The Worm Ouroboros (31 page)

"That had been small loss; but hereof there befell a great and horrible mischief. For in the spring of the year came Gorice IV. with a great army out of waterish Witchlamd, saying with open mouth of defamation that we were the dead King's murtherers: we that were peaceful folk, and would not entertain an action should call us villain for all the wealth of Impland. In the night they came, when all we save the sentinels upon the walls were in our beds secure in a quiet conscience. They took the princes my cousins and all our men, and before our eyes most cruelly murthered them. So that my mother seeing these things fell suddenly into deadly swoonings and was presently dead. And the King commanded them burn the house with fire, and he brake down the holy altars of the Gods, and defiled their high places. And unto me that was young and fair to look on he gave this choice: to go with him and be his slave, other else to be cast down from the Edge and all my bones be broken. Surely I chose this rather. But the Gods, that do help every rightful true cause, made light my fall, and guided me hither safe through all perils of height and cold and ravening beasts, granting me youth and peaceful days for ever, here on the borderland between the living and the dead.

"And the Gods blew upon all the land of the Moruna in the fire of their wrath, to make it desolate, and man and beast cut off therefrom, for a witness of the wicked deeds of Gorice the King, even as Gorice the King made desolate our little castle and our pleasant places. The face of the land was lifted up to high airs where frosts do dwell, so that the cliffs of Omprenne Edge down which ye came are ten times the height they were when Gorice III. came down them. So was an end of flowers on the Moruna, and an end there of spring and of summer days for ever."

The Queen ceased speaking, and Lord Juss was silent for a space, greatly marvelling.

"Judge now," said she, "if your foes be not my foes. It is not hidden from me, my lord, that you deem me but a lukewarm friend and no helper at all in your enterprise. Yet have I ceased not since ye were here to search and to inquire, and sent my little martlets west and east and south and north after tidings of him thou mamedst. They are swift, even as wingy thoughts circling the stablished world; and they returned to me on weary wings, yet with never a word of thy great kinsman."

Juss looked at her eyes that were moist with tears. Truth sat in them like an angel. "O Queen," he cried, "why need thy little minions scour the world, when my brother is here in Koshtra Belorn?"

She shook her head, saying, "This I will swear to thee, there hath no mortal come up into Koshtra Belorn save only thee and thy companions these two hundred years."

But Juss said again, "My brother is here in Koshtra Belorn. Mine eyes beheld him that first might, hedged about with fires. And he is held captive on a tower of brass on a peak of a mountain."

"There be no mountains here," said she, "save this in whose womb we have our dwelling."

"Yet so I beheld my brother," said Juss, "under the white beams of the full moon."

"There is no moon here," said the Queen.

So Lord Juss rehearsed to her his vision of the night, telling her point to point of everything. She harkened gravely, and when he had done, trembled a little and said, "This is a mystery, my lord, beyond my resolution."

She fell silent awhile. Then she began to say in a hushed voice, as if the very words and breath might breed some dreadful matter: "Taken up in a sending maleficial by King Gorice XII. So it hath ever been, that whensoever there dieth one of the house of Gorice there riseth up another in his stead, and so from strength to strength. And death weakeneth not this house of Witchland, but like the dandelion weed being cut down and bruised it springeth up the stronger. Dost thou know why?"

He answered, "No."

"The blessed Gods," said she, speaking yet lower, "have shown me many hidden matters which the sons of men know not neither imagine. Behold this mystery. There is but One Gorice. And by the favour of heaven (that moveth sometimes in a manner our weak judgement seeketh in vain to justify) this cruel and evil One, every time whether by the sword or in the fulmess of his years he cometh to die, departeth the living soul and spirit of him into a new and sound body, and liveth yet another lifetime to vex and to oppress the world, until that body die, and the next in his turn, and so continually; having thus in a manner life eternal."

Juss said, "Thy discourse, O Queen Sophonisba, is in a strain above mortality. This is a great wonder thou tellest me; whereof some little part I guessed aforetime, but the main I knew not. Rightfully, having such a timeless life, this King weareth on his thumb that worm Ouroboros which doctors have from of old made for an ensample of eternity, whereof the end is ever at the beginning and the beginning at the end for ever more."

"See them the hardness of the thing," said the Queen. "But I forget not, my lord, that thou hast a matter nearer thine heart than this: to set free him (name him not!) concerning whom thou didst inquire of me. Touching this, know it for thy comfort, some ray of light I see. Question me no more till I have made trial thereof, lest it prove but a false dawn. If it be as I think, 'tis a trial yet abideth thee should make the stoutest blench."

NEXT day the Queen came to Lord Juss and Lord Bramdoch Daha and made them go with her, and Mivarsh with them to serve them, over the meadows and down a passage like that whereby they had entered the mountain, but this led downward. "Ye may marvel," she said, "to see daylight in the heart of this great mountain. Yet it is but the hidden work of Nature. For the rays of the sun, striking all day upon Koshtra Belorn and upon her robe of snow, sink into the snow like water, and so soaking through the secret places of the rocks shine again in this hollow chamber where we dwell and in these passages cleft by the Gods to give us our goings out and our comings in. And as sunset followeth broad day with coloured fires, and moonlight or darkness followeth sunset, and dawn followeth night ushering the bright day once more, so these changes of the dark and light succeed one another within the mountain."

