ice-ridge. “The rest is thine,” he cried to Lord Juss. “I would not
that any save thou should tread him first, for he is thy mountain.”
“Without thee I had never won up hither,” answered Juss; “and it is not
fitting that I should have that glory to stand first upon the peak when
thine was the main achievement. Go thou before.”
“I will not,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “And it is not so.”
So Juss went forward, smiting with his axe great steps just below the
backbone of the ridge on the western side, and Lord Brandoch Daha and
Mivarsh Faz followed in the steps.
Presently a wind arose in the unseen spaces of the sky, and tore the
mist like a rotten garment. Spears of sunlight blazed through the
rifts. Distant sunny lands shimmered in the unimaginable depths to the
southward, seen over the crest of a tremendous wall that stood beyond
the abyss: a screen of black rock buttresses seamed with a thousand
gullies of glistening snow, and crowned as with battlements with a row
of mountain peaks, savage and fierce of form, that made the eye blink
for their brightness: the lean spires of the summit-ridge of Koshtra
Pivrarcha. These, that the Demons had so long looked up to as in
distant heaven, now lay beneath their feet. Only the peak they climbed
still reared itself above them, clear now and near to view, showing a
bare beetling cliff on the north-east, overhung by a cornice of snow.
Juss marked the cornice, turned him again to his step-cutting, and in
half an hour from the breaking of the clouds stood on that unascended
pinnacle, with all earth beneath him.
• • • • •
They went down a few feet on the southern side and sat on some rocks.
A fair lake studded with islands lay bosomed in wooded and crag-girt
hills at the foot of a deep-cut valley which ran down from the Gates
of Zimiamvia. Ailinon and Ashnilan rose near by in the west, with
the delicate white peak of Akra Garsh showing between them. Beyond,
mountain beyond mountain like the sea.
Juss looked southward where the blue land stretched in fold upon fold
of rolling country, soft and misty, till it melted in the sky. “Thou
and I,” said he, “first of the children of men, now behold with living
eyes the fabled land of Zimiamvia. Is that true, thinkest thou, which
philosophers tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may
tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be
departed, even they that were great upon earth and did great deeds
when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and
the glories thereof, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet
oppressors?”
“Who knoweth?” said Brandoch Daha, resting his chin in his hand and
gazing south as in a dream. “Who shall say he knoweth?”
They were silent awhile. Then Juss spake saying, “If thou and I come
thither at last, O my friend, shall we remember Demonland?” And when he
answered him not, Juss said, “I had rather row on Moonmere under the
stars of a summer’s night, than be a King of all the land of Zimiamvia.
And I had rather watch the sunrise on the Scarf, than dwell in gladness
all my days on an island of that enchanted Lake of Ravary, under
Koshtra Belorn.”
Now the curtain of cloud that had hung till now about the eastern
heights was rent into shreds, and Koshtra Belorn stood like a bride
before them, two or three miles to eastward, facing the slanting rays
of the sun. On all her vast precipices scarce a rock showed bare, so
encrusted were they with a dazzling robe of snow. More lovely she
seemed and more graceful in her airy poise than they had yet beheld
her. Juss and Brandoch Daha rose up, as men arise to greet a queen in
her majesty. In silence they looked on her for some minutes.
Then Brandoch Daha spake, saying, “Behold thy bride, O Juss.”
XIII: KOSHTRA BELORN
HOW THE LORD JUSS ACCOMPLISHED AT LENGTH HIS DREAM’S BEHEST,
TO INQUIRE IN KOSHTRA BELORN; AND WHAT MANNER OF ANSWER HE
RECEIVED.
That night they spent safely, by favour of the Gods, under the highest
crags of Koshtra Pivrarcha, in a sheltered hollow piled round with
snow. Dawn came like a lily, saffron-hued, smirched with smoke-gray
streaks that slanted from the north. The great peaks stood as islands
above a main of level cloud, out of which the sun walked flaming, a
ball of red-gold fire. An hour before his face appeared, the Demons
and Mivarsh were roped and started on their eastward journey. Ill to
do with as was the crest of the great north buttress by which they had
climbed the mountain, seven times worse was this eastern ridge, leading
to Koshtra Belorn. Leaner of back it was, flanked by more profound
abysses, deeplier gashed, too treacherous and too sudden in its changes
from sure rock to rotten and perilous: piled with tottering crags,
hung about with cornices of uncertain snow, girt with cliffs smooth
and holdless as a castle wall. Small marvel that it cost them thirteen
hours to come down that ridge. The sun wheeled towards the west when
they reached at length that frozen edge, sharp as a sickle, that was in
the Gates of Zimiamvia. Weary they were, and ropeless; for by no means
else might they come down from the last great tower save by the rope
made fast from above. A fierce north-easter had swept the ridges all
day, bringing snow-storms on its wings. Their fingers were numbed with
cold, and the beards of Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz stiff with
ice.
