Zimiamvia: A Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  But She, eternal Aphrodite of the nickering eyelids and the violet-sweet breast, laughter-loving, honey-sweet, child of Zeus, She for whom all is made, spoke and said:

  "Rise you worlds, made and unmade, and worship Me.

  "Worship Me, women of all worlds, dresses of mine,"

  shadows of Me in turbid water. I am the truth of you. Without those glints or keepsakes that are in you of Me, you are nothing.

  "O men, kings and lords of the ages, heroes, lovers of wisdom, great strikers, adventurers upon perilous seas, makers and doers, minds and bodies framed in His image that made you, and made Himself, and because without Me Godhead were but a trash-name, therefore, to have Me beside Him from the beginning, made Me: Rise, and worship Me. Rise and, who dares, love Me. But he that would love Me, be it God Himself, shall first kiss My feet."

  Unnumbered as motes in a sunbeam, or as the unnumbered laughter of the waves of ocean, eyes were upon Her from all remoteness of earth and sky and sea, and the rumour of them was as the rumour and rustle of starlings' wings flying in flocks of unnumbered thousands.

  She said: "Look (if your sight can face the nakedness of your hidden mind) into the sea-fire of My eyes. Look: My lips, blood-red, that can at one imperial kiss drain out the rendered soul from your body, and give it back so dyed with the taste of Me as from that now unto your death you shall seek Me ever, never finding yet never altogether losing. These jewels for snares in My hair's darkness are sleet and scourge of wild-fire. The moth-like bare touch of My hand can do away worlds or raise up the dead. In Me is the Bitter-sweet; grave, cradle, and marriage-bed of all contrairs: Rose of the Worlds: Black Lily, Black Flame, that but with the glance do stab, sear, and violently stir to one essence, spirit and sense. In all noble enterprise, in all your most fantastical desires, behold here your cynosure: this centre where all lines meet. I am She that changeth, yet changeth not. Many countenances I have, many dresses, bringing to My lover the black or the red, spade or heart, or pureness of golden flowers or a gold of waning moons at morning; and maidenhead always new. Of all that was, is, or is to come, I, even I of Myself, am end, reason, last elixir. He that loveth, and he love not Me, loveth Death. Love Me who dares. He shall be Mine, I his, for ever; and if it were possible for more than ever, then for ever more."

  She ended: terrible, lifted up above all worlds, shining down all other lights, even to the sun's.

  From behind Her, eastwards, the other side from Paphos, came a roaring of avalanche and rockfall. Mists blowing upwards swallowed the mountain-top in a freezing tempest of sleet and lightnings and thundering darkness; In that void where duration can have no hour-glass, tune stood still, or ceased.

  Then the mists, falling apart, opened a sudden window upon Ambremerine and clear morning. Fiorinda had taken about Her lovely shoulders a robe of diaphanous black silk figured with flower-work of gold and crimson and margery-pearls. Beside her the two nymphs, looking upon her in fearful adoration, were still kneeling.

  Some three hours later, about seven o'clock, the Chancellor, riding up the Memison road a mile or so north from Zayana, had sight of her above him in the high open downland: white jennet, french hood, grass-green riding-habit, merlin on fist. She saw him and began to come down leisurely by the directest way, a steep rocky slope, slacking rein for the little mare, clever as a cat, to choose her steps amid the tangle of creeping rhododenodron and daphne with boulders and stumps and old scree hidden beneath it. "Blessings of the morning upon you, my lady sister," said he, when they were within talking-distance. "I am from Sestola: a message from the King's highness (Gods send he live for ever), for the Duke. You and he are commanded to supper tonight, at Sestola."

  "Excellent. Have you told his grace?"

  "Not yet. I intended for Velvraz Sebarm, supposing to find him there."

  "That was a strange unlikely guess. Dwells he not in Zayana?"

  "A new custom, then, when your ladyship lies in Velvraz Sebarm."

  "Have you breakfasted?"

  "A bite and a sup."

  "I too. Let us breakfast together ere you go back to Acrozayana."

