The Worm Ouroboros

by E R Eddison

  But the Lord Juss spake and said, “O Queen Sophonisba, to hope and wait lieth not in my mature, but to be swift, resolute, and exact whensoever I see my way before me. This have I ever approved, that the strawberry groweth underneath the nettle still. I will assay the ascent of Zora.”

  Nor might all her prayers turn him from this rashness, wherein the Lord Brandoch Daha besides did most eagerly second him.

  Two nights and two days they were gone, and the Queen abode them in great trouble of heart in her pavilion by the enchanted lake. The third evening came Brandoch Daha back to the pavilion, bringing with him Juss that was like a man at point of death, and himself besides deadly sick.

  “Tell me not anything,” said the Queen. “Forgetfulness is the only sovran remedy, which with all my art I will strive to induce in thy mind and in his. Surely I despaired ever to see you in life again, so rashly entered into those regions forbid.”

  Brandoch Daha smiled, but his look was ghastly. “Blame us not overmuch, dear Queen. Who shoots at the mid-day sum, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush.” His voice broke in his throat; the whites of his eyes rolled up; he caught at the Queen’s hand like a frightened child. Then with a mighty effort mastering himself, “I pray bear with me a little,” he said. “After a little good meats and drinks taken ’twill pass. I pray look to Juss: is a dead, think you?”

  Days passed, and months, and the Lord Juss lay yet as it were in the article of death tended by his friend and by the Queen in that pavilion by the lake. At length when winter was gone in middle earth, and the spring far spent, back came that last little martlet on weary wing, she they had long given up for lost. She sank in her mistress’s bosom, almost dead indeed for weariness. But the Queen cherished her, and gave her nectar, so that she gathered strength and said, “O Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the Gods, I flew for thee east and south and west and north, by sea and by land, in heat and frost, unto the frozen poles, about and about. And at the last came to Demonland, to the range of Neverdale. There is a tarn among the mountains, that men call Dule Tarn. Very deep it is, and men that live by bread do hold it for bottomless. Yet hath it a bottom, and on the bottom lieth an hippogriff’s egg, seen by me, for I flew at a great height above it.”

  “In Demonland!” said the Queen. And she said to Lord Brandoch Daha, “It is the only one. Ye must go home to fetch it.”

  Brandoch Daha said, “Home to Demonland? After we spent our powers and crossed the world to find the way?”

  But when Lord Juss knew of it, straightway with hope so renewed began his sickness to depart from him, so that he was in a few weeks’ space very well recovered.

  And it was now a full year gone by since first the Demons came up into Koshtra Belorn.

  CHAPTER XV

  QUEEN PREZMYRA

  How the Lady Prezmyra discovered to Lord Gro what she would have brought about for Demonland, in which should also appear her Lord’s yet more greatness and advancement: and how her too loud speaking of her purpose was the occasion whereby the Lord Corinius was to learn the sweetness of bliss deferred.

  On that same twenty-sixth night of May, when Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha beheld from earth’s loftiest pinnacle the land of Zimiamvia and Koshtra Belorn, Gro walked with the Lady Prezmyra on the western terrace in Carcë. It wanted yet two hours of midnight. The air was warm, the sky a bower of moonbeam and starbeam. Now and then a faint breeze stirred as if night turned in her sleep. The walls of the palace and the Iron Tower cut off the terrace from the direct moonlight, and flamboys spreading their wobbling light made alternating regions of brightness and gloom. Galloping strains of music and the noise of revelry came from within the palace.

  Gro spake: “If thy question, O Queen, overlie a wish to have me gone, I am as lightning to obey thee howsoe’er it grieve me.”

  “’Twas an idle wonder only,” she said. “Stay and it like thee.”

  “It is but a native part of wisdom,” said he, “to follow the light. When thou wast departed from the hall methought all the bright lights were bedimmed.” He looked at her sidelong as they passed into the radiance of a flamboy, studying her countenance that seemed clouded with grievous thought. Fair of all fairs she seemed, stately and splendid; crowned with a golden crown set about with dark amethysts. A figure of a crab-fish topped it above the brow, curiously wrought in silver and bearing in either claw a ball of chrysolite the bigness of a thrush’s egg.

