_The Horn of Alveric_
Northward to lonely lands through wearying years Alveric wandered, where
windy fragments of his grey gaunt tent added a gloom to chill evenings.
And the folk upon lonely farms, as they lit the lights in their houses,
and the ricks began to darken against the pale green of the sky, would
sometimes hear the rap of the mallets of Niv and Zend coming clear
through the hush from the land that no others trod. And their children
peering from casements to see if a star was come would see perhaps the
queer grey shape of that tent flapping its tatters above the last of the
hedgerows, where a moment before was only the grey of the gloaming. On
the next morning there would be guesses and wonderings, and the joy and
fear of the children, and the tales that their elders told them, and the
explorations by stealth to the edge of the fields of men, shy peerings
through dim green gaps in the last of the hedgerows (though to look
toward the East was forbidden), and rumours and expectations; and all
these things were blended together by this wonder that came from the
East, and so passed into legend, which lived for many a year beyond
that morning; but Alveric and his tent would be gone.
So day by day and season after season that company wandered on, the
lonely mateless man, the moonstruck lad and the madman, and that old
grey tent with its long twisted pole. And all the stars became known to
them, and all the four winds familiar, and rain and mist and hail, but
the flow of yellow windows all warm and welcome at night they knew only
to say farewell to: with the earliest light in the first chill of dawn
Alveric would awake from impatient dreams, and Niv would arise shouting,
and away they would go upon their crazed crusade before any sign of
awakening appeared on the quiet dim gables. And every morning Niv
prophesied that they would surely find Elfland; and the days wore away
and the years.
Thyl had long left them; Thyl who prophesied victory to them in burning
song, whose inspirations cheered Alveric on coldest nights and led him
through rockiest ways, Thyl sang one evening suddenly songs of some
young girl's hair, Thyl who should have led their wanderings. And then
one day in the gloaming, a blackbird singing, the may in bloom for
miles, he turned for the houses of men, and married the maiden and was
one no more with any band of wanderers.
The horses were dead; Niv and Zend carried all they had on the pole.
Many years had gone. One Autumn morning Alveric left the camp to go to
the houses of men. Niv and Zend eyed each other. Why should Alveric seek
to ask the way of others? For somehow or other their mad minds knew his
purpose more swiftly than sane intuitions. Had he not Niv's prophecies
to guide him, and the things that Zend had been told on oath by the full
moon?
Alveric came to the houses of men, and of the folk he questioned few
would speak at all of things that lay to the East, and if he spoke of
the lands through which he had wandered for years they gave as little
heed as if he were telling them that he had pitched his tent on the
coloured layers of air that glowed and drifted and darkened in the low
sky over the sunset. And the few that answered him said one thing only:
that only the wizards knew.
When he had learned this Alveric went back from the fields and hedgerows
and came again to his old grey tent in the lands of which none thought;
and Niv and Zend sat there silent, eying him sideways, for they knew he
mistrusted madness and things said by the moon. And next day when they
moved their camp in the chill of dawn Niv led the way without shouting.
They had not gone for many more weeks upon their curious journey when
Alveric met one morning, at the edge of the fields men tended, one
filling his bucket at a well, whose thin high conical hat and mystical
air proclaimed him surely a wizard. "Master," said Alveric, "of those
arts men dread, I have a question that I would ask of the future."
And the wizard turned from his bucket to look at Alveric with doubtful
eyes, for the traveller's tattered figure seemed scarce to promise such
fees as are given by those that justly question the future. And, such as
those fees are, the wizard named them. And Alveric's wallet held that
which banished the doubts of the wizard. So that he pointed to where the
tip of his tower peered over a cluster of myrtles, and prayed Alveric to
come to his door when the evening star should appear; and in that
propitious hour he would make the future clear to him.
And again Niv and Zend knew well that their leader followed after dreams
and mysteries that came not from madness nor from the moon. And he left
them sitting still and saying nothing, but with minds full of fierce
visions.
Through pale air waiting for the evening star Alveric walked over the
fields men tended, and came to the dark oak door of the wizard's tower
which myrtles brushed against with every breeze. A young apprentice in
wizardry opened the door and, by ancient wooden steps that the rats knew
better than men, led Alveric to the wizard's upper room.
