The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖
- Author: Eric Rücker Eddison
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he in Impland?”
“The greatest strength that he can make,” answered Mivarsh, “of devils
ultramontane is as I think two score hundred. Many Imps beside will
follow him, but they have but our country weapons.”
Lord Brandoch Daha took Juss by the arm and went forth with him into
the night. The frosted grass crunched under their tread: strange stars
blinked in the south in a windy space betwixt cloud and sleeping
earth, Achernar near the meridian bedimming all lesser fires with his
pure radiance.
“So cometh Corund upon us as an eagle out of the sightless blue,” said
Brandoch Daha, “with twelve times our forces to let us the way to the
Moruna, and all Impland like a spaniel smiling at his heel; if indeed
this simple soul say true, as I think he doth.”
“Thou fallest all of a holiday mood,” said Juss, “at the first
scenting of this great hazard.”
“O Juss,” cried Brandoch Daha, “thine own breath lighteneth at it, and
thy words come more sprightly forth. Are not all lands, all airs, one
country unto us, so there be great doings afoot to keep bright our
swords?”
Juss said, “Ere we sleep I will inform Zeldornius how the wind
shifteth. He must face both ways now, till this field be cut. This
battle must not go against him, for his enemies be engaged (if Mivarsh
say true) to give the help of their swords to Corund.”
So fared they to Zeldornius’s tent, and Juss said by the way, “Of this
be satisfied: Corund bareth not blade on the hills of Salapanta. The
King hath intelligencers to keep him advertised of all enchanted
circles of the world, and well he knoweth what influences move here,
and with what danger to themselves outlanders draw sword here, as
witness the doom fulfilled these nine years by these three captains.
Therefore will Corund, instructed in these things by his master that
sent him, look to deal with us otherwhere than in this charmed corner
of the earth. And he were as well take a bear by the tooth as meddle
in the fight that now impendeth, and so bring upon him these three
seasoned armies joined in one for his destruction.”
They passed the guard with the watchword, and waked Zeldornius and
told him all. And he, muffled in his great faded cloak, went forth to
see guards were set and all sure against an onslaught from either
side. And standing by his tent to give good night to those lords of
Demonland, he said, “It likes me better so. I ever was a fighter; so,
one fight more.”
The morrow dawned and passed uneventful, and the morrow’s morrow. But
on the third morning after the coming of Mivarsh, behold, east and
west, great armies marching from the plains, and Zeldornius’s array
drawn up to meet them on the ridge, with weapons gleaming and horses
champing and trumpets blowing the call of battle. No greetings were
betwixt them, nor so much as a message of challenge or defiance, but
Jalcanaius with his black riders rushed to the onset from the west and
Helteranius from the east. But Zeldornius, like a gray old wolf,
snapping now this way now that, stemmed the tide of their onslaught.
So began the battle great and fell, and continued the livelong day.
Thrice on either side Zeldornius went forth with a great strength of
chosen men, in so much that his enemies fled before him as the
partridge doth before the sparrowhawk; and thrice did Helteranius and
thrice Jalcanaius Fostus rally and hurl him back, mounting the ridge
anew.
But when it drew near to evening, and the dark day darkened toward
night, the battle ceased, dying down suddenly into silence. Those
lords of Demonland came down from their tower, and walked among the
heaps of dead men slain toward a place of slabby rock in the neck of
the ridge. Here, alone on that field, Zeldornius leaned upon his
spear, gazing downward in a study, his arm cast about the neck of his
old brown horse who hung his head and sniffed the ground. Through a
rift in the western clouds the sun glared forth; but his beams were
not so red as the ling and bent of Salapanta field.
As Juss and his companions drew near, no sound was heard save from the
fortalice behind them: a discordant plucking of a harp, and the voice
of Mivarsh where he walked and harped before the walls, singing this
ditty:
The hag is astride
This night for to ride;
The devill and shee together:
Through thick and through thin.
Now out and then in.
Though ne’er so foule be the weather.
A thorn or a burr
She takes for a spurre.
With a lash of a bramble she rides now;
Through brakes and through bryars.
O’re ditches and mires.
She followes the spirit that guides now.
No beast for his food
Dares now range the wood.
But husht in his laire he lies lurking;
While mischiefs, by these.
On land and on seas.
At noone of night are a working.
The storme will arise
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder.
The ghost from the tomb
Affrighted shall come.
Cal’d out by the clap of the thunder.
When they were come to Zeldornius, the Lord Juss spake saying, “O most
redoubtable Zeldornius, renowned in war, surely thy prognostications
by the moon were true. Behold the noble victory thou hast obtained
upon thine enemies.”
But Zeldornius answered him not, still gazing downwards before his
feet. And there was Helteranius fallen, the sword of Jalcanaius Fostus
standing in his heart, and his right hand grasping still his own sword
that had given Jalcanaius his bane-sore.