  Lord Gro said, “This too was part of my mind, to behold those stars in heaven that men call Berenice’s Hair, and know if they can outshine in glory thine hair, O Queen.”

  They paced on in silence. Then, “These phrases of forced gallantry,” she said, “sort ill with our friendship, my Lord Gro. If I be not angry, think it is because I father them on the deep healths thou hast caroused unto our Lord the King on this night of nights, when the returning year bringeth back the date of his sending, and our vengeance upon Demonland.”

  “Madam,” he said, “I would but have thee give over this melancholy. Seemeth it to thee a little thing that the King hath pleased so singularly to honour Corund thy husband as give him a king’s style and dignity and all Impland to hold in fee? All took notice of it how uncheerfully thou didst receive this royal crown when the King gave it thee to-night, in honour of thy great lord, to wear in his stead till he come home to claim it; this, and the great praise spoke by the King of Corund, which methinks should bring the warmth of pride to thy cheeks. Yet are all these things of as little avail against thy frozen scornful melancholy as the weak winter sun availeth against congealed poois in a black frost.”

  “Crowns are cheap trash to-day,” said Prezmyra; “whenas the King, with twenty kings to be his lackeys, raiseth up mow his lackeys to be kings of the earth. Canst wonder if my joyance in this crown were dashed some little when I looked on that other given by the King to Laxus?”

  “Madam,” said Gro, “thou must forgive Laxus in his own particular. Thou knowest he set not so much as a foot in Pixyland; and if now he must be called king thereof, that should rather please thee, being in despite of Corinius that carried war there and by whatsoever means of skill or fortune overcame thy noble brother and drave him into exile.”

  “Corinius,” she answered, “tasteth in that miss that bane or ill-hap which I dearly pray all they may groan under who would fatten by my brother’s ruin.”

  “Them should Corinius’s grief lift up thy joy,” said Gro. “Yet certain it is, Fate is a blind puppy: build not on her next turn.”

  “Am not I a Queen?” said Prezmyra. “Is not this Witchland? Have we not strength to make curses strong, if Fate be blind indeed?”

  They halted at the head of a flight of steps leading down to the inner ward. The Lady Prezmyra leaned awhile on the black marble balustrade, gazing seaward over the level marshes rough with moonlight. “What care I for Laxus?” she said at last. “What care I for Corinius? A cast of hawks flown by the King against a quarry that in dearworthiness and nobility outshineth an hundred such as they. Nor I will not suffer mine indignation so to witwanton with fair justice as persuade me to put the wite on Witchland. It is most true the Prince my brother practised with our enemies the downthrow of our fortunes, breaking open, had he but known it, the gate of destruction for himself and us, that night when our banquet was turned by him to a battle and our wimey mirths to bloody rages.” She was silent for a time, then said, “Oathbreakers: a most odious name, flat against all humanity. Two faces in one hood. O that earth would start up and strike the sins that tread on her!”

  “I see thou lookest west over sea,” said Gro.

  “There’s somewhat thou canst see, them, my Lord Gro, by owl-light,” said Prezmyra.

  “Thou didst tell me at the time,” he said, “with what compliments in vows and strange well-studied promises of friendship the Lord Juss took leave of thee at their escaping out of Carcë. Yet art thou to blame, O Queen, if thou tak
e in too ill part the breaking of such promises given in extremity, which prove commonly like fish, mew, stale, and stinking in three days.”

  “Sure, ’tis a small matter,” said she, “that my brother should cast aside all ties of interest and alliance to save these great ones from an evil death; and they, being delivered, should toss him a light grammercy and go their ways, leaving him to be exterminated out of his own country and, for all they know or reck, to lose his life. May the great Devil of Hell torture their souls!”

  “Madam,” said Lord Gro, “I would have thee view the matter soberly, and leave these bitter flashes. The Demons did save thy brother once in Lida Nanguna, and his delivering of them out of the hand of our Lord the King was but just payment therefor. The scales hang equal.”

