and Brandoch Daha looked on the mountains of their desire.
Juss spake, haltingly as one talking in a dream. “The sweet smell,
this gusty wind, the very stone thy foot standeth on: I know them all
before. There’s not a night since we sailed out of Lookinghaven that I
have not beheld in sleep these mountains and known their names.”
“Who told thee their names?” asked Lord Brandoch Daha.
“My dream,” Juss answered. “And first I dreamed it in mine own bed in
Galing when I came home from guesting with thee last June. And they be
true dreams that are dreamed there.” And he said, “Seest thou where the
foot-hills part to a dark valley that runneth deep into the chain, and
the mountains are bare to view from crown to foot? Mark where, beyond
the nearer range, bleak-visaged precipices, cobweb-streaked with huge
snow corridors, rise to a rampart where the rock towers stand against
the sky. This is the great ridge of Koshtra Pivrarcha, and the loftiest
of those spires his secret mountain-top.”
As he spoke, his eye followed the line of the eastern ridge, where the
towers, like dark gods going down from heaven, plunge to a parapet
which runs level above a curtain of avalanche-fluted snow. He fell
silent as his gaze rested on the sister peak that east of the gap
flamed skyward in wild cliffs to an airy snowy summit, soft-lined as a
maiden’s cheek, purer than dew, lovelier than a dream.
While they looked the sunset fires died out upon the mountains, leaving
only pale hues of death and silence. “If thy dream,” said Lord Brandoch
Daha, “conducted thee down this Edge, over the Bhavinan, through
yonder woods and hills, up through the leagues of ice and frozen rock
that stand betwixt us and the main ridge, up by the right road to the
topmost snows of Koshtra Belorn: that were a dream indeed.”
“All this it showed me,” said Juss, “up to the lowest rocks of the
great north buttress of Koshtra Pivrarcha, that must first be scaled
by him that would go up to Koshtra Belorn. But beyond those rocks not
even a dream hath ever climbed. Ere the light fades, I’ll show thee our
pass over the nearer range.” He pointed where a glacier crawled betwixt
shadowy walls down from a torn snow-field that rose steeply to a
saddle. East of it stood two white peaks, and west of it a sheer-faced
and long-backed mountain like a citadel, squat and dark beneath the
wild sky-line of Koshtra Pivrarcha that hung in air beyond it.
“The Zia valley,” said Juss, “that runneth into Bhavinan. There lieth
our way: under that dark bastion called by the Gods Tetrachnampf.”
• • • • •
On the morrow Lord Brandoch Daha came to Mivarsh Faz and said, “It is
needful that this day we go down from Omprenne Edge. I would for no
sake leave thee on the Moruna, but ’tis no walking matter to descend
this wall. Art thou a cragsman?”
“I was born,” answered he, “in the high valley of Perarshyn by the
upper waters of the Beirun in Impland. There boys scarce toddle
ere they can climb a rock. This climb affrights me not, nor those
mountains. But the land is unknown and terrible, and many loathly
ones inhabit it, ghosts and eaters of men. O devils transmarine, and
my friends, is it not enough? Let us turn again, and if the Gods save
our lives we shall be famous for ever, that came unto Morna Moruna and
returned alive.”
But Juss answered and said, “O Mivarsh Faz, know that not for fame
are we come on this journey. Our greatness already shadoweth all the
world, as a great cedar tree spreading his shadow in a garden; and
this enterprise, mighty though it be, shall add to our glory only so
much as thou mightest add to these forests of the Bhavinan by planting
of one more tree. But so it is, that the great King of Witchland,
practising in darkness in his royal palace of Carcë such arts of
grammarie and sendings magical as the world hath not been grieved
with until now, sent an ill thing to take my brother, the Lord Goldry
Bluszco, who is dear to me as mine own soul. And They that dwell in
secret sent me word in a dream, bidding me, if I would have tidings of
my dear brother, inquire in Koshtra Belorn. Therefore, O Mivarsh, go
with us if thou wilt, but if thou wilt not, why, fare thee well. For
nought but my death shall stay me from going thither.”
And Mivarsh, bethinking him that if the mantichores of the mountains
should devour him along with those two lords, that were yet a kindlier
fate than all alone to abide those things he wist of on the Moruna, put
on the rope, and after commending himself to the protection of his gods
followed Lord Brandoch Daha down the rotten slopes of rock and frozen
earth at the head of a gully leading down the cliff.
