The Worm Ouroboros

by E R Eddison

  Now as Gro spake came the Lord Corund on the terrace, calling for still wine to cool his throat withal. Prezmyra poured forth to him: “Thou art blamed to me for keeping thy bed, my lord, that shouldst have been devising with the King touching our enemies ta’en captive in this night gone by.”

  Corund sat by his lady on the bench and drank. “If that be all, madam,” said he, “then have I little to charge my conscience withal. For nought lies readier than strike off their heads, and so bring all to a fit and happy ending.”

  “Far otherwise,” said Gro, “hath the King determined. He let drag before him Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha, and with many fleers and jibes, ‘Welcome,’ he saith, ‘to Carcë. Your table shall not lack store of delicates while ye are my guests; albeit ye come unbidden.’ Therewith he let drag them to the old banquet ball. And he bade his smiths drive great iron staples into the wall, whereon he let hang up the Demons by their wrists, spread-eagled against the wall, making both wrists and ankles fast to the staples with gyves of iron. And the King let dight the table before their feet as for a banquet, that the sight and the savour might torment them. And he called all us to his council thither that we might praise his conceit and mock them anew.”

  Said Prezmyra, “A great king should rather be a dog that killeth clean, than a cat that patteth and sporteth with his prey.”

  “True it is,” said Corund, “that they were safer slain.” He rose from his seat. “’Twere not amiss,” he said, “that I had word with the King.”

  “Wherefore so?” asked Prezmyra.

  “He that sleepeth late,” said Corund, eyeing her humorously, “sometimes hath news for her that riseth betimes to sit on the western terrace. And this was I come to tell thee, that I but now beheld eastward from our chamber window, riding toward Carcë out of Pixyland down the Way of Kings—”

  “La Fireez?” she said.

  “Mine eyes be strong enow and clear enow,” said Corund, “but thou’dst scarce require me swear to mine own brother at three miles’ distance. And as for thine, I leave thee the swearing.”

  “Who should ride down the Way of Kings from Pixyland,” cried Prezmyra, “but La Fireez?”

  “That, madam, let Echo answer thee,” said Corund. “And it sticketh in my mind, that the Prince my brother-in-law is one that tieth to his heartstrings the remembrance of past benefits. This too, that none did him ever a greater benefit than Juss, that saved his life six winters back in Impland the More. Wherefore, if La Fireez be to share our revels this night, needful it is that the King command these gabblers to keep silence touching our entertainment of these lords in the old banquet hall, and in general touching the share of Demonland in this fighting.”

  Prezmyra said, “Come, I’ll go with thee.”

  They found the King on the topmost battlements above the water-gate with his lords about him, gazing eastaway toward the long low hills beyond which lay Pixyland. But when Corund began to open his mind to the King, the King said, “Thou growest old, O Corund, and like a good-for-nothing chapman bringest not thy wares to market ere the market be done. I have already ta’en order for this, and straitly charged my people that nought befell last night save a faring of the Goblins against Carcë, and their overthrow, and my chasing of them with a great slaughter into the sea. Whoso by speech or sign shall reveal to La Fireez that the Demons were in it, or that these enemies of mine are thus entertained by me to their discomfort in the old banquet hall, he shall lose nothing but his life.”

  Corund said, “It is well, O King.”

  The King said, “Captain general, what is our strength?”

  Corinius answered, “Seventy and three were slain, and the others for the most part hurt: I among them, that am thus onehanded for the while. I will not engage to find you, O King, fifty sound men in Carcë.”

  “My Lord Corund,” said the King, “thine eyes pierced ever a league beyond the best among us, young or old. How many makest thou yon company?”

  Corund leaned on the parapet and shaded his eyes with his hand that was broad as a smoked haddock and covered on the back with yellow hairs growing somewhat sparsely, as the hairs on the skin of a young elephant. “He rideth with three score horse, O King. One or two more I give you for good luck, but if a have a horseman fewer than sixty, never love me more.”

  The King muttered an imprecation. “It is the curse of chance bringeth him thus pat when I have my powers abroad and am left with too little strength to awe him if he prove irksome. One of thy sons, O Corund, shall take horse and ride south to Zorn and Permio and muster a few score fighting men from the herdsmen and farmers with what speed he may. It is commanded.”

