The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  XXII. TALK WITH A TIPPLER

  Thus Elair rode through the breadth of three improbable kingdoms, dealing death to those men who opposed him, and accepting with vigor the kindnesses that were proffered him by noble ladies; and it was in Melphé that he killed the great Worm of Winden.

  He passed thence, beneath acacias and sycamore-trees, where the road ran through green fields which were nourished by canals. Here he saw buffaloes grazing; and flocks of silvery herons; and sometimes a lone pelican as it budged lumberingly about its fishing. Moreover, two very large whitish-colored eagles startled him, by soaring up from the side of the roadway, just as Elair came into Ecben.

  Well, and in Ecben he found the city of Arleoth to be making ready for a public holiday, on account of a witch-burning that had been arranged, by the Bishop, for the next afternoon.

  This much Elair learned from a shock-headed blacksmith, called Volmar, whom Elair met in a tavern. There they fell to drinking together, because Volmar had already disposed of two bottles of this tavern’s wine, and was ripe to assure Elair of the wine’s palatability.

  “His grace the Bishop acts upon private information,” said Volmar, “and has not yet disclosed what woman will be honored with the main part of tomorrow’s entertainment. But in such matters he is equally thorough and well-skilled and economical. He understands, I mean, how to perfect any woman, howsoever inexperienced, in the rare accomplishment of entertaining several hundred of the best people for an entire afternoon.”

  Thus speaking, Volmar refilled his glass.

  “She will first be weighed, I suppose, against the parish church Bible,” Elair hazarded.

  “Oh, yes; and then stripped to be searched for any such private personal marks as may have been made by her familiar spirit during their shared practice of the indelicate. That is always a popular feature, for our Bishop selects his witches as young and handsome as may be.”

  “Do you torture hereabouts?” Elair asked.

  “Not until after the woman has been swum in the Cathedral lake,” replied Volmar, when he had emptied his glass. “No, for we lost two women, who were so exhausted by torture that they drowned, and thus robbed us of a really good burning. The public hissed the performance, I must tell you. So nowadays we duck first and we torture afterward—but not ever, by the shrewd Bishop’s philanthropic orders, very seriously.”

  “I perceive your meaning, Volmar. After the woman is half drowned, you revive her with your pincers and thumbscrews and so on. That enables her to enter more livelily into the true climax of the day’s entertainment, which is, of course, the slow burning of her accursed body while she is yet alive and is able to suffer with animation. Shall you take any part in this holy business, Volmar?”

  “No, Elair, for I admit that my piety is not all which it ought to be. I admire the high principles of these religious ceremonies, and yet, somehow, I do not enjoy them.”

  Volmar refilled his glass. He emptied it reflectively. He continued,—

  “So I shall return home this evening, riding toward my smithy in Branlon, after I have met that young man with a wreath of red rowan berries about his dark head for whom I am waiting in this tavern.”

  “But Branlon is my goal also,” cried out Elair, “for it is in Branlon that Urc Tabaron lives. Besides that, my hair is dark as your hair; and I am under an obligation to wear a wreath of red rowan berries about my head.”

  “I infer from these facts,” replied Volmar, after thinking over these facts, “that it must have been for you I have been waiting all day in this tavern, at the request of Mr. Smith, the Lord of the Forest, in order that I might give his message to the young champion who came looking for Urc Tabaron. Come now, Elair, but that is a most happy coincidence, which calls for another bottle.”

  —Whereupon Volmar himself called for it.

  Elair belched indignantly; and then said: “I do not know anything about this Mr. Smith. He has no call to be sending me messages. I do not value his messages at the worth of an old shoe-lace, or of a bent pin, or of a dried pea in a dead pod. I do not care at all for the messages of any meddlesome Mr. Smith. What is his message?”

  “I was to tell you, Elair,” replied Volmar—and he shut his left eye, in order to see rather more accurately, as Volmar poured wine into Volmar’s glass,—“that I am Volmar, why, but, yes, to be sure, I am Volmar, whom Smirt the philosopher begot upon Rani, the South Wind’s daughter. And why, pray, should I not be Volmar if it pleases me to be Volmar? I must ask Mr. Smith about that.”

