The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖
- Author: Eric Rücker Eddison
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by him that would go up to Koshtra Belorn. But beyond those rocks not
even a dream hath ever climbed. Ere the light fades, I’ll show thee
our pass over the nearer range.” He pointed where a glacier crawled
betwixt shadowy walls down from a torn snowfield that rose steeply to
a saddle. East of it stood two white peaks, and west of it a sheer-faced
and long-backed mountain like a citadel, squat and dark beneath
the wild skyline of Koshtra Pivrarcha that hung in air beyond it.
“The Zia valley,” said Juss, “that runneth into Bhavinan. There lieth
our way: under that dark bastion called by the Gods Tetrachnampf.”
On the morrow Lord Brandoch Daha came to Mivarsh Faz and said, “It is
needful that this day we go down from Omprenne Edge. I would for no
sake leave thee on the Moruna, but ‘tis no walking matter to descend
this wall. Art thou a cragsman?”
“I was born,” answered he, “in the high valley of Perarshyn by the
upper waters of the Beirun in Impland. There boys scarce toddle ere
they can climb a rock. This climb affrights me not, nor those
mountains. But the land is unknown and terrible, and many loathly ones
inhabit it, ghosts and eaters of men. O devils transmarine, and my
friends, is it not enough? Let us turn again, and if the Gods save our
lives we shall be famous for ever, that came unto Morna Moruna and
returned alive.”
But Juss answered and said, “O Mivarsh Faz, know that not for fame are
we come on this journey. Our greatness already shadoweth all the
world, as a great cedar tree spreading his shadow in a garden; and
this enterprise, mighty though it be, shall add to our glory only so
much as thou mightest add to these forests of the Bhavinan by planting
of one more tree. But so it is, that the great King of Witchiand,
practising in darkness in his royal palace of Carcë such arts of
grammarie and sendings magical as the world hath not been grieved with
until now, sent an ill thing to take my brother, the Lord Goldry
Bluszco, who is dear to me as mine own soul. And They that dwell in
secret sent me word in a dream, bidding me, if I would have tidings of
my dear brother, inquire in Koshtra Belorn. Therefore, O Mivarsh, go
with us if thou wilt, but if thou wilt not, why, fare thee well. For
nought but my death shall stay me from going thither.”
And Mivarsh, bethinking him that if the mantichores of the mountains
should devour him along with those two lords, that were yet a kindlier
fate than all alone to abide those things he wist of on the Moruna,
put on the rope, and after commending himself to the protection of his
gods followed Lord Brandoch Daha down the rotten slopes of rock and
frozen earth at the head of a gully leading down the cliff.
For all that they were early afoot, yet was it high noon ere they were
off the rocks. For the peril of falling stones drove them out from the
gully’s bed first on to the eastern buttress and after, when that grew
too sheer, back to the western wall. And in an hour or twain the
gully’s bed grew shallow and it narrowed to an end, whence Brandoch
Daha gazed between his feet to where, a few spear’s lengths below, the
smooth slabs curved downward out of sight and the eye leapt straight
from their clean-cut edge to shimmering tree-tops that showed tiny as
mosses beyond the unseen gulf of air. So they rested awhile; then
returning a little up the gully forced a way out on to the face and
made a hazardous traverse to a mew gully westward of the first, and so
at last plunged down a long fan of scree and rested on soft fine turf
at the foot of the cliffs.
Little mountain gentians grew at their feet; the pathless forest lay
like the sea below them; before them the mountains of the Zia stood
supreme: the white gables of Islargyn, the lean dark finger of
Tetrachnampf nan Tshark lying back above the Zia Pass pointing to the
sky, and west of it, jutting above the valley, the square bastion of
Tetrachnampf nan Tsurm. The greater mountains were for the most part
sunk behind this nearer range, but Koshtra Belorn still towered above
the Pass. As a queen looking down from her high window, so she
overlooked those green woods sleeping in the noon-day; and on her
forehead was beauty like a star. Behind them where they sat, the
escarpment reared back in cramped perspective, a pile of massive
buttresses cleft with ravines leading upward from that land of leaves
and waters to the hidden wintry flats of the Moruna.
That night they slept on the fell under the stars, and next day, going
down into the woods, came at dusk to an open glade by the waters of
the broad-bosomed Bhavinan. The turf was like a cushion, a place for
elves to dance in. The far bank full half a mile away was wooded to
the water with silver birches, dainty as mountain nymphs, their limbs
gleaming through the twilight, their reflections quivering in the
depths of the mighty river. In the high air day lingered yet, a faint
warmth tingeing the great outlines of the mountains, and westward up
the river the young moon stooped above the trees. East of the glade a
little wooded eminence, no higher than a house, ran back from the
river bank, and in its shoulder a hollow cave.
“How smiles it to thee?” said Juss. “Be sure we shall find no better
place than this thou seest to dwell in until the snows melt and we may
on. For though it be summer all the year round in this fortunate
valley, it is winter on the great hills, and until the spring we were
mad to essay our enterprise.”
