appeased by his defence, wherein he spake cunningly both true words and
lies, he spake again among them saying, “Little gain have I of all my
pains and thought expended by me for Witchland. And better it were for
Witchland if my counsel were better heeded. Corund knoweth how, to mine
own peril, I counselled the King to wrastle no more after the first
bout, and if he had ta’en my rede, rather than suspect me and threaten
me with death, we should not be now to bear him home dead to the royal
catacombs in Carcë.”
Corund said, “Truly hast thou spoken.”
“In one thing only have I failed,” said Gro; “and it can shortly be
amended. The Red Foliot, albeit of our party, will not be won to
attack the Demons by fraud, nor will he suffer us smite them in these
Isles. Some fond simple scruples hang like cobwebs in his mind, and he
is stubborn as touching this. But I have prevailed upon him to make
them tarry here for three days’ space, while we put to sea this very
night, telling him, which he most innocently believeth, that we fear
the Demons, and would flee home ere they be let loose to take us at a
disadvantage on the high seas. And home we will indeed ere they set
sail, yet not for fear of them, but rather that we may devise a deadly
blow against them or ever they win home to Demonland.”
“What blow, Goblin?” said Corinius.
And Gro answered and said, “One that I will devise upon with our Lord
the King, Gorice XII., who now awaiteth us in Carcë. And I will not
blab it to a wine-bibber and a dicer who hath but now drawn sword
against a true lover of Witchland.” Whereupon Corinius leaped up in
mickle wrath to thrust his sword into Gro. But Corund and his sons
restrained him.
• • • • •
In due time the stars revolved to midnight, and the Red Foliot came
secretly with his guards to the Witches’ booths. The lords of Witchland
took their weapons and the men-at-arms bare the goods, and the King
went in the midst on his bier of spear-shafts. So went they picking
their way in the moonless night round the palace and down the winding
path that led to the bed of the combe, and so by the stream westward
toward the sea. Here they deemed it safe to light a torch to show
them the way. Desolate and bleak showed the sides of the combe in the
wind-blown flare; and the flare was thrown back from the jewels of the
royal crown of Witchland, and from the armoured buskins on the King’s
feet showing stark with toes pointing upward from below his bear-skin
mantle, and from the armour and the weapons of them that bare him and
walked beside him, and from the black cold surface of the little river
hurrying for ever over its bed of boulders to the sea. The path was
rugged and stony, and they fared slowly, lest they should stumble and
drop the King.
IV: CONJURING IN THE IRON TOWER
OF THE HOLD OF CARCË, AND OF THE MIDNIGHT PRACTICES OF KING GORICE
XII. IN THE ANCIENT CHAMBER, PREPARING DOLE AND DOOM FOR THE
LORDS OF DEMONLAND.
When the Witches were come aboard of their ship and all stowed, and
the rowers set in order on the benches, they bade farewell to the
Red Foliot and rowed out to the deep, and there hoisted sail and put
up their helm and sailed eastward along the land. The stars wheeled
overhead, and the east grew pale, and the sun came out of the sea on
the larboard bow. Still sailed they two days and two nights, and on
the third day there was land ahead, and morning rose abated by mist
and cloud, and the sun was as a ball of red fire over Witchland in the
east. So they hung awhile off Tenemos waiting for the tide, and at
high water sailed over the bar and up the Druima past the dunes and
mud-flats and the Ergaspian mere, till they reached the bend of the
river below Carcë. Solitary marsh-land stretched on either side as
far as the eye might reach, with clumps of willow and rare homesteads
showing above the flats. Northward above the bend a bluff of land fell
sharply to the elbow of the river, and on the other side sloped gently
away for a few miles till it lost itself in the dead level of the
marshes. On the southern face of the bluff, monstrous as a mountain in
those low sedge-lands, hung square and black the fortress of Carcë.
It was built of black marble, rough-hewn and unpolished, the outworks
enclosing many acres. An inner wall with a tower at each corner formed
the main stronghold, in the south-west corner of which was the palace,
overhanging the river. And on the south-west corner of the palace,
towering sheer from the water’s edge seventy cubits and more to the
battlements, stood the keep, a round tower lined with iron, bearing
on the corbel table beneath its parapet in varying form and untold
repetition the sculptured figure of the crab of Witchland. The outer
ward of the fortress was dark with cypress trees: black flames burning
changelessly to heaven from a billowy sea of gloom. East of the keep
was the water-gate, and beside it a bridge and bridge-house across the
river, strongly fortified with turrets and machicolations and commanded
from on high by the battlements of the keep. Dismal and fearsome to
view was this strong place of Carcë, most like to the embodied soul of
dreadful night brooding on the waters of that sluggish river: by day a
shadow in broad sunshine, the likeness of pitiless violence sitting in
the place of power, darkening the desolation of the mournful fen; by
night, a blackness more black than night herself.
