The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖
- Author: Eric Rücker Eddison
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through the gate of horn, and it bade me inquire hither after him I
most desire, for want of whom my whole soul languisheth in sorrow this
year gone by: even after my dear brother, the Lord Goldry Bluszco.”
His words ceased in his throat. For with the speaking of that name the
firm fabric of the palace quivered like the leaves of a forest under a
sudden squall. Colour went from the scene, like the blood chased from
a man’s face by fear, and all was of a pallid hue, like the landscape
which one beholds of a bright summer day after lying with eyes closed
for a space face-upward under the blazing sun: all gray and cold, the
warm colours burnt to ashes. Withal, followed the appearance of
hateful little creatures issuing from the joints of the paving stones
and the great blocks of the walls and pillars: some like grasshoppers
with human heads and wings of flies, some like fishes with stings in
their tails, some fat like toads, some like eels a-wriggling with
puppy-dogs’ heads and asses’ ears: loathly ones, exiles of glory,
scaly and obscene.
The horror passed. Colour returned. The Queen sat like a graven
statue, her lips parted. After a while she said with a shaken voice,
low and with downcast eyes, “Sirs, you demand of me a very strange
matter, such as wherewith never hitherto I have been acquainted. As
you are noble, I beseech you speak not that name again. In the name of
the blessed Gods, speak it not again.”
Lord Juss was silent. Nought good were his thoughts within him.
In due time a little martlet by the Queen’s command brought them to
their bedchambers. And there in great beds soft and fragrant they
went to rest.
Juss waked long in the doubtful light, troubled at heart. At length he
fell into a troubled sleep. The glimmer of the lamps mingled with his
dreams and his dreams with it, so that scarce he wist whether asleep
or waking he beheld the walls of the bedchamber dispart in sunder,
disclosing a prospect of vast paths of moonlight, and a solitary
mountain peak standing naked out of a sea of cloud that gleamed white
beneath the moon. It seemed to him that the power of flight was upon
him, and that he flew to that mountain and hung in air beholding it
near at hand, and a circle as the appearance of fire round about it,
and on the summit of the mountain the likeness of a burg or citadel of
brass that was green with eld and surface-battered by the frosts and
winds of ages. On the battlements was the appearance of a great
company both men and women, never still, now walking on the wall with
hands lifted up as in supplication to the crystal lamps of heaven, now
flinging themselves on their knees or leaning against the brazen
battlements to bury their faces in their hands, or standing at gaze as
nightwalkers gazing into the void. Some seemed men of war, and some
great courtiers by their costly apparel, rulers and kings and kings’
daughters, grave bearded counsellors, youths and maidens and crowned
queens. And when they went, and when they stood, and when they seemed
to cry aloud bitterly, all was noiseless even as the tomb, and the
faces of those mourners pallid as a dead corpse is pallid.
Then it seemed to Juss that he beheld a keep of brass flatroofed
standing on the right, a little higher than the walls, with
battlements about the roof. He strove to cry aloud, but it was as if
some devil gripped his throat stifling him, for no sound came. For in
the midst of the roof, as it were on a bench of stone, was the
appearance of one reclining; his chin resting in his great right hand,
his elbow on an arm of the bench, his cloak about him gorgeous with
cloth of gold, his ponderous two-handed sword beside him with its
heart-shaped ruby pommel darkly resplendent in the moonlight. Nought
otherwise looked he than when Juss last beheld him, on their ship
before the darkness swallowed them; only the ruddy hues of life seemed
departed from him, and his brow seemed clouded with sorrow. His eye
met his brother’s, but with no look of recognition, gazing as if on
some far point in the deeps beyond the star-shine. It seemed to Juss
that even so would he have looked to find his brother Goldry as he now
found him; his head unbent for all the tyranny of those dark powers
that held him in captivity: keeping like a God his patient vigil,
heedless alike of the laments of them that shared his prison and of
the menace of the houseless night about him.
The vision passed; and Lord Juss perceived himself in his bed again,
the cold morning light stealing between the hangings of the windows
and dimming the soft radiance of the lamps.
Now for seven days they dwelt in that palace. No living thing they
encountered save only the Queen and her little martlets, but all
things desirous were ministered unto them by unseen hands and all
royal entertainment. Yet was Lord Juss heavy at heart, for as often as
he would question the Queen of Goldry, so she would ever put him by,
praying him earnestly not a second time to pronounce that name of
terror. At last, walking with her alone in the cool of the evening on
a trodden path of a meadow where asphodel grew and other holy flowers
beside a quiet stream, he said, “So it is, O Queen Sophonisba, that
when first I came hither and spake with thee I well thought that by
thee my matter should be well sped. And didst not thou them promise me
thy goodness and grace from thee thereafter?”
