of a bright sheltering against the ruthless and persistent wind which
bore everything away as dust: if one felt a bit low-spirited now and
then, it was not for any especial cause: and Morvyth—that, as yet, for
her permitted season, was Queen of the five Isles of Wonder,—could hear
the trumpets and the heralds proclaiming the entry of Prince Chedric of
Lorn....
He, then, was the first to return of those perfectly detestable little
meddlers who out of love for her had, now for a third time, ransacked
the riches of the world: and he had rather nice eyes. Morvyth tidied her
hair.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK THREE
TOUPAN’S BRIGHT BEES
“_The bee that is in the land of Assyria shall rest upon all bushes._”
—ISAIAH, vii, 18.
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_12._
_The Mage Emeritus_
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NOW the tale is no more of Gonfal, who was the first to perish of the
lords of the Silver Stallion. The tale instead tells that, in the while
of Gonfal’s adventuring in Inis Dahut, yet three other champions of the
fellowship had left the Poictesme which under Dame Niafer’s rule was
altering day by day. Coth of the Rocks, indeed, had ridden westward
within the same month that Gonfal departed for the South. There was
never any profitable arguing with Coth: and so, when he declared his
intention of fetching back Dom Manuel into the Poictesme which women and
holy persons and lying poets—as Coth asserted,—were making quite
uninhabitable, nobody did argue. Coth blustered westward, unmolested and
unreasoned with: and for that while no more was heard of him.
And it was in the May of this year that Kerin of Nointel, the Syndic and
Castellan of Basardra, disappeared even more unaccountably than Dom
Manuel had done, for about Kerin’s passing there were not even any
rumors. Kerin, so far as anybody could learn, had vanished in the
darkness of the night season just as unaidedly as that darkness itself
had vanished in turn, and with just as slight vestigial traces of his
passing. The desolation of Kerin’s young wife, Dame Saraïde, was such
that dozens upon dozens of lovers might not content her for her
widowhood, as was immediately shown: and of Kerin also, for that while,
no more was heard.
And Miramon Lluagor, too, that under Manuel had been the Lord Seneschal
of Gontaron, had now gone out of Poictesme,—sedately and unmysteriously
departing, with his wife and child seated beside him upon the back of an
elderly and quite tame dragon, for his former home in the North. It was
there that Miramon had first encountered Dom Manuel in the days when
Manuel was only a swineherd. And it was there that Miramon Lluagor hoped
to pass the remainder of as long a life as his doom permitted him, in
such limited comfort as might anywhere be possible for a married man.
Otherwise, he could foresee, upon the brighter side of his appointed and
appalling doom, nothing which was likely to worry him. For Miramon
Lluagor had very wonderfully prospered at magic, he was, as they say,
now blessed with more than any reasonable person would ask for: and the
most clamant of these superfluities appeared to him to be his wife.
They tell how Miramon was one of the Léshy, born of a people that was
neither human nor immortal, telling how his ancestral home was builded
upon the summit of the mountain called Vraidex. To Vraidex Miramon
Lluagor returned, after the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion had been
disbanded, and Miramon had ceased to amuse himself with the greatness of
Manuel and with the other notions of Poictesme.
They narrate that this magician dabbled no more in knight-errantry, for
which the Seneschal of Gontaron—who through his art was also lord of the
nine kinds of sleep and prince of the seven madnesses,—had never shown
any real forte. He righted no more wrongs, in weather as often as not
unsuited to a champion subject to rheumatism, and he in no way taxed his
comfort to check the prospering of injustice. Instead, he now
maintained, upon the exalted scarps of Vraidex, the sedate seclusion
appropriate to a veteran sorcerer, in his ivory tower carved out of one
of the tusks of Behemoth; and maintained also a handsome retinue of
every sort of horrific illusion to guard the approaches to his Doubtful
Palace; wherein, as the tale likewise tells, this mage resumed his
former vocation, and once more designed the dreams for sleep.