  “This Mr. Smith has more sense in his impudent messages than I thought he had,” Elair answered. “For I, Volmar, I am the Elair whom Smirt of the High Misdeeds begot upon Airel the conversation woman. So we two are brothers.”

  “Well, but that is not my fault, Elair.”

  “It is not your misfortune, either, let me tell you, Volmar. It is obvious, Volmar, that you have been drinking with somebody. Do you let me have that bottle, if indeed you have left any of it. As I thought, it is empty. Nevertheless, I forgive you, my dear brother, on account of that natural affection which ought to exist between us, even if it does not. O my dear brother, do you think we ought to embrace?”

  Volmar considered this proposal very gravely; and in considering it, he hiccoughed, as he waved jerkily, toward the tapster, for another bottle of wine.

  “It would perhaps be as well for us to embrace,” he decided, by-and-by,—“but without prejudice. I admit to you, Elair, that when I think about how many children our divine father must have left here and there during his travels, I do not wish this embrace to establish a precedent. No, Elair; no, I am not prepared to regard every one of my brothers, and it may be, a great number of hulking snub-nosed sisters, too, with complete fondness. No, Elair, you need not argue about it any longer; and I wonder at your obstinacy, you big snub-nosed Elair, because there is a natural fixed limit to all things, even to my fraternal affection.”

  “Nevertheless, my dear brother, let us respect the conventions in our deeds, whatsoever we may think about them in our hearts,” returned Elair, who had always that strict sense of the proprieties which Volmar lacked.

  So the two gentlemen embraced each other in due form, a trifle tipsily; and after that, Volmar gave the second part of his message, saying that he came to guide Elair to the house of Urc Tabaron. Volmar then finished the bottle; and the two mounted their two horses and rode together toward Branlon. They entered a little way into the northern part of the forest, and so approached a gray house among oak-trees.

  Volmar, whom the fresh air had almost sobered, as it had quite sobered Elair, now pointed out this house from afar.

  “That is your goal, Elair; and to go further is not permitted me. So we must part, O my brother, for a brief while or for a great while, just as Mr. Smith may elect.”

  And with that, Volmar rode away.

  “Hah,” said Elair, “but this dark-faced thirsty brother of mine is a cool hand. He does not squander his natural affections; or at any rate, he conceals his fond love for me like a stoic. Well, but that hardly matters now that my quest is about to end triumphantly.”

  XXIII. THE GRAY HOUSE

  Now the tale tells how all seemed very quiet in the clearing about the gray house; and the small fiery devil who sat upon the roof-tree, meditatively picking his teeth, vanished when he saw Elair. Elair considered this odd, if not positively unfriendly, as he approached the door of the gray house, walking upon a pathway of soft clay, in which the huge feet of Elair left huge footprints.

  Well, and when Elair had entered this house, an old man—high-nosed and most nobly bearded—lay dead there, under a sheet of green silk, with a platter of salt resting upon his breast; and beside the body sat a young girl dressed in gray.

  “Peace to the dead!” said Elair; “and to the living their share of happiness!”

  “Though you are very welcome to see, tall black-haired man,” the girl answered, “yet you may not look to find happiness in the house of Urc
Tabaron.”

  “Nevertheless, he is a skilled wizard,” replied Elair. “That is known everywhere. And it may be that he will aid me in my quest, as he once aided my mother Airel against the fire-breathing Cat of Macha.”

  “Urc Tabaron,” the girl said, “was a lord of all magics yesterday; he aided many; he was kindly in a fine time that will not be returning. For it was yesterday that his bond ran out, and that his serving spirit took the agreed forfeit. So now Urc Tabaron lies dead between us, tall man; and I, his daughter, am left friendless.”

  “Then Urc Tabaron cannot aid me after all,” thought Elair, considering humanly his own affairs first; but he said aloud,—

  “Yet you are not friendless, young girl whose name I do not know.”