“This is very true,” said the Queen.
“Them why,” said he, “when I would question thee of that I make most
store of, wilt thou always daff me and put me by?”
She was silent, hanging her head. He looked sidelong for a minute at
her sweet profile, the grave clear limes of her mouth and chin. “Of
whom must I inquire,” he said, “if not of thee, which art Queen in
Koshtra Belorn and must know this thing?”
She stopped and faced him with dark eyes that were like a child’s for
innocence and like a God’s for splendour. “My lord, that I have put
thee off, ascribe it not to evil intent. That were am unnatural part
indeed in me unto you of Demonland who have fulfilled the weird and
set me free again to visit again the world of men which I so much
desire, despite all my sorrows I there fulfilled in elder time. Or
shall I forget you are at enmity with the wicked house of Witchland,
and therefore doubly pledged my friends?”
“That the event must prove, O Queen,” said Lord Juss.
“O saw ye Morna Moruna?” cried she. “Saw ye it in the wilderness?” And
when he looked on her still dark and mistrustful, she said, “Is this
forgot? And methought it should be mention and remembrance made
thereof unto the end of the world. I pray thee, my lord, what age art
thou?”
“I have looked upon this world,” answered Lord Juss, “for thrice ten
years.”
“And I,” said the Queen, “but seventeen summers. Yet that same age had
I when thou wast born, and thy grandsire before thee, and his before
him. For the Gods gave me youth for ever more, when they brought me
hither after the realm-rape that befell our house, and lodged me in
this mountain.”
She paused, and stood motionless, her hands clasped lightly before
her, her head bent, her face turned a little away so that he saw only
the white curve of her neck and her cheek’s soft outline. All the air
was full of sunset, though no sun was there, but a scattered splendour
only, shed from the high roof of rock that was like a sky above them,
self-effulgent. Very softly she began again to speak, the crystal
accents of her voice sounding like the faint motes of a bell borne
from a great way off on the quiet air of a summer evening. “Surely
time past is gone by like a shadow since those days, when I was Queen
in Morna Moruna, dwelling there with my lady mother and the princes my
cousins in peace and joy. Until Gorice III. came out of the north, the
great King of Witchland, desiring to explore these mountains, for his
pride’s sake and his insolent heart; which cost him dear. ‘Twas on am
evening of early summer we beheld him and his folk ride over the
flowering meadows of the Moruna. Nobly was he entertained by us, and
when we knew what way he meant to go, we counselled him turn back, and
the mantichores must tear him if he went. But he mocked at our
advisoes, and on the morrow departed, he and his, by way of Omprenne
Edge. And never again were they seen of living man.
“That had been small loss; but hereof there befell a great and
horrible mischief. For in the spring of the year came Gorice IV. with
a great army out of waterish Witchlamd, saying with open mouth of
defamation that we were the dead King’s murtherers: we that were
peaceful folk, and would not entertain an action should call us
villain for all the wealth of Impland. In the night they came, when
all we save the sentinels upon the walls were in our beds secure in a
quiet conscience. They took the princes my cousins and all our men,
and before our eyes most cruelly murthered them. So that my mother
seeing these things fell suddenly into deadly swoonings and was
presently dead. And the King commanded them burn the house with fire,
and he brake down the holy altars of the Gods, and defiled their high
places. And unto me that was young and fair to look on he gave this
choice: to go with him and be his slave, other else to be cast down
from the Edge and all my bones be broken. Surely I chose this rather.
But the Gods, that do help every rightful true cause, made light my
fall, and guided me hither safe through all perils of height and cold
and ravening beasts, granting me youth and peaceful days for ever,
here on the borderland between the living and the dead.
“And the Gods blew upon all the land of the Moruna in the fire of
their wrath, to make it desolate, and man and beast cut off therefrom,
for a witness of the wicked deeds of Gorice the King, even as Gorice
the King made desolate our little castle and our pleasant places. The
face of the land was lifted up to high airs where frosts do dwell, so
that the cliffs of Omprenne Edge down which ye came are ten times the
height they were when Gorice III. came down them. So was an end of
flowers on the Moruna, and an end there of spring and of summer days
for ever.”
The Queen ceased speaking, and Lord Juss was silent for a space,
greatly marvelling.
“Judge now,” said she, “if your foes be not my foes. It is not hidden
from me, my lord, that you deem me but a lukewarm friend and no helper
at all in your enterprise. Yet have I ceased not since ye were here to
search and to inquire, and sent my little martlets west and east and
south and north after tidings of him thou mamedst. They
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