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

of urgency stung thee on to come so strangely and suddenly and after midnight.”

She paused a minute, then summoning courage: “Lest another should first come to you, O King,” she answered. “Believe me, I know of preparations, and one that shall come to you in the morning praying this thing for another. What intelligence soever some hath, I am sure of that to be true that I have.”

“Another?” said the King.

Sriva answered, “Lord, I’ll say no names. But there be some, O King, be dangerous sweet suppliants, hanging their hopes belike on other strings than we may tune.”

She had bent her head above the polished table, looking curiously down into its depths. Her corsage and gown of scarlet silk brocade were like the chalice of a great flower; her white arms and shoulders like the petals of the flower above it. At length she looked up.

“Thou smilest, my Lady Sriva,” said the King.

“I smiled at mine own thought,” she said. “You’ll laugh to hear it, O my Lord the King, being so different from what we spoke on. But sure, of women’s thoughts is no more surety nor rest than is in a vane that turneth at all winds.”

“Let me hear it,” said the King, bending forward, his lean hairy hand flung idly across the table’s edge.

“Why thus it was, Lord,” said she. “There came me in mind of a sudden that saying of the Lady Prezmyra when first she was wed to Corund and dwelt here in Carcë. She said all the right part of her body was of Witchland but the left Pixy. Whereupon our people that were by rejoiced much that she had given the right part of her body to Witchland. Whereupon she said, but her heart was on the left side.”

“And where wearest thou thine?” asked the King. She durst not look at him, and so saw not the comic light go like summer lightning across his dark countenance as she spoke Prezmyra’s name.

His hand had dropped from the table edge; Sriva felt it touch her knee. She trembled like a full sail that suddenly for an instant the wind leaves. Very still she sat, saying in a low voice, “There’s a word, my Lord the King, if you’d but speak it, should beam a light to show you mine answer.”

But he leaned closer, saying, “Dost think I’ll chaffer with thee? I’ll know the answer first i’ the dark.”

“Lord,” she whispered, “I would not have come to you in this deep and dead time of the night but that I knew you noble and the great King, and no amorous surfeiter that should deal falsely with me.”

Her body breathed spices: soft warm scents to make the senses reel: perfume of malabathrum bruised in wine, essences of sulphur-coloured lilies planted in Aphrodite’s garden. The King drew her to him. She cast her arms about his neck, saying close to his ear, “Lord, I may not sleep till you tell me they must sail, and Corsus must be their captain.”

The King held her gathered up like a child in his embrace. He kissed her on the mouth, a long deep kiss. Then he sprang to his feet, set her down like a doll before him upon the table by the lamp, and so sat back in his own chair again and sat regarding her with a strange and disturbing smile.

On a sudden his brow darkened, and thrusting his face towards hers, his thick black square-cut beard jutting beneath the curl of his shaven upper lip, “Girl,” he said, “who sent thee o’ this errand?”

He rolled his eye upon her with such a gorgon look that her blood ran back with a great leap towards her heart, and she answered, scarce to be heard, “Truly, O King, my father sent me.”

“Was he drunk when he sent thee?” asked the King.

“Truly, Lord, I think he was,” said she.

“That cup that he was drunken withal,” said King Gorice, “let him prize and cherish it all his life natural. For if in his sober senses he should make no more estimation of me than think to bribe my favours with a bona roba; by my soul, in his evil health he had sought to do it, for it should cost him nothing but his life.”

Sriva began to weep, saying, “O King, your gentle pardon.”

But the King paced the room like a prowling lion. “Did he fear I should supply Corund in his place?” said he. “This was a cocksure way to make me do it, if indeed his practice had might to move me at all. Let him learn to come to me with his own mouth if he hope to get good of me. Other else, out of Carcë let him go and avoid my sight, that all the great masters of Hell may conduct him thither.”

The King paused at length beside Sriva, that was perched still upon the table, showing a kind of sweetness in tears, sobbing very pitifully, her face hidden in her two hands. So for a time he beheld her, then lifted her down, and while he sat in his great chair, holding her on his knee with one hand, with the other drew hers gently from before her face. “Come,” he said, “I blame it not on thee. Give over all thy weeping. Reach me that writing from the table.”

She turned in his arms and stretched a hand out for the parchment.

“Thou knowest my signet?” said the King.

She nodded, ay.

“Read,” said he, letting her go. She stood by the lamp, and read.

The King was behind her. He took her beneath the arms, bending to speak hot-breathed in her ear. “Thou seest, I had already chose my general. Therefore I let thee know it, because I mean not to let thee go till morning; and I would not have thee think thy loveliness, howe’er it please me, moveth such deep-commanding spells as to sway my policy.”

She lay back against his breast, limp and strengthless,