Too weary to halt, they set forth again, Juss leading. It was many
hundred paces along that ice-edge, and the sun was near setting when
they stood at last within a stone’s throw of the cliffs of Koshtra
Belorn. Since before noon avalanches had thundered ceaselessly down
those cliffs. Now, in the cool of the evening, all was still. The wind
was fallen. The deep blue sky was without a cloud. The fires of sunset
crept down the vast white precipices before them till every ledge and
fold and frozen pinnacle glowed pink colour, and every shadow became
an emerald. The shadow of Koshtra Pivrarcha lay cold across the lower
stretches of the face on the Zimiamvian side. The edge of that shadow
was as the division betwixt the living and the dead.
“What dost think on?” said Juss to Brandoch Daha, that leaned upon his
sword surveying that glory.
Brandoch Daha started and looked on him. “Why,” said he, “on this: that
it is likely thy dream was but a lure, sent thee by the King to tempt
us on to mighty actions reserved for our destruction. On this side at
least ’tis very certain there lieth no way up Koshtra Belorn.”
“What of the little martlet,” said Juss, “who, whiles we were yet
a great way off, flew out of the south to greet us with a gracious
message?”
“Well if it were not a devil of his,” said Brandoch Daha.
“I will not turn back,” said Juss. “Thou needest not to come with me.”
And he turned again to look on those frozen cliffs.
“No?” said Brandoch Daha. “Nor thou with me. Thou’lt make me angry if
thou wilt so vilely wrest my words. Only fare not too securely; and let
that axe still be ready in thine hand, as is my sword, for kindlier
work than step-cutting. And if thou embrace the hope to climb her by
this wall before us, then hath the King’s enchantery made thee fey.”
By then was the sun gone down. Under the wings of night uplifted from
the east, the unfathomable heights of air turned a richer blue; and
here and there, most dim and hard to see, throbbed a tiny point of
light: the greater stars opening their eyelids to the gathering dark.
Gloom crept upward, brimming the valleys far below like a rising tide
of the sea. Frost and stillness waited on the eternal night to resume
her reign. The solemn cliffs of Koshtra Belorn stood in tremendous
silence, death-pale against the sky.
Juss came backward a step along the ridge, and laying his hand on
Brandoch Daha’s, “Be still,” he said, “and behold this marvel.” A
little up the face of the mountain on the Zimiamvian side, it was as if
some leavings of the after-glow had been entangled among the crags and
frozen curtains of snow. As the gloom deepened, that glow brightened
and spread, filling a rift that seemed to go into the mountain.
“It is because of us,” said Juss, in a low voice. “She is afire with
expectation of us.”
No sound was there save of their breath coming and going, and of the
strokes of Juss’s axe, and of the chips of ice chinking downwards
into silence as he cut their way along the ridge. And ever brighter,
as night fell, burned that strange sunset light above them. Perilous
climbing it was for fifty feet or more from the ridge, for they had no
rope, the way was hard to see, and the rocks were steep and iced and
every ledge deep in snow. Yet came they safe at length up by a steep
short gully to the gully’s head where it widened to that rift of the
wondrous light. Here might two walk abreast, and Lord Juss and Lord
Brandoch Daha took their weapons and entered abreast into the rift.
Mivarsh was fain to call to them, but he was speechless. He came after,
close at their heels like a dog.
For some way the bed of the cave ran upwards, then dipped at a gentle
slope deep into the mountain. The air was cold, yet warm after the
frozen air without. The rose-red light shone warm on the walls and
floor of that passage, but none might say whence it shone. Strange
sculptures glimmered overhead, bull-headed men, stags with human faces,
mammoths, and behemoths of the flood: vast forms and uncertain carved
in the living rock. For hours Juss and his companions pursued their
way, winding downward, losing all sense of north and south. Little by
little the light faded, and after an hour or two they went in darkness:
yet not in utter darkness, but as of a starless night in summer where
all night long twilight lingers. They went a soft pace, for fear of
pitfalls in the way.
