Part 12

So spake Lord Brandoch Daha, and Lord Juss straightway ordered forth the horses, and sent messengers to Volle under Kartadza and to Vizz at Darklairstead bidding them meet him at Krothering with what speed they might. It was four hours before noon when Juss, Spitfire, and Brandoch Daha rode down from Galing and through the woods of Moongarth Bottom at the foot of the lake, taking the main bridle road up Breakingdale, that runs by the western margin of Moonmere under the buttresses of the Scarf. They rode slowly, for the sun was strong on their backs. Glassy was the lake and like a turquoise, and the birch-clad slopes to the east and north and the bare rugged ridges of Stathfell and Budrafell beyond were mirrored in its depths. On the left as they rode, the spurs of the Scarf impended from on high in piled bastions of black porphyry like giants’ castles; and little valleys choked with monstrous boulders, among which the silver birches crowding showed like tiny garden plants, ran steeply back between the spurs. Up those valleys appeared successively the main summits of the Scarf, savage and remote, frowning downward as it were between their own knees: Glaumry Pike, Micklescarf, and Illstack. By noon they had climbed to the extreme head of Breakingdale, and halted on the Stile, a little beyond the water-shed, under the sheer northern wall of Ill Drennock. Before them the pass plunged steeply into Amadardale. The lower reach of Switchwater shone fifteen miles or more to the west, well nigh hidden in the heat-haze. Nearer at hand in the north-west lay Rammerick Mere, bosomed among the smooth-backed Kelialand hills and the easternmost uplands of Shalgreth Heath, with the sea beyond; and on the valley floor, near the watersmeet where Transdale runs into Amadardale, it was possible to descry the roofs of Zigg’s house at Many Bushes.

When they came down thither, Zigg was out a-hunting. So they left word with his lady wife and drank a stirrup cup and rode on, up Switchwater Way, and for twelve miles and more along the southern shore of Switchwater. So dropped they into Gashterndale, and thence rounding the western slopes of Erngate End came up on to Krothering Side when the shadows were lengthening in the golden summer evening. The Side ran gently west for a league or more to where Thunderfirth lay like beaten gold beneath the sun. Across the Firth the pine-forests of Westmark, old as the world, rose toward Brocksty Edge and Gemsar Edge: a far-flung amphitheatre of bare cliff and scree shutting in the prospect to the north. High on the left towered the precipices of Erngate End; southward and south-eastward lay the sea. So rode they down the Side, through deep peaceful meadows fair with white ox-eye daisies, bluebells and yellow goatsbeard and sea campion, deep-blue gentians, agrimony and wild marjoram, and pink clover and bindweed and great yellow buttercups feasting on the sun. And on an eminence beyond which the land fell away more steeply toward the sea, the onyx towers of Krothering standing above woods and gardens showed milk-white against heaven and the clear hyaline.

When they were now but half a mile from the castle Juss said, “Behold and see. The Lady Mevrian hath espied us from afar, and rideth forth to bring thee home.”

Brandoch Daha cantered ahead to meet her: a lady light of build and exceeding fair to look upon, brave of carriage like a war-horse, soft of feature, clear-browed, gray-eyed and proud-eyed: sweet-mouthed, but not as one who can speak nought but sweetness. Her robe was of pale buff-coloured silk, with corsage covered as by a spider’s web with fine golden threads; and she wore a point-lace ruffle stiffened with gold and silver wire and spangled with little diamonds. Her deep hair, black as the raven’s wing, was fastened with pins of gold, and a yellow rose that nestled in its coils was as the moon looking forth among thick clouds of night.

“Doings be afoot, my lady sister,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “One King of Witchland have we done down since we sailed hence; and guested in Carcë with another, little to our content. All which things I’ll tell thee anon. Now lieth our road south for Impland, and Krothering is but our caravanserai.”

