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

Lord Juss and his brethren were on the quay to meet her, and the Lord

Brandoch Daha. They bowed in turn, kissing her hands and bidding her

welcome to Demonland. But she said, “Not to Demonland alone, my lords,

to the world again. And toward which of all earth’s harbours should I

steer, and toward which land if not to this land of yours, who have by

your victories brought peace and joy to all the world? Surely peace

slept not more softly on the Moruna in old days before the names of

Gonce and Witchland were heard in that country, than she shall sleep

for us on this new earth and Demonland, now that those names are

drowned for ever under the whirlpools of oblivion and darkness.”

Juss said, “O Queen Sophonisba, desire not that the names of great men

dead should be forgot for ever. So should these wars that we last year

brought to so mighty a conclusion to make us undisputed lords of the

earth go down to oblivion with them that fought against us. But the

fame of these things shall be on the lips and in the songs of men from

one generation to another, so long as the world shall endure.”

They took horse and rode up from the harbour to the upper road, and so

through open pastures on to Havershaw Tongue. Lambs frisked on the

dewy meadows beside the road; blackbirds flew from bush to bush; larks

trilled in the sightless sky; and as they came down through the woods

to Beckfoot woodpigeons cooed in the trees, and squirrels peeped with

beady eyes. The Queen spoke little. These and all shy things of the

woods and field held her in thrall, charming her to a silence that was

broken only now and then by a little exclamation of joy. The Lord

Juss, who himself also loved these things, watched her delight.

Now they wound up the steep ascent from Beckfoot, and rode into Galing

by the Lion Gate. The avenue of Irish yews was lined by soldiers of

the bodyguards of Juss, Goldry, and Spitfire, and Brandoch Daha.

These, in honour of their great masters and of the Queen, lifted their

spears aloft, while trumpeters blew three fanfares on silver trumpets.

Then to an accompaniment of lutes and theorbos and citherns moving

above the pulse of muffled drums, a choir of maidens sang a song of

welcome, strewing the path before the lords of Demonland and the Queen

with sweet white hyacinths and narcissus blooms, while the ladies

Mevrian and Armelline, more lovely than any queens of earth, waited at

the head of the golden staircase above the inner court to greet Queen

Sophonisba come to Galing.

A hard matter it were to tell of all the pleasures prepared for Queen

Sophonisba and for her delight by the lords of Demonland. The first

day she spent among the parks and pleasure gardens of Galing, where

Lord Juss showed her his great lime avenues, his yew-houses, his fruit

gardens and sunk gardens and his private walks and bowers; his walks

of creeping thyme which being trodden on sends up sweet odours to

refresh the treader; his ancient water-gardens beside the Brankdale

Beck, whither the water nymphs resort in summer and are seen under the

moon singing and combing their hair with combs of gold.

On the second day he showed her his herb gardens, disclosing to her

the secret properties of herbs, wherein he was deeply learned. There

grew that Zamalenticion, which being well beaten up with fat without

salt is sovran for all wounds. And Dittany, which if eaten soon puts

out the arrow and healeth the wounds; and not only by its presence

stayeth snakes wheresoever they be handy to it, but by reason of its

smell carried by wind and they smell it they die. And Mandragora,

which being taken into the middle of an house compelleth all evils out

of the house, and relieveth also headaches and produceth sleep. Also

he showed her Sea Holly in his garden, that is born in secret places

and in wet ones, and the root of it is as the head of that monster

which men name the Gorgon, and the root-twigs have both eyes and nose

and colour of serpents. Of this he told her how when taking up the

root, a man must see to it that no sun shine on it, and he who would

carve it must avert his head, for it is not permitted that man may see

that root unharmed.

The third day Juss showed the Queen his stables, where were his

warhorses and horses for the chase and for chariot racing stabled in

stalls with furniture of silver, and much she marvelled at his seven

white mares, sisters, so like that none might tell one from another,

given him in days gone by by the priests of Artemis in the lands

beyond the sunset. They were immortal, bearing ichor in their veins,

not blood; and the fire of it showed in their eyes like lamps burning.

The fourth night and the fifth the Queen was at Drepaby, guesting with

Lord Goldry Bluszco and the Princess Armelline, that were wedded in

Zajë Zaculo last Yule; and the sixth and seventh nights at Owlswick,

and there Spitfire made her lordly entertainment. But Lord Brandoch

Daha would not have the Queen go yet to Krothering, for he had not yet

made fair again his gardens and pleasaunces and restored his rich and

goodly treasures to his mind after their ill handling by Corinius. And

it was not his will that she should look on Krothering Castle until

all was there stablished anew according to its ancient glory.

