The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (english readers txt) 📕

Title: The Worm Ouroboros

Author: E. R. Eddison

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Language: English

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Title: The Worm Ouroboros

Author: E. R. Eddison

CONTENTS:

I The Castle of Lord Juss

II The Wrastling for Demonland

III The Red Foliot

IV Conjuring in the Iron Tower

V King Gorice’s Sending

VI The Claws of Witchland

VII Guests of the King in Carcë

VIII The First Expedition to Impland

IX Salapanta Hills

X The Marchlands of the Moruna

XI The Burg of Eshgrar Ogo

XII Koshtra Pivrarcha

XIII Koshtra Belorn

XIV The Lake of Ravary

XV Queen Prezmyra

XVI The Lady Sriva’s Embassage

XVII The King Flies His Haggard

XVIII The Murther of Gallandus by Corsus

XIX Thremnir’s Heugh

XX King Corinius

XXI The Parley Before Krothering

XXII Aurwath and Switchwater

XXIII The Weird Begun of Ishnain Nemartra

XXIV A King in Krothering

XXV Lord Gro and the Lady Mevrian

XXVI The Battle of Krothering Side

XXVII The Second Expedition to Impland

XXVIII Zora Rach Nam Psarrion

XXIX The Fleet at Muelva

XXX Tidings of Melikaphkhaz

XXXI The Demons Before Carcë

XXXII The Latter End of All the Lords of Witchland

XXXIII Queen Sophonisba in Galing

ARGUMENT: WITH DATES

To W.G.E. and to my friends K.H. and G.C.L.M.

I dedicate this book

It is neither allegory nor fable but a Story to be read for its own sake.

The proper names I have tried to spell simply. The e in Carcë is

long, like that in Phryne, the o in Krothering short and the accent

on that syllable: Corund is accented on the first syllable, Prezmyra

on the second, Brandoch Daha on the first and fourth, Gorice on the

last syllable, rhyming with thrice: Corinius rhymes with Flaminius,

Galing with sailing, La Fireez with desire ease: ch is always

guttural, as in loch.

E.R.E.

9th January 1922

THERE was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wasdale,

set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen

Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time. Lily and rose and larkspur

bloomed in the borders, and begonias with blossoms big as saucers, red

and white and pink and lemon-colour, in the beds before the porch.

Climbing roses, honeysuckle, clematis, and the scarlet flame-flower

scrambled up the walls. Thick woods were on every side without the

garden, with a gap north-eastward opening on the desolate lake and the

great fells beyond it: Gable rearing his cragbound head against the

sky from behind the straight clean outline of the Screes.

Cool long shadows stole across the tennis lawn. The air was golden.

Doves murmured in the trees; two chaffinches played on the near post

of the net; a little water-wagtail scurried along the path. A French

window stood open to the garden, showing darkly a dining-room panelled

with old oak, its Jacobean table bright with flowers and silver and

cut glass and Wedgwood dishes heaped with fruit: greengages, peaches,

and green muscat grapes. Lessingham lay back in a hammock-chair

watching through the blue smoke of an after-dinner cigar the warm

light on the Gloire de Dijon roses that clustered about the bedroom

window overhead. He had her hand in his. This was their House.

“Should we finish that chapter of Njal?” she said.

She took the heavy volume with its faded green cover, and read: “He

went out on the night of the Lord’s day, when nine weeks were still to

winter; he heard a great crash, so that he thought both heaven and

earth shook. Then he looked into the west airt, and he thought he saw

thereabouts a ring of fiery hue, and within the ring a man on a gray

horse. He passed quickly by him, and rode hard. He had a flaming

firebrand in his hand, and he rode so close to him that he could see

him plainly. He was black as pitch, and he sung this song with a

mighty voice—”

Here I ride swift steed.

His flank flecked with rime.

Rain from his mane drips.

Horse mighty for harm;

Flames flare at each end.

Gall glows in the midst.

So fares it with Flosi’s redes

As this flaming brand flies;

And so fares it with Flosi’s redes

As this flaming brand flies.

“‘Then he thought he hurled the firebrand east towards the fells

before him, and such a blaze of fire leapt up to meet it that he could

not see the fells for the blaze. It seemed as though that man rode

east among the flames and vanished there.

“‘After that he went to his bed, and was senseless for a long time,

but at last he came to himself. He bore in mind all that had happened,

and told his father, but he bade him tell it to Hjallti Skeggi’s son.