  Now was the afternoon wearing to evening when the Prince La Fireez was come in with all his company, and greetings done, and the tribute safe bestowed, and sleeping room appointed for him and his. And now ere all gathered together in the great banquet hall that was built by Gorice XI., when he was first made King, in the southeast corner of the palace; and it far exceeded in greatness and magnificence the old hall where Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha were held in duress. Seven equal walls it had, of dark green jasper, specked with bloody spots. In the midst of one wall was the lofty doorway, and in the walls right and left of this and in those that inclosed the angle opposite the door were great windows placed high, giving light to the banquet hall. In each of the seven angles of the wall a caryatide, cut in the likeness of a three-headed giant from ponderous blocks of black serpentine, bowed beneath the mass of a monstrous crab hewn out of the same stone. The mighty claws of those seven crabs spreading upwards bare up the dome of the roof, that was smooth and covered all over with paintings of battles and hunting scenes and wrastling bouts in dark and smoky colours answerable to the gloomy grandeur of that chamber. On the walls beneath the windows gleamed weapons of war and of the chase, and on the two blind walls were nailed up all orderly the skulls and dead bones of those champions which had wrastled aforetime with King Gorice XI. or ever he appointed in an evil hour to wrastle with Goldry Bluszco. Across the innermost angle facing the door was a long table and a carven bench behind it, and from the two ends of that table, set square with it, two other tables yet longer and benches by them on the sides next the wall stretched to within a short space of the door. Midmost of the table to the right of the door was a high seat of old cypress wood, great and fair, with cushions of black velvet broidered with gold, and facing it at the opposite table another high seat, smaller, and the cushions of it sewn with silver. In the space betwixt the tables five iron braziers, massive and footed with claws like an eagle’s, stood in a row, and behind the benches on either side were nine great stands for flamboys to light the hail by night, and seven behind the cross bench, set at equal distances and even with the walls. The floor was paved with steatite, white and creamy, with veins of rich brown and black and purples and splashes of scarlet. The tables resting on great trestles were massy slabs of a dusky polished stone, powdered with sparks of gold as small as atoms.

  The women sat on the cross-bench, and midmost of them the Lady Prezmyra, who outwent the rest in beauty and queenliness as Venus the lesser planets of the night. Zenambria, wife to Duke Corsus, sat on her left, and on her right Sriva, daughter to Corsus, strangely fair for such a father. On the upper bench, to the right of the door, the lords of Witchland sat above and below the King’s high seat, clad in holiday attire, and they of Pixyland had place over against them on the lower bench. The high seat on the lower bench was set apart for La Fireez. Great plates and dishes of gold and silver and painted porcelain were set in order on the tables, laden with delicacies. Harps and bagpipes struck up a barbaric music, and the guests rose to their feet, as the shining doors swung open and Gorice the King followed by the Prince his guest entered that hall.

  Like a black eagle surveying earth from some high mountain the King passed by in his majesty. His byrny was of black chain mail, its collar, sleeves, and skirt edged with plates of dull gold set with hyacinths and black opals. His ho
se were black, cross-gartered with bands of sealskin trimmed with diamonds. On his left thumb was his great signet ring fashioned in gold in the semblance of the worm Ouroboros that eateth his own tail: the bezel of the ring the head of the worm, made of a peach-coloured ruby of the bigness of a sparrow’s egg. His cloak was woven of the skins of black cobras stitched together with gold wire, its lining of black silk sprinkled with dust of gold. The iron crown of Witchland weighed on his brow, the claws of the crab erect like horns; and the sheen of its jewels was many-coloured like the rays of Sirius on a clear night of frost and wind at Yule-tide.

  The Prince La Fireez went in a mantle of black sendaline sprinkled everywhere with spangles of gold, and the tunic beneath it of rich figured silk dyed deep purple of the Pasque flower. From the golden circlet on his head two wings sprung aloft exquisitely fashioned in plates of beaten copper veneered with jewels and enamels and plated with precious metals to the semblance of the wings of the oleander hawk-moth. He was something below the common height, but stout and strong and sturdily knit, with red crisp curly hair, broad-faced and ruddy, cleanshaved, with high wide-nostrilled nose and bushy red heavy eyebrows, whence his eyes, most like his lady sister’s, sea-green and fiery, shot glances like a lion’s.

