by E R Eddison
"Well, have you seen the child? What find you in him?
Give me in a word your very thought. I must have the truth." She turned and faced him. "Even and the truth be evil."
"If it be truth," said the doctor, "it can in no hand be evil; according to the principle of theoric, Quanta est, tanto bonum, which is as much as to say that completeness of reality and completeness of goodness are, sub specie aeternitatis, the same. I have beheld this child like as were I to behold some small scarce discernible first paling of the skies to tomorrow's dawn, and I say to you: Here is day."
"To be King in his time?"
"So please the Gods."
"In Fingiswold, after his father?"
"So, and more. To be the stay of the whole world."
"This is heavenly music. Shall't be by power, or but by fortune?"
"By power," answered Vandermast. "And by worth."
The Queen caught a deep breath. "O, you have shown me a sweet morn after terrible dreams. But also a strange noise in my head, makes stale the morning: by what warrant must I believe you?"
"By none. You must believe not me, but the truth. I am but a finger pointing. And the nearest way for your highness (being a mortal) to believe that truth, and the sole only way for it to take body and effect in this world, is that you should act and make it so."
"You are dark to me as yet."
"I say that whether this greatness shall be or not be, resteth on your highness alone."
She turned away and hid her face. When, after a minute, she looked around at him again, she reached out her hand for him to kiss. "I am not offended with you," she said. "There was an instant, in that wild talk of ours, I could have cut your throat. Be my friend. God knows, in the path I tread, uneven, stony, and full of bogs, I need one."
Vandermast answered her, "Madam and sweet Mistress, I say to you again, I am yours in all things. And I say but again that your highness's self hath the only power able to help you. Rest faithful to that perfectness which dweileth within you, and be safe in that."
3 - Nigra Sylva where the Devils Dance
THAT NIGHT Prince Aktor startled out of his first sleep from an evil dream that had in it nought of reasonable correspondence with things of daily life but, in an immediacy of pure undeterminable fear, horror and loss that beat down all his sense to deadness, as with a thunder of monstrous wings, hurled him from sleep to waking with teeth a-chatter, limbs trembling, and the breath choking in his throat. Soon as his hand would obey him, he struck a light and lay sweating with the bedclothes huddled about his ears, while he watched the candle-flame bum down almost to blueness then up again, and the slow strokes of midnight told twelve. After a tittle, he blew it out and disposed himself to sleep; but sleep, standing iron-eyed in the darkness beside his bed, withstood all wooing. At length he lighted the candle once more; rose; lighted the lamps on their pedestals of steatite and porphyry; and stood for a minute, naked as he was from bed, before the great mirror that was on the wall between the lamps, as if to sure himself of his continuing bodily presence and verity. Nor was there any unsufficientness apparent in the looking-glass image: of a man in his twenty-third year, slender and sinewy of build, well strengthened and of noble bearing, dark-brown hair, somewhat swart of skin, his face well featured, smooth shaved in the Akkama fashion, big-nosed, lips full and pleasant, and having a delicateness and a certain proudness and a certain want of resolution in their curves, well-set ears, bushy eye-brows, blue eyes with dark lashes of an almost feminine curve and longness.
Getting on his nightgown he brimmed himself a goblet of red wine from the flagon on the table at the bed-head, drank it, filled again, and this time drained the cup at one draught. "Pah!" he said. "In sleep a man's reason lieth drugged, and these womanish fears and scruples that our complete mind would laugh and away with, unman us at their pleasure." He went to the window and threw back the curtains: stood looking out a minute: then, as if night had too many eyes, extinguished the lamps and dressed hastily by moonlight, and so to the window again, pausing in the way to pour out a third cup of wine and, that being quaffed down, a fourth, which being but two parts filled left the flagon empty. Round and above him, as he leaned out now on the sill of the open window, the night listened, warm and still; wall, gable and buttress silver and black under the moonshine, and the sky about the moon suffused with a radiancy of violet light that misted the stars. Aktor said in himself, "Desire without action is poison. Who said that, he was a wise man." As though the unseasonable mildness of this calm, unclouded March midnight had breathed suddenly a frozen air about him, he shivered, and in the same instant there dropped into that pool of silence the marvel of a woman's voice singing, light and bodiless, with a wildness in its rhythms and with every syllable clean and sharp like the tinkle of broken icicles falling:
Where, without the region earth,
Glacier and icefall take their birth,
Where dead cold congeals at night
The wind-carv'd cornices diamond-white,
Till those unnumbered streams whose flood
To the mountain is instead of blood
Seal'd in icy bed do lie,
And still'd is day's artillery,
Near the frost-star'd midnight's dome
The oread keeps her untim'd home.
