The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  Mivarsh quailed, but answered him, ‘Use me well, you were best, and you shall hear from me nought but what is true. First with the sword he vanquished us, and then with subtle words invited us to talk with him in Orpish, pretending friendship. But they are all dead that harkened to him. For when he held them closed up in the council room in Orpish, himself went secretly forth, while his men laid hands on Gandassa Faz and on Illarosh Faz, and on Fax Fay Faz that was greatest amongst us, and on Lurmesh Faz, and cut off their heads and set them up on poles without the gate. And our armies that waited without were dismayed to see the heads of the Fazes of Impland so set on poles, and the armies of the devils ultramontane still threatening us with death. And this big bald bearded devil spake them of Impland fair, saying these that he had slain were their oppressors and he would give them their hearts’ desire if they would be his men, and he would make them free, every man, and share out all Impland amongst them. So were the common sort befooled and brought under by this bald devil from beyond the mountains, and now none withstandeth him in all Impland. But I that had held back from his council in Orpish, fearing his guile, hardly escaped from my folk that rose against me. And I fled into the woods and wildernesses.’

  ‘Where last saw ye him?’ asked Juss.

  Mivarsh answered him, ‘A three days’ journey north-west of this, at Tormerish in Achery.’

  ‘What made he there?’ asked Juss.

  Mivarsh answered, ‘Still devising evil.’

  ‘Against whom?’ asked Juss.

  Mivarsh answered, ‘Against Zeldornius, which is a devil transmarine.’

  ‘Give me some more wine,’ said Juss, ‘and fill again a beaker for Mivarsh Faz. I do love nought so much as tale-telling a-nights. With whom devised he against Zeldornius?’

  Mivarsh answered, ‘With another devil from beyond seas; I have forgot his name.’

  ‘Drink and remember,’ said Juss; ‘or if ’tis gone from thee, paint me his picture.’

  ‘He hath about my bigness,’ said Mivarsh, that was little of stature. ‘His eyes be bright, and he somewhat favoureth this one,’ pointing at Spitfire, ‘though belike he hath not all so fierce a face. He is lean-faced and dark of skin. He goeth in black iron.’

  ‘Is he Jalcanaius Fostus?’ asked Juss.

  And Mivarsh answered, ‘Ay.’

  ‘There’s musk and amber in thy speech,’ said Juss. ‘I must have more of it. What mean they to do?’

  ‘This,’ said Mivarsh: ‘As I sat listening in the dark without their tent, it was made absolute that this Jalcanaius had been deceived in supposing that another devil transmarine, whom men call Helteranius, had been minded to do treacherously against him; whereas, as the bald devil made him believe, ’twas no such thing. And so it was concluded that Jalcanaius should send riders after Helteranius to make peace between them, and that they two should forthwith join to kill Zeldornius, one falling on him in the front and the other in the rear.’

  ‘So ’tis come to this?’ said Spitfire.

  ‘And when they have Zeldornius slain,’ said Mivarsh, ‘then must they help this bald-pate in his undertakings.’

  ‘And so pay him for his redes?’ said Juss.

  And Mivarsh answered, ‘Even so.’

  ‘One thing more I would know,’ said Juss. ‘How great a following hath he in Impland?’

  ‘The greatest strength that he can make,’ answered Mivarsh, ‘of devils ultramontane is as I think two score hundred. Many Imps beside will follow him, but they have but our country weapons.’

  Lord Brandoch Daha took Juss by the arm and went forth with him into the night. The frosted grass crunched under their tread: strange stars blinked in the south in a windy space betwixt cloud and sleeping earth, Achernar near the meridian bedimming all lesser fires with his pure radiance.

  ‘So cometh Corund upon us as an eagle out of the sightless blue,’ said Brandoch Daha, ‘with twelve times our forces to let us the way to the Moruna, and all Impland like a spaniel smiling at his heel; if indeed this simple soul say true, as I think he doth.’

  ‘Thou fallest all of a holiday mood,’ said Juss, ‘at the first scenting of this great hazard.’

  ‘O Juss,’ cried Brandoch Daha, ‘thine own breath lighteneth at it, and thy words come more sprightly forth. Are not all lands, all airs, one country unto us, so there be great doings afoot to keep bright our swords?’