Now was the ship made fast near the water-gate, and the lords of
Witchland landed and their fighting men, and the gate opened to them,
and mournfully they entered in and climbed the steep ascent to the
palace, bearing with them their sad burden of the King. And in the
great hall in Carcë was Gorice XI. laid in state for that night; and
the day wore to its close. Nor was any word from King Gorice XII.
But when the shades of night were falling, there came a chamberlain to
Lord Gro as he walked upon the terrace without the western wall of the
palace; and the chamberlain said, “My lord, the King bids you attend
him in the Iron Tower, and he chargeth you bring unto him the royal
crown of Witchland.”
Gro made haste to fulfil the bidding of the King, and betook himself to
the great banqueting hall, and all reverently he lifted the iron crown
of Witchland set thick with priceless gems, and went by a winding stair
to the tower, and the chamberlain went before him. When they were come
to the first landing, the chamberlain knocked on a massive door that
was forthwith opened by a guard; and the chamberlain said, “My lord, it
is the King’s will that you attend his majesty in his secret chamber
at the top of the tower.” And Gro marvelled, for none had entered that
chamber for many years. Long ago had Gorice VII. practised forbidden
arts therein, and folk said that in that chamber he raised up those
spirits whereby he gat his bane. Sithence was the chamber sealed, nor
had the late Kings need of it, since little faith they placed in art
magical, relying rather on the might of their hands and the sword of
Witchland. But Gro was glad at heart, for the opening of this chamber
by the King met his designs half way. Fearlessly he mounted the winding
stairs that were dusky with the shadows of approaching night and hung
with cobwebs and strewn with the dust of neglect, until he came to
the small low door of that chamber, and pausing knocked thereon and
harkened for the answer.
And one said from within, “Who knocketh?” and Gro answered, “Lord, it
is I, Gro.” And the bolts were drawn and the door opened, and the King
said, “Enter.” And Gro entered and stood in the presence of the King.
Now the fashion of the chamber was that it was round, filling the
whole space of the loftiest floor of the round donjon keep. It was
now gathering dusk, and weak twilight only entered through the deep
embrasures of the windows that pierced the walls of the tower,
looking to the four quarters of the heavens. A furnace glowing in
the big hearth threw fitful gleams into the recesses of the chamber,
lighting up strange shapes of glass and earthenware, flasks and
retorts, balances, hour-glasses, crucibles and astrolabes, a monstrous
three-necked alembic of phosphorescent glass supported on a bain-marie,
and other instruments of doubtful and unlawful aspect. Under the
northern window over against the doorway was a massive table blackened
with age, whereon lay great books bound in black leather with iron
guards and heavy padlocks. And in a mighty chair beside this table
was King Gorice XII., robed in his conjuring robe of black and gold,
resting his cheek on his hand that was lean as an eagle’s claw. The low
light, mother of shade and secrecy, that hovered in that chamber moved
about the still figure of the King, his nose hooked as the eagle’s
beak, his cropped hair, his thick close-cut beard and shaven upper
lip, his high cheek-bones and cruel heavy jaw, and the dark eaves of
his brows whence the glint of green eyes showed as no friendly lamp to
them without. The door shut noiselessly, and Gro stood before the King.
The dusk deepened, and the firelight pulsed and blinked in that dread
chamber, and the King leaned without motion on his hand, bending his
brow on Gro; and there was utter silence save for the faint purr of the
furnace.
In a while the King said, “I sent for thee, because thou alone wast so
hardy as to urge to the uttermost thy counsel upon the King that is now
dead, Gorice XI. of memory ever glorious. And because thy counsel was
good. Marvellest thou that I wist of thy counsel?”
Gro said, “O my Lord the King, I marvel not of this. For it is known to
me that the soul endureth, albeit the body perish.”
