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
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.
Even as all things have an end, he said at the last, “O my lady, mistress of hearts, here would I abide ever, abandoning all else for thy love sake. But my companions tarry for me in thine halls below, and great matters wait on my direction. Give me thy divine mouth once again, and bid me adieu.”
She was lying as if asleep across his breast: smooth-skinned, white, warm, with shapely throat leaned backward against the spice-odorous darknesses of her unbound hair; one tress, heavy and splendid like a python, coiled between white arm and bosom. Swift as a snake she turned, clinging fiercely about him, pressing fiercely again to his her insatiable sweet fervent lips, crying that here must he dwell unto eternity in the intoxication of perfect love and pleasure.
But when in the end, gently constraining her to loose him and let him go, he arose and clothed and armed him, that lady caught about her a translucent robe of silvery sheen, as when the summer moon veils but not hides with a filmy cloud her beauties’ splendour, and so standing before him spake and said, “Go then. This is got by casting of pearls to hogs. I may not slay thee, since over thy body I have no other power. But because thou shalt not laugh overmuch, having required me of that which was beyond the pact and being enjoyed is now slighted of thee and abused, therefore know, proud man, that three gifts I here will grant thee thereto of mine own choosing. Thou shalt have war and not peace. He that thou worst hatest shall throw down and ruin thy fair lordship, Krothering Castle and the mains thereof. And though vengeance shall overtake him at the last, by another’s hand than thine shall it come, and to thine hand shall it be denied.”
Therewith she fell a-weeping. And the Lord Brandoch Daha, with great resolution, went forth from the chamber. And looking back from the threshold he beheld both that and the outer chamber void of lady and sparrow-hawk both. And a great weariness came suddenly upon him. So, going down, he found Lord Juss and his companions sleeping on the cold stones, and the banquet hall empty of all gear and dank with moss and cobwebs, and bats sleeping head-downward among the crumbling roof-beams; nor was any sign of last night’s banqueting. So Brandoch Daha roused his companions, and told Juss how he had fared, and of the weird laid on him by that lady.
And they went greatly wondering forth of the accursed castle of Ishnain Nemartra, glad to come off so scatheless.
On that ninth day of their journey from Salapanta they came through waste lands of stone and living rock, where not so much as an earth-louse stirred with life. Gorges split the earth here and there: rock-walled labyrinths of gloom, unvisited for ever by sunbeam or moonbeam, turbulent in their depths with waters that leaped and churned for ever, never still and never silent. So was that day’s journey tortuous, turning now up now down along those river banks to find crossing places.
When they were halted at noon by the deepest rift they had yet beheld, there came one hastening to them and fell down by Juss and lay panting face to earth as breathless from long running. And when they raised him up, behold Mivarsh Faz, harnessed in the gear of a black rider of Jalcanaius Fostus and armed with axe and sword. Great was his agitation, and he speechless for lack of breath. They used him kindly, and gave him to drink from a great skin of wine, Zeldornius’s gift, and anon he said, “He hath armed countless hundreds of our folk with weapons taken from Salapanta field. These, led by the devils his sons, with Philpritz cursed of the gods, be gone before to hold all the ways be-east of you. Night and day have I ridden and run to warn you. Himself, with his main strength of devils ultramontane, rideth hot on your tracks.”
They thanked him well, marvelling much that he should be at such pains to advertise them of their danger. “I have eat your salt,” answered be, “and moreover ye are against this
