The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖
- Author: Eric Rücker Eddison
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hurt. If o’ the contrary these be very essential beings, needs must
they joyfully welcome me and use me well, being themselves the true
vital spirits of manymountained Demonland; unto whose comfort and the
restorement of her old renown and praise I have with such a strange
determination bent all my painful thoughts and resolut’on.”
So on the motion he discovered himself and hailed them. The wild
things bounded away and were lost among the flanks of the hill. The
capripeds, leaving on the instant their piping or their dancing,
crouched watching him with distrustful startled eyes. Only the Oreads
still in a dazzling drift pursued their round: quiet maiden mouths,
beautiful breasts, slender lithe limbs, hand joined to delicate hand,
parting and closing and parting again, in rhythms of unstaled variety;
here one that, with white arms clasped behind her head where her
braided hair was as burnished gold, circled and swayed with a
langourous motion; here another, that leaped and paused hovering
a-tiptoe, like an arrow of the sun shot through the leafy roof of an old
pine-forest when the warm hill-wind stirs the tree-tops and opens a
tiny window to the sky.
Gro went toward them along the grassy hillside. When he was come a
dozen paces the strength was gone from his limbs. He kneeled down
crying out and saying, “Divinities of earth! deny me not, neither
reject me, albeit cruelly have I till now oppressed your land, but
will do so no more. The footsteps of mine overtrodden virtue lie still
as bitter accusations unto me. Bring me of your mercy where I may find
out them that possessed this land and offer them atonement, who were
driven forth because of me and mine to be outlaws in the woods and
mountains.”
So spake he, bowing his head in sorrow. And he heard, like the
trembling of a silver lute-string, a voice in the air that cried:
North ‘tis and north ‘tis!
Why need we further?
He raised his eyes. The vision was gone. Only the noon and the
woodland, silent, solitary, dazzling, were about and above him.
Lord Gro came now to his horse again, and mounted and rode northaway
through the fells all that summer afternoon, full of cloudy fancies.
When it was eventide his way was high up along the steep side of a
mountain between the screes and the grass, following a little path
made by the wild sheep. Far beneath in the valley was a small river
tortuously flowing along a bouldery bed amid hillocks of old moraines
which were like waves of a sea of grass-clad earth. The July sun
wheeled low, flinging the shadows of the hills far up the westward-facing slopes where Gro was a-riding, but where he rode and above him
the hillside was yet aglow with the warm low sunshine; and the distant
peak that shut in the head of the valley, rearing his huge front like
the gable of a house, with sweeping ribs of bare rock and scree and a
crest of crag like a great breaker frozen to stone in mid career,
bathed yet in a radiance of opalescent light.
Turning the shoulder of the hillside at a place where the hill was cut
by a shallow gully, he saw before him a hollow or sheltered nook.
There, protected by the great body of the hill from the blasts of the
east and north, two rowan trees and some hollies grew in the clefts of
the rock above the watercourse. Under their shadow was a cave, not
large but so big as a man might well abide in and be dry in wild
weather, and beyond it on the right a little waterfall, so beautiful
it was a wonder to behold. This was the fashion of it: a slab of rock,
twice a man’s height, tilted a little forward from the hill, so that
the water fell clear from its upper edge in a thin stream into a rocky
basin. The water in the basin was clear and deep, but a-churn always
with bubbles from the plungingjet from above; and over all the rocks
about it grew mosses and lichens and little water-flowers, nourished
by the stream at root and refreshed by the spray.
The Lord Gro said in his heart, “Here would I dwell for ever had I but
the art to make myself little as an eft. And I would build me an house
a span high beside yonder cushion of moss emeraldhued, with those pink
foxgloves to shade my door which balance their bells above the foaming
waters. This shy grass of Parnassus should be my drinking cup, with
pure white chalice poised on a hair-thin stem; and the curtains of my
bed that little thirsty sandwort which, like a green heaven sown with
milk-white stars, curtains the shady sides of these rocks.”
Resting in this imagination he abode long time looking on that fairy
place, so secretly bestowed in the fold of the naked mountain. Then,
unwilling to depart from so fair a spot, and bethinking him, besides,
that after so many hours his horse was weary, he dismounted and lay
down beside the stream. And in a short while, having his spirits
sublimed with the sweet imagination of those wonders he had beheld, he
was fain to suffer the long dark lashes to droop over his large and
liquid eyes. And deep sleep overcame him.
When he awoke, all the sky was afire with the red of sunset. A shadow
was betwixt him and the western light: the shape of one bending over
him and saying in masterful wise, yet in accents wherein the echoes
and memories of all sweet sounds seemed mingled and laid up at rest
for ever, “Lie still, my lord, nor cry not a rescue. Behold, thine own
sword; and I took it from thee sleeping.” And he was ware of a sharp
sword pointed against his throat where the big veins lie beneath the
tongue.