  Juss said, ‘Ere we sleep I will inform Zeldornius how the wind shifteth. He must face both ways now, till this field be cut. This battle must not go against him, for his enemies be engaged (if Mivarsh say true) to give the help of their swords to Corund.’

  So fared they to Zeldornius’s tent, and Juss said by the way, ‘Of this be satisfied: Corund bareth not blade on the hills of Salapanta. The King hath intelligencers to keep him advertised of all enchanted circles of the world, and well he knoweth what influences move here, and with what danger to themselves outlanders draw sword here, as witness the doom fulfilled these nine years by these three captains. Therefore will Corund, instructed in these things by his master that sent him, look to deal with us otherwhere than in this charmed corner of the earth. And he were as well take a bear by the tooth as meddle in the fight that now impendeth, and so bring upon him these three seasoned armies joined in one for his destruction.’

  They passed the guard with the watchword, and waked Zeldornius and told him all. And he, muffled in his great faded cloak, went forth to see guards were set and all sure against an onslaught from either side. And standing by his tent to give good night to those lords of Demonland, he said, ‘It likes me better so. I ever was a fighter; so, one fight more.’

  The morrow dawned and passed uneventful, and the morrow’s morrow. But on the third morning after the coming of Mivarsh, behold, east and west, great armies marching from the plains, and Zeldornius’s array drawn up to meet them on the ridge, with weapons gleaming and horses champing and trumpets blowing the call of battle. No greetings were betwixt them, nor so much as a message of challenge or defiance, but Jalcanaius with his black riders rushed to the onset from the west and Helteranius from the east. But Zeldornius, like a grey old wolf, snapping now this way now that, stemmed the tide of their onslaught. So began the battle great and fell, and continued the livelong day. Thrice on either side Zeldornius went forth with a great strength of chosen men, in so much that his enemies fled before him as the partridge doth before the sparrow-hawk; and thrice did Helteranius and thrice Jalcanaius Fostus rally and hurl him back, mounting the ridge anew.

  But when it drew near to evening, and the dark day darkened toward night, the battle ceased, dying down suddenly into silence. Those lords of Demonland came down from their tower, and walked among the heaps of dead men slain toward a place of slabby rock in the neck of the ridge. Here, alone on that field, Zeldornius leaned upon his spear, gazing downward in a study, his arm cast about the neck of his old brown horse who hung his head and sniffed the ground. Through a rift in the western clouds the sun glared forth; but his beams were not so red as the ling and bent of Salapanta field.

  As Juss and his companions drew near, no sound was heard save from the fortalice behind them: a discordant plucking of a harp, and the voice of Mivarsh where he walked and harped before the walls, singing this ditty:

  The hag is astride

  This night for to ride;

  The devill and shee together:

  Through thick and through thin.

  Now out and then in,

  Though ne’er so foule be the weather.

  A thorn or a burr

  She takes for a spurre,

  With a lash of a bramble she rides now;

  Through brakes and through bryars,

  O’re ditches and mires,

  She followes the spirit that guides now.

  No beast for his food

  Dares now range the wood,

  But husht in his laire he lies lurking;

  While mischiefs, by these,

  On land and on seas,<
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  At noone of night are a working.

  The storme will arise

  And trouble the skies;

  This night, and more for the wonder,

  The ghost from the tomb

  Affrighted shall come,

  Cal’d out by the clap of the thunder.

  When they were come to Zeldornius, the Lord Juss spake saying, ‘O most redoubtable Zeldornius, renowned in war, surely thy prognostications by the moon were true. Behold the noble victory thou hast obtained upon thine enemies.’

  But Zeldornius answered him not, still gazing downwards before his feet. And there was Helteranius fallen, the sword of Jalcanaius Fostus standing in his heart, and his right hand grasping still his own sword that had given Jalcanaius his bane-sore.

  So looked they awhile on those two great captains slain. And Zeldornius said, ‘Speak not comfortably to me of victory, O Juss. So long as that sword, and that, had his master alive, I did not more desire mine own safety than their destruction who with me in days gone by made conquest of wide Impland. And see with what a poisoned violence they laboured my undoing, and in what an unexpected ruin are they suddenly broken and gone.’ And as one grown into a deep sadness be said, ‘Where were all heroical parts but in Helteranius? and a man might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o’er-leaping actions of great Jalcanaius, who now leaveth but his body to bedung that earth that was lately shaken at his terror. I have waded in red blood to the knee; and in this hour, in my old years, the world is become for me a vision only and a mock-show.’