After a while Juss halted and sniffed the air. “I smell new-mown hay,”
he said, “and flower-scents. Is this my fantasy, or canst thou smell
them too?”
“Ay, and have smelt it this half-hour past,” answered Brandoch Daha;
“also the passage wideneth before us, and the roof of it goeth higher
as we journey.”
“This,” said Juss, “is a great wonder.”
They fared onward, and in a while the slope slackened, and they felt
loose stones and grit beneath their feet, and in a while soft earth.
They bent down and touched the earth, and there was grass growing, and
night-dew on the grass, and daisies folded up asleep. A brook tinkled
on the right. So they crossed that meadow in the dark, until they stood
below a shadowy mass that bulked big above them. In a blind wall so
high the top was swallowed up in the darkness a gate stood open. They
crossed that threshold and passed through a paved court that clanked
under their tread. Before them a flight of steps went up to folding
doors under an archway.
Lord Brandoch Daha felt Mivarsh pluck him by the sleeve. The little
man’s teeth were chattering together in his head for terror. Brandoch
Daha smiled and put an arm about him. Juss had his foot on the lowest
step.
In that instant came a sound of music playing, but of what instruments
they might not guess. Great thundering chords began it, like trumpets
calling to battle, first high, then low, then shuddering down to
silence; then that great call again, sounding defiance. Then the keys
took new voices, groping in darkness, rising to passionate lament,
hovering and dying away on the wind, until nought remained but a roll
as of muffled thunder, long, low, quiet, but menacing ill. And now out
of the darkness of that induction burst a mighty form, three ponderous
blows, as of breakers that plunge and strike on a desolate shore; a
pause; those blows again; a grinding pause; a rushing of wings, as of
Furies steaming up from the pit; another flight of them dreadful in its
deliberation; then a wild rush upward and a swooping again; confusion
of hell, raging serpents blazing through night sky. Then on a sudden
out of a distant key, a sweet melody, long-drawn and clear, like a
blaze of low sunshine piercing the dust-clouds above a battle-field.
This was but an interlude to the terror of the great main theme that
came in tumultuous strides up again from the deeps, storming to a grand
climacteric of fury and passing away into silence. Now came a majestic
figure, stately and calm, born of that terror, leading to it again:
battlings of these themes in many keys, and at last the great triple
blow, thundering in new strength, crushing all joy and sweetness as
with a mace of iron, battering the roots of life into a general ruin.
But even in the main stride of its outrage and terror, that great power
seemed to shrivel. The thunder-blasts crashed weaklier, the harsh blows
rattled awry, and the vast frame of conquest and destroying violence
sank down panting, tottered and rumbled ingloriously into silence.
Like men held in a trance those lords of Demonland listened to the
last echoes of the great sad chord where that music had breathed out
its heart, as if the very heart of wrath were broken. But this was not
the end. Cold and serene as some chaste virgin vowed to the Gods, with
clear eyes which see nought below high heaven, a quiet melody rose from
that grave of terror. Weak it seemed at first, a little thing after
that cataclysm; a little thing, like spring’s first bud peeping after
the blasting reign of cold and ice. Yet it walked undismayed, gathering
as it went beauty and power. And on a sudden the folding doors swung
open, shedding a flood of radiance down the stairs.
Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha watched, as men watch for a star to
rise, that radiant portal. And like a star indeed, or like the tranquil
moon appearing, they beheld after a while one crowned like a Queen with
a diadem of little clouds that seemed stolen from the mountain sunset,
scattering soft beams of rosy brightness. She stood alone under that
mighty portico with its vast shadowy forms of winged lions in shining
stone black as jet. Youthful she seemed, as one that hath but just
bidden adieu to childhood, with grave sweet lips and grave black eyes
and hair like the night. Little black martlets perched on her either
shoulder, and a dozen more skimmed the air above her head, so swift of
wing that scarcely the eye might follow them. Meantime, that delicate
and simple melody mounted from height to height, until in a while it
burned with all the fires of summer, burned as summer to the uttermost
ember, fierce and compulsive in its riot of love and beauty. So that,
before the last triumphant chords died down in silence, that music had
brought back to Juss all the glories of the mountains, the sunset fires
on Koshtra Belorn, the first great revelation of the peaks from Morna
Moruna; and over all these, as the spirit of that music to the eye made
manifest, the image of that Queen so blessed-fair in her youth and
her clear brow’s sweet solemn respect and promise: in every line and
pose of her fair form, virginal dainty as a flower, and kindled from
withinward as never flower was with that divinity before the face of
which speech and song fall silent and men may but catch their breath
and worship.
