The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (e book reader online .TXT) 📖
- Author: Eric Rücker Eddison
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into Koshtra Belorn, and fulfilled the weird according to
preordainment, this only hath been my desire: to further you and to
enhance you and to obtain for you what you would, so far as in me
lieth. Though I be but a weak maid, yet hath it seemed good to the
blessed Gods to show kindness unto me. One holy prayer may work things
we scarce dream of. Wilt thou that I pray to Them tonight?”
“Alas, dear Queen,” said he, “shall those estranged and divided ashes
unite again? Who shall turn back the floodtide of unalterable
necessity?”
But she said, “Thou hast crystals and perspectives can show thee
things afar off. I pray bring them, and row me in thy boat up to
Moonmere Head that we may land there about midnight. And let my Lord
Brandoch Daha come with us and thy brothers. But let none else know of
it. For that were but to mock them with a false dawn, if it should
prove at last to be according to thy wisdom, O my lord, and not
according to my prayers.”
So the Lord Juss did according to the word of that fair Queen, and
they rowed her up the lake by moonlight. None spake, and the Queen
sate apart in the bows of the boat, in earnest supplication to the
blessed Gods. When they were come to the head of the lake they went
ashore on a little spit of silver sand. The April night was above
them, mild with moonlight. The shadows of the fells rose inky black
and beyond imagination huge against the sky. The Queen kneeled awhile
in silence on the cold ground, and those lords of Demonland stood
together in silence watching her.
In a while she raised her eyes to heaven; and behold, between the two
main peaks of the Scarf, a meteor crept slowly out of darkness and
across the night-sky, leaving a trail of silver fire, and silently
departed into darkness. They watched, and another came, and yet
another, until the western sky above the mountain was ablaze with
them. From two points of heaven they came, one betwixt the foreclaws
of the Lion and one in the dark sign of Cancer. And they that came
from the Lion were sparkling like the white fires of Rigel or Altair,
and they that came from the Crab were haughty red, like the lustre of
Antares. The lords of Demonland, leaning on their swords, watched
these portents for a long while in silence. Then the travelling
meteors ceased, and the steadfast stars shone lonely and serene. A
soft breeze stirred among the alders and willows by the lake. The
lapping waters lapping the shingly shore made a quiet tune. A
nightingale in a coppice on a little hill sang so passionate sweet it
seemed some spirit singing. As in a trance they stood and listened,
until that singing ended, and a hush fell on water and wood and lawn.
Then all the east blazed up for an instant with sheet lightnings, and
thunder growled from the east beyond the sea.
The thunder took form so that music was in the heavens, filling earth
and sky as with trumpets calling to battle, first high, then low, then
shuddering down to silence. Juss and Brandoch Daha knew it for that
great call to battle which had preluded that music in the dark night
without her palace, in Koshtra Belorn, when first they stood before
her portal divine. The great call went again through earth and air,
sounding defiance; and in its train new voices, groping in darkness,
rising to passionate lament, hovering, and dying away on the wind,
till nought remained but a roll of muffled thunder, long, low, quiet,
big with menace.
The Queen turned to Lord Juss. Surely her eyes were like two stars
shining in the gloom. She said in a drowned voice, “Thy perspectives,
my lord.”
So the Lord Juss made a fire of certain spices and herbs, and smoke
rose in a thick cloud full of fiery sparks, with a sweet sharp smell.
And he said, “Not we, O my Lady, lest our desires cheat our senses.
But look thou in my perspectives through the smoke, and say unto us
what thou shalt behold in the east beyond the unharvested sea.”
The Queen looked. And she said, “I behold a harbour town and a
sluggish river coming down to the harbour through a mere set about
with mud flats, and a great waste of fen stretching inland from the
sea. Inland, by the river side, I behold a great bluff standing above
the fens. And walls about the bluff, as it were a citadel. And the
bluff and the walled hold perched thereon are black like old night,
and like throned iniquity sitting in the place of power, darkening the
desolation of that fen.”
Juss said, “Are the walls thrown down? Or is not the great round tower
south-westward thrown down in ruin athwart the walls?”
She said, “All is whole and sound as the walls of thine own castle, my
lord.”
Juss said, “Turn the crystal, O Queen, that thou mayest see within the
walls if any persons be therein, and tell us their shape and seeming.”
The Queen was silent for a space, gazing earnestly in the crystal.
Then she said, “I see a banquet hall with walls of dark green jasper
speckled with red, and a massy cornice borne up by giants three-headed
carved in black serpentine; and each giant is bowed beneath the weight
of a huge crab-fish. The hall is sevensided. Two long tables there be
and a crossbench. There be iron braziers in the midst of the hall and
flamboys burning in silver stands, and revellers quaffing at the long
tables. Some dark young men black of brow and great of jaw, most
soldierlike, brothers mayhap. Another with them, ruddy of countenance
and kindlier to look on, with long brown moustachios. Another that
weareth a brazen byrny and sea-green kirtle; an old man he, with
sparse gray whiskers and flabby cheeks; fat and unwieldy; not a comely
old man to look upon.”