  When the King was come into his high seat, with Corund and Corinius on his left and right in honour of their great deeds of arms, and La Fireez facing him in the high seat on the lower bench, the thralls made haste to set forth dishes of pickled grigs and oysters in the shell, and whilks, snails, and cockles fried in olive oil and swimming in red and white hippocras. And the feasters delayed not to fall to on these dainties, while the cupbearer bore round a mighty bowl of beaten gold filled with sparkling wine the hue of the yellow sapphire, and furnished with six golden ladles resting their handles in six half-moon shaped nicks in the rim of that great bowl. Each guest when the bowl was brought to him must brim his goblet with the ladle, and drink unto the glory of Witchland and the rulers thereof.

  Somewhat greenly looked Corinius on the Prince, and whispering Heming, Corund’s son, in the ear, who sat next him, he said, “True it is that La Fireez is the showiest of men in all that belongeth to gear and costly array. Mark with what ridiculous excess he affecteth Demonland in the great store of jewels he flaunteth, and with what an apish insolence he sitteth at the board. Yet this lobcock liveth only by our sufferance, and I see a hath not forgot to bring with him to Witchland the price of our hand withheld from twisting of his neck.”

  Now were borne round dishes of carp, pilchards, and lobsters, and thereafter store enow of meats: a fat kid roasted whole and garnished with peas on a spacious silver charger, kid pasties, plates of neats’ tongues and sweetbreads, sucking rabbits injellies, hedgehogs baked in their skins, hogs’ haslets, carbonadoes, chitterlings, and dormouse pies. These and other luscious meats were borne round continually by thralls who moved silent on bare feet; and merry waxed the talk as the edge of hunger became blunted a little, and the cockles of men’s hearts were warmed with wine.

  “What news in Witchland?” asked La Fireez.

  “I have heard nought newer,” said the King, “than the slaying of Gaslark.” And the King recounted the battle in the night, setting forth as in a frank and open honesty every particular of numbers, times, and comings and goings; save that none might have guessed from his tale that any of Demonland had part or interest in that battle.

  La Fireez said, “Strange it is that he should so attack you. An enemy might smell some cause behind it.”

  “Our greatness,” said Corinius, looking haughtily at him, “is a lamp whereat other moths than he have been burnt. I count it no strange matter at all.”

  Prezmyra said, “Strange indeed, were it any but Gaslark. But sure with him no wild sudden fancy were too light but it should chariot him like thistle-down to storm heaven itself.”

  “A bubble of the air, madam: all fine colours without and empty wind within. I have known other such,” said Corinius, still resting his gaze with studied insolence on the Prince.

  Prezmyra’s eye danced. “O my Lord Corinius,” said she, “change first thine own fashion, I pray thee, ere thou convince gay attire of inward folly, lest beholding thee we misdoubt thy precept—or thy wisdom.”

  Corinius drank his cup to the drains and laughed. Somewhat reddened was his insolent handsome face about the cheeks and shaven jowl, for surely was none in that hall more richly apparelled than he. His ample chest was cased in a jerkin of untanned buckskin plated with silver scales, and he wore a collar of gold that was rough with smaragds and a long cloak of sky-blue silk brocade lined with cloth of silver. On his left wrist was a mighty ring of gold, and on his head a wreath of black bryony and sleeping nightshade. Gro whispered Corund in the ear, “He bibbeth it down apace, and the hour is yet early. This presageth trouble, since ever with him indiscretion treadeth hard on the heels of surliness as he waxeth drunken.”

  Corund grunted assent, saying aloud, “To all peaks of fame might Gaslark have climbed, but for this same rashness. Nought more pitiful hath been heard to tell of than his great sending into Impland, ten years ago, when, on a sudden conceit that a should lay all Impland under him and become the greatest king in all the world, he hired Zeldornius and Helteranius and Jalcanaius Fostus—”

  “The three most notable captains found on earth,” said La Fireez.