For all that they were early afoot, yet was it high noon ere they were
off the rocks. For the peril of falling stones drove them out from
the gully’s bed first on to the eastern buttress and after, when that
grew too sheer, back to the western wall. And in an hour or twain the
gully’s bed grew shallow and it narrowed to an end, whence Brandoch
Daha gazed between his feet to where, a few spear’s lengths below, the
smooth slabs curved downward out of sight and the eye leapt straight
from their clean-cut edge to shimmering tree-tops that showed tiny
as mosses beyond the unseen gulf of air. So they rested awhile; then
returning a little up the gully forced a way out on to the face and
made a hazardous traverse to a new gully westward of the first, and so
at last plunged down a long fan of scree and rested on soft fine turf
at the foot of the cliffs.
Little mountain gentians grew at their feet; the pathless forest
lay like the sea below them; before them the mountains of the Zia
stood supreme: the white gables of Islargyn, the lean dark finger of
Tetrachnampf nan Tshark lying back above the Zia Pass pointing to the
sky, and west of it, jutting above the valley, the square bastion
of Tetrachnampf nan Tsurm. The greater mountains were for the most
part sunk behind this nearer range, but Koshtra Belorn still towered
above the Pass. As a queen looking down from her high window, so
she overlooked those green woods sleeping in the noon-day; and on
her forehead was beauty like a star. Behind them where they sat, the
escarpment reared back in cramped perspective, a pile of massive
buttresses cleft with ravines leading upward from that land of leaves
and waters to the hidden wintry flats of the Moruna.
• • • • •
That night they slept on the fell under the stars, and next day, going
down into the woods, came at dusk to an open glade by the waters of the
broad-bosomed Bhavinan. The turf was like a cushion, a place for elves
to dance in. The far bank full half a mile away was wooded to the water
with silver birches, dainty as mountain nymphs, their limbs gleaming
through the twilight, their reflections quivering in the depths of the
mighty river. In the high air day lingered yet, a faint warmth tingeing
the great outlines of the mountains, and westward up the river the
young moon stooped above the trees. East of the glade a little wooded
eminence, no higher than a house, ran back from the river bank, and in
its shoulder a hollow cave.
“How smiles it to thee?” said Juss. “Be sure we shall find no better
place than this thou seest to dwell in until the snows melt and we
may on. For though it be summer all the year round in this fortunate
valley, it is winter on the great hills, and until the spring we were
mad to essay our enterprise.”
“Why then,” said Brandoch Daha, “turn we shepherds awhile. Thou shalt
pipe to me, and I’ll foot thee measures shall make the dryads think
they ne’er went to school. And Mivarsh shall be a goat-foot god to
chase them; for to tell thee truth country wenches are long grown
tedious to me. O, ’tis a sweet life. But ere we fall to it, bethink
thee, O Juss: time marcheth, and the world waggeth: what goeth forward
in Demonland till summer be come and we home again?”
“Also my heart is heavy because of my brother Spitfire,” said Juss. “O,
’twas an ill storm, and ill delays.”
“Away with vain regrettings,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “For thy sake
and thy brother’s fared I on this journey, and it is known to thee that
never yet stretched I out mine hand upon aught that I have not taken
it, and had my will of it.”
So they made their dwelling in that cave beside deep-eddying Bhavinan,
and before that cave they ate their Yule feast, the strangest they
had eaten all the days of their lives: seated, not as of old, on
their high seats of ruby or of opal, but on mossy banks where daisies
slept and creeping thyme; lighted not by the charmed escarbuncle of
the high presence chamber in Galing, but by the shifting beams of a
brushwood fire that shone not on those pillars crowned with monsters
that were the wonder of the world but on the mightier pillars of the
sleeping beechwoods. And in place of that feigned heaven of jewels
self-effulgent beneath the golden canopy at Galing, they ate pavilioned
under a charmed summer night, where the great stars of winter, Orion,
Sirius, and the Little Dog, were raised up near the zenith, yielding
their known courses in the southern sky to Canopus and the strange
stars of the south. When the trees spake, it was not with their winter
voice of bare boughs creaking, but with whisper of leaves and beetles
droning in the fragrant air. The bushes were white with blossom, not
with hoar-frost, and the dim white patches under the trees were not
snow, but wild lilies and wood anemones sleeping in the night.
