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

“I will not turn back,” said Juss. “Thou needest not to come with me.”

And he turned again to look on those frozen cliffs.

“No?” said Bramdoch Daha. “Nor thou with me. Thou’lt make me angry if

thou wilt so vilely wrest my words. Only fare not too securely; and

let that axe still be ready in thine hand, as is my sword, for

kindlier work than step-cutting. And if thou embrace the hope to climb

her by this wall before us, them hath the King’s enchantery made thee

fey.”

By then was the sun gone down. Under the wings of night uplifted from

the east, the unfathomable heights of air turned a richer blue; and

here and there, most dim and hard to see, throbbed a tiny point of

light: the greater stars opening their eyelids to the gathering dark.

Gloom crept upward, brimming the valleys far below like a rising tide

of the sea. Frost and stillness waited on the eternal might to resume

her reign. The solemn cliffs of Koshtra Belorn stood in tremendous

silence, death-pale against the sky.

Juss came backward a step along the ridge, and laying his hand on

Brandoch Daha’s, “Be still,” he said, “and behold this marvel.” A

little up the face of the mountain on the Zimiamvian side, it was as

if some leavings of the after-glow had been entangled among the crags

and frozen curtains of snow. As the gloom deepened, that glow

brightened and spread, filling a rift that seemed to go into the

mountain.

“It is because of us,” said Juss, in a low voice. “She is afire with

expectation of us.”

No sound was there save of their breath coming and going, and of the

strokes of Juss’s axe, and of the chips of ice chinking downwards into

silence as he cut their way along the ridge. And ever brighter, as

night fell, burned that strange sunset light above them. Perilous

climbing it was for fifty feet or more from the ridge, for they had no

rope, the way was hard to see, and the rocks were steep and iced and

every ledge deep in snow. Yet came they safe at length up by a steep

short gully to the gully’s head where it widened to that rift of the

wondrous light. Here might two walk abreast, and Lord Juss and Lord

Brandoch Daha took their weapons and entered abreast into the rift.

Mivarsh was fain to call to them, but he was speechless. He came

after, close at their heels like a dog.

For some way the bed of the cave ran upwards, them dipped at a gentle

slope deep into the mountain. The air was cold, yet warm after the

frozen air without. The rose-red light shone warm on the walls and

floor of that passage, but none might say whence it shone. Strange

sculptures glimmered overhead, bull-headed men, stags with human

faces, mammoths, and behemoths of the flood: vast forms and uncertain

carved in the living rock. For hours Juss and his companions pursued

their way, winding downward, losing all sense of north and south.

Little by little the light faded, and after an hour or two they went

in darkness: yet not in utter darkness, but as of a starless might in

summer where all might long twilight lingers. They went a soft pace,

for fear of pitfalls in the way.

After a while Juss halted and sniffed the air. “I smell newmown hay,”

he said, “and flower-scents. Is this my fantasy, or canst thou smell

them too?”

“Ay, and have smelt it this half-hour past,” answered Brandoch Daha;

“also the passage wideneth before us, and the roof of it goeth higher

as we journey.”

“This,” said Juss, “is a great wonder.”

They fared onward, and in a while the slope slackened, and they felt

loose stones and grit beneath their feet, and in a while soft earth.

They bent down and touched the earth, and there was grass growing, and

night-dew on the grass, and daisies folded up asleep. A brook tinkled

on the right. So they crossed that meadow in the dark, until they

stood below a shadowy mass that bulked big above them. In a blind wall

so high the top was swallowed up in the darkness a gate stood open.

They crossed that threshold and passed through a paved court that

clanked under their tread. Before them a flight of steps went up to

folding doors under am archway.

Lord Bramdoch Daha felt Mivarsh pluck him by the sleeve. The little

man’s teeth were chattering together in his head for terror. Brandoch

Daha smiled and put am arm about him. Juss had his foot on the lowest

step.

In that instant came a sound of music playing, but of what instruments

they might not guess. Great thundering chords began it, like trumpets

calling to battle, first high, then low, then shuddering down to

silence; then that great call again, sounding defiance. Them the keys

took new voices, groping in darkness, rising to passionate lament,

hovering and dying away on the wind, until nought remained but a roll

as of muffled thunder, long, low, quiet, but menacing ill. And now out

of the darkness of that induction burst a mighty form, three ponderous

blows, as of breakers that plunge and strike on a desolate shore; a

pause; those blows again; a grinding pause; a rushing of wings, as of

Furies steaming up from the pit; another flight of them dreadful in

its deliberation; then a wild rush upward and a swooping again;

confusion of hell, raging serpents blazing through might sky. Then on

a sudden out of a distant key, a sweet melody, long-drawn and clear,

like a blaze of low sunshine piercing the dust-clouds above a battlefield. This was but an interlude to the terror of the great main theme

that came in tumultuous strides up again from the deeps, storming to a

grand climacteric of fury and passing away into silence. Now came a

majestic figure, stately and calm, born of that terror, leading to it

again: battlings of these themes in many keys, and at last the great

triple blow, thundering in new strength, crushing all joy and

sweetness as with a mace of iron, battering the roots of life into a

general ruin. But even in the maim stride of its outrage and terror,

that great power seemed to shrivel. The thunder-blasts crashed

weaklier, the harsh blows rattled awry, and the vast frame of conquest

and destroying violence sank down panting, tottered and rumbled

ingloriously into silence.