  “Nothing is more true,” said Corund. “These he hired, and brought ’em ships and soldiers and horses and such a clutter of engines of war as hath not been seen these hundred years, and sent ’em—whither? To the rich and pleasant lands of Beshtria? No. To Demonland? Not a whit. To this Witchland, where with a twentieth part the power a bath now risked all and suffered death and doom? No! but to yonder hell-besmitten wilderness of Upper Impland, treeless, waterless, not a soul to pay him tribute had he laid it under him save wandering bands of savage Imps, with more bugs on their bodies than pence in their purses, I warrant you. Or was he minded to be king among the divels of the air, ghosts, and hob-thrushes that be found in that desert?”

  “Without controversy there be seventeen several sorts of divels on the Moruna,” said Corsus, very loud and sudden, so that all turned to look on him; “fiery divels, divels of the air, terrestrial divels, as you may say, and watery divels, and subterranean divels. Without controversy there be seven seen sorts, seventeen several sorts of hob-thrushes, and several sorts of divels, and if the humour took me I could name them all by rote.”

  Wondrous solemn was the heavy face of Corsus, his eyes, baggy underneath and somewhat bloodshed, his pendulous cheeks, thick blubber upper-lip, and bristly gray moustachios and whiskers. He had eaten, mainly to provoke thirst, pickled olives, capers, salted almonds, anchovies, fumadoes, and pilchards fried with mustard, and now awaited the salt chine of beef to be a pillow and a resting place for new potations.

  The Lady Zenambria asked, “Knoweth any for certain what fate befell Jalcanaius and Helteranius and Zeldornius and their armies?”

  “Heard I not,” said Prezmyra, “that they were led by Will-o’-the-Wisps to the regions Hyperborean, and there made kings?”

  “Told thee by the madge-howlet, I fear me, sister,” said La Fireez. “Whenas I fared through Impland the More, six years ago, there was many a wild tale told me hereof, but nought within credit.”

  Now was the chine served in amid shallots on a great dish of gold, borne by four serving men, so weighty was the dish and its burden. Some light there glowed in the dull eye of Corsus to see it come, and Corund rose up with brimming goblet, and the Witches cried, “The song of the chine, O Corund!” Great as a neat stood Corund in his russet velvet kirtle, girt about with a broad belt of crocodile hide edged with gold. From his shoulders hung a cloak of wolf’s skin with the hair inside, the outside tanned and diapered with purple silk. Daylight was nigh gone, and through a haze of savours rising from the feast the flamboys shone on his bald head set about with thick grizzled curls, and on his keen gray eyes, and his long and bu
shy beard. He cried, “Give me a rouse, my lords! and if any fail to bear me out in the refrain, I’ll ne’er love him more.” And he sang this song of the chine in a voice like the sounding of a gong; and all they roared in the refrain till the piled dishes on the service tables rang:

  Bring out the Old Chyne, the Cold Chyne to me.

  And how lie charge him come and see.

  Brawn tusked, Brawn well sowst and fine.

  With a precious cup of Muscadine:

  How shall I sing, how shall I look,

  In honour of the Master-Cook?

  The Pig shall turn round and answer me.

  Canst thou spare me a shoulder? a wy, a wy.

  The Duck, Goose, and Capon, good fellows all three.

  Shall dance thee an antick, so shall the Turkey:

  But O! the Cold Chyne, the Cold Chyne for me:

  How shall I sing, how shall I look,

  In honour of the Master-Cook?

  With brewis lie noynt thee from head to th’ heel.

  Shal make thee run nimbler than the new oyld wheel;

  With Pye-crust wee’l make thee

  The eighth wise man to be;

  But O! the Old Chyne, the Cold Chyne for me:

  How shall I sing, how shall I look,

  In honour of the Master-Cook?

  When the chine was carved and the cups replenished, the King issued command saying, “Call hither my dwarf, and let him act his antick gestures before us.”

  Therewith came the dwarf into the hall, mopping and mowing, clad in a sleeveless jerkin of striped yellow and red mockado. And his long and nerveless tail dragged on the floor behind him.

  “Somewhat fulsome is this dwarf,” said La Fireez.

  “Speak within door, Prince,” said Corinius. “Know’st not his quality? A hath been envoy extraordinary from King Gorice XI. of memory ever glorious unto Lord Juss in Galing and the lords of Demonland. And ’twas the greatest courtesy we could study to do them, to send ’em this looby for our ambassador.”