night-sky, leaving a trail of silver fire, and silently

departed into darkness. They watched, and another came, and yet

another, until the western sky above the mountain was ablaze with

them. From two points of heaven they came, one betwixt the foreclaws

of the Lion and one in the dark sign of Cancer. And they that came

from the Lion were sparkling like the white fires of Rigel or Altair,

and they that came from the Crab were haughty red, like the lustre of

Antares. The lords of Demonland, leaning on their swords, watched

these portents for a long while in silence. Then the travelling

meteors ceased, and the steadfast stars shone lonely and serene. A

soft breeze stirred among the alders and willows by the lake. The

lapping waters lapping the shingly shore made a quiet tune. A

nightingale in a coppice on a little hill sang so passionate sweet it

seemed some spirit singing. As in a trance they stood and listened,

until that singing ended, and a hush fell on water and wood and lawn.

Then all the east blazed up for an instant with sheet lightnings, and

thunder growled from the east beyond the sea.

 

The thunder took form so that music was in the heavens, filling earth

and sky as with trumpets calling to battle, first high, then low, then

shuddering down to silence. Juss and Brandoch Daha knew it for that

great call to battle which had preluded that music in the dark night

without her palace, in Koshtra Belorn, when first they stood before

her portal divine. The great call went again through earth and air,

sounding defiance; and in its train new voices, groping in darkness,

rising to passionate lament, hovering, and dying away on the wind,

till nought remained but a roll of muffled thunder, long, low, quiet,

big with menace.

 

The Queen turned to Lord Juss. Surely her eyes were like two stars

shining in the gloom. She said in a drowned voice, “Thy perspectives,

my lord.”

 

So the Lord Juss made a fire of certain spices and herbs, and smoke

rose in a thick cloud full of fiery sparks, with a sweet sharp smell.

And he said, “Not we, O my Lady, lest our desires cheat our senses.

But look thou in my perspectives through the smoke, and say unto us

what thou shalt behold in the east beyond the unharvested sea.”

 

The Queen looked. And she said, “I behold a harbour town and a

sluggish river coming down to the harbour through a mere set about

with mud flats, and a great waste of fen stretching inland from the

sea. Inland, by the river side, I behold a great bluff standing above

the fens. And walls about the bluff, as it were a citadel. And the

bluff and the walled hold perched thereon are black like old night,

and like throned iniquity sitting in the place of power, darkening the

desolation of that fen.”

 

Juss said, “Are the walls thrown down? Or is not the great round tower

south-westward thrown down in ruin athwart the walls?”

 

She said, “All is whole and sound as the walls of thine own castle, my

lord.”

 

Juss said, “Turn the crystal, O Queen, that thou mayest see within the

walls if any persons be therein, and tell us their shape and seeming.”

 

The Queen was silent for a space, gazing earnestly in the crystal.

Then she said, “I see a banquet hall with walls of dark green jasper

speckled with red, and a massy cornice borne up by giants three-headed

carved in black serpentine; and each giant is bowed beneath the weight

of a huge crab-fish. The hall is sevensided. Two long tables there be

and a crossbench. There be iron braziers in the midst of the hall and

flamboys burning in silver stands, and revellers quaffing at the long

tables. Some dark young men black of brow and great of jaw, most

soldierlike, brothers mayhap. Another with them, ruddy of countenance

and kindlier to look on, with long brown moustachios. Another that

weareth a brazen byrny and sea-green kirtle; an old man he, with

sparse gray whiskers and flabby cheeks; fat and unwieldy; not a comely

old man to look upon.”

 

She ceased speaking, and Juss said, “Whom seest thou else in the

banquet hall, O Queen?”

 

She said, “The flare of the flamboys hideth the crossbench. I will

turn the crystal again. Now I behold two diverting themselves with

dice at the table before the crossbench. One is well-looking enough,

well knit, of a noble port, with curly brown hair and beard and keen

eyes like a sailor. The other seemeth younger in years, younger than

any of you, my lords. He is smooth shaved, of a fresh complexion and

fair curling hair, and his brow is wreathed with a festal garland. A

most big broad strong and seemly young man. Yet is there a somewhat

maketh me ill at ease beholding him; and for all his fair countenance

and royal bearing he seemeth displeasing in mine eyes.