“Keep thou thy lips from overspeech,” said the King. “These be
mysteries whereon but to think may snatch thee into peril, and whoso
speaketh of them, though in so secret a place as this, and with me
only, yet at his most bitter peril speaketh he.”
Gro answered, “O King, I spake not lightly; moreover, you did tempt
me by your questioning. Nevertheless I am utterly obedient to your
majesty’s admonition.”
The King rose from his chair and walked towards Gro, slowly. He was
exceeding tall, and lean as a starved cormorant. Laying his hands upon
the shoulders of Gro, and bending his face to Gro’s, “Art not afeared,”
he asked, “to abide me in this chamber, at the close of day? Or hast
not thought on’t, and on these instruments thou seest, their use and
purpose, and the ancient use of this chamber?”
Gro blenched never a whit, but stoutly said, “I am not afeared, O my
Lord the King, but rather rejoiced I at your summons. For it jumpeth
with mine own designs, when I took counsel secretly in my heart after
the woes that the Fates fulfilled for Witchland in the Foliot Isles.
For in that day, O King, when I beheld the light of Witchland darkened
and her might abated in the fall of King Gorice XI. of glorious memory,
I thought on you, Lord, the twelfth Gorice raised up King in Carcë; and
there was present to my mind the word of the soothsayer of old, where
he singeth:
Ten, eleven, twelf I see
In sequent varietie
Of puissaunce and maistrye
With swerd, sinwes, and grammarie,
In the holde of Carcë
Lordinge it royally.
And being minded that he singleth out you, the twelfth, as potent in
grammarie, all my care was that these Demons should be detained within
reach of your spells until we should have time to win home to you and
to apprise you of their farings, that so you might put forth your
power and destroy them by art magic or ever they come safe again to
many-mountained Demonland.”
The King took Gro to his bosom and kissed him, saying, “Art thou not a
very jewel of wisdom and discretion? Let me embrace thee and love thee
for ever.”
Then the King stood back from him, keeping his hands on Gro’s
shoulders, and gazed piercingly upon him for a space in silence. Then
kindled he a taper that stood in an iron candlestick by the table
where the books lay, and held it to Gro’s face. And the King said,
“Ay, wise thou art and of good discretion, and some courage hast thou.
But if thou be to serve me this night, needs must I try thee first
with terrors till thou be inured to them, as tried gold runneth in the
crucible; or if thou be base metal only, till that thou be eaten up by
them.”
Gro said unto the King, “For many years, Lord, or ever I came to Carcë,
I fared up and down the world, and I am acquainted with objects of
terror as a child with his toys. I have seen in the southern seas,
by the light of Achernar and Canopus, giant sea-horses battling with
eight-legged cuttle-fishes in the whirlpools of the Korsh. Yet was I
unafraid. I was in the isle Ciona when the fires of the pit brast forth
in that isle and split it as a man’s skull is split with an axe, and
the green gulfs of the sea swallowed that isle, and the stench and the
steam hung in the air for days where the burning rock and earth had
sizzled in the ocean. Yet was I unafraid. Also was I with Gaslark in
the flight out of Zajë Zaculo, when the Ghouls took the palace over
our heads, and portents walked in his halls in broad daylight, and
the Ghouls conjured the sun out of heaven. Yet was I unafraid. And
for thirty days and thirty nights wandered I alone on the face of the
Moruna in Upper Impland, where scarce a living soul hath been: and
there the evil wights that people the air of that desert dogged my
steps and gibbered at me in darkness. Yet was I unafraid; and came
in due time to Morna Moruna, and thence, standing on the lip of the
escarpment as it were on the edge of the world, looked southaway where
never mortal eye had gazed aforetime, across the untrodden forests of
the Bhavinan. And in that skyey distance, pre-eminent beyond range
on range of ice-robed mountains, I beheld two peaks throned for ever
between firm land and heaven in unearthly loveliness: the spires and
airy ridges of Koshtra Pivrarcha, and the wild precipices that soar
upward from the abysses to the queenly silent snow-dome of Koshtra
Belorn.”
