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

Demonland, in which should also appear her

Lord’s yet more greatness and advancement: and

how her too loud speaking of her purpose was the

occasion whereby the Lord Corinius was to learn

the sweetness of bliss deferred.

ON that same twenty-sixth night of May, when Lord Juss and Lord

Brandoch Daha beheld from earth’s loftiest pinnacle the land of

Zimiamvia and Koshtra Belorn, Gro walked with the Lady Prezmyra on the

western terrace in Carcë. It wanted yet two hours of midnight. The air

was warm, the sky a bower of moonbeam and starbeam. Now and then a

faint breeze stirred as if night turned in her sleep. The walls of the

palace and the Iron Tower cut off the terrace from the direct

moonlight, and flamboys spreading their wobbling light made

alternating regions of brightness and gloom. Galloping strains of

music and the noise of revelry came from within the palace.

Gro spake: “If thy question, O Queen, overlie a wish to have me gone,

I am as lightning to obey thee howsoe’er it grieve me.”

“‘Twas an idle wonder only,” she said. “Stay and it like thee.”

“It is but a native part of wisdom,” said he, “to follow the light.

When thou wast departed from the hall methought all the bright lights

were bedimmed.” He looked at her sidelong as they passed into the

radiance of a flamboy, studying her countenance that seemed clouded

with grievous thought. Fair of all fairs she seemed, stately and

splendid; crowned with a golden crown set about with dark amethysts. A

figure of a crab-fish topped it above the brow, curiously wrought in

silver and bearing in either claw a ball of chrysolite the bigness of

a thrush’s egg.

Lord Gro said, “This too was part of my mind, to behold those stars in

heaven that men call Berenice’s Hair, and know if they can outshine in

glory thine hair, O Queen.”

They paced on in silence. Then, “These phrases of forced gallantry,”

she said, “sort ill with our friendship, my Lord Gro. If I be not

angry, think it is because I father them on the deep healths thou hast

caroused unto our Lord the King on this night of nights, when the

returning year bringeth back the date of his sending, and our

vengeance upon Demonland.”

“Madam,” he said, “I would but have thee give over this melancholy.

Seemeth it to thee a little thing that the King hath pleased so

singularly to honour Corund thy husband as give him a king’s style and

dignity and all Impland to hold in fee? All took notice of it how

uncheerfully thou didst receive this royal crown when the King gave it

thee tonight, in honour of thy great lord, to wear in his stead till

he come home to claim it; this, and the great praise spoke by the King

of Corund, which methinks should bring the warmth of pride to thy

cheeks. Yet are all these things of as little avail against thy frozen

scornful melancholy as the weak winter sun availeth against congealed

poois in a black frost.”

“Crowns are cheap trash to-day,” said Prezmyra; “whenas the King, with

twenty kings to be his lackeys, raiseth up mow his lackeys to be kings

of the earth. Canst wonder if my joyance in this crown were dashed

some little when I looked on that other given by the King to Laxus?”

“Madam,” said Gro, “thou must forgive Laxus in his own particular.

Thou knowest he set not so much as a foot in Pixyland; and if now he

must be called king thereof, that should rather please thee, being in

despite of Corinius that carried war there and by whatsoever means of

skill or fortune overcame thy noble brother and drave him into exile.”

“Corinius,” she answered, “tasteth in that miss that bane or ill-hap

which I dearly pray all they may groan under who would fatten by my

brother’s ruin.”

“Them should Corinius’s grief lift up thy joy,” said Gro. “Yet certain

it is, Fate is a blind puppy: build not on her next turn.”

“Am not I a Queen?” said Prezmyra. “Is not this Witchland? Have we not

strength to make curses strong, if Fate be blind indeed?”

They halted at the head of a flight of steps leading down to the inner

ward. The Lady Prezmyra leaned awhile on the black marble balustrade,

gazing seaward over the level marshes rough with moonlight. “What care

I for Laxus?” she said at last. “What care I for Corinius? A cast of

hawks flown by the King against a quarry that in dearworthiness and

nobility outshineth an hundred such as they. Nor I will not suffer

mine indignation so to witwanton with fair justice as persuade me to

put the wite on Witchland. It is most true the Prince my brother

practised with our enemies the downthrow of our fortunes, breaking

open, had he but known it, the gate of destruction for himself and us,

that night when our banquet was turned by him to a battle and our

wimey mirths to bloody rages.” She was silent for a time, then said,

“Oathbreakers: a most odious name, flat against all humanity. Two

faces in one hood. O that earth would start up and strike the sins

that tread on her!”

“I see thou lookest west over sea,” said Gro.

“There’s somewhat thou canst see, them, my Lord Gro, by owl-light,”

said Prezmyra.

“Thou didst tell me at the time,” he said, “with what compliments in

vows and strange well-studied promises of friendship the Lord Juss

took leave of thee at their escaping out of Carcë. Yet art thou to

blame, O Queen, if thou take in too ill part the breaking of such

promises given in extremity, which prove commonly like fish, mew,

stale, and stinking in three days.”

