by E R Eddison
Juss smiled. ‘O Queen Sophonisba, little thou knowest our mind, if thou think this shall turn us back.’
‘I say it,’ said the Queen, ‘with no such vain purpose; but to show you the necessity of that way I shall now tell you of, since well I know ye will not give over this attempt. To none save to a Demon durst I have told it, lest heaven should hold me answerable for his death. But unto you I may with the less danger commit this dangerous counsel if it be true, as I was taught long ago, that the hippogriff was seen of old in Demonland.’
‘The hippogriff?’ said Lord Brandoch Daha. ‘What else is it than the emblem of our greatness? A thousand years ago they nested on Neverdale Hause, and there abide unto this day in the rocks the prints of their hooves and talons. He that rode it was a forefather of mine and of Lord Juss.’
‘He that shall ride it again,’ said Queen Sophonisba, ‘he only of mortal men may win to Zora Rach, and if he be man enough of his hands may deliver him we wot of out of bondage.’
‘O Queen,’ said Juss, ‘somewhat I know of grammarie and divine philosophy, yet must I bow to thee for such learning, that dwellest here from generation to generation and dost commune with the dead. How shall we find this steed? Few they be, and high they fly above the world, and come to birth but one in three hundred years.’
She answered, ‘I have an egg. In all lands else must such an egg lie barren and sterile, save in this land of Zimiamvia which is sacred to the lordly races of the dead. And thus cometh this steed to the birth: when one of might and heart beyond the wont of man sleepeth in this land with the egg in his bosom, greatly desiring some high achievement, the fire of his great longing hatcheth the egg, and the hippogriff cometh out therefrom, weak-winged at first as thou hast seem a butterfly new-hatched out his chrysalis. Then only mayst thou mount him, and if thou be man enow to turn him to thy will he shall bear thee to the uttermost parts of earth unto thine heart’s desire. But if thou be aught less than greatest, beware that steed, and mount only earthly coursers. For if there be aught of dross within thee, and thine heart falter, or thy purpose cool, or thou forget the level aim of thy glory, then will he toss thee to thy ruin.’
‘Thou hast this thing, O Queen?’ said Lord Juss.
‘My lord,’ she said softly, ‘more than an hundred years ago I found it, while I rambled on the cliffs that are about this charmed Lake of Ravary. And here I hid it, being taught by the Gods what thing I had found and knowing what was foreordained, that certain of earth should come at last to Koshtra Belorn. Thinking in my heart that he that should come might be of those who bare some great unfulfilled desire, and might be of such might as could ride to his desire on such a steed.’
They abode, talking little, by the charmed lake’s shore till evening. Then they arose, and went with her to a pavilion by the lake, built in a grove of flowering trees. Ere they went to rest, she brought them the hippogriff’s egg, great as a man’s body, yet light of weight, rough and coloured like gold. And she said, ‘Which of you, my lords?’
Juss answered, ‘He, if might and a high heart should only count; but I, because my brother it is that we must free from his dismal place.’
So the Queen gave the egg to Lord Juss; and he, bearing it in his arms, bade her good-night, saying, ‘I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep.’
And the ambrosial night came down. And gentle sleep, softer than sleep is on earth, closed their eyes in that pavilion beside the enchanted lake.
Mivarsh slept not. Small joy had he of that Lake of Ravary, caring for none of its beauties but mindful still of certain lewd bulks he had seen basking by its shores all through the golden afternoon. He had questioned one of the Queen’s martlets concerning them, who laughed at him and let him know that these were crocodiles, wardens of the lake, tame and gentle toward the heroes of bliss who resorted thither to bathe and disport themselves. ‘But should such an one as thou,’ she said, ‘adventure there, they would chop thee up at a mouthful.’ This saddened him. And indeed, little ease of heart had he since he came out of Impland, and dearly he desired his home, though it were sacked and burnt, and the men of his own blood, though they should prove his foes. And well he thought that if Juss should fly with Brandoch Daha mounted on hippogriff to that cold mountain top where souls of the great were held in bondage, he should never win back alone to the world of men, past the frozen mountains, and the mantichores, and past the crocodile that dwelt beside Bhavinan.
He lay awake an hour or twain, weeping quietly, until out of the giant heart of midnight came to him with fiery clearness the words of the Queen, saying that by the heat of great longing in his heart that claspeth it must that egg be hatched, and that that man should then mount and ride on the wind unto his heart’s desire. Therewith Mivarsh sat up, his hands clammy with mixed fear and longing. It seemed to him, awake and alone among the sleepers in that breathless night, that no longing could be greater than his longing. He said in his heart, ‘I will arise, and take the egg privily from the devil transmarine and clasp it myself. I do him no wrong thereby, for said she not it was perilous? Also every man raketh the embers to his own cake.’
