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 watershed, 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 northwest 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 the 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 gatehouse 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 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