Thus it was that, upon the back of the elderly and quite tame dragon,
Miramon returned to his earlier pursuits and to the practice of what
he—in his striking way of putting things,—described as art for art’s
sake. The episode of Manuel had been, in the lower field of merely
utilitarian art, amusing enough. That stupid, tall, quiet posturer, when
he set out to redeem Poictesme, had needed just the mere bit of
elementary magic which Miramon had performed for him, to establish
Manuel among the great ones of earth. Miramon had, in consequence, sent
a few obsolete gods to drive the Northmen out of Poictesme, while Manuel
waited upon the sands north of Manneville and diverted his leisure by
contemplatively spitting into the sea. Thereafter Manuel had held the
land to the admiration of everybody but more particularly of
Miramon,—who did not at all agree with Anavalt of Fomor in his
estimation of Dom Manuel’s mental gifts.
Yes, it had been quite amusing to serve under Manuel, to play at being
lord of Gontaron and Ranec, and to regard at close quarters this tall
grave gray cockeyed impostor, who had learned only not to talk.... For
that, thought Miramon, was Manuel’s secret: Manuel did not expostulate,
he did not explain, he did not argue; he, instead, in any time of
trouble or of uncertainty, kept quiet; and that quiet struck terror to
his ever-babbling race, and had earned for the dull-witted but shrewd
fellow—who was concealing only his lack of any thought or of any plan,—a
dreadful name for impenetrable wisdom and for boundless resource.
“Keep mum with Manuel!” said Miramon, “and all things shall be added to
you. It is a great pity that my wife has not the knack for these little
character analyses.”
Yes, the four years had been an amusing episode. But dreams and the
designing of dreams were the really serious matters to which Miramon
returned after this holiday outing in carnage and statecraft.
And here, too,—as everywhere,—his wife confronted him. Miramon’s
personal taste in art was for the richly romantic sweetened with
nonsense and spiced with the tabooed. But his wife Gisèle had quite
other notions, a whole set of notions, and her philosophy was that of
belligerent individualism. And the sorcerer to keep peace, at least in
the intervals between his wife’s more mordantly loquacious moments, must
of necessity design such dreams as Gisèle preferred. But he knew that
these dreams did not express the small thoughts and fancies which
harbored in the heart of Miramon Lluagor, and which would perish with
the falling of his doom unless he wrought these fancies into dreams
that, being fleshless, might evade carnivorous time.
He was preëminent among the dream-makers of this world, he was the
dreaded lord (because of his retinue of illusions) over all the country
about Vraidex: but, in his own home he was not dreaded, he, very
certainly, was not preëminent. And Miramon hungered for the lost freedom
of his bachelorhood.
His wife also was discontent, because the ways of the Léshy appeared to
this mortal woman indecorous. The dooms that were upon the Léshy seemed
not entirely in good taste, to her who had been born of a race about
whom destiny appeared not to bother. In fact, it was a continual
irritation to Gisèle that her little boy Demetrios was predestinate to
kill his father with the charmed sword Flamberge. This was a doom Gisèle
found not the sort of thing you cared to have imminent in your own
family: and she felt that the sooner the gray Norns, who weave the fate
of all that live, were spoken to quite candidly, the better it would be
for everybody concerned.
She was irritated by the mere sight of Flamberge. So her thinking was
not of silk and honey when, after polishing the sword as was her usage
upon Thursday morning, she came into Miramon’s ivory tower to hang the
fatal weapon in its right place.
With Miramon under the green tasseled canopy sat one whom Gisèle was not
unsurprised to see there. For closeted with Miramon to-day was Ninzian,
the High Bailiff of Yair and Upper Ardra, who was the most famous for
his piety of all the lords of the Silver Stallion. The dreadful need and
the peculiar reason which Ninzian had for being pious and philanthropic
were matters not known to everybody: but Miramon Lluagor knew about
these things, and therefore he made appropriate use of Ninzian. Indeed,
upon this very afternoon, the two were looking at that which Ninzian had
fetched out of the land of Assyria, and had procured for the sorcerer,
at a price.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_13._
_Economics of Gisèle_
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NOW Madame Gisèle also was looking at that which Ninzian had procured
for her husband at a price. She looked at it—upon the whole—with
slightly less disfavor than she afterward looked at the two men.
