The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖

Daha that hung shackled to

the wall side by side. Something dazzled they were in the sudden

torchlight, but Lord Brandoch Daha spake and hailed the Prince, and

his mocking haughty lazy accents were scarcely touched with

hollowness, for all his hunger-starving and long watching and the cark

and care of his affliction. “La Fireez!” he said. “Day ne’er broke up

till now. And methought ye were yonder false fitchews fostered in

filth and fen, the spawn of Witchland, returned again to fleer and

flout at us.”

 

La Fireez told them how things had gone, and he said, “Occasion

gallopeth apace. Upon this bargain do I loose you, that ye come

incontinently with me out of Carcë, and seek no revenge tonight upon

the Witches.”

 

Juss said yea to this; and Brandoch Daha laughed, saying, “Prince, I

so love thee, I could refuse thee nothing, were it shave half my beard

and go in fustian till harvest-time, sleep in my clothes, and

discourse pious nothings seven hours a day with my lady’s lap-dog.

This night we be utterly thine. An instant only bear with us: this

fare shows too good to rest untasted after so much looking on. It were

discourteous too to leave it so.” Therewith, their chains being now

stricken off, he eat a great slice of turkey and three quails boned

and served in jelly, and Juss a dozen plovers’ eggs and a cold

partridge. Lord Brandoch Daha said, “I prithee break the egg-shells,

Juss, when the meat is out, lest some sorcerer should prick or write

thy name thereon, and so mischief thy person.” And pouring out a stoup

of wine, he quaffed it off, and filling it again, “Perdition catch me

if it be not mine own wine of Krothering! Saw any a carefuller host

than King Gorice?” And he pledged Lord Juss in the second cup, saying,

“I will drink with thee next in Carcë when the King of Witchland and

all the lords thereof are slain.”

 

Thereafter they took their weapons that lay by on the table, set there

to distress their souls and with little expectation they should so

take them up again; and glad at heart albeit somewhat stiff of limb

they went forth with La Fireez from that banquet hall.

 

When they were come into the courtyard Juss spake and said, “Herein

might honour hold us back even hadst thou made no bargain with us, La

Fireez. For great shame it were to us and we fell upon the lords of

Witchland when they were drunk and unable to meet us in equal battle.

But let us ere we be gone from Carcë ransack this hold for my kinsman

Goldry Bluszco, since for his sake only and in hope to find him here

we fared on this journey.”

 

“So you touch no other thing but only Goldry if ye shall find him, I

am content,” said the Prince.

 

So when they had found keys they ransacked all Carcë, even to the

dread chamber where the King had conjured and the vaults and cellars

below the river. But it availed not.

 

And as they stood in the courtyard in the torchlight there came forth

on a balcony the Lady Prezmyra in her nightgown, disturbed by this

ransacking. Ethereal as a cloud she seemed, pavilioned in the balmy

night, as a cloud touched by the exhalations of the unrisen moon.

“What transformation is this?” said she. “Demons loose in the court?”

 

“Content thee, dear heart,” said the Prince. “Thy man is safe, and all

else beside as I think; save that the King hath a broken head, the

which I lament, and will without question soon be healed. They lie all

in the banquet hail tonight, being too sleepy-sodden with the feast

to take their chambers.”

 

Prezmyra cried, “My fears are fallen upon me. Art thou broken with

Witchland?”

 

“That may I not forejudge,” he answered. “Tell them tomorrow that

nought I did in hatred, and nought but what I was by circumstance

enforced to. For I am not such a coward nor so great a villain as

leave my friends caged up while strength is left me to work for their

setting free.”

 

“You must straightway forth from Carcë,” said Prezmyra, “and that o’

the instant. My step-son Hacmon, which was sent to gather strength to

awe thee if need were, rideth by now from the south with a great

company. Thy horses are fresh, and ye may well outdistance the King’s

men if they ride after you. If thou wilt not yet raise up a river of

blood betwixt us, begone.”

 

“Why fare thee well, then, sister. And doubt it not, these rifts

‘tween me and Witchland shall soon be patched up and forgot.” So spake

the Prince with a merry voice, yet grieved at heart. For well he

weened the King should never pardon him that blow, nor his robbing him

of his prey.

 

But she said, sadly, “Farewell, my brother. And my heart tells me I

shall never see thee more. When thou took’st these from prison, thou

didst dig up two mandrakes shall bring sorrow and death to thee and to

me and to all Witchland.”

 

The Prince was silent, but Lord Juss bowed to Prezmyra saying, “Madam,

these things be on the knees of Fate. But imagine not that while life

and breath be in us we shall leave to uphold the Prince thy brother.

His foes be our foes for this night sake.”

 

“Thou swearest it?” she said.

 

He answered, “Madam, I swear it unto thee and unto him.”