When Gro had ended, the King turned him away and, taking from a shelf
a retort filled with a dark blue fluid, set it on a bain-marie, and
a lamp thereunder. Fumes of a faint purple hue came forth from the
neck of the retort, and the King gathered them in a flask. He made
signs over the flask and shook forth into his hand therefrom a fine
powder. Then said he unto Gro, holding out the powder in the open palm
of his hand, “Look narrowly at this powder.” And Gro looked. The King
muttered an incantation, and the powder moved and heaved, and was like
a crawling mass of cheesemites in an overripe cheese. It increased
in volume in the King’s hand, and Gro perceived that each particular
grain had legs. The grains grew before his eyes, and became the size
of mustard seeds, and then of barleycorns, swiftly crawling each over
other. And even as he marvelled, they waxed great as kidney beans, and
now was their shape and seeming clear to him, so that he beheld that
they were small frogs and paddocks; and they overflowed from the King’s
hand as they waxed swiftly in size, pouring on to the floor. And they
ceased not to increase and grow; and now were they large as little
dogs, nor might the King retain more than a single one, holding his
hand under its belly while it waved its legs in the air; and they were
walking on the tables and jostling on the floor. Pallid they were, and
permeable to light like thin horn, and their hue a faint purple, even
as the hue of the vapour whence they were engendered. And now was the
room filled with them so that they mounted perforce one on another’s
shoulders, and they were of the bigness of well fatted hogs; and they
goggled their eyes at Gro and croaked. The King looked narrowly on Gro,
who stood in the presence of that spectacle, the crown of Witchland in
his hands; and the King marked that the crown trembled not a whit in
Gro’s hands that held it. So he said a certain word, and the paddocks
and the frogs grew small again, shrinking more swiftly than they had
grown, and so vanished.
The King now took from the shelf a ball the size of the egg of an
estridge, of dark green glass. He said unto Gro, “Look well at this
glass and tell me what thou seest.” Gro answered him, “I see a shifting
shadow within.” The King commanded him saying, “Dash it down with all
thy strength upon the floor.” The Lord Gro lifted the ball with both
hands above his head, and it was ponderous as a ball of lead, and
according to the command of Gorice the King he hurled it on the floor,
so that it was pashed in pieces. And, behold, a puff of thick smoke
burst forth from the fragments of the ball and took the form of one
of human shape and dreadful aspect, whose two legs were two writhing
snakes; and it stood in the chamber so tall that the head of it touched
the vaulted ceiling, viewing the King and Gro malevolently and menacing
them. The King caught down a sword that hung against the wall, and put
it in Gro’s hand, shouting, “Smite off the legs of it! and delay not,
or thou art but dead!” Gro smote and cut off the left leg of the evil
wight, easily, as it were cutting of butter. But from the stump came
forth two fresh snakes a-writhing; and so it fared likewise with the
right leg, but the King shouted, “Smite and cease not, or thou art but
a dead dog!” and ever as Gro hewed a snake in twain forth came two
more from the wound, till the chamber was a maze of their wriggling
forms. And still Gro hewed with a will, until the sweat stood on his
brow, and he said, panting between the strokes, “O King, I have made
him many-legged as a centipede: must I make him a myriapod ere night’s
decline?” And the King smiled, and spake a word of hidden meaning; and
therewith the turmoil was gone as a gust of wind departeth, and nought
left save the shivered splinters of the green ball on the chamber floor.
“Wast not afeared?” asked the King, and when Gro said nay, “Methinks
these sights of terror should much afflict thee,” said the King, “since
well I know thou art not skilled in art magical.”
“Yet am I a philosopher,” answered Lord Gro; “and somewhat know I of
alchymy and the hidden properties of this material world: the virtues
of herbs, plants, stones, and minerals, the ways of the stars in their
courses, and the influences of those heavenly bodies. And I have held
converse with birds and fishes in their degree, and that generation
which creepeth on the earth is not held in scorn by me, but oft talk I
in sweet companionship with the eft of the pond, and the glow-worm, and
the lady-bird, and the pismire, and their kind, making them my little
gossips. So have I a certain lore which lighteth me in the outer court
of the secret temple of grammarie and art forbid, albeit I have not
peered within that temple. And by my philosophy, O King, I am certified
concerning these apparitions which you have raised for me, that they
be illusions and phantasms only, able to terrify the soul indeed of
him that knoweth not divine philosophy, but without bodily power or
essence. Nor is aught to fear in such, save the fear itself wherewith
they strike the simple.”
Then said the King, “By what token knowest thou this?”
And the Lord Gro made answer unto him, “O King, as a child weaveth a
daisy-chain, thus easily did you conjure up these shapes of terror. Not
in such wise fareth he that calleth out of the deep the deadly terror
indeed; but with toil and sweat and with straining of thought, will,
heart, and sinew fareth he.”