He stirred not at all, neither spake aught, only looking up at her as
at some vision of delight strayed from the fugitive flock of dreams.
The lady said, “Where by thy company? And how many? Answer me
swiftly.”
He answered her like a dreamer, “How shall I answer thee? How shall I
number them that be beyond all count? Or how name unto your grace
their habitation which are even very now closer to me than hand or
feet, yet o’ the next instant are able to transcend a main wilder
belike than even a starbeam hath journeyed o’er?”
She said, “Riddle me no riddles. Answer me, thou wert best.”
“Madam,” said Gro, “these that I told thee of be the company of mine
own silent thoughts. And, but for mine horse, this is all the company
that came hither with me.”
“Alone?” said she. “And sleep so securely in thine enemies’ country?
That showed a strange confidence.”
“Not enemies, if I may,” said he.
But she cried, “And thou Lord Gro of Witchland?”
“That one sickened long since,” he answered, “of a mortal sickness;
and ‘tis now a day and a night since he is dead thereof.”
“What art thou, then?” said she.
He answered, “If your grace would so receive me, Lord Gro of
Demonland.”
“A very practised turncoat,” said she. “Belike they also are wearied
of thee and thy ways. Alas,” she said in an altered voice, “thy gentle
pardon! when doubtless it was for thy generous deeds to me-ward they
fell out with thee, when thou didst so nobly befriend me.”
“I will tell your highness,” answered he, “the pure truth. Never stood
matters better ‘twixt me and all of them than when yesternight I
resolved to leave them.”
The Lady Mevrian was silent, a cloud in her face. Then, “I am alone,”
she said. “Therefore think it not little-hearted in me, nor forgetful
of past benefits, if I will be further certified of thee ere I suffer
thee to rise. Swear to me thou wilt not betray me.”
But Gro said, “How should an oath from me avail thee, madam? Oaths
bind not an ill man. Were I minded to do thee wrong, lightly should I
swear thee all oaths thou mightest require, and lightly o’ the next
instant be forsworn.”
“That is not well said,” said Mevrian. “Nor helpeth not thy safety.
You men do say that women’s hearts be faint and feeble, but I shall
show thee the contrary is in me. Study to satisfy me. Else will I
assuredly smite thee to death with thine own sword.”
The Lord Gro lay back, clasping his slender hands behind his head.
“Stand, I pray thee,” said he, “o’ the other side of me, that I may
see thy face.”
She did so, still threatening him with the sword. And he said smiling,
“Divine lady, all my days have I had danger for my bedfellow, and
peril of death for my familiar friend; whilom leading a delicate life
in princely court, where murther sitteth in the winecup and in the
alcove; whilom journeying alone in more perilous lands than this, as
witness the Moruna, where the country is full of venomous beasts and
crawling poisoned serpents, and the divels be as abundant there as
grasshoppers on a hot hillside in summer. He that feareth is a slave,
were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is
without fear is king of all the world. Thou hast my sword. Strike.
Death shall be a sweet rest to me. Thraldom, not death, should terrify
me.”
She paused awhile, then said unto him, “My Lord Gro, thou didst do me
once a right great good turn. Surely I may build my safety on this,
that never yet did kite bring forth a good flying hawk.” She shifted
her hold on his sword, and very prettily gave it him hilt-foremost,
saying, “I give it thee back, my lord, nothing doubting that that
which was given in honour thou wilt honourably use.”
But he, rising up, said, “Madam, this and thy noble words hath given
such rootfastness to the pact of faith betwixt us that it may now
unfold what blossom of oaths thou wilt; for oaths are the blossom of
friendship, not the root. And thou shalt find me a true holder of my
vowed amity unto thee without spot or wrinkle.”
For sundry nights and days abode Gro and Mevrian in that place,
hunting at whiles to get their sustenance, drinking of the sweet
spring-water, sleeping anights, she in her cave beneath the holly
bushes and the rowans beside the waterfall, he in a cleft of the rocks
a little below in the gully, where the moss made cushions soft and
resilient as the great stuffed beds in Carcë. In those days she told
him of her farings since that night of April when she escaped out of
Krothering: how first she found harbourage at By in Westmark, but
hearing in a day or two of a hue and cry fled east again, and
sojourning awhile beside Throwater came at length about a month ago
upon this cave beside the little fountain, and here abode. Her mind
had been to win over the mountains to Galing, but she had after the
first attempt given over that design, for fear of companies of the
enemy whose hands she barely escaped when she came forth into the
lower valleys that open on the eastern coastlands. So she had turned
again to this hiding place in the hills, as secret and remote as any
in Demonland. For this dale she let him know was Neverdale, where no
road ran save the way of
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