 

The Lady Prezmyra withdrew sadly to her chamber. And in short space

she heard their horsehooves on the bridge, and looking forth beheld

where they galloped on the Way of Kings dim in the coppery light of a

waning moon rising over Pixyland. So sate she by the window of

Corund’s lofty bedchamber gazing through the night, long after her

brother and the lords of Demonland and her brother’s men were ridden

beyond her seeing, long after their last hoofbeat had ceased to echo

on the road. In a while fresh horsehooves sounded from the south, and

a noise as of many riding in company; and she knew it was young Hacmon

back from Permio.

VIII THE FIRST EXPEDITION TO IMPLAND

Of the homecoming of the Demons, and how

Lord Juss was taught in a dream whither he must

seek for tidings of his dear brother, and how they

took counsel at Krothering, and determined of

their expedition to Impland.

 

MIDSUMMER night, ambrosial, starry-kirtled, walked on the sea, as the

ship that brought the Demons home drew nigh to her journey’s end. The

cloaks of Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha, who slept on the poop,

were wet with dew. Smoothly they had passage through that charmed

night, where winds were hushed asleep and nought was heard save the

waves talking beneath the bows of the ship, the lilting changeless

song of the steersman, and the creak, dip, and swash of oars keeping

time to his singing. Vega burned like a sapphire near the zenith, and

Arcturus low in the northwest, beaconing over Demonland. In the

remote southeast Fomalhaut rose from the sea, a lonely splendour in

the dim region of Capricorn and the Fishes.

 

So rowed they till day broke, and a light wind sprang up fresh and

keen. Juss waked, and stood up to scan the gray glassy surface of the

sea spread to vast distances where sky and water faded into one.

Astern, great clouds bridged the gates of day, boiling upwards into

crags of wine-dark vapour and burning plumes of sunrise. In the

stainless spaces of the sky above these sailed the horned moon, frail

and wan as a white foam-flower blown from the waves. Westward, facing

the thunder-smoke of dawn, the fine far ridge of Kartadza was like cut

crystal against the sky: the first island sentinel of manymountained

Demonland, his topmost cliffs dawn-illumined with pale gold and

amethyst while yet the lesser heights lay obscure, lapped in the folds

of night. And with the opening day the mists swathing the mountain’s

skirts were lifted up in billowy masses that grew and shrank and grew

again, made restless by the wayward winds which morning waked in the

hollow mountain side, and torn by them into wisps and streamers. Some

were blown upward, steaming up the great gullies in the rocks below

the peak, while now and then a puff of cloud swam free for a minute,

floated a minute’s space as ready to sail skyward, then indolently

stooped again to the mountain wall to veil it in an unsubstantial

fleece of golden vapour. And now all the western seaboard of Demonland

lay clear to view, stretching fifty miles and more from Northhouse

Skerries past the Drakeholms and the low downs of Kestawick and

Byland, beyond which tower the mountains of the Scarf, past the jagged

skyline of the Thornbacks and the far Neverdale peaks overhanging the

wooded shores of Onwardlithe and Lower Tivarandardale, to the extreme

southern headland, filmy-pale in the distance, where the great range

of Rimon Armon plunges its last wild bastion in the sea.

 

As a lover gazing on his mistress, so gazed Lord Juss on Demonland

rising from the sea. No word spake he till they came off

Lookinghaven-ness and could see where beyond the beaked promontory the

sound opened between Kartadza and the mainland. Albeit the outer sea was

calm, the air in the sound was thick with spray from the churning of the

waters among the reefs and swallowing shoals. For the tide ran like a

mill-race through that sound, and the roaring of it was plain to hear at

two miles’ distance where they sailed. Juss said, “Mindest thou my

shepherding of the Ghoul fleet into yonder jaws? I would not tell thee

for shame whenas the fit was on me. But this is the first day since the

sending came upon us that I have not wished in my heart that the Races

of Kartadza had gulped me down also and given me one ending with the

accursed Ghouls.”

 

Lord Brandoch Daha looked swiftly upon him and was silent.

 

Now in a short while was the ship come into Lookinghaven and alongside

of the marble quay. There amid his folk stood Spitfire, who greeted

them, saying, “I made all ready to bring three of you home in triumph

from your ship, but Volle counselled against it. Glad am I that I took

his counsel, and put by those things I had prepared. They had cut me

to the heart to see them now.”

 

Juss answered him, “O my brother, this noise of hammers in

Lookinghaven, and these ten keels laid on the slips, show me ye have

been busied on things nearer our needs than bay-leaves and the

instruments of joy since thou camest home.”

 

So they took horse, and while they rode they related to Spitfire all

that had befallen since their faring to Carcë. In such wise came they

north past the harbour, and so over Havershaw Tongue to Beckfoot where

they took the upper path that climbs into Evendale close under the

screes of Starksty Pike, and so came a little before noon to Galing.

 

The black rock of Galing stands at the end of the spur that runs down

from the south ridge of Little Drakeholm, dividing Brankdale from

Evendale. On three sides the cliffs fall sheer from the castle walls

to the deep woods of oak and birch and rowan tree which carpet the

flats of Moongarth Bottom and feather the walls of the gill through

which the Brankdale beck plunges in waterfall after waterfall. Only on

the northeast may aught save a winged thing come at