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

one tapped gently at the chamber door. The King bade enter, and there came the captain of his bodyguard and stood before the King, with word that one waited without, praying instant audience, “And showed me for a token, O my Lord the King, a bull’s head with fiery nostrils graven in a black opal in the bezel of a ring, which I knew for the signet of my Lord Corsus that his lordship beareth alway on his left thumb. And ’twas this, O King, that only persuaded me to deliver the message unto your Majesty in this unseasonable hour. Which if it be a fault in me, I do humbly hope your Majesty will pardon.”

“Knowest thou the man?” said the King.

He answered, “I might not know him, dread Lord, for the mask and great hooded cloak he weareth. It is a little man, and speaketh a husky whisper.”

“Admit him,” said King Gorice; and when Sriva was come in, masked and hooded and holding forth the ring, he said, “Thou lookest questionable, albeit this token opened a way for thee. Put off these trappings and let me know thee.”

But she, speaking still in a husky whisper, prayed that they might be private ere she disclosed herself. So the King bade leave them private.

“Dread Lord,” said the soldier, “is it your will that I stand ready without the door?”

“No,” said the King. “Void the antechamber, set the guard, and let none disturb me.” And to Sriva he said, “If thine errand prove not more honester than thy looks, this is an ill night’s journey for thee. At the lifting of my finger I am able to metamorphose thee to a mandrake. If indeed thou beest aught else already.”

When they were alone the Lady Sriva doffed her mask and put back her hood, uncovering her head that was crowned with two heavy trammels of her dark brown hair bound up and interwoven above her brow and ears and pinned with silver pins headed with garnets coloured like burning coals. The King beheld her from under the great shadow of his brows, darkly, not by so much as the moving of an eyelid or a lineament of his lean visage betraying aught that passed in his mind at this disclosing.

She trembled and said, “O my Lord the King, I hope you will indulge and pardon in me this trespass. Truly I marvel at mine own boldness how I durst come to you.”

With a gesture of his hand the King bade her be seated in a chair on his right beside the table. “Thou needest not be afraid, madam,” he said. “That I admit thee, let it make thee assured of welcome. Let me know thine errand.”

The fire of her father’s wine shuddered down within her like a low-lit flame in a gust of wind as she sat there alone with King Gorice XII in the circle of the lamplight. She took a deep breath to still her heart’s fluttering and said, “O King, I was much afeared to come, and it was to ask you a boon: a little thing for you to give, Lord, and yet to me that am the least of your handmaids a great thing to receive. But now I am come indeed, I durst not ask it.”

The glitter of his eyes looking out from their eaves of darkness dismayed her; and little comfort had she of the iron crown at his elbow, bright with gems and fierce with uplifted claws, or of the copper serpents interlaced that made the arms of his chair, or of the bright image of the lamp reflected in the table top where were red streaks like streaks of blood and black streaks like edges of swords streaking the green shining surface of the stone.

Yet she took heart to say, “Were I a great lord had done your majesty service as my father hath, or these others you did honour tonight, O King, it had been otherwise.” He said nothing, and still gathering courage she said, “I too would serve you, O King. And I came to ask you how.”

The King smiled. “I am much beholden to thee, madam. Do as thou hast done, and thou shalt please me well. Feast and be merry, and charge not thine head with these midnight questionings, lest too much carefulness make thee grow lean.”

“Grow I so, O King? You shall judge.” So speaking the Lady Sriva rose up and stood before him in the lamplight. Slowly she opened her arms upwards right and left, putting back her velvet cloak from her shoulders, until the dark cloak hanging in folds from either uplifted hand was like the wings of a bird lifted up for flight. Dazzling fair shone her bare shoulders and bare arms and throat and bosom. One great hyacinth stone, hanging by a gold chain about her neck, rested above the hollow of her breasts. It flashed and slept with her breathing’s alternate fall and swell.

“You did threaten me, Lord, but now,” she said, “to transmew me to a mandrake. Would you might change me to a man.”

She could read nothing in the crag-like darkness of his countenance, the iron lip, the eyes that were like pulsing firelight out of hollow caves.

“I should serve you better so, Lord, than my poor beauty may. Were I a man, I had come to you tonight and said, ‘O King, let us not suffer any longer of that hound Juss. Give me a sword, O King, and I will put down Demonland for you and tread them under feet.’ ”

She sank softly into her chair again, suffering her velvet cloak to fall over its back. The King ran his finger thoughtfully along the upstanding claws of the crown beside him on the table.

“Is this the boon thou askest me?” he said at length. “An expedition to Demonland?”

She answered it was.

“Must they sail tonight?” said the King, still watching her. She smiled foolishly.

“Only,” he said, “I would know what gadfly