the secret properties of herbs, wherein he was deeply learned. There
grew that Zamalenticion, which being well beaten up with fat without
salt is sovran for all wounds. And Dittany, which if eaten soon puts
out the arrow and healeth the wounds; and not only by its presence
stayeth snakes wheresoever they be handy to it, but by reason of its
smell carried by wind and they smell it they die. And Mandragora, which
being taken into the middle of an house compelleth all evils out of the
house, and relieveth also headaches and produceth sleep. Also he showed
her Sea Holly in his garden, that is born in secret places and in wet
ones, and the root of it is as the head of that monster which men name
the Gorgon, and the root-twigs have both eyes and nose and colour of
serpents. Of this he told her how when taking up the root, a man must
see to it that no sun shine on it, and he who would carve it must avert
his head, for it is not permitted that man may see that root unharmed.
The third day Juss showed the Queen his stables, where were his
war-horses and horses for the chase and for chariot racing stabled in
stalls with furniture of silver, and much she marvelled at his seven
white mares, sisters, so like that none might tell one from another,
given him in days gone by by the priests of Artemis in the lands beyond
the sunset. They were immortal, bearing ichor in their veins, not
blood; and the fire of it showed in their eyes like lamps burning.
The fourth night and the fifth the Queen was at Drepaby, guesting with
Lord Goldry Bluszco and the Princess Armelline, that were wedded in
Zajë Zaculo last Yule; and the sixth and seventh nights at Owlswick,
and there Spitfire made her lordly entertainment. But Lord Brandoch
Daha would not have the Queen go yet to Krothering, for he had not yet
made fair again his gardens and pleasaunces and restored his rich and
goodly treasures to his mind after their ill handling by Corinius. And
it was not his will that she should look on Krothering Castle until all
was there stablished anew according to its ancient glory.
The eighth day she came again to Galing, and now Lord Juss showed her
his study, with his astrolabes of orichalc, figured with all the signs
of the Zodiac and the mansions of the moon, standing a tall man’s
height above the floor, and his perspectives and globes and crystals
and hollow looking-glasses; and great crystal globes where he kept
homunculi whom he had made by secret processes of nature, both men and
women, less than a span long, as beautiful as one could wish to see in
their little coats, eating and drinking and going their ways in those
mighty globes of crystal where his art had given them being.
Every night, whether at Galing, Owlswick, or Drepaby Mire, was feasting
held in her honour, with music and dancing and merry-making and all
delight, and poetical recitations and feats of arms and horsemanship,
and masques and interludes the like whereof hath not been seen on
earth for beauty and wit and all magnificence.
• • • • •
Now was the ninth day come of the Queen’s guesting in Demonland, and
it was the eve of Lord Juss’s birthday, when all the great ones in the
land were come together, as four years ago they came, to do honour on
the morrow unto him and unto his brethren as was their wont aforetime.
It was fine bright weather, with every little while a shower to bring
fresh sweetness to the air, colour and refreshment to the earth, and
gladness to the sunshine. Juss walked with the Queen in the morning
in the woods of Moongarth Bottom, now bursting into leaf; and after
their mid-day meal showed her his treasuries cut in the live rock under
Galing Castle, where she beheld bars of gold and silver piled like
trunks of trees; unhewn crystals of ruby, chrysoprase, or hyacinth, so
heavy a strong man might not lift them; stacks of ivory in the tusk,
piled to the ceiling; chests and jars filled with perfumes and costly
spices, ambergris, frankincense, sweet-scented sandalwood and myrrh and
spikenard; cups and beakers and eared wine-jars and lamps and caskets
made of pure gold, worked and chased with the forms of men and women
and birds and beasts and creeping things, and ornamented with jewels
beyond price, margarites and pink and yellow sapphires, smaragds and
chrysoberyls and yellow diamonds.
When the Queen had had her fill of gazing on these, he carried
her to his great library where statues stood of the nine Muses
about Apollo, and all the walls were hidden with books: histories
and songs of old days, books of philosophy, alchymy and astronomy
and art magic, romances and music and lives of great men dead and
great treatises of all the arts of peace and war, with pictures and
illuminated characters. Great windows opened southward on the garden
from the library, and climbing rose-trees and plants of honeysuckle
and evergreen magnolia clustered about the windows. Great chairs and
couches stood about the open hearth where a fire of cedar logs burned
in winter time. Lamps of moonstones self-effulgent shaded with cloudy
green tourmaline stood on silver stands on the table and by each couch
and chair, to give light when the day was over; and all the air was
sweet with the scent of dried rose-leaves kept in ancient bowls and
vases of painted earthenware.