  She answered, “Do not defile mine ears with their excuses. They have shamefully abused us; and the guilt of their black deed planteth them day by day more firmlier in my deeper-settled hate. Art thou so deeply read in nature and her large philosophy, and I am yet to teach thee that deadliest hellebore or the vomit of a toad are qualified poison to the malice of a woman?”

  The darkness of a great cloud-bank spreading from the south swallowed up the moonlight. Prezmyra turned to resume her slow pacing down the terrace. The yellow fiery sparkles in her eyes glinted in the flamboys’ flare. She looked dangerous as a lioness, and delicate and graceful like an antelope. Gro walked beside her, saying, “Did not Corund drive them forth in winter on to the Moruma, and can they continue there in life, alone amid so many devouring perils?”

  “O my lord,” she cried, “say these good tidings to the kitchen wenches, not to me. Why, thyself didst enter in past years the very heart of the Moruma and yet camest off, else art thou the greatest liar. This only camkerfrets my soul: that days go by, and months, and Witchland beateth down all peoples under him, and yet he suffereth the crown of pride, these rebels of Demonland, to go yet untrodden under feet. Doth he deem it the better part to spare a foe and spoil a friend? That were an unhappy and unnatural conclusion. Or is he fey, even as was Gorice XI.? Heaven foreshield it, yet as ill an end may bechamce him and utter ruin come on all of us if he will withhold his scourge from Demomland until Juss and Brandoch Daha come home again to meet with him.”

  “Madam,” said Lord Gro, “in these few words thou hast given me the picture of mine own mind in small. And forgive me that I bespake thee warily at the first, for these are matters of heavy moment, and ere I opened my mind to thee I would know that it agreed with thine. Let the King smite mow, in the happy absence of their greatest champions. So shall we be in strength against them if they return again, and perchance Goldry with them.”

  She smiled, and it seemed as if all the sultry night freshened and sweetened at that lady’s smile. “Thou art a dear companion to me,” she said. “Thy melancholy is to me as some shady wood in summer, where I may dance if I will, and that is often, or be sad if I will, and that is in these days oftener than I would: and never thou crossest my mood. Save but now thou didst so, to plague me with thy precious flattering jargon, till I had thought thee skin-changed with Laxus or young Corinius, seeking such lures as gallants spread their wings to, to stoop in ladies’ bosoms.”

  “For I would shake thee from this late-received sadness,” said Gro. And he said, “Thou art to commend me too, since I spake nought but truth.”

  “Oh, have done, my lord,” she cried, “or I’ll dismiss thee hence.” And as they walked Prezmyra sang softly:

  He that cannot chuse but love.

  And strives against it still.

  Never shall my fancy move.

  For he loves ’gaynst his will;

  Nor he which is all his own.

  And can att pleasure chuse;

  When I am caught he can be gone.

  And when he list refuse.

  Nor he that loves none but faire.

  For such by all are sought;

  Nor he that can for foul ones care.

  For his Judgement then is naught;

  Nor he—

  She broke off suddenly, saying, “Come, I have shook off the ill disposition the sight of Laxus bred in me and of his tawdry crown. Let’s think on action. And first, I will tell thee a thing. This we spoke of hath been in my mind these two or three moons, ever since Corinius’s campaigning in Pixyland. So when word came of my lord’s destroying of the Demon host, and his driving of Juss and Brandoch Daha like runaway thralls on the Moruna, I sent him a letter by the hand of Viglus that bare him from our Lord the King the king’s name in Impland. Therein I expressed how that the crown of Demonland should be a braver crown for us than this of Impland, howsoe’er it sparkle, praying him urge upon the King his sending of an armament to Demonland, and my lord the leader thereof; or, if he could not as then come home to ask it, then I entreated him make me his ambassador to lay this counsel before the King and crave the enterprise for Corund.”

  “Is not his answer in those letters I brought thee?” said Gro.

  “Ay,” said she, “and a very scurvy beggarly lickspittle answer for a great lord to send to such a matter as I propounded. Alack, it puffs away all my wifely duty but to speak on’t, and makes me rail like a gangrel-woman.”

  “I’ll walk apart, madam,” said Gro, “if thou wouldst have privateness to deliver thy mind.”