  “I am called Oina, huge snub-nosed man; and tomorrow, or the next day, it may be, when the burghers of Arleoth know about my father’s death, I shall be called Oina the Witch; and because of this little people’s hatred of my father’s wisdom and of his calm friendly ways, my body will be burned living.”

  Elair remembered now those episcopal activities of which he had heard in Arleoth. But he said only,—

  “That would be a great pity, Oina; for you have a well-shaped body.”

  “It is as Heaven made it, man of sweet words,” she replied, modestly.

  “It is a body such as, at the fit time, some lucky young champion, and no flames, shall embrace ardently,” Elair told her. “I remain here, Oina. The men of Arleoth will come to this place assuredly, led by their Bishop. So let us now bury your dead. And when the Bishop of Arleoth comes out against Oina the Witch there will be yet other dead to bury.”

  Elair digged a grave. In it they laid that which Urc Tabaron’s serving spirit had made of Urc Tabaron. And Elair spoke to the dead wizard, saying:

  “May peace be with you, Urc Tabaron, now that much power and wisdom are not with you any longer. I had strong need of your magics, to find for me the Water of Airdra, so that I might win the unequalled beauty of Fergail the proud Queen. Well, and yesterday you knew how to compound the Water of Airdra: from them who have tasted this water youth does not ebb, nor may age touch them. Yesterday you might well have aided me. But you lie huddled now in a pit, all witless and badly bitten, with your lean neck wrung, you whose cunning once helped my mother Airel to evade death; and for her sake shall your daughter evade death so long as my sword-arm keeps its strength, or my pistols yet have a bullet in them.”

  Oina cried out, “And what talk is this about the Water of Airdra and about Queen Fergail?”

  Elair told her, first, his name and parentage, and second, the conditions of the queen’s quest.

  Then Oina said: “Of the Water of Airdra I have heard my father speak, time and again. But who is this Fergail woman, about whom I have heard no word until to-day?”

  Elair said: “There is no word but falters before the perfections of Fergail. She is a great queen in Evain; she is famed for the bright colors of her body and the lovable ways of her life: but by rights she ought to be queen over the whole world.”

  Now Oina regarded him gravely. She sighed afterward, saying,—

  “And besides this, Queen Fergail is of all women the most fortunate, in that she is well loved by Elair, the son of sublime Smirt.”

  “Do you think so?” asked Elair. “Indeed I also, at times, I grant you, I have been forbidden only by some proper modesty from thinking that Fergail might do worse than to reward entirely my entire adoration. For people tell me I have qualities not amiss in a king.”

  “There is no man between any two oceans who is more fit to be a king,” declared Oina.

  “Come, come, but let us not exaggerate, my dear child! Here and there, I do not doubt, may be found my equal, or perhaps a person who is even my superior, in some slight unimportant respects such as no sane woman, at any rate, would consider essential to being a well-thought-of king. About that, of course, I do not know.”

  “And that which a person does not know, Elair, does not matter.”

  “You speak strangely, small mouse. I know, in any event, that you are a droll child.”

  “And is that all which you find me, Elair?” she inquired, with grave wistfulness.

  “No, my fawn. For you are likewise a most adorable child,” replied Elair, genially.

  XXIV. IN REGARD TO OINA

  Truly, of the women whom Elair at some time had known, and loved in his careless fashion, none seemed to him to have been more innocent or more helpless than was Oina. Very certainly, no woman alive anywhere needed more immediately a defender. So was it that pity overthrew this black-haired and blunt-nosed Elair, who in his day had overthrown the green Worm of Winden and four giants and one sea-monster and two full-grown dragons.

  In his heart was Fergail firmly enthroned, as the most beautiful and the wisest and the most worshipful of all earth’s ladies. Yet his eyes rested with pleasure upon Oina, the fond child, who, in her small mouselike fashion, was rather pretty.