They passed on, ever downward, till after many hours they came suddenly forth into dazzling sunlight. They stood at a cave's mouth on a beach of sand white and clean, that was lapped by the ripples of a sapphire lake: a great lake, sown with islets craggy and luxuriant with trees and flowering growths. Many-armed was the lake, winding everywhere in secret reaches behind promontories that were spurs of the mountains that held it in their bosom: some wooded or green with lush flower-spangled turf to the water's edge, some with bare rocks abrupt from the water, some crowned with rugged lines of crag that sent down scree-slopes into the lake below. It was mid-afternoon, sweet-aired, a day of dappled cloud-shadows and changing lights. White birds circled above the lake, and now and them a kingfisher flashed by like a streak of azure flame. That was a westward facing beach, at the end of a headland that ran down clothed with pine-forests with open primrose glades from a spur of Koshtra Belorn. Northward the two great mountains stood at the head of a straight narrow valley that ran up to the Gates of Zimiamvia. Vaster they seemed than the Demons had yet beheld them, showing at but six or seven miles' distance a clear sixteen thousand feet above the lake. Nor from any other point of prospect were they more lovely to behold: Koshtra Pivrarcha like an eagle armed, shadowing with wings, and Koshtra Belorn as a Goddess fallen a-dreaming, gracious as the morning star of heaven. Wondrous bright were their snows in the sunshine, yet ghostly and unsubstantial to view seen through the hazy summer air. Olive trees, gray and soft- outlined like embodied mist, grew in the lower valleys; woods of oak and birch and every forest tree clothed the slopes; and in the warmer folds of the mountain sides belts of creamy rhododendrons straggled upwards even to the moraimes above the lower glaciers and the very margin of the snows.

The Queen watched Lord Juss as his gaze moved to the left past Koshtra Pivrarcha, past the blunt lower crest of Goglio, to a great lonely peak many miles distant that frowned over the rich maze of nearer ridges which stood above the lake. Its southern shoulder swept in a long majestic line of cliffs up to a clean sharp summit; northward it fell steeplier away. Little snow hung on the sheer rock faces, save where the gullies cleft them. For grace and beauty scarce might Koshtra Belorn herself surpass that peak: but terrible it looked, and as a mansion of old night, that not high noon-day could wholly dispossess of darkness.

"There standeth a mountain great and fair," said Lord Brandoch Daha, "which was hid in a cloud when we were on the high ridges. It hath the look of a great beast couchant."

Still the Queen watched Lord Juss, who looked still on that peak. Then he turned to her, his hands clenched on the buckles of his breast-plates. She said, "Was it as I think?"

He took a great breath. "It was so I beheld it in the beginning," he said, "as from this place. But here are we too far off to see the citadel of brass, or know if it be truly there." And he said to Brandoch Daha, "This remaineth, that we climb that mountain."

"That can ye never do," said the Queen.

"That shall be shown," said Brandoch Daha.

"List," said she. "Nameless is yonder mountain upon earth, for until this hour, save only for me and you, the eye of living man hath not looked upon it. But unto the Gods it hath a name, and unto the spirits of the blest that do inhabit this land, and unto those unhappy souls that are held in captivity on that cold mountain top: Zora Rach nam Psarrion, standing apart above the noiseless lifeless snow-fields that feed the Psarrion glaciers; loneliest and secretest of all earth's mountains, and most accursed. O my lords," she said, "think not to climb up Zora. Emchantments ring round Zora, so that ye should not get so near as to the edges of the snow-fields at her feet ere ruin gathered you."

Juss smiled. "O Queen Sophonisba, little thou knowest our mind, if thou think this shall turn us back."

"I say it," said the Queen, "with no such vain purpose; but to show you the necessity of that way I shall now tell you of, since well I know ye will not give over this attempt. To none save to a Demon durst I have told it, lest heaven should hold me answerable for his death. But unto you I may with the less danger commit this dangerous counsel if it be true, as I was taught long ago, that the hippogruff was seen of old in Demonland."

"The hippogriff?" said Lord Brandoch Daha. "What else is it than the emblem of our greatness? A thousand years ago they nested on Neverdale Hause, and there abide unto this day in the rocks the prints of their hooves and talons. He that rode it was a forefather of mine and of Lord Juss."

"He that shall ride it again," said Queen Sophomisba, "he only of mortal men may win to Zora Rach, and if he be man enough of his hands may deliver him we wot of out of bondage."

"O Queen," said Juss, "somewhat I know of grammarie and divine philosophy, yet must I bow to thee for such learning, that dwellest here from generation to generation and dost commune with the dead. How shall we find this steed? Few they be, and high they fly above the world, and come to birth but one in three hundred years."

She answered, "I have an egg. In all lands else must such an egg lie barren and sterile, save in this land of Zimiamvia which is sacred to the lordly races of the dead. And thus cometh this steed to the birth: when one of might and heart beyond the wont of man sleepeth in this land with the egg in his bosom, greatly desiring some high achievement, the fire of his great longing hatcheth the egg, and the hippogriffcometh out therefrom, weak-winged at first as thou hast seem a butterfly new-hatched out his chrysalis. Then only mayst thou mount him, and if thou be man enow to turn him to thy will he shall bear thee to the uttermost parts of earth unto thine heart's desire. But if thou be aught less than greatest, beware that steed, and mount only earthly coursers. For if there be aught of dross within thee, and thine heart falter, or thy purpose cool, or thou forget the level aim of thy glory, then will he toss thee to thy ruin."

"Thou hast this thing, O Queen?" said Lord Juss.

"My lord," she said softly, "more than an hundred years ago I found it, while I rambled on the cliffs that are about this charmed Lake of Ravary. And here I hid it, being taught by the Gods what thing I had found and knowing what was foreordained, that certain of earth should come at last to Koshtra Belorn. Thinking in my heart that he that should come might be of those who bare some great unfulfilled desire, and might be of such might as could ride to his desire on such a steed."