The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison [best e reader for academics txt] 📗

amphitheatre, and lean limestone crags tower heavenward on every side. High in the south, couched above great gray moraines, the Zia glacier, wrinkle-backed like some dragon survived out of the elder chaos, thrusts his snout into the valley. Here out of his caves of ice the young river thunders, casting up a spray where rainbows hover in bright weather. The air blows sharp from the glacier, and alpine flowers and shrubs feed on the sunlight.

Here they gathered them good store of food. And every morning they were afoot before the sunrise, to ascend the mountains and make sure their practice ere they should attempt the greater peaks. So they explored all the spurs of Tetrachnampf and Islargyn, and those peaks themselves; the rock peaks of the lower Nuanner range overlooking Bhavinan; the snow peaks east of Islargyn: Avsek, Kiurmsur, Myrsu, Byrshnargyn, and Borch Mehephtharsk, loftiest of the range, by all his ridges, dwelling a week on the moraines of the Mehephtharsk glacier above the upland valley of Foana; and westward the dolomite group of Burdjazarshra and the great wall of Shilack.

Now were their muscles by these exercises grown like bands of iron, and they hardy as mountain bears and sure of foot as mountain goats. So on the ninth day of May they crossed the Zia Pass and camped on the rocks under the south wall of Tetrachnampf nan Tshark. The sun went down, like blood, in a cloudless sky. On either hand and before them, the snows stretched blue and silent. The air of those high snowfields was bitter cold. A league and more to the south a line of black cliffs bounded the glacier-basin. Over that black wall, twelve miles away, Koshtra Belorn and Koshtra Pivrarcha towered against an opal heaven.

While they supped in the fading light, Juss said, “The wall thou seest is called the Barriers of Emshir. Though over it lieth the straight way to Koshtra Pivrarcha, yet is it not our way, but an ill way. For, first, that barrier hath till now been held unclimbable, and so proven even by half-gods that alone assayed it.”

“I await not thy second reason,” said Brandoch Daha. “Thou hast had thy way until now, and now thou shalt give me mine in this, to come with me tomorrow and show how thou and I make of such barriers a puff of smoke if they stand in the path between us and our fixed ends.”

“Were it only this,” answered Juss, “I would not gainsay thee. But not senseless rocks alone are we set to deal with if we take this road. Seest thou where the Barriers end in the east against yonder monstrous pyramid of tumbled crags and hanging glaciers that shuts out our prospect eastaway? Menksur men call it, but in heaven it hath a more dreadful name: Ela Mantissera, which is to say, the Bed of the Mantichores. O Brandoch Daha, I will climb with thee what unscaled cliff thou list, and I will fight with thee against the most grisfullest beasts that ever grazed by the Tartarian streams. But both these things in one moment of time, that were a rash part and a foolish.”

But Brandoch Daha laughed, and answered him, “To nought else may I liken thee, O Juss, but to the sparrow-camel. To whom they said, ‘Fly,’ and it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a camel’; and when they said, ‘Carry,’ it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a bird.’ ”

“Wilt thou egg me on so much?” said Juss.

“Ay,” said Brandoch Daha, “if thou wilt be assish.”

“Wilt thou quarrel?” said Juss.

“Thou knowest me,” said Brandoch Daha.

“Well,” said Juss, “thy counsel hath been right once and saved us, for nine times that it hath been wrong, and my counsel saved thee from an evil end. If ill behap us, it shall be set down that it had from thy peevish will original.” And they wrapped them in their cloaks and slept.

On the morrow they rose betimes and set forth south across the snows that were crisp and hard for the frosts of the night. The Barriers, as it were but a stone’s-throw removed, stood black before them; starlight swallowed up size and distance that showed only by walking, as still they walked and still that wall seemed no nearer nor no larger. Twice and thrice they dipped into a valley or crossed a raised-up fold of the glacier; till they stood at break of day below the smooth blank wall frozen and bleak, with never a ledge in sight great enough to bear snow, barring their passage southward.

They halted and ate and scanned the wall before them. And ill to do with it seemed. So they searched for an ascent, and found at last a spot where the glacier swelled higher, a mile or less from the western shoulder of Ela Mantissera. Here the cliff was but four or five hundred feet high; yet smooth enow and ill enow to look on; yet their likeliest choice.

Some while it was ere they might get a footing on that wall, but at length Brandoch Daha, standing on Juss’s shoulder, found him a hold where no hold showed from below, and with great travail fought a passage up the rock to a stance some hundred feet above them, whence sitting sure on a broad ledge great enough to hold six or seven folk at a time he played up Lord Juss on the rope and after him Mivarsh. An hour and a half it cost them for that short climb.

“The northeast buttress of Ill Stack was children’s gruel to this,” said Lord Juss.

“There’s more aloft,” said Lord Brandoch Daha, lying back against the precipice, his hands clasped behind his head, his feet a-dangle over the ledge. “In thine ear, Juss: I would not go first on the rope again on such a pitch for all the wealth of Impland.”

“Wilt repent and return?” said Juss.

“If thou’lt be last down,” he answered. “If not, I’d liever risk what waits untried