She turned her horse, and they rode all in company into the shadow of the ancient cedars that clustered to the north of the home-meads and pleasure gardens, stately, gaunt-limbed, flat-browed, bleak against the sky. On the left a lily-paven lake slept cool beneath mighty elms, with a black swan near the bank and her four cygnets dozing in a row, their heads tucked beneath their wings, so that they looked like balls of gray-brown froth floating on the water. The path leading to the bridge-gate zig-zagged steeply up the mound between low broad balustrades of white onyx bearing at intervals square onyx pots, planted some with yellow roses and some with wondrous flowers, great and delicate, with frail white shell-like petals. Deep, mysterious centres had those flowers, thick with soft hairs within, and dark within with velvety purple streaked with black and blood colour and dust of gold.

The castle of Lord Brandoch Daha standing at the top of the mound was circled by a ditch both broad and deep. The gate before the drawbridge was of iron gilded and richly wrought. The towers and gate-house were of white onyx like the castle itself, and on either hand before the gate was a colossal marble hippogriff, standing more than thirty feet high at the withers; and the wings and hooves and talons of the hippogriffs and their manes and forelocks were overlaid with gold, and their eyes carbuncles of purest lustre. Over the gate was written in letters of gold:

Ye braggers an’ a’, Be skeered and awa’ Frae Brandoch Daha.

But to tell even a tenth part of the marvels rich and beautiful that were in the house of Krothering: its cool courts and colonnades rich with gems and fragrant with costly spices and strange blooms: its bed-chambers where, caught like Aphrodite in her golden net, the spirit of sleep seemed ever to shake slumber from its plumes, and none might be waking long in those chambers but sweet sleep overcame their eyelids: the Chamber of the Sun and the Chamber of the Moon, and the great middle hall with its high gallery and ivory stair: to tell of all these were but to cloy imagination with picturing in one while of over-much glory and splendour.

• • • • •

Nought befell that night save the coming of Zigg before sun-down, and of those brethren Volle and Vizz in the night, having ridden hard in obedience to the word of Juss. In the morning when they had eaten their day-meal the lords of Demonland went down into the pleasaunces, and with them the Lady Mevrian. And in an alley that was roofed with beams of cedar resting on marble pillars, the beams and pillars smothered with dark-red roses, they sat looking eastward across a sunk garden. The weather was sweet and gracious, and thick dew lay on the pale terraced lawns that led down among flower beds to the fish-pond in the midst. The water made a cool mirror whereon floated yellow and crimson water-lilies opening to the sky. All the greens and flower-colours glowed warm and clean, but soft withal and shadowy, veiled in the gray haze of the summer morning.

They sat here and there as they listed on chairs and benches, near a huge tank or vase of dark green jade where sulphur-coloured lilies grew in languorous beauty, their back-curled petals showing the scarlet anthers; and all the air was heavy with their sweetness. The great jade vase was round and flat like the body of a tortoise, open at the top where the lilies grew. It was carved with scales, as it were the body of a dragon, and a dragon’s head a-gaping reared itself at one end, and at the other the tail curved up and over like the handle of a basket, and the tail had little fore and hind feet with claws, and a smaller head at the end of the tail gaped downwards biting at the large head. Four legs supported the body, and each leg was a small dragon standing on its hind feet, its head growing into the parent body as the thigh or shoulder joint should join the trunk. In the curve of the creature’s neck, his back propped against its head, sat the Lord Brandoch Daha in graceful ease, one foot touching the ground, the other swinging free; and in his hands was the book, bound in dark puce-coloured goatskin and gold, given him by Gaslark in years gone by. Zigg watched him idly turn the pages while the others talked. Leaning toward Mevrian he whispered in her ear, “Is not he able and shapen for to subdue and put under him all the world: thy brother? A man of blood and peril, and yet so fair to behold that it is a marvel?”

Her eyes danced. She said, “It is pure truth, my lord.”

Now spake Spitfire saying, “Read forth to us, I pray thee, the book of Gro; for my soul is afire to set forth on this faring.”