So he arose, and came secretly to Juss where he lay with his strong arms circling the egg. A beam of the moon came in by a window, shining on the face of Juss, that was as the face of a God. Mivarsh bent over him and teased the egg gently from his embrace, praying fervently the while. And, for Juss was in a profound slumber, his soul mounting in vision far from earth, far from that shore divine, to lone regions where Goldry watched still in frozen mournful patience on the heights of Zora, at last Mivarsh gat the egg and bare it to his bed. Very warm it was, crackling to his ear as he embraced it, as of a power moving from withinwards.
In such wise Mivarsh fell asleep, clasping the egg as a man should clasp his dearest. And a little before dawn it hatched in his arms and fell asunder, and he started awake, his arms about the neck of a strange steed. It went forth into the pale light before the sunrise, and he with it, holding it fast. The sheen of its hair was like the peacock’s neck; its eyes like the changing fires of a star of a windy night. Its nostrils widened to the breath of the dawn. Its wings unfolded and grew stiff, their feathers like the tail-feathers of the peacock pheasant, white with purple eyes, and hard to the touch as iron blades. Mivarsh was mounted on its back, seizing the shining mane with both hands, trembling. And now was he fain to descend, but the hippogriff snorted and reared, and he, fearing a great fall, clung closer. It stamped with its silver hoofs, flapping its wings, ramping like a lioness, tearing up the grass with its claws. Mivarsh screamed, torn between hope and fear. It plunged forward and leaped into the air and flew.
The Demons, waked by the whirring of wings, rushed from the pavilion, to behold that marvel flown against the obscure west. Wild was its flight, like a snipe dipping and plunging. And while they looked, they saw the rider flung from his seat and heard, some moments after, a dull flop and splash of a body fallen in the lake.
The wild steed vanished, winging toward the upper air. Rings ran outward from the splash, troubling the surface of the lake, marring the dark reflection of Zora Rach mirrored in the sleeping waters.
‘Poor Mivarsh!’ cried Lord Brandoch Daha. ‘After all the weary leagues I made him go with me.’ And he threw off his cloak, took a dagger in his teeth, and swam with great overarm strokes out to the spot where Mivarsh fell. But nought he found of Mivarsh. Only he saw nearby on an island beach a crocodile, big and bloated, that eyed him guiltily and stayed not for his coming, but lumbering into the water dived and disappeared. So Brandoch Daha turned and swam ashore again.
Lord Juss stood as a man stricken to stone. As one despaired he turned to the Queen, who now came forth to them wrapped in a mantle of swansdown; yet high he held his head. ‘O Queen Sophonisba, here is that secret glome or bottom of our days, come when we sniffed the sweetness of the morning.’
‘My lord,’ said she, ‘the flies hemerae take life with the sun and die with the dew. But t
hou, if thou be truly great, join not hands with desperation. Let the sad ending of this poor servant of thine be to thee a monument against such folly. Earth is not ruined for a single shower. Come back with me to Koshtra Belorn.’
He looked at the grand peak of Zora, dark against the wakening east. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘thou hast little more than half my years, and yet by another computation thou art seven times mine age. I am not light of will, nor thou shalt not find me a fool to thee. Let us go back to Koshtra Belorn.’
They brake their fast quietly and returned by the way they came. And the Queen said, ‘My lords Juss and Brandoch Daha, there be few steeds of such a kind to carry you to Zora Rach nam Psarrion, and not ye, though ye be beyond the half-gods in your might and virtue, might have power to ride them but if ye take them from the egg. So high they fly, so shy they are, ye should not catch them though ye waited ten men’s lifetimes. I will send my martlets to see if there be another egg in the world.’
So she despatched them, north and west and south and east. And in due time those little birds returned on weary wing, all save one, without tidings.
‘All have come back to me,’ said the Queen, ‘save Arabella alone. Dangers attend them in the world: birds of prey, men that slay little birds for their sport. Yet hope with me that she may come back at last.’
But the Lord Juss spake and said, ‘O Queen Sophonisba, to hope and wait lieth not in my nature, 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 sun, 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.
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 tonight, 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 pools in a black frost.’
‘Crowns are cheap trash today,’ said Prezmyra; ‘whenas the King, with twenty kings to be his lackeys, raiseth up now 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.’
‘Then 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 stron
g, 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 wit-wanton 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 winey 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, then, 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 take in too ill part the breaking of such promises given in extremity, which prove commonly like fish, new, 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!’