From which high if she down stray,
On th' world's great stage to sport and play,
There most she maketh her game and glee
To harry mankind's obliquity.
So singing, she passed directly below him, in the inky shadow of the wall. A lilting, scorning voice it was, with overtones in it of a tragical music as from muted strings, stone-moving but as out of a stone-cold heart: a voice to send tricklings down the spine as when the night-raven calls, or the whistler shrill, whose call is a fore-tasting of doom. And now, coming out into clear moonlight, she turned about and looked up at his window. He saw her eyes, like an animal's eyes, throw back the glitter of the moon. Then she resumed her way, still singing, toward the northerly corner of the courtyard where an archway led to a cloistered walk which went to the Queen's garden. Aktor stood for a short moment as if in doubt; then, his heart beating thicker, undid his door, fumbled his way down the stone staircase swift as he might in the dark, and so out and followed her.
The garden gate stood open, and a few steps within it he overtook her. "You are a night-walker, it would seem, and in strange places."
"So much is plain," said she, and her lynx-like eyes looked at him.
"Know you who this is that do speak to you?"
"O yes. Prince by right in your own land, till your own land put you out; and thereafter prince here, and but by courtesy. Which is much like egg without the meat: fair outsides, but small weight and smaller profit. I've heard some unbitted tongues say: princox."
"You are a bold little she-cat," he said. Again a shivering took him, bred of some bite in the air. "There is frost in this garden."
"Is there? Your honour were wiser leave it and go to bed, then."
"You must first do me this kindness, mistress. Bring me to the old man your grandsire."
"At this time of night?"
"There is a thing I must ask him."
"You are a great asker."
"What do you mean?" he said, as might a boy caught unawares by some uncloaking of his mind he had safely supposed well hid.
Anthea bared her teeth. "Do you not wish you had my art, to see in the dark?" Then, with a shrug: "I heard him tell you, this afternoon, he had no answer to questions of yours."
"I cannot sleep," said Aktor, "for want of his answer."
"There is always the choice to stay awake."
"Will you bring me to him."
"No."
"Tell me where he sleeps, then, and I will seek him out."
Anthea laughed at the moon. "Hearken how these mortals will ask and ask! But I am not your nurse, to weary myself with parroting of No, no, no, when a pettish child screams for the nightshade-berry. Y
ou shall have it, though it poison you. Wait here till I inform him, if so he may deign to come to you."
The prince saw her depart. As a silver birch-tree of the mountains, if it might, should walk, so walked she under the moon. And the moon, or she so walking, or the wine that was in his veins, or the thunder of his inward thought, wrought in him to think: "Why blame myself? Am I untrue to my friend and well-doer and dispenser of all my good, if I seek unturningly the good that seems to my incensed brain main good indeed? She is to him but an engine to breed kings to follow him. With this son bred, why, it hath long been apparent and manifest he is through with her: the pure unadulterate high perfection of all that is or ever shall be, is to him but a commodity unheeded hath served his turn. By God, what cares he for me either? That have held her today, thank the Gods (if any Gods there were, save the grand Devil perhaps in Hell that now, if flesh were or spirit were, which is in great doubt, riveth and rendeth my flesh and spirit), in my arms, albeit but for an instant only, albeit she renegued and rejected me, to know that, flesh by flesh, she must be mine to eternity? God! No, but to necessity: eternity is a trash-name. But this is now; and until my death or hers. And what of him? That, by my soul (damn my soul: for there is no soul, but only the animal spirits; and they unknown, save as the brief substance of a dream or a candle burning, that lives but and dies but in her): what surety have I (God damn me) that he meaneth not to sell me to the supplanter (I oathe him to the gallows) sits in my father's seat? Smooth words and sweet predicaments: I am in a mist. Come sight but for a lightning-flash, 'tis folly and madness to trust aught but sight. Seeing's believing. God or Hell, both unbelievable, 'tis time to believe whichever will show me firm ground indeed." He was in a muck sweat. And now, looking at that statue as an enemy, and in the ineluctable grip of indignation and love, each with the frenzy of other doubled upon it by desire, he began to say within himself: "Female Beast! Wisely was that done of men's folly, to fain you a goddess. You, who devour their brains: who ganch them on your hook by their dearest flesh till they are ready to do the abominablest treasons so only they may come at the filthy anodyne you offer them, that is a lesser death in the tasting, that breaks their will and their manhood and, being tasted, leaves them sucked dry of all save shame and emptiness only and sickness of heart. Come to life, now. Move. Turn your false lightless lustful eyes here, that you may see how your method works with me. Would they were right cockatrice's eyes, should look me dead, turn me to a stone, as you are stone: to nothing, as you are nothing."