All the creatures of the forest came to that feast, for they were
without fear, having never looked upon the face of man. Little
tree-apes, and popinjays, and titmouses, and coalmouses, and wrens, and
gentle round-eyed lemurs, and rabbits, and badgers, and dormice, and
pied squirrels, and beavers from the streams, and storks, and ravens,
and bustards, and wombats, and the spider-monkey with her baby at her
breast: all these came to gaze with curious eye upon those travellers.
And not these alone, but fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses:
the wild buffalo, the wolf, the tiger with monstrous paws, the bear,
the fiery-eyed unicorn, the elephant, the lion and she-lion in their
majesty, came to behold them in the firelight in that quiet glade.
“It seems we hold court in the woods to-night,” said Lord Brandoch
Daha. “It is very pleasant. Yet hold thee ready with me to put some
fire-brands amongst ’em if need befall. ’Tis likely some of these great
beasts are little schooled in court ceremonies.”
Juss answered, “And thou lovest me, do no such thing. There lieth this
curse upon all this land of the Bhavinan, that whoso, whether he be man
or beast, slayeth in this land or doeth here any deed of violence,
there cometh down a curse upon him that in that instant must destroy
and blast him for ever off the face of the earth. Therefore it was
I took away from Mivarsh his bow and arrows when we came down from
Omprenne Edge, lest he should kill game for us and so a worse thing
befall him.”
Mivarsh harkened not, but sat all a-quake, looking intently on a
crocodile that came ponderously out upon the bank. And now he began to
scream with terror, crying, “Save me! let me fly! give me my weapons!
It was foretold me by a wise woman that a cocadrill-serpent must devour
me at last!” Whereat the beasts drew back uneasily, and the crocodile,
his small eyes wide, startled by Mivarsh’s cries and violent gestures,
lurched with what speed he might back into the water.
• • • • •
Now in that place Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz
abode for four moons’ space. Nothing they lacked of meat and drink,
for the beasts of the forest, finding them well disposed, brought them
of their store. Moreover, there came flying from the south, about the
ending of the year, a martlet which alighted in Juss’s bosom and said
to him, “The gentle Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the Gods, had news
of your coming. And because she knoweth you both mighty men of your
hands and high of heart, therefore by me she sent you greeting.”
Juss said, “O little martlet, we would see thy Queen face to face, and
thank her.”
“Ye must thank her,” said the bird, “in Koshtra Belorn.”
Brandoch Daha said, “That shall we fulfil. Thither only do our thoughts
intend.”
“Your greatness,” said the martlet, “must approve that word. And know
that it is easier to lay under you all the world in arms than to ascend
up afoot into that mountain.”
“Thy wings were too weak to lift me, else I’d borrow them,” said
Brandoch Daha.
But the martlet answered, “Not the eagle that flieth against the sun
may alight on Koshtra Belorn. No foot may tread her, save of those
blessed ones to whom the Gods gave leave ages ago, till they be come
that the patient years await: men like unto the Gods in beauty and in
power, who of their own might and main, unholpen by magic arts, shall
force a passage up to her silent snows.”
Brandoch Daha laughed. “Not the eagle?” he cried, “but thou, little
flitter-jack?”
“Nought that hath feet,” said the martlet. “I have none.”
The Lord Brandoch Daha took it tenderly in his hand and held it high in
the air, looking to the high lands in the south. The birches swaying
by the Bhavinan were not more graceful nor the distant mountain-crags
behind them more untameable to behold than he. “Fly to thy Queen,” he
said, “and say thou spakest with Lord Juss beside the Bhavinan and with
Lord Brandoch Daha of Demonland. Say unto her that we be they that were
for to come; and that we, of our own might and main, ere spring be well
turned summer, will come up to her in Koshtra Belorn to thank her for
her gracious sendings.”
• • • • •
Now when it was April, and the sun moving among the signs of heaven was
about departing out of Aries and entering into Taurus, and the melting
of the snows in the high mountains had swollen all the streams to
spate, filling the mighty river so that he brimmed his banks and swept
by like a tide-race, Lord Juss said, “Now is the season propitious
for our crossing of the flood of Bhavinan and setting forth into the
mountains.”
“Willingly,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “But shall’s walk it, or swim it,
or take to us wings? To me, that have many a time swum back and forth
over Thunderfirth to whet mine appetite ere I brake my fast, ’tis a
small matter of this river stream howso swift it runneth. But with our
harness and weapons and all our gear, that were far other matter.”