“Sure, ‘tis a small matter,” said she, “that my brother should cast

aside all ties of interest and alliance to save these great ones from

an evil death; and they, being delivered, should toss him a light

grammercy and go their ways, leaving him to be exterminated out of his

own country and, for all they know or reck, to lose his life. May the

great Devil of Hell torture their souls!”

“Madam,” said Lord Gro, “I would have thee view the matter soberly,

and leave these bitter flashes. The Demons did save thy brother once

in Lida Nanguna, and his delivering of them out of the hand of our

Lord the King was but just payment therefor. The scales hang equal.”

She answered, “Do not defile mine ears with their excuses. They have

shamefully abused us; and the guilt of their black deed planteth them

day by day more firmlier in my deeper-settled hate. Art thou so deeply

read in nature and her large philosophy, and I am yet to teach thee

that deadliest hellebore or the vomit of a toad are qualified poison

to the malice of a woman?”

The darkness of a great cloudbank spreading from the south swallowed

up the moonlight. Prezmyra turned to resume her slow pacing down the

terrace. The yellow fiery sparkles in her eyes glinted in the

flamboys’ flare. She looked dangerous as a lioness, and delicate and

graceful like an antelope. Gro walked beside her, saying, “Did not

Corund drive them forth in winter on to the Moruma, and can they

continue there in life, alone amid so many devouring perils?”

“O my lord,” she cried, “say these good tidings to the kitchen

wenches, not to me. Why, thyself didst enter in past years the very

heart of the Moruma and yet camest off, else art thou the greatest

liar. This only camkerfrets my soul: that days go by, and months, and

Witchland beateth down all peoples under him, and yet he suffereth the

crown of pride, these rebels of Demonland, to go yet untrodden under

feet. Doth he deem it the better part to spare a foe and spoil a

friend? That were an unhappy and unnatural conclusion. Or is he fey,

even as was Gorice XI.? Heaven foreshield it, yet as ill an end may

bechamce him and utter ruin come on all of us if he will withhold his

scourge from Demomland until Juss and Brandoch Daha come home again to

meet with him.”

“Madam,” said Lord Gro, “in these few words thou hast given me the

picture of mine own mind in small. And forgive me that I bespake thee

warily at the first, for these are matters of heavy moment, and ere I

opened my mind to thee I would know that it agreed with thine. Let the

King smite mow, in the happy absence of their greatest champions. So

shall we be in strength against them if they return again, and

perchance Goldry with them.”

She smiled, and it seemed as if all the sultry night freshened and

sweetened at that lady’s smile. “Thou art a dear companion to me,” she

said. “Thy melancholy is to me as some shady wood in summer, where I

may dance if I will, and that is often, or be sad if I will, and that

is in these days oftener than I would: and never thou crossest my

mood. Save but now thou didst so, to plague me with thy precious

flattering jargon, till I had thought thee skin-changed with Laxus or

young Corinius, seeking such lures as gallants spread their wings to,

to stoop in ladies’ bosoms.”

“For I would shake thee from this late-received sadness,” said Gro.

And he said, “Thou art to commend me too, since I spake nought but

truth.”

“Oh, have done, my lord,” she cried, “or I’ll dismiss thee hence.” And

as they walked Prezmyra sang softly:

He that cannot chuse but love.

And strives against it still.

Never shall my fancy move.

For he loves ‘gaynst his will;

Nor he which is all his own.

And can att pleasure chuse;

When I am caught he can be gone.

And when he list refuse.

Nor he that loves none but faire.

For such by all are sought;

Nor he that can for foul ones care.

For his Judgement then is naught;

Nor he—

She broke off suddenly, saying, “Come, I have shook off the ill

disposition the sight of Laxus bred in me and of his tawdry crown.

Let’s think on action. And first, I will tell thee a thing. This we

spoke of hath been in my mind these two or three moons, ever since

Corinius’s campaigning in Pixyland. So when word came of my lord’s

destroying of the Demon host, and his driving of Juss and Brandoch

Daha like runaway thralls on the Moruna, I sent him a letter by the

hand of Viglus that bare him from our Lord the King the king’s name in

Impland. Therein I expressed how that the crown of Demonland should be

a braver crown for us than this of Impland, howsoe’er it sparkle,

praying him urge upon the King his sending of an armament to

Demonland, and my lord the leader thereof; or, if he could not as then

come home to ask it, then I entreated him make me his ambassador to

lay this counsel before the King and crave the enterprise for Corund.”

“Is not his answer in those letters I brought thee?” said Gro.

“Ay,” said she, “and a very scurvy beggarly lickspittle answer for a

great lord to send to such a matter as I propounded. Alack, it puffs

away all my wifely duty but to speak on’t, and makes me rail like a

gangrel-woman.”

“I’ll walk apart, madam,” said Gro, “if thou wouldst have privateness

to deliver thy mind.”