Queen Sophonisba said, “My lord, I love this best of all the fair
things thou hast shown me in thy castle of Galing: here where all
trouble seems a forgotten echo of an ill world left behind. Surely
my heart is glad, O my friend, that thou and these other lords of
Demonland shall now enjoy your goodly treasures and fair days in your
dear native land in peace and quietness all your lives.”
The Lord Juss stood at the window that looked westward across the lake
to the great wall of the Scarf. Some shadow of a noble melancholy
hovered about his sweet dark countenance as his gaze rested on a
curtain of rain that swept across the face of the mountain wall, half
veiling the high rock summits. “Yet think, madam,” said he, “that we
be young of years. And to strenuous minds there is an unquietude in
over-quietness.”
Now he conducted her through his armouries where he kept his weapons
and weapons for his fighting men and all panoply of war. There he
showed her swords and spears, maces and axes and daggers, orfreyed and
damascened and inlaid with jewels; byrnies and baldricks and shields;
blades so keen, a hair blown against them in a wind should be parted
in twain; charmed helms on which no ordinary sword would bite. And
Juss said unto the Queen, “Madam, what thinkest thou of these swords
and spears? For know well that these be the ladder’s rungs that we of
Demonland climbed up by to that signiory and principality which now we
hold over the four corners of the world.”
She answered, “O my lord, I think nobly of them. For an ill part it
were while we joy in the harvest, to contemn the tools that prepared
the land for it and reaped it.”
While she spoke, Juss took down from its hook a great sword with a haft
bound with plaited cords of gold and silver wire and cross-hilts of
latoun set with studs of amethyst and a drake’s head at either end of
the hilt with crimson almandines for his eyes, and the pommel a ball of
deep amber-coloured opal with red and green flashes.
“With this sword,” said he, “I went up with Gaslark to the gates of
Carcë, four years gone by this summer, being clouded in my mind by the
back-wash of the sending of Gorice the King. With this sword I fought
an hour back to back with Brandoch Daha, against Corund and Corinius
and their ablest men: the greatest fight that ever I fought, and
against the fearfullest odds. Witchland himself beheld us from Carcë
walls through the watery mist and glare, and marvelled that two men
that are born of woman could perform such deeds.”
He untied the bands of the sword and drew it singing from its sheath.
“With this sword,” he said, looking lovingly along the blade, “I have
overcome hundreds of mine enemies: Witches, and Ghouls, and barbarous
people out of Impland and the southern seas, pirates of Esamocia and
princes of the eastern main. With this sword I gat the victory in many
a battle, and most glorious of all in the battle before Carcë last
September. There, fighting against great Corund in the press of the
fight I gave him with this sword the wound that was his death-wound.”
He put up the sword again in its sheath: held it a minute as if
pondering whether or no to gird it about his waist: then slowly turned
to its place on the wall and hung it up again. He carried his head high
like a war-horse, keeping his gaze averted from the Queen as they went
out from the great armoury in Galing; yet not so skilfully but she
marked a glistening in his eye that seemed a tear standing above his
lower eyelash.
• • • • •
That night was supper set in Lord Juss’s private chamber: a light
regale, yet most sumptuous. They sat at a round table, nine in company:
the three brethren, the Lords Brandoch Daha, Zigg, and Volle, the
Ladies Armelline and Mevrian, and the Queen. Brightly flowed the
wines of Krothering and Norvasp and blithely went the talk to outward
seeming. But ever and again silence swung athwart the board, like a
gray pall, till Zigg broke it with a jest, or Brandoch Daha or his
sister Mevrian. The Queen felt the chill behind their merriment. The
silent fits came oftener as the feast went forward, as if wine and good
cheer had lost their native quality and turned fathers of black moods
and gloomy meditations.
The Lord Goldry Bluszco, that till now had spoke little, spake now not
at all, his proud dark face fixed in staid pensive lines of thought.
Spitfire too was fallen silent, his face leaned upon his hand, his brow
bent; and whiles he drank amain, and whiles he drummed his fingers
on the table. The Lord Brandoch Daha leaned back in his ivory chair,
sipping his wine. Very demure, through half-closed eyes, like a
panther dozing in the noon-day, he watched his companions at the feast.