The King smiled. “Thou sayest true. Now, therefore, since
phantasmagoria maketh not thy heart to quail, I present thee a more
material horror.”
And he lighted the candles in the great candlesticks of iron and
opened a little secret door in the wall of the chamber near the floor;
and Gro beheld iron bars within the little door, and heard a hissing
from behind the bars. The King took a key of silver of delicate
construction, the handle slender and three spans in length, and opened
the iron grated door. And the King said, “Behold and see, that which
sprung from the egg of a cock, hatched by the deaf adder. The glance
of its eye sufficeth to turn to stone any living thing that standeth
before it. Were I but for one instant to loose my spells whereby I hold
it in subjection, in that moment would end my life days and thine. So
strong in properties of ill is this serpent which the ancient Enemy
that dwelleth in darkness hath placed upon this earth, to be a bane
unto the children of men, but an instrument of might in the hand of
enchanters and sorcerers.”
Therewith came forth that offspring of perdition from its hole,
strutting erect on its two legs that were the legs of a cock; and a
cock’s head it had, with rosy comb and wattles, but the face of it
like no fowl’s face of middle-earth but rather a gorgon’s out of Hell.
Black shining feathers grew on its neck, but the body of it was the
body of a dragon with scales that glittered in the rays of the candles,
and a scaly crest stood on its back; and its wings were like bats’
wings, and its tail the tail of an aspick with a sting in the end
thereof, and from its beak its forked tongue flickered venomously. And
the stature of the thing was a little above a cubit. Now because of
the spells of King Gorice whereby he held it ensorcelled it might not
cast its baneful glance upon him, nor upon Gro, but it walked back and
forth in the candle light, averting its eyes from them. The feathers
on its neck were fluffed up with anger and wondrous swiftly twirled
its scaly tail, and it hissed ever more fiercely, irked by the bonds
of the King’s enchantment; and the breath of it was noisome, and hung
in sluggish wreaths about the chamber. So for a while it walked before
them, and as it looked sidelong past him Gro beheld the light of its
eyes that were as sick moons burning poisonously through a mist of
greenish yellow in the dusk of night. And strong loathing seized him,
so that his gorge rose to behold the thing, and his brow and the palms
of his hands became clammy, and he said, “My Lord the King, I have
looked steadfastly on this cockatrice and it affrighteth me no whit,
but it is loathly in my sight, so that my gorge riseth because of it,”
and with that he fell a-vomiting. And the King commanded that serpent
back into its hole, whither it returned, hissing wrathfully.
Now the King poured forth wine, speaking a charm over the cup, and
when the bright wine had revived Lord Gro, the King spake saying, “It
is well, O Gro, that thou hast shown thyself a philosopher indeed, and
of heart intrepid. Yet even as no blade is utterly tried until one
try it in very battle, where if it snap woe and doom wait on the hand
that wields it, so must thou in this midnight suffer a yet fiercer
furnace-heat of terror, wherein if thou be reduced we are both lost
eternally, and this Carcë and all Witchland blasted with us for ever in
ruin and oblivion. Durst abide this trial?”
Gro answered, “I am hot to obey your word, O King. For well know I that
it is idle to hope by phantoms and illusions to appal the Demons, and
that against the Demons the deadly eye of thy cockatrice were turned
in vain. Stout of heart are they, and instructed in all lore, and
Juss a sorcerer of ancient power, who hath charms to blunt the glance
of basilisk or cockatrice. He that would strike down the Demons must
conjure indeed.”
“Great,” said the King, “is the strength and cunning of the seed of
Demonland. By main strength have they now shown mastery over us, as
sadly witnesseth the overthrow of Gorice XI., ’gainst whom no mortal
could stand up and wrastle and not die, till cursed Goldry, drunk
with spleen and envy, slew him in the Foliot Isles. Nor was there any
aforetime to outdo us in feats of arms, and Gorice X., victorious in
single combats without number, made our name glorious over all the
world. Yet at the last he gat his death, out of all expectation and by
what treacherous sleight I know not, standing in single combat against
the curled step-dancer from Krothering. But I, that am skilled in
grammarie, do bear a mightier engine against the Demons than brawny
sinews or the sword that smiteth asunder. Yet is mine engine perilous
to him that useth it.”