The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖
- Author: Eric Rücker Eddison
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Brandoch Daha, who, missing his footing on the narrow edge of rock,
fell backwards a great fall, clear of the cliff, down to the snow an
hundred feet beneath them.
As it craned over, minded to follow and make an end of him, Juss smote
it in the hinder parts and on the ham, shearing away the flesh from
the thigh bone, and his sword came with a clank against the brazen
claws of its foot. So with a horrid bellow it turned on Juss, rearing
like a horse; and it was three heads greater than a tall man in
stature when it reared aloft, and the breadth of its chest like the
chest of a bear. The stench of its breath choked Juss’s mouth and his
senses sickened, but he slashed it athwart the belly, a great round-armed blow, cutting open its belly so that the guts fell out. Again he
hewed at it, but missed, and his sword came against the rock, and was
shivered into pieces. So when that noisome vermin fell forward on him
roaring like a thousand lions, Juss grappled with it, running in
beneath its body and clasping it and thrusting his arms into its
inward parts, to rip out its vitals if so he might. So close he
grappled it that it might not reach him with its murthering teeth, but
its claws sliced off the flesh from his left knee downward to the
ankle bone, and it fell on him and crushed him on the rock, breaking
in the bones of his breast. And Juss, for all his bitter pain and
torment, and for all he was well nigh stifled by the sore stink of the
creature’s breath and the stink of its blood and puddings blubbering
about his face and breast, yet by his great strength wrastled with
that fell and filthy man-eater. And ever he thrust his right hand,
armed with the hilt and stump of his broken sword, yet deeper into its
belly until he searched out its heart and did his will upon it,
slicing the heart asunder like a lemon and severing and tearing all
the great vessels about the heart until the blood gushed about him
like a spring. And like a caterpillar the beast curled up and
straightened out in its death spasms, and it rolled and fell from that
ledge, a great fall, and lay by Brandoch Daha, the foulest beside the
fairest of all earthly beings, reddening the pure snow with its blood.
And the spines that grew on the hinder parts of the beast went out and
in like the sting of a new-dead wasp that goes out and in continually.
It fell not clean to the snow, as by the care of heaven was fallen
Brandoch Daha, but smote an edge of rock near the bottom, and that
strook out its brains. There it lay in its blood, gaping to the sky.
Now was Juss stretched face downward as one dead, on that giddy edge
of rock. Mivarsh had saved him, seizing him by the foot and drawing
him back to safety when the beast fell. A sight of terror he was,
clotted from head to toe with the beast’s blood and his own. Mivarsh
bound his wounds and laid him tenderly as he might back against the
cliff, then peered down a long while to know if the beast were dead
indeed.
When he had gazed downward earnestly so long that his eyes watered
with the strain, and still the beast stirred not, Mivarsh prostrated
himself and made supplication saying aloud, “O Shlimphli, Shiamphi,
and Shebamri, gods of my father and my father’s fathers, have pity of
your child, if as I dearly trow your power extendeth over this far and
forbidden country no less than over Impland, where your child hath
ever worshipped you in your holy places, and taught my sons and my
daughters to revere your holy names, and made an altar in mine house,
pointed by the stars in manner ordained from of old, and offered up my
seventh-born son and was minded to offer up my seventh-born daughter
thereon, in meekness and righteousness according to your holy will;
but this I might not do, since you vouchsafed me not a seventh
daughter, but six only. Wherefore I beseech you, of your holy names’
sake, strengthen my hand to let down this my companion safely by the
rope, and thereafter bring me safely down from this rock, howsoever he
be a devil and an unbeliever; O save his life, save both their lives.
For I am sure that if these be not saved alive, never shall your child
return, but in this far land starve and die like an insect that dureth
but for a day.”
So prayed Mivarsh. And belike the high Gods were moved to pity of his
innocence, hearing him so cry for help unto his mumbo-jumbos, where no
help was; and belike they were not minded that those lords of
Demonland should there die evilly before their time, unhonoured,
unsung. Howsoever, Mivarsh arose and made fast the rope about Lord
Juss, knotting it cunningly beneath the arms that it might not tighten
in the lowering and crush his breast and ribs, and so with much ado
lowered him down to the foot of the cliff. Thereafter came Mivarsh
himself down that perilous wall, and albeit for many a time he thought
his bane was upon him, yet by good cragsmanship spurred by cold
necessity he gat him down at last. Being down, he delayed not to
minister to his companions, who came to themselves with heavy
groaning. But when Lord Juss was come to himself he did his healing
art both on himself and on Lord Brandoch Daha, so that in a while they
were able to stand upon their feet, albeit something stiff and weary
and like to vomit. And it was by then the third hour past noon.