Like sunbeams chased by cloud-shadows across a mountain-side in windy
weather, the lights of humorous enjoyment played across his face.
The Queen said, “O my lords, you have promised me I should hear the
full tale of your wars in Impland and the Impland seas, and how you
came to Carcë and of the great battle that there befell, and of the
latter end of all the lords of Witchland and of Gorice XII. of memory
accursed. I pray you let me hear it now, that our hearts may be
gladdened by the tale of great deeds the remembrance whereof shall be
for all generations, and that we may rejoice anew that all the lords
of Witchland are dead and gone because of whom and their tyranny earth
hath groaned and laboured these many years.”
Lord Juss, in whose face when it was at rest she had beheld that same
melancholy which she had marked in him in the library that same day,
poured forth more wine, and said, “O Queen Sophonisba, thou shalt hear
it all.” Therewith he told all that had befallen since they last bade
her adieu in Koshtra Belorn: of the march to the sea at Muelva; of
Laxus and his great fleet destroyed and sunk off Melikaphkhaz; of the
battle before Carcë and its swinging fortunes; of the unhallowed light
and flaring signs in heaven whereby they knew of the King’s conjuring
again in Carcë; of their waiting in the night, armed at all points,
with charms and amulets ready against what dreadful birth might be
from the King’s enchantments; of the blasting of the Iron Tower, and
the storming of the hold in pitch darkness; of the lords of Witchland
murthered at the feast, and nought left at last of the power and pomp
and terror that was Witchland save dying embers of a funeral fire and
voices wailing in the wind before the dawn.
When he had done, the Queen said, as if talking in a dream, “Surely it
may be said of these kings and lords of Witchland dead—
These wretched eminent things
Leave no more fame behind ’em than should one
Fall in a frost, and leave his print in snow;
As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts
Both form and matter.”
With those words spoken dropped silence again like a pall athwart that
banquet table, more tristful than before and full of heaviness.
On a sudden Lord Brandoch Daha stood up, unbuckling from his shoulder
his golden baldrick set with apricot-coloured sapphires and diamonds
and fire-opals that imaged thunderbolts. He threw it before him on the
table, with his sword, clattering among the cups. “O Queen Sophonisba,”
said he, “thou hast spoken a fit funeral dirge for our glory as for
Witchland’s. This sword Zeldornius gave me. I bare it at Krothering
Side against Corinius, when I threw him out of Demonland. I bare it at
Melikaphkhaz. I bare it in the last great fight in Witchland. Thou wilt
say it brought me good luck and victory in battle. But it brought not
to me, as to Zeldornius, this last best luck of all: that earth should
gape for me when my great deeds were ended.”
The Queen looked at him amazed, marvelling to see him so much moved
that she had known until now so lazy mocking and so debonair.
But the other lords of Demonland stood up and flung down their jewelled
swords on the table beside Lord Brandoch Daha’s. And Lord Juss spake
and said, “We may well cast down our swords as a last offering on
Witchland’s grave. For now must they rust: seamanship and all high
arts of war must wither: and, now that our great enemies are dead and
gone, we that were lords of all the world must turn shepherds and
hunters, lest we become mere mountebanks and fops, fit fellows for
the chambering Beshtrians or the Red Foliot. O Queen Sophonisba, and
you my brethren and my friends, that are come to keep my birthday
with me to-morrow in Galing, what make ye in holiday attire? Weep ye
rather, and weep again, and clothe you all in black, thinking that our
mightiest feats of arms and the high southing of the bright star of
our magnificence should bring us unto timeless ruin. Thinking that we,
that fought but for fighting’s sake, have in the end fought so well
we never may fight more; unless it should be in fratricidal rage each
against each. And ere that should betide, may earth close over us and
our memory perish.”
Mightily moved was the Queen to behold such a violent sorrow, albeit
she could not comprehend the roots and reason of it. Her voice shook
a little as she said, “My Lord Juss, my Lord Brandoch Daha, and you
other lords of Demonland, it was little in mine expectation to find in
you such a passion of sour discontent. For I came to rejoice with you.