 

“There is a damosel there too, watching them while they play. Showily

dressed she is, and hath some beauty. Yet scarce can I commend her–”

and, ill at ease on a sudden, the Queen suddenly put down the crystal.

 

The eye of Lord Brandoch Daha twinkled, but he kept silence. Lord Juss

said, “More, I entreat thee, O Queen, ere the reek be gone and the

vision fade. If this be all within the banquet hall, seest thou nought

without?”

 

Queen Sophonisba looked again, and in a while said, “There is a

terrace facing to the west under the inner wall of that fortress of

old night, and walking on it in the torchlight a man crowned like a

King. Very tall he is: lean of body, and long of limb. He weareth a

black doublet bedizened o’er with diamonds, and his crown is in the

figure of a crab-fish, and the jewels thereof outface the sun in

splendour. But scarce may I mark his apparel for looking on the face

of him, which is more terrible than the face of any man that ever I

saw. And the whole aspect of the man is full of darkness and power and

terror and stern command, that spirits from below earth must tremble

at and do his bidding.”

 

Juss said, “Heaven forfend that this should prove but a sweet and

golden dream, and we wake tomorrow to find it flown.”

 

“There walketh with him,” said the Queen, “in intimate converse, as of

a servant talking to his lord, one with a long black beard curly as

the sheep’s wool and glossy as the raven’s wing. Pale he is as the

moon in daylight hours, slender, with fine-cut features and great dark

eyes, and his nose hooked like a reaping-hook; gentlelooking and

melancholy-looking, yet noble.”

 

Lord Brandoch Daha said, “Seest thou none, O Queen, in the lodgings

that be in the eastern gallery above the inner court of the palace?”

 

The Queen answered, “I see a lofty bedchamber hung with arras. It is

dark, save for two branching candlesticks of lights burning before a

great mirror. I see a lady standing before the mirror, crowned with a

queen’s crown of purple amethysts on her deep hair that hath the

colour of the tipmost tongues of a flame. A man cometh through the

door behind her, parting the heavy hangings left and right. A big man

he is, and looketh like a king, in his great wolfskin mantle and his

kirtle of russet velvet with ornaments of gold. His bald head set

about with grizzled curls and his bushy beard flecked with gray speak

him something past his prime; but the light of youth burns in his

eager eyes and the vigour of youth is in his tread. She turneth to

greet him. Tall she is, and young she is, and beautiful, and

proud-faced, and sweet-faced, and most gallanthearted too, and merry of

heart too, if her looks belie her not.”

 

Queen Sophonisba covered her eyes, saying, “My lords, I see no more.

The crystal curdles within like foam in a whirlpool under a high force

in rainy weather. Mine eyes grow sore with watching. Let us row back,

for the night is far spent and I am weary.”

 

But Juss stayed her and said, “Let me dream yet awhile. The double

pillar of the world, that member thereof which we, blind instruments

of inscrutable Heaven, did shatter, restored again? From this time

forth to maintain, I and he, his and mine, ageless and deathless for

ever, for ever our high contention whether he or we should be great

masters of all the earth? If this be but phantoms, O Queen, thou’st

‘ticed us to the very heart of bitterness. This we could have missed,

unseen and unimagined: but not now. Yet how were it possible the Gods

should relent and the years return?”

 

But the Queen spake, and her voice was like the falling shades of

evening, pulsing with hidden splendour, as of a sense of wakening

starlight alive behind the fading blue. “This King,” she said, “in the

wickedness of his impious pride did wear on his thumb the likeness of

that worm Ouroboros, as much as to say his kingdom should never end.

Yet was he, when the appointed hour did come, thundered down into the

depths of Hell. And if now he be raised again and his days continued,

‘tis not for his virtue but for your sake, my lords, whom the Almighty

Gods do love. Therefore I pray you possess your hearts awhile with

humility before the most high Gods, and speak no unprofitable words.

Let us row back.”

 

Dawn came golden-fingered, but the lords of Demonland lay along abed

after their watch