  Therewith he looked on the Demons, and there was that in his eyes that stayed their speech.

  In a while he spake again, saying, ‘I sware unto you my furtherance if I prevailed. But now is mine army passed away as wax wasteth before the fire, and I wait the dark ferryman who tarrieth for no man. Yet, since never have I wrote mine obligations in sandy but in marble memories, and since victory is mine, receive these gifts: and first thou, O Brandoch Daha, my sword, since before thou wast of years eighteen thou wast accounted the mightiest among men-at-arms. Mightily may it avail thee, as me in time gone by. And unto thee, O Spitfire, I give this cloak. Old it is, yet may it stand thee in good stead, since this virtue it hath that he who weareth it shall not fall alive into the hand of his enemies. Wear it for my sake. But unto thee, O Juss, give I no gift, for rich thou art of all good gifts: only my good will give I unto thee, ere earth gape for me.’

  So they thanked him well. And he said, ‘Depart from me, since now approacheth that which must complete this day’s undoing.’

  So they fared back to the spy-fortalice, and night came down on the hills. A great wind moaning out of the hueless west tore the clouds as a ragged garment, revealing the lonely moon that fled naked betwixt them. As the Demons looked backward in the moonlight to where Zeldornius stood gazing on the dead, a noise as of thunder made the firm land tremble and drowned the howling of the wind. And they beheld how earth gaped for Zeldornius.

  After that, the dark shut down athwart the moon, and night and silence hung on the field of Salapanta.

  X

  THE MARCHLANDS OF THE MORUNA

  Of the journey of the Demons from Salapanta to Eshgrar Ogo: wherein is set down concerning the Lady of Ishnain Nemartra, and other notable matters.

  MIVARSH FAZ came betimes on the morrow to the lords of Demonland, and found them ready for the road. So he asked them where their journey lay, and they answered, ‘East.’

  ‘Eastward,’ said Mivarsh, ‘all ways lead to the Moruna. None may go thither and not die.’

  But they laughed and answered him, ‘Do not too narrowly define our power, sweet Mivarsh, restraining it to thy capacities. Know that our journey is a matter determined of, and it is fixed with nails of diamond to the wall of inevitable necessity.’

  They took leave of him and went their ways with their small army. For four days they journeyed through deep woods carpeted with the leaves of a thousand autumns, where at midmost noon twilight dwelt among hushed woodland noises, and solemn eyeballs glared nightly between the tree-trunks, gazing on the Demons as they marched or took their rest.

  The fifth day, and the sixth and the seventh, they journeyed by the southern margin of a gravelly sea, made all of sand and gravel and no drop of water, yet ebbing and flowing away with great waves as another sea doth, never standing still and never at rest. And always by day and night as they came through the desert was a great noise very hideous and a sound as it were of tambourines and trumpets; yet was the place solitary to the eye, and no living thing afoot there save their company faring to the east.

  On the eighth day they left the shore of that waterless sea and came by broken rocky ground to the descent to a wide vale, shelterless and unfruitful, with the broad stony bed of a little river winding in the strath. Here, looking eastward, they beheld in the lustre of a late bright-shining sun a castle of red stone on a terrace of the fell-side beyond the valley. Juss said, ‘We can be there before nightfall, and there will we take guesting.’ When they drew near they were ware, betwixt sunset and moonlight, of one sitting on a boulder in their path about a furlong from the castle, as if gazing on them and awaiting their coming. But when they came to the boulder there was no such person. So they passed on their way toward the castle, and when they looked behind them, lo, there was he sitting on the boulder bearing his head in his hands: a strange thing, which would cause any man to abhor.

  The castle gate stood open, and they entered in, and so by the courtyard to a great hall, with the board set as for a banquet, and bright fires and an hundred candles burning in the still air; but no living thing was there to be seen, nor voice heard in all that castle. Lord Brandoch Daha said, ‘In this land to fail of marvels only for an hour were the strangest marvel. Banquet we lightly and so to bed.’ So they sat down and ate, and drank of the honey-sweet wine, till all thoughts of war and hardship and the unimagined perils of the wilderness and Corund’s great army preparing their destruction faded from their minds, and the spirit of slumber wooed their weary frames.