“Is it for nought we are grown friends with them that do inhabit these
woods?” said Juss. “The crocodile shall bear us over Bhavinan for the
asking.”
“It is an ill fish,” said Mivarsh; “and it sore dislikes me.”
“Then here thou must abide,” said Brandoch Daha. “But be not dismayed,
I will go with thee. The fish may bear us both at a draught and not
founder.”
“It was a wise woman foretold it me,” answered Mivarsh, “that such a
kind of serpent must be my bane. Yet be it according to your will.”
So they whistled them up the crocodile; and first the Lord Juss fared
over Bhavinan, riding on the back of that serpent with all his gear and
weapons of war, and landed several hundred paces down stream for the
stream was very strong; and thereafter the crocodile returning to the
north bank took the Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz and put them
across in like manner. Mivarsh put on a gallant face, but rode as near
the tail as might be, fingering certain herbs from his wallet that were
good against serpents, his lips moving in urgent supplication to his
gods. When they were come ashore they thanked the crocodile and bade
him farewell and went their way swiftly through the woods. And Mivarsh,
as one new loosed from prison, went before them with a light step,
singing and snapping his fingers.
Now had they for three days or four a devious journey through the
foot-hills, and thereafter made their dwelling for forty days’ space
in the Zia valley, above the gorges. Here the valley widens to a
flat-floored amphitheatre, and lean limestone crags tower heavenward on
every side. High in the south, couched above great gray moraines, the
Zia glacier, wrinkle-backed like some dragon survived out of the elder
chaos, thrusts his snout into the valley. Here out of his caves of
ice the young river thunders, casting up a spray where rainbows hover
in bright weather. The air blows sharp from the glacier, and alpine
flowers and shrubs feed on the sunlight.
Here they gathered them good store of food. And every morning they were
afoot before the sunrise, to ascend the mountains and make sure their
practice ere they should attempt the greater peaks. So they explored
all the spurs of Tetrachnampf and Islargyn, and those peaks themselves;
the rock peaks of the lower Nuanner range overlooking Bhavinan; the
snow peaks east of Islargyn: Avsek, Kiurmsur, Myrsu, Byrshnargyn, and
Borch Mehephtharsk, loftiest of the range, by all his ridges, dwelling
a week on the moraines of the Mehephtharsk glacier above the upland
valley of Foana; and westward the dolomite group of Burdjazarshra and
the great wall of Shilack.
Now were their muscles by these exercises grown like bands of iron,
and they hardy as mountain bears and sure of foot as mountain goats.
So on the ninth day of May they crossed the Zia Pass and camped on the
rocks under the south wall of Tetrachnampf nan Tshark. The sun went
down, like blood, in a cloudless sky. On either hand and before them,
the snows stretched blue and silent. The air of those high snowfields
was bitter cold. A league and more to the south a line of black cliffs
bounded the glacier-basin. Over that black wall, twelve miles away,
Koshtra Belorn and Koshtra Pivrarcha towered against an opal heaven.
While they supped in the fading light, Juss said, “The wall thou seest
is called the Barriers of Emshir. Though over it lieth the straight
way to Koshtra Pivrarcha, yet is it not our way, but an ill way. For,
first, that barrier hath till now been held unclimbable, and so proven
even by half-gods that alone assayed it.”
“I await not thy second reason,” said Brandoch Daha. “Thou hast had thy
way until now, and now thou shalt give me mine in this, to come with me
to-morrow and show how thou and I make of such barriers a puff of smoke
if they stand in the path between us and our fixed ends.”
“Were it only this,” answered Juss, “I would not gainsay thee. But
not senseless rocks alone are we set to deal with if we take this
road. Seest thou where the Barriers end in the east against yonder
monstrous pyramid of tumbled crags and hanging glaciers that shuts
out our prospect eastaway? Menksur men call it, but in heaven it
hath a more dreadful name: Ela Mantissera, which is to say, the Bed
of the Mantichores. O Brandoch Daha, I will climb with thee what
unscaled cliff thou list, and I will fight with thee against the most
grisfullest beasts that ever grazed by the Tartarian streams. But
both these things in one moment of time, that were a rash part and a
foolish.”
But Brandoch Daha laughed, and answered him, “To nought else may I
liken thee, O Juss, but to the sparrow-camel. To whom they said, ‘Fly,’
and it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a camel’; and when they said,
‘Carry,’ it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a bird.’”
