The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖
- Author: Eric Rücker Eddison
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sat her down, saying, “I pray thee, my Lord Corinius, unsay that word.
Thou knowest it dislikes me.”
He looked on her in silence for a minute, leaned forward across the
board, his lips parted a little and between them his breath coming and
going thick and swift. “Well,” he said, “sit there, and it like thee,
madam, and manage my delights by stages. Last year the wide world
betwixt us: this year the mountains: yestereve Krothering walls:
tonight a table’s breadth: and ere night be done, not so much as–”
Gro saw the wild-deer look in Lady Mevrian’s eyes. She said, “This is
talk I have not learned to understand, my lord.”
“I shall learn it thee,” said Corinius, his face aflame. “Lovers live
by love as larks by leeks. By Satan, I do love thee as thou wert the
heart out of my body.”
“My Lord Corinius,” said she, “we ladies of the north have little
stomach for these fashions, howe’er they commend them in waterish
Witchland. If thou’lt have my friendship, bring me service therefor,
and that in season. This is no fit table-talk.”
“Why there,” said he, “we’re in fast agreement. I’ll blithely show
thee all this, and a quainter thing beside, in thine own chamber. But
‘twas beyond my hopes thou’dst grant me that so suddenly. Are we so
happy?”
In great shame and anger the Lady Mevrian stood up from the table.
Corinius, something unsteadily, leaped to his feet. For all his
bigness, so tall she was she looked him level in the eye. And he, as
when in the face of a night-ranging beast suddenly a man brandishes a
bright light, stood stupid under that gaze, the springs of action
strangely frozen in him on a sudden, and said sullenly, “Madam, I am a
soldier. Truly mine affection standeth not upon compliment. That I am
impatient, put the wite on thy beauty not on me. Pray you, be seated.”
But Mevrian answered, “Thy language, my lord, is too bold and vicious.
Come to me tomorrow if thou wilt; but I’ll have thee know, patience
only and courtesy shall get good of me.”
She turned to the door. He, as if with the turning away of that lady’s
eyes the spell was broke, cried loudly upon his folk to stay her. But
there was none stirred. Therewith he, as one that cannot command his
own indecent appetites, o’ersetting bench and board in eager haste to
lay hands on her, it so betided that he tripped up with one of these
and fell a-sprawling. And ere he was gotten again on his feet, the
Lady Mevrian was gone from the hall.
He rose up painfully, proffering from his lips a mudspring of
barbarous and filthy imprecations; so that Laxus who helped raise him
up was fain to chide him, saying, “My lord, unman not thyself by such
a bestial transformation. Are not we yet with harness on our backs in
a kingdom newly gained, the old lords thereof discomfited in deed but
not yet ta’en nor slain, studying belike to raise new powers against
us? And above such and so many affairs wilt thou make place for the
allurements of love?”
“Ay!” answered he. “Nor shall such a sapless ninny as thou avail to
cross me therein. Ask thy little gamesome Sriva, when thou comest home
to wed her, if I be not better able than thou to please a woman.
She’ll tell thee! I’ the main season meddle not in matters that be too
high for such as thou.”
Both Gro and the sons of Corund were by and heard those words. The
Lord Laxus schooled himself to laugh. He turned toward Gro, saying,
“The general is far gone in wine.”
Gro, marking Laxus’s face flushed red to the ears for all his studied
carelessness, answered him softly, “‘Tis so, my lord. And in wine is
truth.”
Now Corinius, bethinking him that it was yet early and the feast
barely well begun, let set a guard on all the passages which led to
Mevrian’s lodgings, to the end that she might not issue therefrom but
there wait on his pleasure. That done, he bade renew their feasting.
No stint of luscious meats and wines was there, and the lords of
Witchiand sat them down again right eagerly to the good banquet. Laxus
spoke secretly to Gro: “I wot well thou takest in very ill part these
doings. Let it stand firm in thy mind that if thou shouldst deem it
fitting to play him a trick and steal the lady from him, I’ll not
stand i’ the way on’t.”
“In a bunch of cards,” said Gro, “knaves wait upon the kings. It were
not so ill done and we made it so here. I heard a bird sing lately
thou hadst a quarrel to him.”
“Thou must not think so,” answered Laxus. “I’ll give thee still a
Roland for thine Oliver, and tell thee ‘tis most apparent thyself dost
love this lady.”
Gro said, “Thou chargest me with a sweet folly is foreign to my
nature, being a grave scholar that if ever I did frequent such toys
have long eschewed them. Only meseems ‘tis an ill thing if she must be
given over unto him against her will. Thou knowest him of a rough and
mere soldierly mind, besides his dissolute company with other women.”
“Tush,” said Laxus, “he may go his gate for me, and be as close as a
butterfly with the lady. But out of policy, ‘twere best rid her hence.
I’d not be seen in’t. That provided, I’ll second thee allways. If he
lie here the summer long in amorous dalliance, justly might the King
abraid us that midst o’ the day’s sport we gave his good hawk a gorge,
and so lost him the game.”