“A good day and a grand blessing to you, Messire Ninzian!” said Madame
Gisèle: and she extended her hand, along with her scouring-rag, for him
to kiss, and she inquired about his wife Dame Balthis, pleasantly
enough. She spoke then, in a different tone, to Miramon Lluagor. “And
with what are you cluttering up the house now?”
“Ah, wife,” replied Miramon, “here, very secretly fetched out of the
land of Assyria, are those bees about whom it is prophesied that they
shall rest upon all bushes. Here are the bright bees of Toupan, a
treasure beyond word or thinking. They are not as other bees, for theirs
is the appearance of shining ice: and they crawl fretfully, as they have
crawled since Toupan’s downfall, about this cross of black stone—”
“That is a very likely story for you to be telling me, who can see that
the disgusting creatures have wings to fly away with whenever they want
to! And, besides, who in the world is this Toupan?”
“He is nobody in this world, wife, and it is wiser not to speak of him.
Let it suffice that in the time of the Old Ones he made all things as
they were. Then Koshchei came out of Ydalir, and took the power from
Toupan, and made all things as they are. Yet three of Toupan’s servitors
endure upon earth, where they who were once lords of the Vendish have
now no privilege remaining save to creep humbly as insects: the use of
their wings is denied them here among the things which were made by
Koshchei, and the charmed stone holds them immutably. Oho, but, wife,
there is a cantrap which would free them, a cantrap which nobody has as
yet discovered, and to their releaser will be granted whatever his will
may desire—”
“This is some more of your stuff and nonsense, out of old fairy tales,
where everybody gets three wishes, and no good from any of them!”
“No, my love, because I shall put them to quite practical uses. For you
must know that when I have found out the cantrap which will release the
bees of Toupan—”
Gisèle showed plainly that his foolishness did not concern her. She
sighed, and she hung the sword in its accustomed place. “Oh, but I am
aweary of this endless sorcery and piddling with vain dreams!”
“Then, wife,” said Miramon, “then why are you perpetually meddling with
what you do not understand?”
“I think,” Ninzian observed at once, for Ninzian too was married, “I
think that I had best be going.”
But Gisèle’s attention was reserved for her husband. “I meddle, as you
so very politely call it, because you have no sense of what is right and
proper, and no sense of morals, and no sense of expediency, and, in
fact, no sense at all.”
Miramon said, “Now, dearest—!”
Ninzian was hastily picking up his hat.
And Gisèle continued, with that resistless and devastating onflow which
is peculiar to tidal waves and the tongue of her who speaks for her
husband’s own good.
“Women everywhere,” Gisèle generalized, “have a hard time of it: but in
particular do I pity the woman that is married to one of you moonstruck
artists. She has not half a husband, she has but the tending of a baby
with long legs—”
“It is so much later than I thought, that really now—” observed Ninzian,
ineffectively.
“—And I might have had a dozen husbands—”
Miramon said, “But, surely, no woman of your well-known morality, my
darling—”
“—I might, as you very well remember, have married Count Manuel
himself—”
“I know. I can recall how near you came to marrying him. He was a dull,
a cold-blooded and a rather dishonest clod-hopper: but the luck of
Manuel Pig-Tender did not ever desert him,” said Miramon, sighing, “not
even then!”
“I say, I might have had my pick of a dozen really prominent and
looked-up-to warriors, who would have had the decency to remember our
anniversary and my birthday, and in any event would never have been in
the house twenty-four hours a day! Instead, here I am tied to a
muddle-head who fritters away his time contriving dreams that nobody
cares about one way or the other! And yet, even so—”
“And yet, even so—as you were no doubt going on to observe, my
dearest,—even so, since your soliloquy pertains to matters in which our
guest could not conceivably be interested—”
“And yet,” said Gisèle, with a heavier and a deadlier emphasis, “even
so, if only you would be sensible about your silly business I could put
up with the inconvenience of having you underfoot every moment. People
need dreams to help them through the night, and nobody enjoys a really
good dream more than I do when I have time for it, with the million and
one things that are put upon me. But dreams ought to be wholesome—”
“My darling, now, as a matter of esthetics, as a mere point of fact—”
“—But dreams ought to be wholesome, they ought to be worth while, they
ought to teach an uplifting moral, and certainly they ought not to be
about incomprehensible thin nonsense that nobody can half way
understand. They ought, in a word, to make you feel that the world is a
pretty good sort of place, after all—”
“But, wife, I am not sure that it is,” said Miramon, mildly.