“Wilt thou egg me on so much?” said Juss.
“Ay,” said Brandoch Daha, “if thou wilt be assish.”
“Wilt thou quarrel?” said Juss.
“Thou knowest me,” said Brandoch Daha.
“Well,” said Juss, “thy counsel hath been right once and saved us, for
nine times that it hath been wrong, and my counsel saved thee from an
evil end. If ill behap us, it shall be set down that it had from thy
peevish will original.” And they wrapped them in their cloaks and slept.
On the morrow they rose betimes and set forth south across the snows
that were crisp and hard for the frosts of the night. The Barriers, as
it were but a stone’s-throw removed, stood black before them; starlight
swallowed up size and distance that showed only by walking, as still
they walked and still that wall seemed no nearer nor no larger. Twice
and thrice they dipped into a valley or crossed a raised-up fold of
the glacier; till they stood at break of day below the smooth blank
wall frozen and bleak, with never a ledge in sight great enough to bear
snow, barring their passage southward.
They halted and ate and scanned the wall before them. And ill to do
with it seemed. So they searched for an ascent, and found at last a
spot where the glacier swelled higher, a mile or less from the western
shoulder of Ela Mantissera. Here the cliff was but four or five hundred
feet high; yet smooth enow and ill enow to look on; yet their likeliest
choice.
Some while it was ere they might get a footing on that wall, but at
length Brandoch Daha, standing on Juss’s shoulder, found him a hold
where no hold showed from below, and with great travail fought a
passage up the rock to a stance some hundred feet above them, whence
sitting sure on a broad ledge great enough to hold six or seven folk
at a time he played up Lord Juss on the rope and after him Mivarsh. An
hour and a half it cost them for that short climb.
“The north-east buttress of Ill Stack was children’s gruel to this,”
said Lord Juss.
“There’s more aloft,” said Lord Brandoch Daha, lying back against the
precipice, his hands clasped behind his head, his feet a-dangle over
the ledge. “In thine ear, Juss: I would not go first on the rope again
on such a pitch for all the wealth of Impland.”
“Wilt repent and return?” said Juss.
“If thou’lt be last down,” he answered. “If not, I’d liever risk what
waits untried above us. If it prove worse, I am confirmed atheist.”
Lord Juss leaned out, holding by the rock with his right hand,
scanning the wall beside and above them. An instant he hung so, then
drew back. His square jaw was set, and his teeth glinted under his dark
moustachios something fiercely, as a thunder-beam betwixt dark sky and
sea in a night of thunder. His nostrils widened, as of a war-horse at
the call of battle; his eyes were like the violet levin-brand, and all
his body hardened like a bowstring drawn as he grasped his sharp sword
and pulled it forth grating and singing from its sheath.
Brandoch Daha sprang afoot and drew his sword, Zeldornius’s loom. “What
stirreth?” he cried. “Thou look’st ghastly. That look thou hadst when
thou tookest the helm and our prows swung westward toward Kartadza
Sound, and the fate of Demonland and all the world beside hung in thine
hand for wail or bliss.”
“There’s little sword-room,” said Juss. And again he looked forth
eastward and upward along the cliff. Brandoch Daha looked over his
shoulder. Mivarsh took his bow and set an arrow on the string.
“It hath scented us down the wind,” said Brandoch Daha.
Small time was there to ponder. Swinging from hold to hold across the
dizzy precipice, as an ape swingeth from bough to bough, the beast drew
near. The shape of it was as a lion, but bigger and taller, the colour
a dull red, and it had prickles lancing out behind, as of a porcupine;
its face a man’s face, if aught so hideous might be conceived of
human kind, with staring eyeballs, low wrinkled brow, elephant ears,
some wispy mangy likeness of a lion’s mane, huge bony chaps, brown
blood-stained gubber-tushes grinning betwixt bristly lips. Straight for
the ledge it made, and as they braced them to receive it, with a great
swing heaved a man’s height above them and leaped down upon their ledge
from aloft betwixt Juss and Brandoch Daha ere they were well aware of
its changed course. Brandoch Daha smote at it a great swashing blow and
cut off its scorpion tail; but it clawed Juss’s shoulder, smote down
Mivarsh, and charged like a lion upon Brandoch Daha, who, missing his
footing on the narrow edge of rock, fell backwards a great fall, clear
of the cliff, down to the snow an hundred feet beneath them.