The eighth day she came again to Galing, and now Lord Juss showed her

his study, with his astrolabes of orichalc, figured with all the signs

of the Zodiac and the mansions of the moon, standing a tall man’s

height above the floor, and his perspectives and gloves and crystals

and hollow looking-glasses; and great crystal globes where he kept

homunculi whom he had made by secret processes of nature, both men and

women, less than a span long, as beautiful as one could wish to see in

their little coats, eating and drinking and going their ways in those

mighty globes of crystal where his art had given them being.

Every night, whether at Galing, Owlswick, or Drepaby Mire, was

feasting held in her honour, with music and dancing and merrymaking

and all delight, and poetical recitations and feats of arms and

horsemanship, and masques and interludes the like whereof hath not

been seen on earth for beauty and wit and all magnificence.

Now was the ninth day come of the Queen’s guesting in Demonland, and

it was the eve of Lord Juss’s birthday, when all the great ones in the

land were come together, as four years ago they came, to do honour on

the morrow unto him and unto his brethren as was their wont aforetime.

It was fine bright weather, with every little while a shower to bring

fresh sweetness to the air, colour and refreshment to the earth, and

gladness to the sunshine. Juss walked with the Queen in the morning in

the woods of Moongarth Bottom, now bursting into leaf; and after their

mid-day meal showed her his treasuries cut in the live rock under

Galing Castle, where she beheld bars of gold and silver piled like

trunks of trees; unhewn crystals of ruby, chrysoprase, or hyacinth, so

heavy a strong man might not lift them; stacks of ivory in the tusk,

piled to the ceiling; chests and jars filled with perfumes and costly

spices, ambergris, frankincense, sweet-scented sandalwood and myrrh

and spikenard; cups and beakers and eared wine-jars and lamps and

caskets made of pure gold, worked and chased with the forms of men and

women and birds and beasts and creeping things, and ornamented with

jewels beyond price, margarites and pink and yellow sapphires,

smaragds and chrysoberyls and yellow diamonds.

When the Queen had had her fill of gazing on these, he carried her to

his great library where statues stood of the nine Muses about Apollo,

and all the walls were hidden with books: histories and songs of old

days, books of philosophy, alchymy and astronomy and art magic,

romances and music and lives of great men dead and great treatises of

all the arts of peace and war, with pictures and illuminated

characters. Great windows opened southward on the garden from the

library, and climbing rose-trees and plants of honeysuckle and

evergreen magnolia clustered about the windows. Great chairs and

couches stood about the open hearth where a fire of cedar logs burned

in winter time. Lamps of moonstones self-effulgent shaded with cloudy

green tourmaline stood on silver stands on the table and by each couch

and chair, to give light when the day was over; and all the air was

sweet with the scent of dried rose-leaves kept in ancient bowls and

vases of painted earthenware.

Queen Sophonisba said, “My lord, I love this best of all the fair

things thou hast shown me in thy castle of Galing: here where all

trouble seems a forgotten echo of an ill world left behind. Surely my

heart is glad, O my friend, that thou and these other lords of

Demonland shall now enjoy your goodly treasures and fair days in your

dear native land in peace and quietness all your lives.”

The Lord Juss stood at the window that looked westward across the lake

to the great wall of the Scarf. Some shadow of a noble melancholy

hovered about his sweet dark countenance as his gaze rested on a

curtain of rain that swept across the face of the mountain wall, half

veiling the high rock summits. “Yet think, madam,” said he, “that we

be young of years. And to strenuous minds there is an unquietude in

over-quietness.”

Now he conducted her through his armouries where he kept his weapons

and weapons for his fighting men and all panoply of war. There he

showed her swords and spears, maces and axes and daggers, orfreyed and

damascened and inlaid with jewels; byrnies and baldricks and shields;

blades so keen, a hair blown against them in a wind should be parted

in twain; charmed helms on which no ordinary sword would bite. And

Juss said unto the Queen, “Madam, what thinkest thou of these swords

and spears? For know well that these be the ladder’s rungs that we of

Demonland climbed up by to that signiory and principality which now we

hold over the four corners of the world.”

She answered, “O my lord, I think nobly of them. For an ill part it

were while we joy in the harvest, to contemn the tools that prepared

the land for it and reaped it.”

While she spoke, Juss took down from its hook a great sword with a

haft bound with plaited cords of gold and silver wire and cross-hilts

of latoun set with studs of amethyst and a drake’s head at either end

of the hilt with crimson almandines for his eyes, and the pommel a

ball of deep amber-coloured opal with red and green flashes.

“With this sword,” said he, “I went up with Gaslark to the gates of

Carcë, four years gone by this summer, being clouded in my mind by the

back-wash of the sending of Gorice the King. With this sword I fought

an hour back to back with Brandoch Daha, against Corund and Corinius

and their ablest men: the greatest fight that ever I fought, and

against the fearfullest odds. Witchland himself beheld us from Carcë

walls through the watery mist and glare, and marvelled that two men

that are born of woman could perform such deeds.”