Like men held in a trance those lords of Demonland listened to the

last echoes of the great sad chord where that music had breathed out

its heart, as if the very heart of wrath were broken. But this was not

the end. Cold and serene as some chaste virgin vowed to the Gods, with

clear eyes which see nought below high heaven, a quiet melody rose

from that grave of terror. Weak it seemed at first, a little thing

after that cataclysm; a little thing, like spring’s first bud peeping

after the blasting reign of cold and ice. Yet it walked undismayed,

gathering as it went beauty and power. And on a sudden the folding

doors swung open, shedding a flood of radiance down the stairs.

Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha watched, as men watch for a star to

rise, that radiant portal. And like a star indeed, or like the

tranquil moon appearing, they beheld after a while one crowned like a

Queen with a diadem of little clouds that seemed stolen from the

mountain sunset, scattering soft beams of rosy brightness. She stood

alone under that mighty portico with its vast shadowy forms of winged

lions in shining stone black as jet. Youthful she seemed, as one that

hath but just bidden adieu to childhood, with grave sweet lips and

grave black eyes and hair like the night. Little black martlets

perched on her either shoulder, and a dozen more skimmed the air above

her head, so swift of wing that scarcely the eye might follow them.

Meantime, that delicate and simple melody mounted from height to

height, until in a while it burned with all the fires of summer,

burned as summer to the uttermost ember, fierce and compulsive in its

riot of love and beauty. So that, before the last triumphant chords

died down in silence, that music had brought back to Juss all the

glories of the mountains, the sunset fires on Koshtra Belorn, the

first great revelation of the peaks from Morna Moruna; and over all

these, as the spirit of that music to the eye made manifest, the image

of that Queen so blessed-fair in her youth and her clear brow’s sweet

solemn respect and promise: in every line and pose of her fair form,

virginal dainty as a flower, and kindled from withinward as never

flower was with that divinity before the face of which speech and song

fall silent and men may but catch their breath and worship.

When she spoke, it was with a voice like crystal: “Thanks be and

praise to the blessed Gods. For to, the years depart, and the fated

years bring forth as the Gods ordain. And ye be those that were for to

come.”

Surety those great lords of Demonland stood like little boys before

her. She said again, “Are not ye Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha of

Demonland, come up to me by the way banned to all mortals else, come

up into Koshtra Belorn?”

Then answered Lord Juss for them both and said, “Surely, O Queen

Sophomisba, we be they thou namest.”

Now the Queen carried them into her palace, and into a great hall

where was her throne and state. The pillars of the hall were as vast

towers, and there were galleries above them, tier upon tier, rising

higher than sight could reach or the light of the gentle lamps in

their stands that lighted the tables and the floor. The walls and the

pillars were of a sombre stone unpolished, and on the walls strange

portraitures: lions, dragons, mickers of the sea, spread-eagles,

elephants, swans, unicorns, and other, lively made and richly set

forth with curious colours of painting: all of giant size beyond the

experience of human kind so that to be in that hall was as it were to

shelter in a small spot of light and life, canopied, vaulted, and

embraced by the circumambient unknown.

The Queen sate on her throne that was bright like the face of a river

ruffled with wind under a silver moon. Save for those little martlets

she was unattended. She made those lords of Demonland sit down before

her face, and there were brought forth by the agency of unseen hands

tables before them and precious dishes filled with unknown viands. And

there played a soft music, made in the air by what unseen art they

knew not.

The Queen said, “Behold, ambrosia which the Gods do eat and nectar

which they drink; on which meat and wine myself do feed, by the bounty

of the blessed Gods. And the savour thereof wearieth not, and the glow

thereof and the perfume thereof dieth not for ever.”

So they tasted of the ambrosia, that was white to look on and crisp to

the tooth and sweet, and being eaten revived strength in the body more

than a surfeit of bullock’s flesh, and of the nectar that was all

afoam and coloured like the inmost fires of sunset. Surely somewhat of

the peace of the Gods was in that nectar divine.

The Queen said, “Tell me, why are ye come?”

Juss answered, “Surely there was a dream