The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖
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bandied what way she will. Against thee we war not, and I swear to
thee that all our care is to make thee amends.”
“O, thine oaths!” said Prezmyra. “What amends canst thou make? Youth I
have and some poor beauty. Wilt thou conjure those three dead men
alive again that ye have slain? For all thy vaunted art, I think this
were too hard a task.”
All they were silent, eyeing her as she walked delicately past the
table. She looked with a distant and, to outward seeming,
uncomprehending eye on the dead feasters and their empty cups. Empty
all, save that one passed on by Viglus, whereof Corsus would not
drink; and it stood half drained. Of curious workmanship it was, of
pale green glass, its stand formed of three serpents intertwined, the
one of gold, another of silver, the third of iron. Fingering it
carelessly she raised her glittering eyes once more on the Demons, and
said, “It was ever the wont of you of Demonland to eat the egg and
give away the shell in alms.” And pointing at the lords of Witchland
dead at the feast, she asked, “Were these also your victims in this
day’s hunting, my lords?”
“Thou dost us wrong, madam,” cried Goldry. “Never hath Demoniand used
suchlike arts against her enemies.”
Lord Brandoch Daha looked swiftly at him, and stepped idly forward,
saying, “I know not what art hath wrought yon goblet, but ‘tis
strangely like to one I saw in Impland. Yet fairer is this, and of
more just proportions.” But Prezmyra forestalled his outstretched
hand, and quietly drew the cup towards her out of reach. As sword
crosses sword, the glance of her green eyes crossed his, and she said,
“Think not that you have a worse enemy left on earth than me. I it was
that sent Corsus and Corinius to trample Demonland in the mire. Had I
but some spark of masculine virtue, some soul at least of you should
yet be loosed squealing to the shades to attend my dear ones ere I set
sail. But I have none. Kill me then, and let me go.”
Juss, whose sword was bare in his hand, smote it home in the scabbard
and stepped towards her. But the table was betwixt them, and she drew
back to the dais where Corund lay in state. There, like some
triumphant goddess, she stood above them, the cup of venom in her
hand. “Come not beyond the table, my lords,” she said, “or I drain
this cup to your damnation.”
Brandoch Daha said, “The dice are thrown, O Juss. And the Queen hath
won the hazard.”
“Madam,” said Juss, “I swear to you there shall no force nor restraint
be put upon you, but honour only and worship shown you, and friendship
if you will. That surely mightest thou take of us for thy brother’s
sake.” Thereat she looked terribly upon him, and he said, “Only on
this wild night lay not hands upon yourself. For their sake, that even
now haply behold us out of the undiscovered barren lands, beyond the
dismal lake, do not this.”
Still facing them, the cup still aloft in her right hand, Prezmyra
laid her left hand lightly on the brazen plates of Corund’s byrny that
cased the mighty muscles of his breast. Her hand touched his beard,
and drew back suddenly; but in an instant she laid it gently again on
his breast. Somewhat her orient loveliness seemed to soften for a
passing minute in the altering light, and she said, “I was given to
Corund young. This night I will sleep with him, or reign with him,
among the mighty nations of the dead.”
Juss moved as one about to speak, but she stayed him with a look, and
the lines of her body hardened again and the lioness looked forth anew
in her peerless eyes. “Hath your greatness,” she said, “so much
outgrown your wit, that you think I will abide to be your pensioner,
that have been a Princess in Pixyland, a Queen of far-fronted Impland,
and wife to the greatest soldier in this hold of Carcë, which till
this day hath been the only scourge and terror of the world? O my
lords of Demonland, good comfortable fools, speak to me no more, for
your speech is folly. Go, doff your hats to the silly hind that
runneth on the mountain; pray her gently dwell with you amid your
stalled cattle, when you have slain her mate. Shall the blackening
frost, when it hath blasted and starved all the sweet garden flowers,
say to the rose, Abide with us; and shall she harken to such a wolfish
suit?”
So speaking she drank the cup; and turning from those lords of
Demonland as a queen turneth her from the unregarded multitude,
kneeled gently down by Corund’s bier, her white arms clasped about his
head, her face pillowed on his breast.
When Juss spake, his voice was choked with tears. He commanded Bremery
that they should take up the bodies of Corsus and Zenambria and those
sons of Corund and of Corsus that lay poisoned and dead in that hall
and on the morrow give them reverent burial. “And for the Lord
Corinius I will that ye make a bed of state, that he may lie in this
hall tonight, and tomorrow will we lay him in howe before Carcë, as
is fitting for so renowned a captain. But great Corund and his lady
shall none depart one from the other, but in one grave shall they
rest, side by side, for their love sake. Ere we be gone I will rear
them such a monument as beseemeth great kings and princes when they
die. For royal and lordly was Corund, and a mighty man at arms, and a
fighter clean of hand, albeit our bitter enemy. Wondrous it is with
what cords of love he bound to him this unparagoned Queen of his. Who
bath known her like among women for trueness and highness of heart?