She ceased speaking, and Juss said, “Whom seest thou else in the
banquet hall, O Queen?”
She said, “The flare of the flamboys hideth the crossbench. I will
turn the crystal again. Now I behold two diverting themselves with
dice at the table before the crossbench. One is well-looking enough,
well knit, of a noble port, with curly brown hair and beard and keen
eyes like a sailor. The other seemeth younger in years, younger than
any of you, my lords. He is smooth shaved, of a fresh complexion and
fair curling hair, and his brow is wreathed with a festal garland. A
most big broad strong and seemly young man. Yet is there a somewhat
maketh me ill at ease beholding him; and for all his fair countenance
and royal bearing he seemeth displeasing in mine eyes.
“There is a damosel there too, watching them while they play. Showily
dressed she is, and hath some beauty. Yet scarce can I commend her–”
and, ill at ease on a sudden, the Queen suddenly put down the crystal.
The eye of Lord Brandoch Daha twinkled, but he kept silence. Lord Juss
said, “More, I entreat thee, O Queen, ere the reek be gone and the
vision fade. If this be all within the banquet hall, seest thou nought
without?”
Queen Sophonisba looked again, and in a while said, “There is a
terrace facing to the west under the inner wall of that fortress of
old night, and walking on it in the torchlight a man crowned like a
King. Very tall he is: lean of body, and long of limb. He weareth a
black doublet bedizened o’er with diamonds, and his crown is in the
figure of a crab-fish, and the jewels thereof outface the sun in
splendour. But scarce may I mark his apparel for looking on the face
of him, which is more terrible than the face of any man that ever I
saw. And the whole aspect of the man is full of darkness and power and
terror and stern command, that spirits from below earth must tremble
at and do his bidding.”
Juss said, “Heaven forfend that this should prove but a sweet and
golden dream, and we wake tomorrow to find it flown.”
“There walketh with him,” said the Queen, “in intimate converse, as of
a servant talking to his lord, one with a long black beard curly as
the sheep’s wool and glossy as the raven’s wing. Pale he is as the
moon in daylight hours, slender, with fine-cut features and great dark
eyes, and his nose hooked like a reaping-hook; gentlelooking and
melancholy-looking, yet noble.”
Lord Brandoch Daha said, “Seest thou none, O Queen, in the lodgings
that be in the eastern gallery above the inner court of the palace?”
The Queen answered, “I see a lofty bedchamber hung with arras. It is
dark, save for two branching candlesticks of lights burning before a
great mirror. I see a lady standing before the mirror, crowned with a
queen’s crown of purple amethysts on her deep hair that hath the
colour of the tipmost tongues of a flame. A man cometh through the
door behind her, parting the heavy hangings left and right. A big man
he is, and looketh like a king, in his great wolfskin mantle and his
kirtle of russet velvet with ornaments of gold. His bald head set
about with grizzled curls and his bushy beard flecked with gray speak
him something past his prime; but the light of youth burns in his
eager eyes and the vigour of youth is in his tread. She turneth to
greet him. Tall she is, and young she is, and beautiful, and
proud-faced, and sweet-faced, and most gallanthearted too, and merry of
heart too, if her looks belie her not.”
Queen Sophonisba covered her eyes, saying, “My lords, I see no more.
The crystal curdles within like foam in a whirlpool under a high force
in rainy weather. Mine eyes grow sore with watching. Let us row back,
for the night is far spent and I am weary.”
But Juss stayed her and said, “Let me dream yet awhile. The double
pillar of the world, that member thereof which we, blind instruments
of inscrutable Heaven, did shatter, restored again? From this time
forth to maintain, I and he, his and mine, ageless and deathless for
ever, for ever our high contention whether he or we should be great
masters of all the earth? If this be but phantoms, O Queen, thou’st
‘ticed us to the very heart of bitterness. This we could have missed,
unseen and unimagined: but not now. Yet how were it possible the Gods
should relent and the years return?”
But the Queen spake, and her voice was like the falling shades of
evening, pulsing with hidden splendour, as of a sense of wakening
starlight alive behind the fading blue. “This King,” she said, “in the
wickedness of his impious pride did wear on his thumb the likeness of
that worm Ouroboros, as much as to say his kingdom should never end.
Yet was he, when the appointed hour did come, thundered down into the
depths of Hell. And if now he be raised again and his days continued,
‘tis not for his virtue but for your sake, my lords, whom the Almighty
Gods do love. Therefore I pray you possess your hearts awhile with
humility before the most high Gods, and speak no unprofitable words.
Let us row back.”
Dawn came golden-fingered, but the lords of Demonland lay along abed
after their watch
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