“Then, the more shame to you! and the very least you can do is to keep
such morbid notions to yourself, and not be upsetting other people’s
repose with them!”
“I employ my natural gift, I express myself and none other. The
rose-bush does not put forth wheat, nor flax either,” returned the
sorcerer, with a tired shrug. “In fine, what would you have?”
“A great deal it means to you,—you rose-bush!—what I prefer! But if I
had my wish your silly dream-making would be taken away from you so that
we might live in some sort of reputable and common-sense way.”
All the while that she reasoned sensibly and calmly with her husband for
his own good, Gisèle had feverishly been dusting things everywhere, just
to show what a slave she was to him, and because it irritated Miramon to
have his personal possessions thus dabbed at and poked about: and now,
as she spoke, Gisèle slapped viciously with her scouring-rag at the
black cross. And a thing happened to behold which would have astonished
the innumerous mages and the enchanters who had given over centuries to
searching for the cantrap which would release the bees of Toupan. For
now without any exercise of magic the scouring-rag swept from the stone
one of the insects. Koshchei, who made all things as they are, had
decreed, they report, that these bright perils could be freed only in
the most obvious way, because he knew this would be the last method
attempted by any learned person.
Then for an instant the walls of the ivory tower were aquiver like blown
veils. And the bee passed glitteringly to the window and through the
clear glass of the closed window, leaving a small round hole there, as
the creature went to join its seven fellows in the Pleiades.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_14._
_The Changing That Followed_
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NOW, when this eighth bright bee had joined its seven fellows in the
Pleiades, then Toupan, afloat in the void, unclosed his ancient
unappeasable eyes. Jacy returned to his aforetime estate in the moon:
all plants and trees everywhere were withered, and the sea also lost its
greenness, and there were no more emeralds. And the Star Warriors and
the Wardens of the Worlds were troubled, and They cried out to Koshchei
who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations to remain
in eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.
Koshchei, for reasons of his own, did not reply.
Then Jacy whispered to Toupan: “Now is the hour of thy release, O
Toupan! now is the hour that Koshchei falls. For among the things that
are there stays no verdancy anywhere, and without green things nobody
can keep health and strength.”
Toupan answered: “I am diminished. My bones have become like silver, and
my members have turned into gold, and my hair is like lapis-lazuli.”
“Thine eyes remain unchanged,” said the slow whispering of Jacy. “Send
forth thine eyes, O Toupan, against the work of Koshchei, who has
blasphemed against the Old Ones, and who has created things as they
are.”
“Though he acknowledge both of these misdoings, why need my eyes be
troubled—as yet?”
Then Jacy said, “Send forth thine eyes, O Toupan, so that we Old Ones
may rejoice in the dreadfulness of thy overlooking!”
Toupan answered: “I was before the Old Ones. My soul was before thought
and time. It is the soul of Shu, it is the soul of Khnemu, it is the
soul of Heh: it is the soul of Night and of Desolation, and there is a
thinking about my soul which looks out of the eyes of every serpent. My
soul alone keeps any knowledge of that dark malignity which everywhere
encompasses the handiwork of Koshchei who made things as they are. Why
need my soul be troubled, therefore,—as yet?”
But Jacy said again: “Give aid now to the Old Ones! Already thy bees go
forth, that shall rest upon all bushes, and already no verdancy remains.
Send forth thine eyes now, also, in which there is the knowledge denied
to Koshchei!”
And Toupan answered: “The time of my release is not yet at hand.
Nevertheless, between now and a while, when yet another bee is loosed, I
shall bestir my soul, I will send forth my eyes, so that all may
perceive the dreadfulness of my overlooking.”
At that the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds cried out again
to Koshchei.
Then Koshchei answered Them: “Have patience! When Toupan is released I
perish with You. Meanwhile I have made all things as they are.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_15._
_Disastrous Rage of Miramon_
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NOW also, when this eighth bright bee had joined its fellows in the
Pleiades, in that same instant Miramon Lluagor, as he stood appalled in
his ivory tower, was aware of a touch upon his forehead, as if a damp
sponge were passing over it. Then he perceived that, with the petulant
voicing of his damnable wife’s desire, he had forthwith forgotten the
secret of his preëminence.