  They turned off from the road at a walking-pace by the path that goes to Velvraz Sebarm. Their morning shadows, still long, went before them. A heat-mist was rising from Zayana lake, and all the soft landscape westward was golden with morning. "I would counsel you, brother," she said, "to stick to your politics: not pry into my domestical affairs. I too have my policies: have long ago learned, like as my Lord Barganax (as you, I thought, had likely observed), that prime article of wisdom of the learned doctor: nothing over-much."

  They rode awhile in silence.

  "How like you of my little falcon? Is she not a jewel?"

  The Lord Beroald perfunctorily gave it a look. "Good for flying at vermin."

  Upon that, sourly said, she glanced sidelong at him out of her slanting green eyes. "Clouds in your face? and so fair a morning?"

  "Clouds from Rerek, may be."

  "Are but smoke-balls. Blow them away."

  "The council will sit today. By latest secret advertisements I have had, he still draweth forces to Laimak."

  "And what else indeed, then, would you look for?"

  "Nought else; save now for the sequel. 'Tis time to end it"

  A satirical sumptuosity of suppressed laughter stirred at the corners of that lady's mouth. "Heaven shield me from a condition where you and your friends swayed all. I think you would leave us no great eminent thing extant might you but avail to end it, lest by some far-fetched possibility it grow to danger perhaps your little finger."

  "I am a man of common prudence."

  "God for witness, were you that and no more, I think I'd hate you for it."

  "A quality uncommon in some quarters today."

  "Some quarters? O lawyers' equivocations! Which then?"

  "Even the highest."

  "Yes, I know," said she. "Some safety there for unsafety, by favour of heaven."

  "Trouble not your sweet perverse heart as for that. The wolf will run: you shall see."

  "I shall see good sport, then."

  The Chancellor eyed her with a sardonic smile. "Your ladyship was not always so chary in ending an inconvenience."

  "You think not?"

  "What of your first husband? What of your second?"

  "Foh!" she said. "That was far another matter, and where there was cause why. Small nastiness, of a sort as plenty as blackberries, and thus rightly (with help of your gentle kindness, dear brother) made away."

  He laughed. "Praise where praise is due, madam. You asked no help from me when you did up Morville."

  They were come now to the gardens, where the path leads round by the waterside to the castle gate between drifts of stately golden-eyed daisies with black-curling petals of a deep wine-purple and, at their feet, pink-coloured stonecrops on whose platter-like heads scores of butterflies sipped honey and sunned their wings. Fiorinda said, "Because a dog grins his teeth, that means not necessarily he means to bite his master, I have known my ban-dog growl at things I could not myself neither see nor hear, much less smell. And, 'cause my dog's a good dog, and I a good mistress, let him growl. Like enough, hath his reasons."

  "Very well argued. But when, being bid stop growling, yet he growleth, that is not so good."

  "O," said she, with a little scornful backward movement of her head, "I follow not these subtleties. Why be so unlike your most deep discerning self, brother? When have you known the King miss in aught he set out to perform? Am I to tell you he hath power to crush him we speak on, soon as crush an importunate flea, were he so minded?"

  "I dearly wish he would do it," said the Chancellor.

  "Go then, tell him to. I think you shall have the flea in your ear for your pains. As good crush me!"

  As they rode up, they beheld now before them Duke Barganax, upon a marble bench without the gate under an arbour of climbing roses. The involutions of their petals held every indeterminate fair colour that lies between
primrose and incarnadine: the scent of them, the mere perfume of love. He sat there like a man altogether given over to the influences of the time and the place, fondling the lynx beneath the chin and sipping hippocras from a goblet of silver. There was a merry glow in his eyes as he stood up, unbonneting, to bid her good-morrow. Helping her down from the saddle he seized occasion to salute her with a kiss, which she, as in a studied provokement and naughtiness, took upon a cold cheek and, when at second attempt he would have had her lips, dexterously withheld them.

  The Chancellor, dismounting, noted this by-play with ironic unconcern. "Fortunately met, my lord Duke," he said, as the grooms led away their horses. "I was to speak with your grace, by his serene highness's command, that you sup with him tonight in Sestola: a farewell banquet ere they begin their progress north again to Rialmar. You are for the council, doubtless, this afternoon?"

  "I fear not, my lord."

  "I'm sorry. We need our ablest wits upon't, if aught's to come of this business."