  Prezmyra laughed. “F’Tis not all so bad,” she said, “and yet it makes me angry. The enterprise he commends, up to the hilt, and I have his leave to broach it to the King, as his mouth-piece, and press it with him out of all ho. But for the leading on’t, he will not have it, he. Corsus must have it, or Corinius. Stay, let me read it out,” and standing near one of the lights she took a parchment from her bosom. “Pooh! ’tis too fond; I will not shame my lord to read it, even to thee.”

  “Well,” said Gro, “were I the King, Corund should be my general to put down Demonland. Corsus he may send, for he hath done great work in his day, but in mine own judgement I like him not for such an errand. Corinius he hath not yet forgiven for his fault at the banquet a year ago.”

  “Corinius!” said Prezmyra. “So his butchery of mine own dear land goeth not only without reward, but hath not so much as bought him back to favour, thou thinkest?”

  “I think not,” said Lord Gro. “Besides, he is mad wroth to have plucked that prickly fruit but for another’s eating. He bare himself so presumptuous-ill in the hall to-night, gleeking and galling at Laxus, slapping of his sword, and with so many more shameless braves and wanton fashions, and worst of all his most openly seeking to toy with Sriva, i’ this first month of her betrothal unto Laxus, it will be a wonder if blood be not spilt betwixt them ere the night be done. Methinks he is not i’ the mood to take the field again without some sure reward; and methinks the King, guessing his mind, would not offer him a new enterprise and so give him the glory of refusing it.”

  They stood near the arched gateway that opened on the terrace from the inner court. Music still sounded from the great banquet hall of Gorice XI. Under the archway and in the shadows of the huge buttresses of the walls it was as though the elements of gloom, expelled from the bright circles round the flamboys, huddled with sister glooms to make a double darkness.

  “Well, my lord,” said Prezmyra, “doth thy wisdom bless my resolve?”

  “Whate’er it be, yes, because it is thime, O Queen.”

  “Whate’er it be!” she cried. “Dost hang in doubt on’t? What else, but seek audience with the King as my first care in the morning. Have I not my lord’s bidding so far?”

  “And if thy zeal outrun his bidding in one particular?” said Gro.

  “Why, just!” said she. “And if I bring thee not word ere tomorrow’s noon that order is given for Demonland, and my Lord Corund named his general for that sailing, ay, and letters sealed for his straight recall from Orpish—”

  “Hist!” said Gro. “Steps i’ the court.”

  They turned towards the archway, Prezmyra singing under her breath:

 
Nor he that still his Mistresse payes. For she is thrall’d therefore; Nor he that payes not, for he sayes Within, shee’s worth no more. Is there then no kinde of men Whom I may freely prove? I will vent that humour then In mine own selfe love.

  Corinius met them in the gateway, coming from the banquet house. He halted full in their path to peer closely through the darkness at Prezmyra, so that she felt the heat of his breath, heavy with wine. It was too dark to know faces but he knew her by her stature and bearing.

  “Cry thee mercy, madam,” he said. “Methought an instant ’twas—but no matter. Your best of rest.”

  So saying he made way for her with a deep obeisance, jostling roughly against Gro with the same motion. Gro, little minded for a quarrel, gave him the wall, and followed Prezmyra into the inner court.

  The Lord Corinius sat him down on the nearest of the benches, leaned his stalwart back luxuriously upon the cushions and there rested, thripping his fingers and singing to himself:

  What an Ass is he

  Waits a woman’s leisure

  For a minute’s pleasure.

  And perhaps may be

  Gull’d at last, and lose her;

  What an ass is he?

  What need I to care

  For a woman’s favour?

  If another have her.

  Why should I despair?

  When for gold and labour

  I can have my share.

  If I chance to see

  One that’s brown, I love her.

  Till I see another

  Browner is than she;

  For I am a lover

  Of my liberty.

  A rustle behind him on his left made him turn his head. A figure stole out of the deep shadow of the buttress nearest the archway. He leapt up and was first in the gate, blocking it with open arms. “Ah,” he cried, “so titmice roost i’ the shade, ha? What ransom shall I have of thee for making me keep empty tryst last night? Ay, and wast creeping hence to make me a fool once more the night-long and I had not caught thee.”