“’Tis writ somewhat crabbedly,” said Brandoch Daha, “and most damnably long. I spent half last night a-searching on’t, and ’tis most apparent no other way lieth to these mountains save by the Moruna, and across the Moruna is (if Gro say true) but one way, and that from the Gulf of Muelva: ‘a xx dayes journeye from northe by south-est.’ For here he telleth of watersprings by the way, but he saith in other parts of the desert be no watersprings, save only springs venomous, where ‘The water riketh like a sething potte continually, having sumwhat a sulphureous and sumwhat onpleasant savor,’ and, ‘The grownd nurysheth here no plante nor herbe except yt bee venomous champinions or tode stooles.’”

“If he say true?” said Spitfire. “He is a turncoat and a renegado. Wherefore not therefore a liar?”

“But a philosopher,” answered Juss. “I knew him well of old in Goblinland, and I judge him to be one who is not false save only in policy. Subtle of mind he is, and dearly loveth plotting and scheming, and, as I think, perversely affecteth ever the losing side if he be brought into any quarrel; and this hath dragged him oft-times to misfortune. But in this book of his travels he must needs speak truth, as it seemeth to me, to be true to his own self.”

The Lady Mevrian looked approvingly on Lord Juss and her eye twinkled. For well it liked her humour to hear men’s natures so divined.

“O Juss, friend of my heart,” said Lord Brandoch Daha, “thy words proceed, as ever they did, from the true fount of wisdom, and I embrace them and thee. This book is a guide which we shall follow not helter-skelter but as old men of war. If then the right road to Morna Moruna lie from the Gulf of Muelva, were we not best sail straight thitherward and lay up our ships in that Gulf where the coast and the country side be without habitation, rather than fare to some nearer haven of Outer Impland such as Arlan Mouth whither thou and Spitfire fared six summers ago?”

“Not Arlan Mouth, o’ this journey,” said Juss. “Some sport perchance we might obtain there had we leisure for fighting with the accursed inhabitants, but every day’s delay we now do make holdeth my brother another day in bondage. The princes and Fazes of the Imps have many strong walled towns and towers in all those coastlands, and hard by in a mediamnis of the river Arlan, in Orpish, is the great castle of Fax Fay Faz, whereto Goldry and I drave him home from Lida Nanguna.”

“’Tis an ill coast too, to find a landing,” said Brandoch Daha, turning the leaves of the book. “As he saith, ‘Ymplande the More beginnith at the west syde of the mowth of Arlan and occupiethe all the lond unto the hedeland Sibrion, and therefro sowth awaye to the Corshe, by gesse a vij hundered myles, wherby the se is not ther of nature favorable nor no haven is or cumming yn meete for shippes.’”

So after some talk and searching of that book of Gro they determined this should be their plan: to fare to Impland by way of the Straits of Melikaphkhaz and the Didornian Sea, and so lay up their ships in the Gulf of Muelva, and landing there start straightway across the wilderness to Morna Moruna, even as Gro had described the way.

“Ere we leave it,” said Brandoch Daha, “hear what he speaketh concerning Koshtra Belorn. This he beheld from Morna Moruna, whereof he saith: ‘The contery is hylly, sandy, and baren of wood and corne, as forest ful of lynge, mores, and mosses, with stony hilles. Here is a mighty stronge and usid borow for flying serpens in sum baren, hethy, and sandy grownd, and thereby the litle round castel of Morna Moruna stondith on Omprenne Edge, as on the limit of the worlde, sore wether beten and yn ruine. This castelle was brent in tyme of warre, spoyled and razyd by Kynge Goriyse the fourt of Wytchlande in auncient dayes. And they say there was blamelesse folke dwellid therein and ryghte gentle, nor was ther any need for Goriyse to have usid them so cruellie, when hee cawsyd the hole howsholde there to appere before hym and then slawe sum owt of hande, and the residew he throughe all downe the steep cliffe. And but few supervivid after the gret falle, and these fled awaye thorough the untrodden forests of Bavvynaune and withoute question perysht ther yn great sorwe and miserie. Sum fable that it was for thys cruel facte sake that King Goriyse was eat by divels on the Moruna with al hys hoste, one man onely cumming home again to tell of these thynges bifallen.’ Now mark: ‘From Morna Moruna I behelde sowthawaye two grete mowntaynes standing over Bavvinane as two Queenes in bewty seted in the skye by estimacion xx legues fro hence above meny more ise robed mowntaines supereminente. The wyche as I lernyd was Coschtre Belourne the one and the othere Koshtre Pivrarca. And I veuyed them continuallie unto the going downe of the sun, and that was the fayrest sighte and the most bewtifullest and gallant marvaille that mine eyen hath sene. Therewith talkid I with the smaule thynges that dwell there in the ruines and in the busschis growing round abowte as it ys my wonte, and amongst them one of those byrdes cawld martlettes that have feete so litle that they seime to have none. And thys litle martlette sittynge in a frambousier or raspis busche tolde mee that none may come alive unto Coschtra Beloorn, for the mantycores of the mowntaines will certeynely ete his brains ere he come thither. And were he so fortunate as scape these mantycores, yet cowlde hee never climbe up the gret cragges of yce and rocke on Koschtre Beloorn, for none is so stronge as to scale them but by art magicall, and such is the vertue of that mowntayne that no magick avayleth there, but onlie strength and wisdome alone, and as I seye these woulde not avayl to climbe those cliffes and yce ryvers.’”