  Then a faint music, troublous in its voluptuous wild sweetness, floated on the air, and they beheld a lady enter on the dais. Beautiful she seemed beyond the beauty of mortal women. In her dark hair was the likeness of the horned moon in honey-coloured cymophanes every stone whereof held a straight beam of light imprisoned that quivered and gleamed as sunbeams quiver wading in the clear deeps of a summer sea. She wore a coat-hardy of soft crimson silk, close fitting, so that she did truly apparel her apparel and with her own loveliness made it more sumptuous. She said, ‘My lords and guests in Ishnain Nemartra, there be beds of down and sheets of lawn for all of you that be aweary. But know that I keep a sparrow-hawk sitting on a perch in the eastern tower, and he that will wake my sparrow-hawk this night long, alone without any company and without sleep, I shall come to him at the night’s end and shall grant unto him the first thing that he will ask me of earthly things.’ So saying she departed like a dream.

  Brandoch Daha said, ‘Cast we lots for this adventure.’

  But Juss spake against it, saying, ‘There’s likely some guile herein. We must not in this accursed land suffer aught to seduce our minds, but follow our set purpose. We must not be of those who go forth for wool and come home shorn.’

  Brandoch Daha and Spitfire mocked at this, and cast lots between themselves. And the lot fell upon Lord Brandoch Daha. ‘Thou shalt not deny me this,’ said he to Lord Juss, ‘else will I never more do thee good.’

  ‘I never could yet deny thee anything,’ answered Juss. ‘Art not thou and I finger and thumb? Only forget not, whatsoe’er betide, wherefore we be come hither.’

  ‘Art not thou and I finger and thumb?’ said Brandoch Daha. ‘Fear nothing, O friend of my heart. I’ll not forget it.’

  So while the others slept, Brandoch Daha waked the sparrow-hawk, night-long in the eastern chamber. For all that the cold hillside without was rough with hoar-frost the air was warm in that chamber and heavy
, disposing strongly to sleep. Yet he closed not an eye, but still beheld the sparrow-hawk, telling it stories and tweaking it by the tail ever and anon as it grew drowsy. And it answered shortly and boorishly, looking upon him malevolently.

  And with the golden dawn, behold that lady in the shadowy doorway. At her entering in, the sparrow-hawk clicked its wings as in anger, and without more ado tucked its beak beneath its wing and went to sleep. But that bright lady, looking on the Lord Brandoch Daha, spake and said, ‘Require it of me, my Lord Brandoch Daha, that which thou most desirest of earthly things.’

  But he, as one bedazzled, stood up saying, ‘O lady, is not thy beauty at the dawn of day an irradiation that might dispel the mists of hell? My heart is ravished with thy loveliness and only fed with thy sight. Therefore thy body will I have, and none other thing earthly.’

  ‘Thou art a fool,’ she cried, ‘that knowest not what thou askest. Of all things earthly mightest thou have taken choose; but I am not earthly.’

  He answered, ‘I will have nought else.’

  ‘Thou dost embrace then a great danger,’ said she, ‘and loss of all thy good luck, for thee and thy friends beside.’

  But Brandoch Daha, seeing how her face became on a sudden such as are new-blown roses at the dawning, and her eyes wide and dark with love-longing, came to her and took her in his arms and fell to kissing and embracing of her. On such wise they abode for awhile, that he was ware of no thing else on earth save only the sense-maddening caress of that lady’s hair, the perfume of it, the kiss of her mouth, the swell and fall of that lady’s breast straining against his. She said in his ear softly, ‘I see thou art too masterful. I see thou art one who will be denied nothing, on whatsoever thine heart is set. Come.’ And they passed by a heavy-curtained doorway into an inner chamber, where the air was filled with the breath of myrrh and nard and ambergris, a fragrancy as of sleeping loveliness. Here, amid the darkness of rich hangings and subdued glints of gold, a warm radiance of shaded lamps watched above a couch, great and broad and downy-pillowed. And here for a long time they solaced them with love and all delight.