And strangely it soundeth in mine ear to hear you mourn and lament your
worst enemies, at so great hazard of your lives and all you held dear,
struck down by you at last. I am but a maid and young in years, albeit
my memory goeth back two hundred springs, and ill it befitteth me to
counsel great lords and men of war. Yet strange it seemeth if there be
not peaceful enjoyment and noble deeds of peace for you all your days,
who are young and noble and lords of all the world and rich in every
treasure and high gifts of learning, and the fairest country in the
world for your dear native land. And if your swords must not rust, ye
may bear them against the uncivil races of Impland and other distant
countries to bring them to subjection.”
But Lord Goldry Bluszco laughed bitterly. “O Queen,” he cried, “shall
the correction of feeble savages content these swords, which have
warred against the house of Gorice and against all his chosen captains
that upheld the great power of Carcë and the glory and the fear
thereof?”
And Spitfire said, “What joy shall we have of soft beds and delicate
meats and all the delights that be in many-mountained Demonland, if we
must be stingless drones, with no action to sharpen our appetite for
ease?”
All were silent awhile. Then the Lord Juss spake saying, “O Queen
Sophonisba, hast thou looked ever, on a showery day in spring, upon the
rainbow flung across earth and sky, and marked how all things of earth
beyond it, trees, mountain sides, and rivers, and fields, and woods,
and homes of men, are transfigured by the colours that are in the bow?”
“Yes,” she said, “and oft desired to reach them.”
“We,” said Juss, “have flown beyond the rainbow. And there we found no
fabled land of heart’s desire, but wet rain and wind only and the cold
mountain-side. And our hearts are a-cold because of it.”
The Queen said, “How old art thou, my Lord Juss, that thou speakest as
an old man might speak?”
He answered, “I shall be thirty-three years old to-morrow, and that
is young by the reckoning of men. None of us be old, and my brethren
and Lord Brandoch Daha younger than I. Yet as old men may we now look
forth on our lives, since the goodness thereof is gone by for us.” And
he said, “Thou O Queen canst scarcely know our grief; for to thee the
blessed Gods gave thy heart’s desire: youth for ever, and peace. Would
they might give us our good gift, that should be youth for ever, and
war; and unwaning strength and skill in arms. Would they might but
give us our great enemies alive and whole again. For better it were we
should run hazard again of utter destruction, than thus live out our
lives like cattle fattening for the slaughter, or like silly garden
plants.”
The Queen’s eyes were large with wonder. “Thou couldst wish it?” she
said.
Juss answered and said, “A true saying it is that ‘a grave is a rotten
foundation.’ If thou shouldst proclaim to me at this instant the great
King alive again and sitting again in Carcë, bidding us to the dread
arbitrament of war, thou shouldst quickly see I told thee truth.”
While Juss spake, the Queen turned her gaze from one to another round
the board. In every eye, when he spake of Carcë, she saw the lightning
of the joy of battle as of life returning to men held in a deadly
trance. And when he had done, she saw in every eye the light go out.
Like Gods they seemed, in the glory of their youth and pride, seated
about that table; but sad and tragical, like Gods exiled from wide
Heaven.
None spake, and the Queen cast down her eyes, sitting as if wrapped
in thought. Then the Lord Juss rose to his feet, and said, “O Queen
Sophonisba, forgive us that our private sorrows should make us so
forgetful of our hospitality as weary our guest with a mirthless feast.
But think ’tis because we know thee our dear friend we use not too
much ceremony. To-morrow we will be merry with thee, whate’er betide
thereafter.”
So they bade good-night. But as they went out into the garden under the
stars, the Queen took Juss aside privately and said to him, “My lord,
since thou and my Lord Brandoch Daha came first of mortal men into
Koshtra Belorn, and fulfilled the weird according to preordainment,
this only hath been my desire: to further you and to enhance you and
to obtain for you what you would, so far as in me lieth. Though I be
but a weak maid, yet hath it seemed good to the blessed Gods to show
kindness unto me. One holy prayer may work things we scarce dare dream
of. Wilt thou that I pray to Them to-night?”
“Alas, dear Queen,” said he, “shall those estranged and divided
ashes unite again? Who shall turn back the flood-tide of unalterable
necessity?”
But she said, “Thou hast crystals and perspectives can show thee things
afar off. I pray bring them, and row me in thy boat up to Moonmere Head
that we may land there about midnight. And let my Lord Brandoch Daha
come with us and thy brothers. But let none else know of it. For that
were but to mock them with a false dawn, if it should prove at last to
be according to thy wisdom, O my lord, and not according to my prayers.”