“What be these mantichores of the mountains that eat men’s brains?” asked the Lady Mevrian.

“This book is so excellent well writ,” said her brother, “that thine answer appeareth on this same page: ‘The beeste Mantichora, whych is as muche as to saye devorer of menne, rennith as I herde tell, on the skirt of the mowntaynes below the snow feldes. These be monstrous bestes, ghastlie and ful of horrour, enemies to mankinde, of a red coloure, with ij rowes of huge grete tethe in their mouthes. It hath the head of a man, his eyen like a ghoot, and the bodie of a lyon lancing owt sharpe prickles fro behinde. And hys tayl is the tail of a scorpioun. And is more delyverer to goo than is fowle to flee. And hys voys is as the roaryng of x lyons.’”

“These beasts,” said Spitfire, “were alone enough to draw me thither. I shall bring thee home a small one, madam, to keep chained in the court.”

“That should dash me from thy friendship for ever, cousin,” said Mevrian, stroking the feathery ears of her little marmoset that cuddled in her lap. “That which feedeth on brains were overnourished in Demonland, and belike would overrun the whole country-side.”

“Send it to Witchland,” said Zigg. “Where when it hath eat up Gro and Corund it may sup lightly on the King, and then most fortunately starve for lack of its proper nutriment.”

Juss stood up from his seat. “Thou and I and Spitfire,” said he to Brandoch Daha, “must to work roundly and gather strength, for ’tis already midsummer. You, Vizz, Volle, and Zigg, must have the warding of our homes whiles we be gone. We cannot be less than two thousand swords on this faring.”

“How many ships, Volle,” asked Lord Brandoch Daha, “canst thou give us, busked and boun, ere this moon wane?”

“There be fourteen afloat,” said Volle. “Besides these, ten keels lie on the slips at Lookinghaven, and nine more hath Spitfire but now laid down on the beach before his house at Owlswick.”

“Thirty and three in sum,” said Spitfire. “You see we have not twiddled our thumbs whilst ye were gone.”

Juss paced back and forth with great strides, his brow clouded and his jaw clenched. In a while he said, “Laxus hath forty sail, dragons of war. I am not so idle-headed as fare without an army into Impland, but certain it is that if our ill-willers would move war against us we stand in apparent weakness, here or abroad, to throw back their onset.”

Volle said, “Of these nineteen ships a-building no more than two can take the water before a month be past, and but seven more ere six months’ time, push we never so mightily the work.”

“The season weareth, and my brother wasteth in duress. We must sail ere another moon grow old,” said Juss.

Volle said, “Then with sixteen sail thou sailest, O Juss; and then thou leavest us not one ship at home till more be finished and launched.”

“How can we leave you so?” cried Spitfire.

But Brandoch Daha looked towards his lady sister, met her glance, and was satisfied. “The choice lieth fair before us,” said he. “If we will eat the egg, little need to debate whether the shell must go.”

