by Clark Ashton Smith
_2. The Mirror in the Hall of Ebony_
From the nethermost profund of slumber, from a gulf beyond the sun and
stars that illume the Lethean shoals and the vague lands of somnolent
visions, I floated on a black unrippling tide to the dark threshold
of a dream. And in this dream I stood at the end of a long hall that
was ceiled and floored and walled with sable ebony, and was lit with a
light that fell not from the sun or moon nor from any lamp. The hall
was without doors or windows, and at the further extreme an oval mirror
was framed in the wall. And standing there, I remembered nothing of
all that had been; and the other dreams of sleep, and the dream of
birth and of everything thereafter, were alike forgotten. And forgotten
too was the name I had found among men, and the other names whereby
the daughters of dream had known me; and memory was no older than my
coming to that hall. But I wondered not, nor was I troubled thereby,
and naught was strange to me: for the tide that had borne me to this
threshold was the tide of Lethe.
Anon, though, I knew not why, my feet were drawn adown the hall, and I
approached the oval mirror. And in the mirror I beheld the haggard face
that was mine, and the red mark on the cheek where the one I loved had
struck me in her anger, and the mark on the throat where her lips had
kissed me in amorous devotion. And, seeing this, I remembered all that
had been; and the other dreams of sleep, and the dream of birth and
of everything thereafter, alike returned to me. And thus I recalled the
name I had assumed beneath the terrene sun, and the names I had borne
beneath the suns of sleep and of reverie. And I marvelled much, and was
enormously troubled, and all things were most strange to me, and all
things were as of yore.
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