  Yes, and Oina had her accomplishments, too. That night she cooked for Elair the very nicest supper he could imagine. And he partook of everything with appreciation,—of the thick bean soup, and of the white trout, including the roe, with its sharp-flavored wonderful pink sauce, and of the mutton and the venison, and of carrots, and of spinach, and of a half-dozen or so onions. He ate then, for his unpretentious dessert, a large rice pudding, liberal with its currants, and four apples and several handfuls of walnuts. And in no king’s palace, as Elair remarked truthfully, had he ever eaten with more zest. The girl was a born cook.

  Moreover, it was heart-warming to talk with Oina, as he did after their fine supper that night, about the wide world which Elair had travelled over, and to recount to her his superb adventures therein, while she listened admiringly, with her red lips a bit parted and her soft eyes glowing in the candle light, and he told about how, at Winden, he had fought with three worms simultaneously, each one of them larger than a cart horse. It was Elair’s way whenever he talked about himself to use freely a poet’s license.

  But the trouble was, What to do with her? When the best people came from Arleoth, upon the second day of Elair’s stay in the gray house, to dispose of them was no heavy task. It involved merely the killing of three leading citizens and the slight wounding of a fat bishop’s backside—an operation as respectfully performed as proved possible—before the best people went away from Elair of their own will.

  Yet his problem remained: and a person who had? upon his hands, willy-nilly, the daughter of a known wizard was in a hard quandary. During the latter years of his life, Urc Tabaron, so far as Elair could discover, had dealt only with elemental spirits, a few demons, and a deposed pagan deity called Mr. Smith; so that no human friend anywhere survived to whose kindness Oina might be entrusted. The convent, that ever-open refuge for womankind, was closed sternly to a girl of Oina’s far too dubious origin, as to which a bishop would now speak forcefully without pausing to sit down.

  In brief, there seemed nobody ready to take charge of her; and yet to leave her alone in this forest was impossible, even apart from the fact that the best people of Arleoth, upon the first news of Elair’s departure, would promptly utilize the child’s soft slender little body for a fine public witch-burning.

  XXV. MR. SMITH UPON MODESTY

  Now came to the gray house an heroic being, of majestic and yet affable demeanor, with a twittering halo of white birds circling about his dark head; and he carried in his hand a long silver staff, having a fir-cone at the tip of it. This person shone, like white fire, until of a sudden the birds left him. He assumed then the hues more proper to mortality.

  Afterward, when Elair had asked of this visitant his name and mission, benign Mr. Smith said:

  “I am the Lord of this forest, whom curiosity led hither. I desired to see again that son whom Smirt of the High Misdeeds begot upon Airel the conversation woman in six conversations.”

  Elair answered the renowned demi-god, “Well, and you beh
old that son, Lord of the Forest, howsoever unworthy I may be of my sublime sire, who was a supreme master of gods, whereas I am only a supreme master of warfare and of love-making and of minstrelsy.”

  “Ah, but at least you inherit his well-known modesty,” replied Mr. Smith, admiringly, “along with his good looks.”

  “Meanwhile, Lord of the Forest, I do not understand how you can be seeing me again unless you have seen me somewhere before to-day.”

  “Now you bring up this point, Elair, that does appear logical,” Mr. Smith admitted.

  “For you cannot possibly have seen me in this part of the world, Lord of the Forest, which I am now visiting for the first time.”

  “Yes, that is true, Elair.” So then, after thinking over the matter for some while, Mr. Smith suggested,—

  “It follows, no doubt, that I must have seen you in some dream or another.”

  “Yet that does not quite follow,” said Elair, puzzled.

  “Well, but how else would you explain it?” asked Mr. Smith, with the air of a broad-minded person who has formed his own private opinion, but who remains open to argument.

  Such obtuseness rather bothered Elair. Yet he said patiently:

  “But I am not explaining it. You are explaining it.”

  “Then why, Elair, do you not listen to this explanation as carefully as I listen, in the deferred hope of understanding my explanation, instead of becoming loud-voiced and angry?”

  “Because, Lord of the Forest—well, because when I listen to you I do not know at all what you are talking about. Your words are smooth, and they are self-confident, but they do not mean anything.”