Something he could yet recall, they say, of the magic of the Purin and
the cast stones, of the Horse and the Bull of the Water, and most of the
lore of the Apsarasas and the Faidhin remained to him. He could still
make shift, he knew, to control the roving Lamboyo, to build the fearful
bridge of the White Ladies, or to contrive the dance of the Korred. He
retained his communion with Necksa and Paralda, those sovereign
Elementaries. He kept his mastery of the Shedeem who devastate, of the
Shehireem who terrify, and of the Mazikeen who destroy. Nor had he lost
touch with the Stewards of Heaven,—of whom at this period Och had the
highest power and was customarily summoned by Miramon Lluagor, for a
brief professional consultation, every Sunday morning at sunrise.
But such accomplishments, as Miramon despairingly knew, were the stock
in trade of mere hedge wizards, they were the rudiments of any fairly
competent sorcerer anywhere: and that supreme secret which had made
Miramon Lluagor the master of all dreams was gone away from him
completely.
He was very angry. He was the angrier for that he saw, just for an
instant, a sort of frightened and bewildered remorse in his wife’s
foolish face, and he desperately foreknew himself to be upon the brink
of comforting her.
“Accursed woman!” Miramon cried out, “now indeed has your common-sense
completed what your nagging began! This is the doom of all artists that
have to do with well-conducted women. Truly has it been said that the
marriage-bed is the grave of art. Well, I have put up with much from
you, but this settles it, and I will not put up with your infatuation
for a reputable and common-sense way of living, and I wish you were in
the middle of next week!”
With that he caught the soiled scouring-rag from the hand of Gisèle, and
he slapped at one of the remaining bees, and he brushed it from the
black cross. And this bee departed as the other had done.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_16._
_Concerns the Pleiades and a Razor_
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WHEN this bright bee had departed as the other had done before him, then
Toupan moved his wings, and he made ready to overlook the work of
Koshchei: and in the instant that Toupan moved, the worlds in that part
of the universe were dislodged and ran melting down the sky. It was
Gauracy who swept all the fragments together and formed a sun
immeasurably larger than that which he had lost, and an obstreperous mad
conflagration which did not in anything conform with the handiwork of
Koshchei.
And Gauracy then shouted friendlily to Toupan, “Now is the hour of thy
release, O Toupan! now is the hour of the return of the Old Ones, now is
the hour that Koshchei falls!”
Toupan answered: “The hour of my release is not yet come. But this is
the hour of my overlooking.”
Then Gauracy bellowed, as he swept yet other worlds into the insatiable
flaming of his dreadful sun, “I kindle for you a fine light to see by!”
And now the gods who were worshiped in those worlds which remained,
these also cried out to Koshchei. For now, in the intolerable glare of
Gauracy’s malefic sun, they showed as flimsy and incredible inventions.
And the gods knew, moreover, that, if ever the last remaining bee were
freed from the cross, the dizain of the Pleiades would be completed, and
Toupan would be released, and the power of the Old Ones would return;
and that a day foretold by many prophets, the day upon which every god
must shave with a razor that is hired, would be at hand; and that, with
the falling about of this very dreadful and ignominious necessity, the
day of the divine contentment of all gods in any place would be over,
forever.
Meanwhile the eyes of Toupan went forth, among the Star Warriors and the
Wardens of the Worlds. It was They who, under Koshchei, had shaped the
earths and the waters, and who had knit together the mountains, and who
had fashioned all other things as they are. It was They who had woven
the heavens, and who had placed the soul of every god within him. They
were the makers of the hours and the creators of the days and the
kindlers of the fires of life, and They were powers whose secret and
sustaining names were not known to any of the gods of men. Yet now the
eyes of Toupan went among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the
Worlds, and Toupan regarded them one by one; and wheresoever the old
eyes of Toupan had rested there remained no world nor any Warden
watching over it, but only, for that instant, a very little spiral of
thin sluggish vapor.
And those of Them who were not yet destroyed cried piteously to
Koshchei, who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations
to keep eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.