“I see,” said Gro, smiling in himself, “thou art a man of sober
government and understanding, and thinkest first of Witchland. And
that is both just and right.”
Now went the feast forward with great surfeiting and swigging of wine.
Mevrian’s women that were there, much against their own good will, to
serve the banquet, set ever fresh dishes before the feasters and
poured forth fresh wines, golden and tawny and rubyred, in the goblets
of jade and crystal and hammered gold. The air in the fair chamber was
thick with the steam of bakemeats and the vinons breath of the
feasters, so that the lustre of the opal lamps burned coppery, and
about each lamp was a bush of coppery beams like the beams about a
torch that burns in a fog. Great was the clatter of cups, and great
the clinking of glass as in their drunkenness the Witches cast down
the priceless beakers on the floor, smashing them in shivers. And huge
din there was of laughter and song; and amidst of it, women’s voices
singing, albeit near drowned in the hurly burly. For they constrained
Mevrian’s damosels in Krothering to sing and dance before them,
howsoever woeful at heart. And to other entertainment than this of
dance and song was many a black-bearded reveller willing to constrain
them; and sought occasion thereto, but this by stealth only, and out
of eye-shot of their general. For heavily enow was his wrath fallen on
some who rashly flaunted in his face their light disports, presuming
to hunt in such fields while their lord went still a-fasting.
After a while Heming, who sat next to Gro, began to say to him in a
whisper, “This is an ill banquet.”
“Meseems rather ‘tis a very good banquet,” said Gro.
“Would I saw some other issue thereof,” said Heming, “than that he
purposeth. Or how thinkest thou?”
“I scarce can blame him,” answered Gro. “‘Tis a most lovesome lady.”
“Is not the man a most horrible open swine? And is it to be endured
that he should work his lewd purpose on so sweet a lady?”
“What have I to do with it?” said Gro.
“What less than I?” said Heming.
“It dislikes thee?” said Gro.
“Art thou a man?” said Heming. “And she that hateth him besides as
bloody Atropos!”
Gro looked him a swift searching look in the eye. Then he whispered,
his head bowed over some raisins he was a-picking: “If this is thy
mind, ‘tis well.” And speaking softly, with here and there some snatch
of louder discourse or jest between whiles lest he should seem too
earnestly engaged in secret talk, he taught Heming orderly and clearly
what he had to do, discovering to him that Laxus also, being bit with
jealousy, was of their accord. “Thy brother Cargo is aptest for this.
He standeth about her height, and by reason of his youth is yet
beardless. Go find him out. Rehearse unto him word by word all this
talking that hath been between me and thee. Corinius holdeth me too
deep suspect to suffer me out of his eye tonight. Unto you sons of
Corund therefore is the task; and I biding at his elbow may avail to
hold him here i’ the hall till it be performed. Go; and wise counsel
and good speed wait on your attempts.”
The Lady Mevrian, being escaped to her own chamber in the south tower,
sat by an eastern window that looked across the gardens and the lake,
past the sea-lochs of Stropardon and the dark hills of Eastmark, to
the stately ranges afar which overhang in mid-air Mosedale and
Murkdale and Swartriverdale and the inland sea of Throwater. The last
lights of day still lingered on their loftier summits: on Ironbeak, on
the gaunt wall of Skarta, and on the distant twin towers of Dina seen
beyond the lower Mosedale range in the depression of Neverdale Hause.
Behind them rolled up the ascent of heaven the wheels of quiet Night:
holy Night, mother of the Gods, mother of sleep, tender nurse of all
little birds and beasts that dwell in the field and all tired hearts
and weary: mother besides of strange children, affrights, and rapes,
and midnight murders bold.
Mevrian sat there till all the earth was blurred in darkness and the
sky a-throb with starlight, for it was yet an hour until the rising of
the moon. And she prayed to Lady Artemis, calling her by her secret
names and saying, “Goddess and Maiden chaste and holy; triune Goddess,
Which in heaven art, and on the earth Huntress divine, and also hast
in the veiled sunless places below earth Thy dwelling, viewing the
large stations of the dead: save me and keep me that am Thy maiden
still.”
She turned the ring upon her finger and scanned in the gathering gloom
the bezel thereof, which was of that chrysoprase that is hid in light
and seen in darkness, being as a flame by night but in the day-time
yellow or wan. And behold, it palpitated with splendour from
withinward, and was as if a thousand golden sparks danced and swirled
within the stone.
While she pondered what interpretation lay likeliest on this sudden
flowering of unaccustomed splendour within the chrysoprase, behold,
one of her women of the bedchamber who brought lights said, standing
before her, “Twain of those lords of Witchland would speak with your
ladyship in private.”
“Two?” said Mevrian. “There’s safety yet in numbers. Which be they?”
“Highness, they be tall and slim of body. They be blackadvised. They
bear them discreet as dormice, and most commendably sober.”
Mevrian asked, “Is it the Lord Gro? Hath he a great black beard, much
curled and perfumed?”
“Highness, I marked not that either weareth a beard,” said the woman,
“nor their names I know not.”
“Well,” said
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