Swinging round on his heel, with his back to that image which was but as a reflection in shattered mirrors, least unsufficient in its almost changelessness, of that which is everlastingly changing and yet everlastingly perfect and the same, he came face to face with Doctor Vandermast; whose eyes, under this moonlight which has no half-tones, seemed pits of darkness in the bony sockets of a death's-head. "Wisdom," said the doctor, "is seldom in extremes. And I would wish your noble excellency consider how this mischief of blasphemy operateth not against God nor Goddess, who one while find in it diversion and matter for laughter, and another while pass it by as unworthy their remark; but it operateth against the blasphemer, as an infection wonderfully deadly to the soul."
Aktor, listening to these words, looked at him aghast, and at the delicate mountain lynx who, with flaming eyes, kept at the doctor's heel. "You who can prophesy of others," he said, "I beseech you deny no longer to prophesy to me of me. The more, since I find your eyes are upon secret thoughts which, afore all things, I'd a supposed mine own and inviolate."
Vandermast answered and said, "Prince, albeit I am not wholly untraded in the noble dark science, and maybe could show you marvels should make your hair turn, I have not an art to discern men's thought; save indeed as any prudent man may discern them, which is to say, in their faces (as but even now, in yours). Neither pretend I to fore-knowledge of things to come."
Aktor said, "You did prophesy, as many can witness, this very day."
"Of whom?"
"Of these lords of Rerek."
"No," replied he. "I did but point to probabilities. It belongeth to human kind ever to desire certainties, but it belongeth as well to the world never to satisfy that desire. God, who wrought all things of nought, is doubtless able to know all things: past, present, or to come, to unbound eternity. But it shall not orderly hereupon ensure that He will elect to make actual that knowledge in very deed even in His own unscrutable inmost Mind. Whether he will so or no, is a question philosophers may wisely leave unanswered. Myself therefore, that am a humble scholar in divine wisdom and a humble seeker of truth, attempt no prophesyings of things to come. Only, observing constantly the train of the world and the bent or aptitude of the mind and heart of this man or of that, I do (so far as by conferring of act and word and outward aspect it be possible to reach some near guess or judgement thereon) now and then speak my thought. But such speech, howsoever it be addressed to unwrap the hid causes and events of things, is of likelihoods only: never of certitudes. For what, in this world, to a man or a woman, which be reasonable beasts, seemeth utterly certain and inevitable, is none the less in doubt and a thing contingent: at its highest, no higher than a probability. And this is because mortals, being that they are free movers, do daily by will or act make, transmute, or unmake again, such seeming certainties. And in action there is but one certainty, and that of God."
"For myself," said Aktor, "I tell you with open face and good conscience, I believe not in God. Nor Devil neither. But wisdom and true-heartedness I can embrace when I do see them; and I do embrace them in you. My perplexities are like to turn me into madness, and they are matters it were unsafe to give a hint of, but to mine own heart and liver, under my skin. For pity sake, speak to me. Let me entreat to know what likelihoods attend for me."