So the Lord Juss did according to the word of that fair Queen, and they
rowed her up the lake by moonlight. None spake, and the Queen sate
apart in the bows of the boat, in earnest supplication to the blessed
Gods. When they were come to the head of the lake they went ashore on
a little spit of silver sand. The April night was above them, mild
with moonlight. The shadows of the fells rose inky black and beyond
imagination huge against the sky. The Queen kneeled awhile in silence
on the cold ground, and those lords of Demonland stood together in
silence watching her.
In a while she raised her eyes to heaven; and behold, between the two
main peaks of the Scarf, a meteor crept slowly out of darkness and
across the night-sky, leaving a trail of silver fire, and silently
departed into darkness. They watched, and another came, and yet
another, until the western sky above the mountain was ablaze with them.
From two points of heaven they came, one betwixt the foreclaws of the
Lion and one in the dark sign of Cancer. And they that came from the
Lion were sparkling like the white fires of Rigel or Altair, and they
that came from the Crab were haughty red, like the lustre of Antares.
The lords of Demonland, leaning on their swords, watched these portents
for a long while in silence. Then the travelling meteors ceased, and
the steadfast stars shone lonely and serene. A soft breeze stirred
among the alders and willows by the lake. The lapping waters lapping
the shingly shore made a quiet tune. A nightingale in a coppice on a
little hill sang so passionate sweet it seemed some spirit singing. As
in a trance they stood and listened, until that singing ended, and a
hush fell on water and wood and lawn. Then all the east blazed up for
an instant with sheet lightnings, and thunder growled from the east
beyond the sea.
The thunder took form so that music was in the heavens, filling earth
and sky as with trumpets calling to battle, first high, then low, then
shuddering down to silence. Juss and Brandoch Daha knew it for that
great call to battle which had preluded that music in the dark night
without her palace, in Koshtra Belorn, when first they stood before
her portal divine. The great call went again through earth and air,
sounding defiance; and in its train new voices, groping in darkness,
rising to passionate lament, hovering, and dying away on the wind, till
nought remained but a roll of muffled thunder, long, low, quiet, big
with menace.
The Queen turned to Lord Juss. Surely her eyes were like two stars
shining in the gloom. She said in a drowned voice, “Thy perspectives,
my lord.”
So the Lord Juss made a fire of certain spices and herbs, and smoke
rose in a thick cloud full of fiery sparks, with a sweet sharp smell.
And he said, “Not we, O my Lady, lest our desires cheat our senses. But
look thou in my perspectives through the smoke, and say unto us what
thou shalt behold in the east beyond the unharvested sea.”
The Queen looked. And she said, “I behold a harbour town and a sluggish
river coming down to the harbour through a mere set about with mud
flats, and a great waste of fen stretching inland from the sea. Inland,
by the river side, I behold a great bluff standing above the fens. And
walls about the bluff, as it were a citadel. And the bluff and the
walled hold perched thereon are black like old night, and like throned
iniquity sitting in the place of power, darkening the desolation of
that fen.”
Juss said, “Are the walls thrown down? Or is not the great round tower
south-westward thrown down in ruin athwart the walls?”
She said, “All is whole and sound as the walls of thine own castle, my
lord.”
Juss said, “Turn the crystal, O Queen, that thou mayest see within the
walls if any persons be therein, and tell us their shape and seeming.”
The Queen was silent for a space, gazing earnestly in the crystal.
Then she said, “I see a banquet hall with walls of dark green jasper
speckled with red, and a massy cornice borne up by giants three-headed
carved in black serpentine; and each giant is bowed beneath the weight
of a huge crab-fish. The hall is seven-sided. Two long tables there
be and a cross-bench. There be iron braziers in the midst of the hall
and flamboys burning in silver stands, and revellers quaffing at the
long tables. Some dark young men black of brow and great of jaw, most
soldier-like, brothers mayhap. Another with them, ruddy of countenance
and kindlier to look on, with long brown moustachios. Another that
weareth a brazen byrny and sea-green kirtle; an old man he, with sparse
gray whiskers and flabby cheeks; fat and unwieldy; not a comely old man
to look upon.”
She ceased speaking, and Juss said, “Whom seest thou else in the
banquet hall, O Queen?”