Mevrian rose from her seat laughing, and said, “Then let the council rise, my lords.” And her eyes grew serious, and she said, “Shall they make rhymes upon us that we of Demonland, whom men repute and hold the mightiest lords in all the world, hung sheepishly back from this high needful enterprise lest, our greatest captains being abroad, our enemies might haply take us at home at disadvantage? It shall not be said of the women of Demonland that they upheld such counsels.”

IX: SALAPANTA HILLS

OF THE LANDING OF LORD JUSS AND HIS COMPANIONS IN OUTER IMPLAND AND THEIR MEETING WITH ZELDORNIUS, HELTERANIUS, AND JALCANAIUS FOSTUS; AND OF THE TIDINGS TOLD BY MIVARSH, AND THE DEALINGS OF THE THREE GREAT CAPTAINS ON THE HILLS OF SALAPANTA.

On the thirty and first day after that council held in Krothering, the fleet of Demonland put to sea from Lookinghaven: eleven dragons of war and two great ships of burthen, bound for the uttermost seas of earth in quest of the Lord Goldry Bluszco. Eighteen hundred Demons fared on that expedition, and not a man among them that was not a complete soldier. For five days they rowed southaway on a windless sea, and on the sixth the sea-cliffs of Goblinland came out of the haze on their starboard bow. They rowed south along the land, and on the tenth day out from Lookinghaven passed under the Ness of Ozam, journeying thence four days with a favouring wind over the open seas to Sibrion. But now, when they had rounded that dark promontory and were about steering east along the coast of Impland the More, and less than ten days’ journey lay betwixt them and their haven in Muelva, a dismal tempest suddenly surprised them. For forty days it swept them in hail and sleet over wide-wallowing ocean, without a star, without a course; till, on a fierce midnight of wind and darkness and roaring waters was Juss’s and Spitfire’s ship and other four in her company driven on the rocks on a lee shore and broken in pieces. Hardly, and after long battling among great waves, those brethren won ashore, weary and hurt. In the inhospitable light of a wet and windy dawn they mustered on the beach such of their folk as had escaped out of the mouth of destruction; and they were three hundred and thirty and three.

Spitfire, beholding these things, spake and said, “This land hath a villanous look stirreth my remembrance, as but to behold verjuice soureth the mouth of him who once tasted thereof. Rememberest thou this land?”

Juss scanned the low long coast-line that swept north and west to an estuary, and beyond ran westwards till it was lost in the scud and driving spray. Desolate birds flew above the welter of the surges. He said, “Certainly this is Arlan Mouth, where least of all I had choosed to come a-land with so small a head of men. Yet shalt thou prove here, as it hath ever been, how all occasions are but steps for us to climb fame by.”

“Our ships lost,” cried Spitfire, “and the more part of our men, and worst of all, Brandoch Daha that is worth ten thousand. Easilier shall a little ant bib this ocean dry, than shall we in this taking perform our enterprise.” And he cursed and blasphemed, saying, “Cursed be the malice of the sea, which, having broke our power, now speweth us ashore here to our mere undoing; and so hath done great succour to the King of Witchland, and unto all the world beside great damage.”

But Juss answered him, “Think not that these contrary winds come of fortune or by the influence of malignant and combustive stars. This weather bloweth out of Carcë. Even as these very waves thou beholdest have each his back-wash or undertow, so followeth after every sending an undertow of evil hap, whereby, albeit in essence a less deadly thing, many have been drowned and washed away who stood unremoved against the main stroke of the breaker. So were we twice since that day brought near to our bane: first, when our judgement being darkened with a strange distraction we went up with Gaslark against Carcë; next, when this storm wrecked us here by Arlan Mouth. Though by mine art I rebated the King’s sending, yet against the maleficial undertow that followed it my charms avail not, nor the virtues of all sorcerous herbs that grow.”

“Are these things so, and wilt thou yet be temperate?” said Spitfire.

“Content thee,” said Juss. “The sands run down. A certain time only runneth this stream for our hurt; it must now have well nigh spent itself, and it were too perilous for him to conjure a second time, as last May he conjured in Carcë.”

“Who told thee that?” asked Spitfire.