  "I have opened all my mind to the King, and have his leave to sit out. Truth is, there's matters on hand must detain me otherwheres today. But as for supper, pray you say, with my duty, I kiss his highness's hands and joyfully obey his summons."

  "I shall."

  "Strange," said Fiorinda, "I am bidden too." She sat down, shedding, as some exquisite lily sheds waft by waft its luxury abroad, a fresh master-work of seducing and sense-ensearching elegancy from every lazy feline grace of her settling herself upon the bench: eye-wages for the Duke.

  "Is that so strange?" said he, his eyes upon her. "I took't for granted."

  "What brings your grace hither in this hour of the morning?"

  "Idleness," answered he with a shrug of the shoulder. "Want, of a more reasonable employment. O, and now I remember me, I had these letters for your ladyship, to wish you well of your twentieth birthday." With that, turning to the table before the bench where he had sat, he took a parchment: gave it into her hand.

  She unrolled it. While she scanned it curiously, a delicate warmth of colour slowly imbued the proud pallor of her cheek. "A dear bounty of your grace," she said. "I am deeply beholden. But indeed I cannot accept of it."

  "You will not be so uncivil as hand me back my gift."

  "Nay, indeed and indeed, I'll not have it. Mind you not the poet? -

  Nor he that still his Mistress payes,

  For she is thrall'd therefore."

  Beroald continued-

  "Nor he that payes not, for he sayes

  Within, shee's worth no more."

  Barganax reddened to the ears. "To the devil with your firked-up rhymes," he said. "Come, I give it to you freely, out of pure love and friendship. You must take it so."

  She put it into her brother's hand, who read the docket: "Deede of feoffment to behoof of the Ladie Fiorinda by liverie of seisin to holde in fee simple the castell of Velvraz Sebarrm and the maines therof scituate in the Roiall Appannage and Dukedome of Zayana.- Why, this is princely bounty indeed."

  "Well," said the lady, drawing down a blossom of the rose to smell to, and watching the Duke from under the drooped coal-black curtain of her eyelashes. "Not to displeasure your grace, I'll take it. Give it me, brother: so. And now," (to the Duke) "hereby I give it you back, i' the like truth and kindness, and for token of my devotion to your grace's person."

  "No, you anger me," he said, snatching the parchment and flinging it, violently crumpled, on the ground. "'Tis an unheard-of thing if I may not bestow a present upon a noble lady but 'tis spat back in my face as so much muck or dirt."

  "Dear my lord, you strain too far: I intended it far otherwise. Be not angry with me, not today of all days. And before breakfast, seems in especially unkind."

  He loured upon her for a moment; then suddenly fell a-laughing.

  "Nor I'll not be laughed at, neither. Come," she said, rising and, in a divine largesse which at once sought pardon and as sweetly dispensed it, putting her arm in his, "let's walk apart awhile while the board's a-setting."

  When they were private, "I think," she began to say, looking down to the jewelled fingers of her hand where it rested, a drowsed white lily for its beauty, a sleeping danger for its capacities, upon his sleeve; as hands will oftest betray in their outward some habit or essence of the soul that informs them from within: "I thinV I have a kind of mistrustful jealousy against great and out-sparkling gifts. Not little gifts, of a jewel, a horse, a gown, a book: that's but innocent gew-gaws, adornments of love. But, as for greater things-"

  "O madonna mia," said Barganax, "you have the pride of archangel ruined. What care I? For I think if God should offer you fief seignoral of Heaven itself, you'd not stoop to pick it up."

  "But surely, you and I," she said, and the accents of her voice, summer-laden, lazy, languorous, trod measure now with his foot-fall and with hers as they paced in a cool of pomegranate-trees, "we surely gave all? Body and inward sprite, yours to me, mine to you, almost a full year ago?"

  "With all my heart (though I doubt 'tis not wholesome meat for you to be told so), I say ay to that."