When she spoke, it was with a voice like crystal: “Thanks be and praise
to the blessed Gods. For lo, the years depart, and the fated years
bring forth as the Gods ordain. And ye be those that were for to come.”
Surely those great lords of Demonland stood like little boys before
her. She said again, “Are not ye Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha of
Demonland, come up to me by the way banned to all mortals else, come up
into Koshtra Belorn?”
Then answered Lord Juss for them both and said, “Surely, O Queen
Sophonisba, we be they thou namest.”
Now the Queen carried them into her palace, and into a great hall where
was her throne and state. The pillars of the hall were as vast towers,
and there were galleries above them, tier upon tier, rising higher than
sight could reach or the light of the gentle lamps in their stands that
lighted the tables and the floor. The walls and the pillars were of a
sombre stone unpolished, and on the walls strange portraitures: lions,
dragons, nickers of the sea, spread-eagles, elephants, swans, unicorns,
and other, lively made and richly set forth with curious colours of
painting: all of giant size beyond the experience of human kind, so
that to be in that hall was as it were to shelter in a small spot of
light and life, canopied, vaulted, and embraced by the circumambient
unknown.
The Queen sate on her throne that was bright like the face of a river
ruffled with wind under a silver moon. Save for those little martlets
she was unattended. She made those lords of Demonland sit down before
her face, and there were brought forth by the agency of unseen hands
tables before them and precious dishes filled with unknown viands. And
there played a soft music, made in the air by what unseen art they knew
not.
The Queen said, “Behold, ambrosia which the Gods do eat and nectar
which they drink; on which meat and wine myself do feed, by the bounty
of the blessed Gods. And the savour thereof wearieth not, and the glow
thereof and the perfume thereof dieth not for ever.”
So they tasted of the ambrosia, that was white to look on and crisp to
the tooth and sweet, and being eaten revived strength in the body more
than a surfeit of bullock’s flesh, and of the nectar that was all afoam
and coloured like the inmost fires of sunset. Surely somewhat of the
peace of the Gods was in that nectar divine.
The Queen said, “Tell me, why are ye come?”
Juss answered, “Surely there was a dream sent me, O Queen Sophonisba,
through the gate of horn, and it bade me inquire hither after him I
most desire, for want of whom my whole soul languisheth in sorrow this
year gone by: even after my dear brother, the Lord Goldry Bluszco.”
His words ceased in his throat. For with the speaking of that name the
firm fabric of that palace quivered like the leaves of a forest under a
sudden squall. Colour went from the scene, like the blood chased from
a man’s face by fear, and all was of a pallid hue, like the landscape
which one beholds of a bright summer day after lying with eyes closed
for a space face-upward under the blazing sun: all gray and cold, the
warm colours burnt to ashes. Withal, followed the appearance of hateful
little creatures issuing from the joints of the paving stones and the
great blocks of the walls and pillars: some like grasshoppers with
human heads and wings of flies, some like fishes with stings in their
tails, some fat like toads, some like eels a-wriggling with puppy-dogs’
heads and asses’ ears: loathly ones, exiles of glory, scaly and obscene.
The horror passed. Colour returned. The Queen sat like a graven statue,
her lips parted. After a while she said with a shaken voice, low and
with downcast eyes, “Sirs, you demand of me a very strange matter, such
as wherewith never hitherto I have been acquainted. As you are noble, I
beseech you speak not that name again. In the name of the blessed Gods,
speak it not again.”
Lord Juss was silent. Nought good were his thoughts within him.
In due time a little martlet by the Queen’s command brought them to
their bed-chambers. And there in great beds soft and fragrant they went
to rest.
[Illustration: IN KOSHTRA BELORN.]