That learned man surveyed him awhile in silence. "I did constantly refuse this, for the sufficient reason that I could not understand your excellency clearly enough to speak aught save upon conjecture. But I do now understand you more thoroughly, but still I am slow to speak; because I judge your nature to be of that dangerous complexion that, hearing what I should have to tell you, you would like as not misapply it to so high a strain as should soon or late call you to a fearful audit."
Aktor said, "I swear to you, you do misjudge me".
"And yet," said Vandermast, sitting now on the bench, while the Prince waited for his words as a suitor waits before a judge for judgement, and this lynx sat elegantly on her haunches against the doctor's knee, licking her fur: "And yet, who am I to set impediments in the path of the strainable force of destiny? To hide from your excellency the matters I see, were (it might with some colour be argued) to deprive you of the chance which They who command the great wheel of things do intend for you: the chance to choose between the worser course and the better not by luck nor by sway of mood, as appetite might egg forward or timorousness hold you back, but by reasoned judgement of right and wrong. And be it that, knowing what hangeth on your choice, you must run the hazard of a wrong choice which would damn you quite and so end you, yet have you it in potential (if your choice be noble) to make your name great and honoured among generations yet unborn. A wicked fault therefore it were in me if I should rest silent and thus, intermeddling (albeit but by abstinence) betwixt you and the unlike destinies which contend together to entertain your soul, should leave you but a weak creature uncharactered, such as of whom saith the philosopher that weak natures can attain to greatness in nothing, neither to great good nor to great evil." He paused. Those upright glowing slits, which, in the lynx's eyes staring at the Prince, were instead of pupils, pulsed with yellow fire. The frost in the garden deepened. "Know then that I seem to find in you," said the doctor: "That you are like to be in such case that, slaying your friend, you should gain a kingdom; and again, that, sparing your enemy, you should slay your only friend. Upon which matters," he said, and the voice of him was now as very frostbite in the air, "and upon whether they shall seem f
it to you to be embraced and followed or (by contraries) to be eschewed and renounced, resteth (I suppose) your bliss or bale unto everlasting."
When Doctor Vandermast had so ended, Aktor, standing like a stone, seemed to consider with himself. Then, even in that moonlight, the flush of blood darkened his face, and he, that had held himself but now like a suppliant, stood like a king, his breast mightily broadened and his shoulders squared. Suddenly, glancing over his shoulder as lions do before they charge, he took a step towards the doctor, checked himself, and said, his words coming thick and stumbling like a drunken man's: "You have spoke better than you know, old man: lanced the impost-hume in my breast and freed me for action, and that to the very tune I have these many weeks heard drumming in my head, but till now my fond doubts and scruples used me for their fool and rein'd me back from it. My friend: him, my seeming friend: yes, I'll kill him and be King in his place: who is my vile unshowing enemy, and to spare him were as good as go kill my only very friend in the world; and that is, her. About it, then. But 'cause you know so much, and 'cause I'll take no hazards, I'll first settle you: put you where you shall not blab."
With that he leapt at the doctor and seized him, whose tall lean body in his clutches seemed fleshless and light as the pitiful frame of a little moulted hen that seems frail as a sparrow under her sparse remnant of feathers; but the lynx bit him cruelly in the leg, that he as swiftly let go his hold upon Vandermast. His hand jumped to his belt for a weapon, but in that haste of coming down from his chamber he had forgot it. He beat her furiously about the head with his fists, but got naught for it but bloody knuckles, for she stuck like a limpet, her fore-claws deep in the fleshy parts of his thigh, her hind-claws scrabbling and gashing his calves and shins like razors. AH this in a few brief moments of time, till staggering backwards, heedless of all save the bitter mischief of her teeth and claws and the agony to rid this horror which clung to his flesh like a plaster of burrowing fire, he tripped upon his heel at the pond's brink and fell plump in. His head struck the statue's plinth as he fell, which had well been the end of him, to drown there senseless in two foot depth of water. But may be the cold ducking brought him to himself; for scarce had Anthea, letting go as he fell, come out of her lynx-shape to stand, nymph once more, by the water-side, than he crawled to land again painfully, drenched and dripping.