  "To speak naked as my nail (and 'tis time, may be, to do it), I dwell in this house, have use of these lands and pleasaunces, joyfully and with a quiet mind; and why, my friend? Because they are yours, and, being yours, mine so far as need. For is not this wide 'world, and Heaven's mansions besides (if there be), not yours indeed, nor yet mine, but ours? Is it not graved in this ring you gave me - HMETEPA - Ours? Feminine singular, I that am ours: neuter plural, all else whatsoever, ours. And Velvraz Sebarm, being yours, is therefore the dearer to me, who am yet more entirely yours than it. Am not I yours by blood and breathing, glued infinitely closer than had we two one body, one spirit, to make us undistinctly one? Surely a cribbed lone self-being self were no possession, no wealth, no curious mutual engine of pleasure and of love. 'Twere prison sooner."

  The Duke spoke no word: a silence that seemed to enjoin silence to itself, lest a spell break.

  "But what was given already," she said, "and given (as it ought to be) with that reckless, unthought, uncalculated freedom as a kiss should be given-to wish now to give that again by bond and sealed instrument, 'tis unbelievable between you and me. As though you should a bethought you: "Someday, by hap she shall be another's. Or by hap I may find (being myself too in the hot hey-day of my youth, and long wedded to variety) another mistress. And-"

  "No more of these blasphemies," said the Duke, his voice ruled, yet as holding down some wolf within him: "lest you be blasted."

  "Nay, you shall hear it out: 'And 'cause I yet love her past remedy,' you might say, 'I'll give her this rich demesne: and more if need be: make my munificencies play the pander, to drug her for me, and so bind her to my bed.' Heaven spare us, will you think to ensure us together by investment?"

  "No more," he said, "for God sake. Tis a filthy imagination, a horrible lie; and in your secret veins you know it. Why will you torture me?" But, even in the setting of his teeth, he clapped down his right hand upon hers where it lay, the pledge of her all-pervading presence quivering within it, along his sleeve: as not to let it go.

  They walked slowly on for a while, without word spoken, unless in the unsounded commerce of minds, that can work through touch of hand on hand. Then Fiorinda said, "We must turn back. My respected brother will think strange we should leave him so long with none but the waiting breakfast-covers for company."

  As they turned, their eyes met as in some mutual half-embraced, half-repudiate, pact of restored agreement:, as if the minds behind their eyes were ware each of other's watchfulness and found there matter for hidden laughter. The Duke said, "You spoke a while since of a token of your regard for me. I know a readier token, if your ladyship had honestly a mind to prove that."

  "O, let's not be chafferers of proofs."

  "It comes o'er my memory, my coming hither was to ask the honour of your company at supper."

  "Tonight?"

  "Tonight, madam, I had dearly wished."<
br />
  "See then, how fortune makes good your wish before the asking.-We sup together in Sestola."

  "Not entirely as I would, though."

  "Your grace is hard to please."

  "Is there aught new in that? 'Tis another likeness between us."

  The lady's head bent now in lazy contemplation of her own lilied hand, where it yet lay out, sunning like an adder in warm beams, along his fore-arm. Her eyes veiled themselves. Her lips, seeming to brood upon some una-vowed, perhaps unconfirmed, assent, were honeyed gall. Under the coat-hardy, which from hip to throat fitted as glove fits hand, the Grecian splendours of her breasts rose and fell: restful unrestfulness of summer sea, or of two pigeons closed together on a roof. The Duke said: "Is it permitted to ask where your ladyship means to lie tonight?"

  "Truly I hope, abed. And your grace, where?"

  "In heaven, I had a longing hope. It rests not with me to decide."

  The fingers of the hand on his arm began to stir: a sylph-like immateriality of touch: almost imperceptible.

  "Well?" he said.

  "You must not tease me. I am not in the mood to decide."

  He said, softly in her ear, "All's hell that is not heaven, tonight. Would you have me lie in hell?"

  Some seducing and mocking spirit sat up and looked at him from the corners of her mouth. "A most furious and unreasonable observation. Nay, I am not in a mood for ayes and noes. I do entreat your favour, ask me no more."

  He stopped, and stood facing her. "I think your ladyship is own daughter to the Devil in hell. No help for it, then: I take my leave."

  "Not in anger, I hope?" she held out her hand.

  "Anger? Your body and beauty have for so long bewitched me, I am no longer capable even of the satisfaction of being angry with you."

  "Well, let's bear out a sober face 'fore the world: before my brother there. Some show of kindness. Pray your grace, kiss my hand, or he'll wonder at it."