Juss waked long in the doubtful light, troubled at heart. At length he
fell into a troubled sleep. The glimmer of the lamps mingled with his
dreams and his dreams with it, so that scarce he wist whether asleep
or waking he beheld the walls of the bed-chamber dispart in sunder,
disclosing a prospect of vast paths of moonlight, and a solitary
mountain peak standing naked out of a sea of cloud that gleamed white
beneath the moon. It seemed to him that the power of flight was upon
him, and that he flew to that mountain and hung in air beholding it
near at hand, and a circle as the appearance of fire round about it,
and on the summit of the mountain the likeness of a burg or citadel
of brass that was green with eld and surface-battered by the frosts
and winds of ages. On the battlements was the appearance of a great
company both men and women, never still, now walking on the wall with
hands lifted up as in supplication to the crystal lamps of heaven,
now flinging themselves on their knees or leaning against the brazen
battlements to bury their faces in their hands, or standing at gaze as
night-walkers gazing into the void. Some seemed men of war, and some
great courtiers by their costly apparel, rulers and kings and kings’
daughters, grave bearded counsellors, youths and maidens and crowned
queens. And when they went, and when they stood, and when they seemed
to cry aloud bitterly, all was noiseless even as the tomb, and the
faces of those mourners pallid as a dead corpse is pallid.
Then it seemed to Juss that he beheld a keep of brass flat-roofed
standing on the right, a little higher than the walls, with battlements
about the roof. He strove to cry aloud, but it was as if some devil
gripped his throat stifling him, for no sound came. For in the midst
of the roof, as it were on a bench of stone, was the appearance of one
reclining; his chin resting in his great right hand, his elbow on an
arm of the bench, his cloak about him gorgeous with cloth of gold, his
ponderous two-handed sword beside him with its heart-shaped ruby pommel
darkly resplendent in the moonlight. Nought otherwise looked he than
when Juss last beheld him, on their ship before the darkness swallowed
them; only the ruddy hues of life seemed departed from him, and his
brow seemed clouded with sorrow. His eye met his brother’s, but with no
look of recognition, gazing as if on some far point in the deeps beyond
the star-shine. It seemed to Juss that even so would he have looked to
find his brother Goldry as he now found him; his head unbent for all
the tyranny of those dark powers that held him in captivity: keeping
like a God his patient vigil, heedless alike of the laments of them
that shared his prison and of the menace of the houseless night about
him.
The vision passed; and Lord Juss perceived himself in his bed again,
the cold morning light stealing between the hangings of the windows and
dimming the soft radiance of the lamps.
• • • • •
Now for seven days they dwelt in that palace. No living thing they
encountered save only the Queen and her little martlets, but all
things desirous were ministered unto them by unseen hands and all
royal entertainment. Yet was Lord Juss heavy at heart, for as often
as he would question the Queen of Goldry, so she would ever put him
by, praying him earnestly not a second time to pronounce that name of
terror. At last, walking with her alone in the cool of the evening on
a trodden path of a meadow where asphodel grew and other holy flowers
beside a quiet stream, he said, “So it is, O Queen Sophonisba, that
when first I came hither and spake with thee I well thought that by
thee my matter should be well sped. And didst not thou then promise me
thy goodness and grace from thee thereafter?”
“This is very true,” said the Queen.
“Then why,” said he, “when I would question thee of that I make most
store of, wilt thou always daff me and put me by?”
She was silent, hanging her head. He looked sidelong for a minute at
her sweet profile, the grave clear lines of her mouth and chin. “Of
whom must I inquire,” he said, “if not of thee, which art Queen in
Koshtra Belorn and must know this thing?”
She stopped and faced him with dark eyes that were like a child’s for
innocence and like a God’s for splendour. “My lord, that I have put
thee off, ascribe it not to evil intent. That were an unnatural part
indeed in me unto you of Demonland who have fulfilled the weird and set
me free again to visit again the world of men which I so much desire,
despite all my sorrows I there fulfilled in elder time. Or shall I
forget you are at enmity with the wicked house of Witchland, and
therefore doubly pledged my friends?”
“That the event must prove, O Queen,” said Lord Juss.
“O saw ye Morna Moruna?” cried she. “Saw ye it in the wilderness?” And
when he looked on her still dark and mistrustful, she said, “Is this
forgot? And methought it should be mention and remembrance made thereof
unto the end of the world. I pray thee, my lord, what age art thou?”
“I have looked upon this world,” answered Lord Juss, “for thrice ten
years.”
“And I,” said the Queen, “but seventeen summers. Yet that same age had
I when thou wast born, and thy grandsire before thee, and his before
him. For the Gods gave me youth for ever more, when they brought me
hither after the realm-rape that befell our house, and lodged me in
this mountain.”