While they rested, beholding where the beast mantichora lay in his
blood, Juss spake and said, “It is to be said of thee, O Brandoch
Daha, that thou to-day hast done both the worst and the best. The
worst, when thou wast so stubborn set to fare upon this climb which
hath come within a little of spilling both thee and me. The best,
whenas thou didst smite off his tail. Was that by policy or by
chance?”
“Why,” said he, “I was never so poor a man of my hands that I need
turn braggart. ‘Twas handiest to my sword, and it disliked me to see
it wagging. Did aught lie on it?”
“The sting of his tail,” answered Juss, “were competent for thine or
my destruction, and it grazed but our little finger.”
“Thou speakest like a book,” said Brandoch Daha. “Else might I scarce
know thee for my noble friend, being betrayed with blood as a buffalo
with mire. Be not angry with me, if I am most at ease to windward of
thee.”
Juss laughed. “If thou be not too nice,” he said, “go to the beast and
dabble thyself too with the blood of his bowels. Nay, I mock not; it
is most needful. These be enemies not of mankind only, but each of
other; walking every one by himself, loathing every one his kind
living or dead, so that in all the world there abideth nought
loathlier unto them than the blood of their own kind, the least smell
whereof they do abhor as a mad dog abhorreth water. And ‘tis a
clinging smell. So are we after this encounter most sure against
them.”
That night they camped at the foot of a spur of Avsek, and set forth
at dawn down the long valley eastward. All day they heard the roaring
of mantichores from the desolate flanks of Ela Mantissera that showed
now no longer as a pyramid but as a long-backed screen, making the
southern rampart of that valley. It was ill going, and they somewhat
shaken. Day was nigh gone when beyond the eastern slopes of Ela they
came where the white waters of the river they followed thundered
together with a black water rushing down from the southwest. Below,
the river ran east in a wide valley dropping afar to treeclad depths.
In the fork above the watersmeet the rocks enclosed a high green
knoll, like some fragment of a kindlier clime that overlived into an
age of ruin.
“Here, too,” said Juss, “my dream walked with me. And if it be ill
crossing there where this stream breaketh into a dozen branching
cataracts a little above the watersmeet, yet well I think ‘tis our
only crossing.” So, ere the light should fade, they crossed that
perilous edge above the waterfalls, and slept on the green knoll.
That knoll Juss named Throstlegarth, after a thrush that waked them
next morning, singing in a little windstunted mountain thorn that grew
among the rocks. Strangely sounded that homely song on the cold
mountain side, under the unhallowed heights of Ela, close to the
confines of those enchanted snows which guard Koshtra Belorn.
No sight of the high mountains had they from Throstlegarth, nor, for a
long while, from the bed of that straight steep glen of the black
waters up which now their journey lay. Rugged spurs and buttresses
shut them in. High on the left bank above the cataracts they made
their way, buffeted by the wind that leaped and charged among the
crags, their ears sated with the roaring sound of waters, their eyes
filled with the spray blown upward. And Mivarsh followed after them.
Silent they fared, for the way was steep and in such a wind and such a
noise of torrents a man must shout lustily if he would be heard. Very
desolate was that valley, having a dark aspect and a ghastful, such as
a man might look for in the infernal glens of Pyriphlegethon or
Acheron. No living thing they saw, save at whiles high above them an
eagle sailing down the wind, and once a beast’s form running in the
hollow mountain side. This stood at gaze, lifting up its foul human
platter-face with glittering eyes bloody and great as saucers; scented
its fellow’s blood, started, and fled among the crags.
So fared they for the space of three hours, and so, coming suddenly
round a shoulder of the hill, stood on the upper threshold of that
glen at the gates of a flat upland valley. Here they beheld a sight to
darken all earth’s glories and strike dumb all her singers with its
grandeur. Framed in the crags of the hillsides, canopied by blue
heaven, Koshtra Pivrarcha stood before them. So huge he was that even
here at six miles’ distance the eye might not at a glance behold him,
but must sweep back and forth as over a broad landscape from the
ponderous roots of the mountain where they sprang black and sheer from
the glacier, up the vast face, where buttress was piled upon buttress
and tower upon tower in a blinding radiance of ice-hung precipice and
snow-filled gully, to the lone heights where like spears menacing high
heaven the white teeth of the summit-ridge cleft the sky. From right
to left he filled nigh a quarter of the heavens, from the graceful
peak of Ailinon looking over his western shoulder, to where on the
east the snowy slopes of Jalchi shut in the prospect, hiding Koshtra
Belorn.
They camped that evening on the left moraine of the High Glacier of
Temarm. Long spidery streamers of cloud, filmy as the gauze of a
lady’s veil, blew eastward from the spires on the ridge, signs of wild
weather aloft.
Juss said, “Glassy clear is the air. That forerunneth not
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