“Why then,” said Brandoch Daha, “turn we shepherds awhile. Thou shalt
pipe to me, and I’ll foot thee measures shall make the dryads think
they ne’er went to school. And Mivarsh shall be a goat-foot god to
chase them; for to tell thee truth country wenches are long grown
tedious to me. O, ‘tis a sweet life. But ere we fall to it, bethink
thee, O Juss: time marcheth, and the world waggeth: what goeth forward
in Demonland till summer be come and we home again?”
“Also my heart is heavy because of my brother Spitfire,” said Juss.
“Oh, ‘twas an ill storm, and ill delays.”
“Away with vain regrettings,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “For thy sake
and thy brother’s fared I on this journey, and it is known to thee
that never yet stretched I out mine hand upon aught that I have not
taken it, and had my will of it.”
So they made their dwelling in that cave beside deep-eddying Bhavinan,
and before that cave they ate their Yule feast, the strangest they had
eaten all the days of their lives: seated, not as of old, on their
high seats of ruby or of opal, but on mossy banks where daisies slept
and creeping thyme; lighted not by the charmed escarbuncle of the high
presence chamber in Galing, but by the shifting beams of a brushwood
fire that shone not on those pillars crowned with monsters that were
the wonder of the world but on the mightier pillars of the sleeping
beechwoods. And in place of that feigned heaven of jewels self-effulgent beneath the golden canopy at Galing, they ate pavilioned
under a charmed summer night, where the great stars of winter, Orion,
Sirius, and the Little Dog, were raised up near the zenith, yielding
their known courses in the southern sky to Canopus and the strange
stars of the south. When the trees spake, it was not with their winter
voice of bare boughs creaking, but with whisper of leaves and beetles
droning in the fragrant air. The bushes were white with blossom, not
with hoar-frost, and the dim white patches under the trees were not
snow, but wild lilies and wood anemones sleeping in the night.
All the creatures of the forest came to that feast, for they were
without fear, having never looked upon the face of man. Little tree-apes, and popinjays, and titmouses, and coalmouses, and wrens, and
gentle roundeyed lemurs, and rabbits, and badgers, and dormice, and
pied squirrels, and beavers from the streams, and storks, and ravens,
and bustards, and wombats, and the spider-monkey with her baby at her
breast: all these came to gaze with curious eye upon those travellers.
And not these alone, but fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses:
the wild buffalo, the wolf, the tiger with monstrous paws, the bear,
the fiery-eyed unicorn, the elephant, the lion and shelion in their
majesty, came to behold them in the firelight in that quiet glade.
“It seems we hold court in the woods tonight,” said Lord Brandoch
Daha. “It is very pleasant. Yet hold thee ready with me to put some
firebrands amongst ‘em if need befall. ‘Tis likely some of these
great beasts are little schooled in court ceremonies.”
Juss answered, “And thou lovest me, do no such thing. There lieth this
curse upon all this land of the Bhavinan, that whoso, whether he be
man or beast, slayeth in this land or doeth here any deed of violence,
there cometh down a curse upon him that in that instant must destroy
and blast him for ever off the face of the earth. Therefore it was I
took away from Mivarsh his bow and arrows when we came down from
Omprenne Edge, lest he should kill game for us and so a worse thing
befall him.”
Mivarsh harkened not, but sat all a-quake, looking intently on a
crocodile that came ponderously out upon the bank. And mow he began to
scream with terror, crying, “Save me! let me fly! give me my weapons!
It was foretold me by a wise woman that a cocadrill-serpent must
devour me at last!” Whereat the beasts drew back uneasily, and the
crocodile, his small eyes wide, startled by Mivarsh’s cries and
violent gestures, lurched with what speed he might back into the
water.
Now in that place Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz
abode for four moons’ space. Nothing they lacked of meat and drink,
for the beasts of the forest, finding them well disposed, brought them
of their store. Moreover, there came flying from the south, about the
ending of the year, a martlet which alighted in Juss’s bosom and said
to him, “The gentle Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the Gods, had news
of your coming. And because she knoweth you both mighty men of your
hands and high of heart, therefore by me she sent you greeting.”
Juss said, “O little martlet, we would see thy Queen face to face, and
thank her.”
“Ye must thank her,” said the bird, “in Koshtra Belorn.”
Brandoch Daha said, “That shall we fulfil. Thither only do our
thoughts intend.”
“Your greatness,” said the martlet, “must approve that word. And know
that it is easier to lay under you all the world in arms than to
ascend up afoot into that mountain.”
“Thy wings were too weak to lift me, else I’d borrow them,” said
Brandoch Daha.
But the martlet answered, “Not the eagle that flieth against the sun
may alight on Koshtra Belorn. No foot may tread her, save of those
blessed ones to whom the Gods gave leave ages ago, till they be come
that the patient years await: men
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