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

Corsus chuckled weakly. “Ye say well: very well, O King, very well, La

Fireez. Our quarrels are ended. No room for more. For, look you,

Demonland is a ripe fruit ready to drop me thus in our mouth.” Leaning

back he gaped his mouth wide open, suspending by one leg above it an

hortolan basted with its own dripping. The bird slipped through his

fingers, and fell against his cheek, and so on to his bosom, and so on

the floor, and his brazen byrny and the sleeves of his pale green

kirtle were splashed with the gravy.

Whereat Corinius let fly a great peal of laughter; but La Fireez

flushed with anger and said, scowling, “Drunkenness, my lord, is a

jest for thralls to laugh at.”

“Then sit thou mum, Prince,” said Corinius, “lest thy quality be

called in question. For my part I laugh at my thoughts, and they be

very choice.”

But Corsus wiped his face and fell asinging:

Whene’er I bib the wine down.

Asleepe drop all my cares.

A fig for fret.

A fig for sweat.

A fig care I for cares.

Sith death must come, though I say nay.

Why grieve my life’s days with affaires?

Come, bib we then the wine down

Of Bacchus faire to see;

For alway while we bibbing be.

Asleepe drop all our cares.

With that, Corsus sank heavily forward again on the table. And the

dwarf, whose japes all else in that company had taken well even when

themselves were the mark thereof, leaped up and down, crying, “Hear a

wonder! This pudding singeth. When with two platters, thralls! ye have

served it o’ the board without a dish. One were too little to contain

so vast a deal of bullock’s blood and lard. Swift, and carve it ere

the vapours burst the skin.”

“I will carve thee, filth,” said Corsus, lurching to his feet; and

catching the dwarf by the wrist with one hand he gave him a great box

on the ear with the other. The dwarf squealed and bit Corsus’s thumb

to the bone, so that he loosed his hold; and the dwarf fled from the

hall, while the company laughed pleasantly.

“So flieth folly before wisdom which is in wine,” said the King. “The

night is young: bring me botargoes, and caviare and toast. Drink,

Prince. The red Thramnian wine that is thick like honey wooeth the

soul to divine philosophy. How vain a thing is ambition. This was

Gaslark’s bane, whose enterprises of such pitch and moment have ended

thus, in a kind of nothing. Or what thinkest thou, Gro, thou which art

a philosopher?”

“Alas, poor Gaslark,” said Gro. “Had all grown to his mind, and had he

‘gainst all expectation gotten us overthrown, even so had he been no

nearer to his heart’s desire than when he first set forth. For he had

of old in Zajë Zaculo eating and drinking and gardens and treasure and

musicians and a fair wife, all soft ease and contentment all his days.

And at the last, howsoe’er we shape our course, cometh the poppy that

abideth all of us by the harbour of oblivion hard to cleanse. Dry

withered leaves of laurel or of cypress tree, and a little dust.

Nought else remaineth.”

“With a sad brow I say it,” said the King: “I hold him wise that

resteth happy, even as the Red Foliot, and tempteth not the Gods by

over-mounting ambition to his dejection.”

La Fireez had thrown himself back in his high seat with his elbows

resting on its lofty arms and his hands dangling idly on either side.

With head held high and incredulous smile he harkened to the words of

Gorice the King.

Gro said in Corund’s ear, “The King hath found strange kindness in the

cup.”

“I think thou and I be clean out o’ fashion,” answered Corund,

whispering, “that we be not yet drunken; the cause whereof is that

thou drinkest within measure, which is good, and me this amethyst at

my belt keepeth sober, were I never so surfeit-swelled with wine.”

La Fireez said, “You are pleased to jest, O King. For my part, I had

as lief have this musk-million on my shoulders as a head so blockish

as to want ambition.”

“If thou wert not our princely guest,” said Corinius, “I had called

that spoke in the right fashion of a little man. Witchland affecteth

not such vaunts, but can afford to speak as our Lord the King in proud

humility. Turkey cocks do strut and gobble; not so the eagle, who

holdeth the world at his discretion.”

“Pity on thee,” cried the Prince, “if this cheap victory turn thee so

giddy. Goblins!”

Corinius scowled. Corsus chuckled, saying to himself but loud enough

for all to hear, “Goblins, quotha? They were small game had they been

all. Ay, there it is: had they been all.”

The King’s brow was like a foul black cloud. The women held their

breath. But Corsus, blandly insensible of these gathering thunders,

beat time on the table with his cup, drowsily chanting to a most

mournful air:

When birds in water deepe do lie.

And fishes in the air doe flue.

When water burns and fire doth freeze.

And oysters grow as fruits on trees—

A resounding hecup brought him to a full close.

The talk had died down, the lords of Witchland, ill at ease, studying

to wear their faces to the bent of the King’s looks. But Prezmyra

spake, and the music of her voice came like a refreshing shower. “This

song of my Lord Corsus,” she said, “made me hopeful for an answer to a

question in philosophy; but Bacchus, you see, hath ta’en his soul into

Elysium for a season, and I fear me nor truth nor wisdom cometh from

his mouth tonight. And this was my question, whether it be true that

all animals of the land are in their kind in the sea? My Lord

Corinius, or thou, my princely brother, can you resolve me?”

