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

matter,” said she, “that my brother should cast aside all ties of interest and alliance to save these great ones from an evil death; and they, being delivered, should toss him a light grammercy and go their ways, leaving him to be exterminated out of his own country and, for all they know or reck, to lose his life. May the great Devil of Hell torture their souls!”

“Madam,” said Lord Gro, “I would have thee view the matter soberly, and leave these bitter flashes. The Demons did save thy brother once in Lida Nanguna, and his delivering of them out of the hand of our Lord the King was but just payment therefor. The scales hang equal.”

She answered, “Do not defile mine ears with their excuses. They have shamefully abused us; and the guilt of their black deed planteth them day by day more firmlier in my deeper-settled hate. Art thou so deeply read in nature and her large philosophy, and I am yet to teach thee that deadliest hellebore or the vomit of a toad are qualified poison to the malice of a woman?”

The darkness of a great cloud-bank spreading from the south swallowed up the moonlight. Prezmyra turned to resume her slow pacing down the terrace. The yellow fiery sparkles in her eyes glinted in the flamboys’ flare. She looked dangerous as a lioness, and delicate and graceful like an antelope. Gro walked beside her, saying, “Did not Corund drive them forth in winter on to the Moruna, and can they continue there in life, alone amid so many devouring perils?”

“O my lord,” she cried, “say these good tidings to the kitchen wenches, not to me. Why, thyself didst enter in past years the very heart of the Moruna and yet camest off, else art thou the greatest liar. This only cankerfrets my soul: that days go by, and months, and Witchland beateth down all peoples under him, and yet he suffereth the crown of pride, these rebels of Demonland, to go yet untrodden under feet. Doth he deem it the better part to spare a foe and spoil a friend? That were an unhappy and unnatural conclusion. Or is he fey, even as was Gorice XI? Heaven foreshield it, yet as ill an end may bechance him and utter ruin come on all of us if he will withhold his scourge from Demonland until Juss and Brandoch Daha come home again to meet with him.”

“Madam,” said Lord Gro, “in these few words thou hast given me the picture of mine own mind in small. And forgive me that I bespake thee warily at the first, for these are matters of heavy moment, and ere I opened my mind to thee I would know that it agreed with thine. Let the King smite now, in the happy absence of their greatest champions. So shall we be in strength against them if they return again, and perchance Goldry with them.”

She smiled, and it seemed as if all the sultry night freshened and sweetened at that lady’s smile. “Thou art a dear companion to me,” she said. “Thy melancholy is to me as some shady wood in summer, where I may dance if I will, and that is often, or be sad if I will, and that is in these days oftener than I would: and never thou crossest my mood. Save but now thou didst so, to plague me with thy precious flattering jargon, till I had thought thee skin-changed with Laxus or young Corinius, seeking such lures as gallants spread their wings to, to stoop in ladies’ bosoms.”

“For I would shake thee from this late-received sadness,” said Gro. And he said, “Thou art to commend me too, since I spake nought but truth.”

“Oh, have done, my lord,” she cried, “or I’ll dismiss thee hence.” And as they walked Prezmyra sang softly:

“He that cannot chuse but love,
And strives against it still,
Never shall my fancy move,
For he loves ’gaynst his will;
Nor he which is all his own,
And can att pleasure chuse;
When I am caught he can be gone,
And when he list refuse.
Nor he that loves none but faire,
For such by all are sought;
Nor he that can for foul ones care,
For his Judgement then is naught;
Nor he⁠—”

She broke off suddenly, saying, “Come, I have shook off the ill disposition the sight of Laxus bred in me and of his tawdry crown. Let’s think on action. And first, I will tell thee a thing. This we spoke of hath been in my mind these two or three moons, ever since Corinius’s campaigning in Pixyland. So when word came of my lord’s destroying of the Demon host, and his driving of Juss and Brandoch Daha like runaway thralls on the Moruna, I sent him a letter by the hand of Viglus that bare him from our Lord the King the king’s name in Impland. Therein I expressed how that the crown of Demonland should be a braver crown for us than this of Impland, howsoe’er it sparkle, praying him urge upon the King his sending of an armament to Demonland, and my lord the leader thereof; or, if he could not as then come home to ask it, then I entreated him make me his ambassador to lay this counsel before the King and crave the enterprise for Corund.”

“Is not his answer in those letters I brought thee?” said Gro.

“Ay,” said she, “and a very scurvy beggarly lickspittle answer for a great lord to send to such a matter as I propounded. Alack, it puffs away all my wifely duty but to speak on’t, and makes me rail like a gangrel-woman.”

“I’ll walk apart, madam,” said Gro, “if thou wouldst have privateness to deliver thy mind.”

Prezmyra laughed. “ ’Tis not all so bad,” she said, “and yet it makes me angry. The enterprise he commends, up to the hilt, and I have his leave to broach it to the King, as his mouthpiece, and press it with him out of all ho. But