The wizard had on a silken cloak of black, which he held to be due to
the future; without it he would not question the years to be. And when
the young apprentice had gone away he moved to a volume he had on a high
desk, and turned from the volume to Alveric to ask what he sought of the
future. And Alveric asked him how he should come to Elfland. Then the
wizard opened the great book's darkened cover and turned the pages
therein, and for a long while all the pages he turned were blank, but
further on in the book much writing appeared, although of no kind that
Alveric had ever seen. And the wizard explained that such books as these
told of all things; but that he, being only concerned with the years to
be, had no need to read of the past, and had therefore acquired a book
that told of the future only; though he might have had more than this
from the College of Wizardry, had he cared to study the follies already
committed by man.
Then he read for a while in his book, and Alveric heard the rats
returning softly to the streets and houses that they had made in the
stairs. And then the wizard found what he sought of the future, and told
Alveric that it was written in his book how he never should come to
Elfland while he carried a magical sword.
When Alveric heard this he paid the wizard's fees and went away doleful.
For he knew the perils of Elfland, which no common sabre forged on the
anvils of men could ever avail to parry. He did not know that the magic
that was in his sword left a flavour or taste on the air like that of
lightning, which passed through the border of twilight and spread over
Elfland, nor knew that the Elf King learned of his presence thus and
drew his frontier away from him, so that Alveric should trouble his
realm no more; but he believed what the wizard had read to him out of
his book, and so went doleful away. And, leaving the stairs of oak to
time and the rats, he passed out of the grove of myrtles and over the
fields of men, and came again to that melancholy spot where his grey
tent brooded mournfully in the wilderness, dull and silent as Niv and
Zend sitting beside it. And after that they turned and wandered
southwards, for all journeys now seemed equally hopeless to Alveric, who
would not give up his sword to meet magical perils without magical aid;
and Niv and Zend obeyed him silently, no longer guiding him with raving
prophesies or with things said by the moon, for they knew he had taken
counsel with another.
By weary ways with lonely wanderings they came far to the South, and
never the border of Elfland appeared with its heavy layers of twilight;
yet Alveric would never give up his sword, for well he guessed that
Elfland dreaded its magic, and had poor hope of recapturing Lirazel with
any blade that was dreadful only to men. And after a while Niv
prophesied again, and Zend would come late on nights of the full moon to
wake Alveric with his tales. And for all the mystery that was in Zend
when he spoke, and for all the exultation of Niv when he prophesied,
Alveric knew by now that the tales and the prophecies were empty and
vain and that neither of these would ever bring him to Elfland. With
this mournful knowledge in a desolate land he still struck camp at dawn,
still marched, still sought for the frontier, and so the months went by.
And one day where the edge of Earth was a wild untended heath, running
down to the rocky waste in which Alveric had camped, he saw at evening a
woman in the hat and cloak of a witch sweeping the heath with a broom.
And each stroke as she swept the heath was away from the fields we know,
away to the rocky waste, eastwards towards Elfland. Big gusts of black
dried earth and puffs of sand were blowing towards Alveric from every
powerful stroke. He walked towards her from his sorry encampment and
stood near and watched her sweeping; but still she laboured at her
vigorous work, striding away behind dust from the fields we know, and
sweeping as she strode. And after a while she lifted her face as she
swept and looked at Alveric, and he saw that it was the witch
Ziroonderel. After all these years he saw that witch again, and she saw
beneath the flapping rags of his cloak that sword that she had made for
him once on her hill. Its scabbard of leather could not hide from the
witch that it was that very sword, for she knew the flavour of magic
that rose from it faintly and floated wide through the evening.
"Mother Witch!" said Alveric.
And she curtsied low to him, magical though she was and aged by the
passing of years that had been before Alveric's father, and though many
in Erl had forgotten their lord by now; yet she had not forgotten.
He asked her what she was doing there, on the heath with her broom in
the evening.
"Sweeping the world," she said.
And Alveric wondered what rejected things she was sweeping away from the
world, with grey dust mournfully turning over and over as it drifted
across our fields, going slowly into the darkness that was gathering
beyond our coasts.
"Why are you sweeping the world, Mother Witch?" he said.
"There's things in the world that ought not to be here," said she.
He looked wistfully then at the rolling grey clouds from her broom that
were all drifting towards Elfland.
"Mother Witch," he said, "can I go too? I have looked for twelve years
for Elfland, and have not found a glimpse of the Elfin Mountains."
And the old witch looked kindly at him, and then she glanced at his
sword.
"He's afraid of my magic," she said; and thought or mystery dawned in
her eyes as she spoke.
"Who?" said Alveric.
And Ziroonderel lowered her eyes.
"The King," she said.
And then she told him how that enchanted monarch would draw away from
whatever had worsted him once, and with him draw all that he had, never
supporting the presence of any magic that was the equal of his.