So he went and told Hjallti, but he said he had seen “the Wolf’s Ride,

and that comes ever before great tidings.”’”

They were silent awhile; then Lessingham said suddenly, “Do you mind

if we sleep in the east wing tonight?”

“What, in the Lotus Room?”

“Yes.”

“I’m too much of a lazy-bones tonight, dear,” she answered.

“Do you mind if I go alone, then? I shall be back to breakfast. I like

my lady with me; still, we can go again when next moon wanes. My pet

is not frightened, is she?”

“No!” she said, laughing. But her eyes were a little big. Her fingers

played with his watch-chain. “I’d rather,” she said presently, “you

went later on and took me. All this is so odd still: the House, and

that; and I love it so. And after all, it is a long way and several

years too, sometimes, in the Lotus Room, even though it is all over

next morning. I’d rather we went together. If anything happened then,

well, we’d both be done in, and it wouldn’t matter so much, would it?”

“Both be what?” said Lessingham. “I’m afraid your language is not all

that might be wished.”

“Well, you taught me!” said she; and they laughed.

They sat there till the shadows crept over the lawn and up the trees,

and the high rocks of the mountain shoulder beyond burned red in the

evening rays. He said, “If you like to stroll a bit of way up the

fell-side, Mercury is visible tonight. We might get a glimpse of him

just after sunset.”

A little later, standing on the open hillside below the hawking bats,

they watched for the dim planet that showed at last low down in the

west between the sunset and the dark.

He said, “It is as if Mercury had a finger on me tonight, Mary. It’s

no good my trying to sleep tonight except in the Lotus Room.”

Her arm tightened in his. “Mercury?” she said. “It is another world.

It is too far.”

But he laughed and said, “Nothing is too far.”

They turned back as the shadows deepened. As they stood in the dark of

the arched gate leading from the open fell into the garden, the soft

clear notes of a spinet sounded from the house. She put up a finger.

“Hark,” she said. “Your daughter playing Les Barricades.”

They stood listening. “She loves playing,” he whispered. “I’m glad we

taught her to play.” Presently he whispered again, “_Les Barricades

Mysterieuses_. What inspired Couperin with that enchanted name? And

only you and I know what it really means. _Les Barricades

Mysterieuses_.”

That night Lessingham lay alone in the Lotus Room. Its casements

opened eastward on the sleeping woods and the sleeping bare slopes of

Illgill Head. He slept soft and deep; for that was the House of

Postmeridian, and the House of Peace.

In the deep and dead time of the night, when the waning moon peered

over the mountain shoulder, he woke suddenly. The silver beams shone

through the open window on a form perched at the foot of the bed: a

little bird, black, round-headed, short-beaked, with long sharp wings,

and eyes like two stars shining. It spoke and said, “Time is.”

So Lessingham got up and muffled himself in a great cloak that lay on

a chair beside the bed. He said, “I am ready, my little martlet.” For

that was the House of Heart’s Desire.

Surely the martlet’s eyes filled all the room with starlight. It was

an old room with lotuses carved on the panels and on the bed and

chairs and roofbeams; and in the glamour the carved flowers swayed

like waterlilies in a lazy stream. He went to the window, and the

little martlet sat on his shoulder. A chariot coloured like the halo

about the moon waited by the window, poised in air, harnessed to a

strange steed. A horse it seemed,9 but winged like an eagle, and its

fore-legs feathered and armed with eagle’s claws instead of hooves. He

entered the chariot, and that little martlet sat on his knee.

With a whirr of wings the wild courser sprang skyward. The night about

them was like the tumult of bubbles about a diver’s ears diving in a

deep pool under a smooth steep rock in a mountain cataract. Time was

swallowed up in speed; the world reeled; and it was but as the space

between two deep breaths till that strange courser spread wide his

rainbow wings and slanted down the night over a great island that

slumbered on a slumbering sea, with lesser isles about it: a country

of rock mountains and hill pastures and many waters, all a-glimmer in

the moonshine.

They landed within a gate crowned with golden lions. Lessingham came

down from the chariot, and the little black martlet circled about his

head, showing him a yew avenue leading from the gates. As in a dream,

he followed her.

Of the rarities that were in the lofty presence

chamber, fair and lovely to behold, and of the

qualities and conditions of the lords of

Demonland: and of the embassy sent unto them by

King Gorice XI., and of the answer thereto.

THE eastern stars were paling to the dawn as