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,
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 he said, “Where were all heroical parts but in Helteranius? and a man might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o’erleaping 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 hue less 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 alway 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 court-yard 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