And Alveric could not believe that such a king cared so much for the
magic he had in his old black scabbard.
"It is his way," she said.
And then he would not believe that he had waved away Elfland.
"He has the power," said she.
And still Alveric would face this terrible king and all the powers he
had; but wizard and witch had warned him that he could not go with his
sword, and how go unarmed through the grizzly wood against the palace of
wonder? For to go there with any sword from the anvils of men was but to
go unarmed.
"Mother Witch," he cried. "May I come no more to Elfland?"
And the longing and grief in his voice touched the witch's heart and
moved it to magical pity.
"You shall go," she said.
He stood there half despair in the mournful evening, half dreams of
Lirazel. While the witch from under her cloak drew forth a small false
weight which once she had taken away from a seller of bread.
"Draw this along the edge of your sword," she said, "all the way from
hilt to point, and it will disenchant the blade, and the King will never
know what sword is there."
"Will it still fight for me?" said Alveric.
"No," said the witch. "But once you are over the frontier take this
script and wipe the blade with it on every spot that the false weight
has touched." And she fumbled under her cloak again and drew forth a
poem on parchment. "It will enchant it again," she said.
And Alveric took the weight and the written thing.
"Let not the two touch," warned the witch.
And Alveric set them apart.
"Once over the frontier," she said, "and he may move Elfland where he
will, but you and the sword will be within his borders."
"Mother Witch," said Alveric, "will he be wroth with you if I do this?"
"Wroth!" said Ziroonderel. "Wroth? He will rage with a most exceeding
fury, beyond the power of tigers."
"I would not bring that on you, Mother Witch," said Alveric.
"Ha!" said Ziroonderel. "What care I?"
Night was advancing now, and the moor and the air growing black like the
witch's cloak. She was laughing now and merging into the darkness. And
soon the night was all blackness and laughter; but he could see no
witch.
Then Alveric made his way back to his rocky camp by the light of its
lonely fire.
And as soon as morning appeared on the desolation, and all the useless
rocks began to glow, he took the false weight and softly rubbed it along
both sides of his sword until all its magical edge was disenchanted. And
he did this in his tent while his followers slept, for he would not let
them know that he sought for help that came not from the ravings of Niv,
nor from any sayings that Zend had had from the moon.
Yet the troubled sleep of madness is not so deep that Niv did not watch
him out of one wild sly eye when he heard the false weight softly
rasping the sword.
And when this was secretly done and secretly watched, Alveric called to
his two men, and they came and folded up his tattered tent, and took the
long pole and hung their sorry belongings upon it; and on went Alveric
along the edge of the fields we know, impatient to come at last to the
land that so long eluded him. And Niv and Zend came behind with the pole
between them, with bundles swinging from it and tatters flying.
They moved inland a little towards the houses of men to purchase the
food they needed; and this they bought in the afternoon from a farmer
who dwelt in a lonely house, so near to the very edge of the fields we
know that it must have been the last house in the visible world. And
here they bought bread and oatmeal, and cheese and a cured ham, and
other such things, and put them in sacks and slung them over their pole;
then they left the farmer and turned away from his fields and from all
the fields of men. And as evening fell they saw just over a hedge,
lighting up the land with a soft strange glow that they knew to be not
of this Earth, that barrier of twilight that is the frontier of Elfland.
"Lirazel!" shouted Alveric, and drew his sword and strode into the
twilight. And behind him went Niv and Zend, with all their suspicions
flaming now into jealousy of inspirations or magic that were not theirs.
Once he called Lirazel; then, little trusting his voice in that wide
weird land, he lifted his hunter's horn that hung by his side on a
strap, he lifted it to his lips and sounded a call weary with so much
wandering. He was standing within the edge of the boundary; the horn
shone in the light of Elfland.
Then Niv and Zend dropped their pole in that unearthly twilight, where
it lay like the wreckage of some uncharted sea, and suddenly seized
their master.
"A land of dreams!" said Niv. "Have I not dreams enough?"
"There is no moon there!" cried Zend.
Alveric struck Zend on the shoulder with his sword, but the sword was
disenchanted and blunt and only harmed him slightly. Then the two seized
the sword and dragged Alveric back. And the strength of the madman was
beyond what one could believe. They dragged him back again to the fields
we know, where they two were strange and were jealous of other
strangeness, and led him far from the sight of the pale-blue mountains.
He had not entered Elfland.
But his horn had passed the boundary's edge and troubled the air of
Elfland, uttering across its dreamy calm one long sad earthly note: it
was the horn that Lirazel heard as she spoke with her father.