So looked they awhile on those two great captains slain. And
Zeldornius said, “Speak not comfortably to me of victory, O Juss. So
long as that sword, and that, had his master alive, I did not more
desire mine own safety than their destruction who with me in days gone
by made conquest of wide Impland. And see with what a poisoned
violence they laboured my undoing, and in what an unexpected ruin are
they suddenly broken and gone.” And as one grown into a deep sadness
be said, “Where were all heroical parts but in Helteranius? and a man
might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o’er-leaping
actions of great Jalcanaius, who now leaveth but his body to bedung
that earth that was lately shaken at his terror. I have waded in red
blood to the knee; and in this hour, in my old years, the world is
become for me a vision only and a mock-show.”
Therewith he looked on the Demons, and there was that in his eyes that
stayed their speech.
In a while he spake again, saying, “I sware unto you my furtherance if
I prevailed. But now is mine army passed away as wax wasteth before
the fire, and I wait the dark ferryman who tarrieth for no man. Yet,
since never have I wrote mine obligations in sandy but in marble
memories, and since victory is mine, receive these gifts: and first
thou, O Brandoch Daha, my sword, since before thou wast of years
eighteen thou wast accounted the mightiest among men-at-arms. Mightily
may it avail thee, as me in time gone by. And unto thee, O Spitfire, I
give this cloak. Old it is, yet may it stand thee in good stead, since
this virtue it bath that he who weareth it shall not fall alive into
the hand of his enemies. Wear it for my sake. But unto thee, O Juss,
give I no gift, for rich thou art of all good gifts: only my good will
give I unto thee, ere earth gape for me.”
So they thanked him well. And he said, “Depart from me, since now
approacheth that which must complete this day’s undoing.”
So they fared back to the spy-fortalice, and night came down on the
hills. A great wind moaning out of the hueless west tore the clouds as
a ragged garment, revealing the lonely moon that fled naked betwixt
them. As the Demons looked backward in the moonlight to where
Zeldornius stood gazing on the dead, a noise as of thunder made the
firm land tremble and drowned the howling of the wind. And they beheld
how earth gaped for Zeldornius.
After that, the dark shut down athwart the moon, and night and silence
hung on the field of Salapanta.
X THE MARCHLANDS OF THE MORUNAOf the journey of the demons from Salapanta to
Eshgrar Ogo: wherein is set down concerning
the Lady of Ishnain Nemartra, and other
notable matters.
MIVARSH FAZ came betimes on the morrow to the lords of Demonland, and
found them ready for the road. So he asked them where their journey
lay, and they answered, “East.”
“Eastward,” said Mivarsh, “all ways lead to the Moruna. None may go
thither and not die.”
But they laughed and answered him, “Do not too narrowly define our
power, sweet Mivarsh, restraining it to thy capacities. Know that our
journey is a matter determined of, and it is fixed with nails of
diamond to the wall of inevitable necessity.”
They took leave of him and went their ways with their small army. For
four days they journeyed through deep woods carpeted with the leaves
of a thousand autumns, where at midmost noon twilight dwelt among
hushed woodland noises, and solemn eyeballs glared nightly between the
tree-trunks, gazing on the Demons as they marched or took their rest.
The fifth day, and the sixth and the seventh, they journeyed by the
southern margin of a gravelly sea, made all of sand and gravel and no
drop of water, yet ebbing and flowing away with great waves as another
sea doth, never standing still and never at rest. And always by day
and night as they came through the desert was a great noise very
hideous and a sound as it were of tambourines and trumpets; yet was
the place solitary to the eye, and no living thing afoot there save
their company faring to the east.
On the eighth day they left the shore of that waterless sea and came
by broken rocky ground to the descent to a wide vale, shelterless and
unfruitful, with the broad stony bed of a little river winding in the
strath. Here, looking eastward, they beheld in the lustre of a late
bright-shining sun a castle of red stone on a terrace of the fell-side
beyond the valley. Juss said, “We can be there before nightfall, and
there will we take guesting.” When they drew near they were ware,
betwixt sunset and moonlight, of one sitting on a boulder in their
path about a furlong from the castle, as if gazing on them and
awaiting their coming. But when they came to the boulder there was no
such person. So they passed on their way toward the castle, and when
they looked behind them, lo, there was he sitting on the boulder
bearing his head in his hands: a strange thing, which would cause any
man to abhor.
The castle gate stood open, and they entered in, and so by the courtyard to a great ball, with the board set as for a banquet, and bright
fires and an hundred candles burning in the still air; but no living
thing was there to be seen, nor voice heard in all that castle. Lord
Brandoch Daha said, “In this land to fail of marvels only for an hour
were the strangest marvel. Banquet we lightly and so to bed.”
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