“Why, so it is received, madam,” said La Fireez. “And inquiry will

show thee many pretty instances: as the sea-frog, the sea-fox, the

sea-dog, the sea-horse, the sealion, the sea-bear. And I have known

the barbarous people of Esamocia eat of a conserve of sea-mice mashed

and brayed in a mortar with the flesh of that beast named _bos

marinus_, seasoned with salt and garlic.”

“Foh! speak to me somewhat quickly,” cried the Lady Sriva, “ere in

imagination I taste such nasty meat. Prithee, yonder gold peaches and

raisins of the sun as an antidote.”

“Lord Gro will instruct thee better than I,” said La Fireez. “For my

part, albeit I think nobly of philosophy, yet have I little leisure to

study it. Oft have I hunted the badger, yet never answered that

question of the doctors whether he hath the legs of one side shorter

than of the other. Neither know I, for all the lampreys I have eat,

how many eyes the lamprey hath, whether it be nine or two.”

Prezmyra smiled: “O my brother, thou art too too smoored, I fear me,

in the dust of action and the field to be at accord with these nice

searchings. But be there birds under the sea, my Lord Gro?”

Gro made answer, “In rivers, certainly, though it be but birds of the

air sojourning for a season. As I myself have found them in Outer

Impland, asleep in winter time at the bottom of lakes and rivers, two

together, mouth to mouth, wing to wing. But in the spring they revive

again, and by and by are the woods full of their singing. And for the

sea, there be true sea-cuckows, sea-thrushes, and sea-sparrows, and

many more.”

“It is passing strange,” said Zenambria.

Corsus sang:

When sorcerers do leave their charme.

When spiders do the fly no harme.

Prezmyra turned to Corund saying, “Was there not a merry dispute

betwixt you, my lord, concerning the toad and the spider, thou

maintaining that they do poisonously destroy one another, and my Lord

Gro that he would show thee to the contrary?”

“‘Twas even so, lady,” said Corund, “and it is yet in controversy.”

Corsus sang:

And when the blackbird leaves to sing.

And likewise serpents for to sting.

Then you may saye, and justly too.

The old world now is turned anew:

and so sank back into bloated silence.

“My Lord the King,” cried Prezmyra, “I beseech you give order for the

ending of this difference between two of your council, ere it wax to

dangerous heat. Let them be given a toad, O King, and spiders without

delay, that they may make experiment before this goodly company.”

Therewith all fell alaughing, and the King commanded a thrall, who

shortly brought fat spiders to the number of seven and a crystal winecup, and inclosed with them beneath the cup a toad, and set all before

the King. And all beheld them eagerly.

“I will wager two firkins of pale Permian wine to a bunch of

radishes,” said Corund, “that victory shall be given unto the spiders.

Behold how without resistance they do sit upon his head and pass all

over his body.”

Gro said, “Done.”

“Thou wilt lose the wager, Corund,” said the King. “This toad taketh

no hurt from the spiders, but sitteth quiet out of policy, tempting

them to security, that upon advantage he may swallow them down.”

While they watched, fruits were borne in: queen-apples, almonds,

pomegranates and pistick nuts; and fresh bowls and jars of wine, and

among them a crystal flagon of the peach-coloured wine of Krothering

vintaged many summers ago in the vineyards that stretch southward

toward the sea from below the castle of Lord Brandoch Daha.

Corinius drank deep, and cried, “‘Tis a royal drink, this wine of

Krothering! Folk say it will be good cheap this summer.”

Whereat La Fireez shot a glance at him, and the King marking it said

in Corinius’s ear, “Wilt thou be prudent? Let not thy pride flatter

thee to think aught shall avail thee, any more than my vilest thrall,

if by thy doing this Prince smell out my secrets.”

By then was the hour waxing late, and the women took their leave,

lighted to the doors in great state by thralls with flamboys. In a

while, when they were gone. “A plague of all spiders!” cried Corund.

“Thy toad hath swallowed one already.”

“Two more!” said Gro. “Thy theoric crumbleth apace, O Corund. He hath

two at a gulp, and but four remain.”

The Lord Corinius, whose countenance was now aflame with furious

drinking, held high his cup and catching the Prince’s eye, “Mark well,

La Fireez,” he cried, “a sign and a prophecy. First one; next two at a

mouthful; and early after that, as I think, the four that remain. Art

not afeared lest thou be found a spider when the brunt shall come?”

“Hast drunk thyself horn-mad, Corinius?” said the King under his

breath, his voice shaken with anger.

“He is as witty a marmalade-eater as ever I conversed with,” said La

Fireez, “but I cannot tell what the dickens he means.”

“That,” answered Corinius, “which should make thy smirking face turn

serious. I mean our ancient enemies, the haskardly mongrels of

Demonland. First gulp, Goldry, taken heaven knows whither by the

King’s sending in a deadly scud of wind–”

“The devil damn thee!” cried the King, “what drunken brabble is this?”

But the Prince La Fireez waxed red as blood, saying, “This it is then

that lieth behind this hudder mudder, and ye go