And sure none was ever more unfortunate.”
Now went they forth into the outer ward of Carcë. The night bore still
some signs of that commotion of the skies that had so lately burst
forth and passed away, and some torn palls of thundercloud yet hung
athwart the face of heaven. Betwixt them in the swept places of the
sky a few stars shivered, and the moon, more than half waxen towards
her full, was sinking over Tenemos. Some faint breath of autumn was
abroad, and the Demons shuddered a little, fresh from the heavy air of
the great banquet hall. The ruins of the Iron Tower smoking to the
sky, and the torn and tumbled masses of masonry about it, showed
monstrous in the gloom as fragments of old chaos; and from them and
from the riven earth beneath steamed up pungent fumes as of brimstone
burning. Ever busily, back and forth through those sulphurous vapours,
obscene birds of the night flitted a weary round, and bats on leathern
wing, fitfully and dimly seen in the uncertain mirk, save when their
passage brought them dark against the moon. And from the solitudes of
the mournful fen afar voices of lamentation floated on the night: wild
wailing cries and sobbing noises and long moans rising and falling and
quivering down to silence.
Juss laid his hand on Goldry’s arm, saying, “There is nought earthly
in these laments, nor be those that thou seest circling in the reek
very bats or owls. These be his masterless familiars wailing for their
Lord. Many such served him, simple earthy divels and divels of the air
and of the water, held by him in thrail by sorcerous and artificial
practices, coming and going and doing his will.”
“These availed him not,” said Goldry, “nor the sword of Witchland
against our might and main, that brake it asunder in his hand and slew
his mighty men of valour.”
“Yet true it is,” said Lord Juss, “that none greater hath lived on
earth than King Gorice XII. When after these long wars we held him as
a stag at bay, he feared not to assay a second time, and this time
unaided and alone, what no man else hath so much as once performed and
lived. And well he knew that that which was summoned by him out of the
deep must spill and blast him utterly if he should slip one whit, as
slip he did in former days, but his disciple succoured him. Behold now
with what loud striking of thunder, unconquered by any earthly power,
he hath his parting: with this Carcë black and smoking in ruin for his
monument, these lords of Witchland and hundreds besides of our
soldiers and of the Witches for his funeral bakemeats, and spirits
weeping in the night for his chief mourners.”
So came they again to the camp. And in due time the moon set and the
clouds departed and the quiet stars pursued their eternal way until
night’s decline; as if this night had been but as other nights: this
night which had beheld the power and glory that was Witchland by such
a hammer-stroke of destiny smitten in pieces.
XXXIII QUEEN SOPHONISBA IN GALINGOf the entertainment given by Lord Juss in
Demonland to Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the
gods, and of that circumstance which, beyond all
the wonders fair and lovely to behold shown her
in that country, made her most to marvel:
wherein is a rare example how in a fortunate
world, out of all expectation, in the spring of the
year, cometh a new birth.
NOW the returning months brought the season of the year when Queen
Sophonisba should come according to her promise to guest with Lord
Juss in Galing. And so it was that in the hush of a windless April
dawn the Zimiamvian caravel that bare the Queen to Demonland rowed up
the firth to Lookinghaven.
All the east was a bower for the golden dawn. Kartadza, sharpoutlined
as if cut in bronze, still hid the sun; and in the great shadow of the
mountain the haven and the low hills and the groves of holm-oak and
strawberry tree slumbered in a deep obscurity of blues and purples,
against which the avenues of pink almond blossom and the white marble
quays were bodied forth in pale wakening beauty, imaged as in a
looking-glass in that tranquillity of the sea. Westward across the
firth all the land was aglow with the opening day. Snow lingered still
on the higher summits. Cloudless, bathing in the golden light, they
stood against the blue: Dina, the Forks of Nantreganon, Pike o’
Shards, and all the peaks of the Thornback range and Neverdale.
Morning laughed on their high ridges and kissed the woods that clung
about their lower limbs: billowy woods, where rich hues of brown and
purple told of every twig on all their myriad branches thick and afire
with buds. White mists lay like coverlets on the water-meadows where
Tivarandardale opens to the sea. On the shores of Bothrey and
Scaramsey, and on the mainland near the great bluff of Thremnir’s
Heugh and a little south of Owlswick, clear spaces among the
birchwoods showed golden yellow: daffodils abloom in the spring.
They rowed in to the northernmost berth and made fast the caravel. The
sweetness of the almond trees was the sweetness of spring in the air,
and spring was in the face of that Queen as she came with her
attendants up the shining steps, her little martlets circling about
her or perching on her shoulders: she to whom the Gods of old gave
youth everlasting, and peace everlasting in Koshtra
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