The Worm Ouroboros

by E.R. Eddison

“A most fiery politician is my little martlet: damned fiends and angels and nothing betwixt for her.

“How is it with the King?” Gro answered him, “He chafeth to be at it; and to pass away the time he playeth at dice with Corinius, and the luck goeth against the King.” “What makest thou of that?” asked Corund. And Gro said, “The fortune of the dice jumpeth not commonly with the fortune of war.”

“O Gaslark,” said Spitfire, “our brother that is stolen from us, with us it surely lieth to find him and set him free.” But Juss groaned and said, “In which star of the unclimbed sky wilt thou begin our search? Or in which of the secret streams of ocean where the last green rays are quenched in oozy darkness?”

“Surely, O my Lady Prezmyra, truth masketh in many a strange disguise when she rideth rumour’s broomstick through kings’ palaces.

Now were borne round dishes of carp, pilchards, and lobsters, and thereafter store enow of meats: a fat kid roasted whole and garnished with peas on a spacious silver charger, kid pasties, plates of neats’ tongues and sweetbreads, sucking rabbits injellies, hedgehogs baked in their skins, hogs’ haslets, carbonadoes, chitterlings, and dormouse pies.

“Strange it is that he should so attack you. An enemy might smell some cause behind it.” “Our greatness,” said Corinius, looking haughtily at him, “is a lamp whereat other moths than he have been burnt. I count it no strange matter at all.”

“He bibbeth it down apace, and the hour is yet early. This presageth trouble, since ever with him indiscretion treadeth hard on the heels of surliness as he waxeth drunken.”

Whene’er I bib the wine down. Asleepe drop all my cares. A fig for fret. A fig for sweat. A fig care I for cares. Sith death must come, though I say nay. Why grieve my life’s days with affaires? Come, bib we then the wine down Of Bacchus faire to see; For alway while we bibbing be. Asleepe drop all our cares.

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

“Our peacemaking taketh a pretty turn. Heels i’ the air: monstrous unladylike!”

“Thou art a dapper fellow. It is a wonder that thou wilt strut in the tented field with all this womanish gear. Thy shield: how many of these sparkling baubles thinkest thou I’d leave in it were we once come to knocks?” “I’ll tell thee,” answered Lord Brandoch Daha. “For every jewel that bath been beat out of my shield in battle, never yet went Ito war that I brought not home an hundredfold to set it fair again, from the spoils I obtained from mine enemies.

Who shoots at the mid-day sum, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush.”

“Thou art a dear companion to me,” she said. “Thy melancholy is to me as some shady wood in summer, where I may dance if I will, and that is often, or be sad if I will, and that is in these days oftener than I would: and never thou crossest my mood. Save but now thou didst so, to plague me with thy precious flattering jargon, till I had thought thee skin-changed with Laxus or young Corinius, seeking such lures as gallants spread their wings to, to stoop in ladies’ bosoms.”

“Next time thou shalt not carry it so, but I will have thee when and where I would. Thou mayst gull the Devil with thy perfidiousness, but not me a second time, thou lying cozening vixen.” She answered softly, “Beastly man, I did perform the very article of mine oath, and left thee an open door last night. If thou didst look to find me within, that were beyond aught I promised. And know for that I’ll seek a greater than thou, and a nicer to my liking: one less ready to swap each kitchen slut on the lips. I know thy practice, my lord, and thy conditions.”

“Well,” said the King, “there be two days in every month when whatever is begun will never reach completion. And I think it was on such a day he did execute his purpose upon Gallandus.”

Proudly he stood before the King, his head firm planted above his mighty throat and neck; his proud luxurious mouth, made for wine-cups and for ladies’ lips, firm set above the square shaven chin and jaw; the thick fair curls of his hair bound with black bryony; the insolence that dwelt in his dark blue eyes tamed for the while in face of that green bale-light that rose and fell in the steadfast gaze of the King.

‘Arnod, ’tis a bonny horse thou ridest. Could he carry thee to a swine-hunt down from Erngate End i’ the morning?’ I saluted him and said, ‘Not so far only, Lord, but to burning Hell so thou but lead us.’ ‘Come on,’ saith he. ‘’Tis a better gate I shall lead thee: to Krothering hall ere eventide.’”

“Of the roads,” answered Gro, “a wise man will choose ever that one which is indirect. For but consider the matter, thou that art a great cragsman: think our life’s course a lofty cliff. I am to climb it, sometime up, sometime down. I pray, whither leadeth the straight road on such a cliff? Why, nowhither. For if I will go up by the straight way, ’tis not possible; I am left gaping whiles thou by crooked courses hast gained the top. Or if down, why ’tis easy and swift; but then, no more climbing ever more for me. And thou, clambering down by the crooked way, shalt find me a dead and unsightly corpse at the bottom.”

The cloudless vault of heaven; the unnumbered laughter of the sea; that quiet cove beneath, and those ships of war and that army camping by the ships; the emptiness of the blasted wolds to southward, where every rock seemed like a dead man’s skull and every rank tuft of grass hag-ridden; the bearing of those lords of Demonland who stood beside him, as if nought should be of commoner course to them pursuing their resolve than to turn their backs on living land and enter those regions of the dead; these things with a power as of a mighty music made Gro’s breath catch in his throat and the tear spring in his eye.

Lulled with light-stirring airs too gentle-soft to ruffle her glassy surface, warm incense-laden airs sweet with the perfume of immortal flowers, the charmed Lake of Ravary dreamed under the moon.

And he, who had all his days drunk deep of the fountain of the joy of life and the glory and the wonder of being, felt ever deadlier and darker in his soul that lonely horror which he first had tasted the day before at his first near sight of Zora, while he flew through the cold air portent-laden; and his whole heart grew sick because of it.

“Thou art nothing. And all thy desires and memories and loves and dreams, nothing. The little dead earth-louse were of greater avail than thou, were it not nothing as thou art nothing. For all is nothing: earth and sky and sea and they that dwell therein. Nor shall this illusion comfort thee, if it might, that when thou art abolished these things shall endure for a season, stars and months return, and men grow old and die, and new men and women live and love and die and be forgotten. For what is it to thee, that shalt be as a blown-out flame? and all things in earth and heaven, and things past and things for to come, and life and death, and the mere elements of space and time, of being and not being, all shall be nothing unto thee; because thou shalt be nothing, for ever.”

“Why must you wed then, dear heart?” said she, “if you were minded to do what likes you? Men love not sad looks in their wives. You may ride a lover on the curb, madam, but once you wed him ’tis all t’other way: all his way, madam, and beware of ‘had I wist.’”

False friends! O, I could eat their hearts with garlic.”

“O King, thou hast given us terrible good counsel. But it was riddlewise. And hearing thee, mine eye was still on the crown thou wearest, made in the figure of a crab-fish, which, because it looks one way and goes another, methought did fitly pattern out thy looking to our perils but seeking the while thine own advantage.”

“Time gallopeth: so must we.”

Fortune’s a right strumpet, to fondle me in the neck and now yerk me one thus i’ the midriff.”

“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.”