The Nightmare Had Triplets (35 page)

    There had been Pegasus, and Caligula’s horse, and the Wooden Horse of Troy, and Mahomet’s horse, and Alexander the Great’s horse, and the nightmare, and Balaam’s ass, although the true nightmare would henceforward be to dream about the most lovely and dear of all human faces, knowing that you would not ever again see the detestable creature, and quarrel with her, and provoke her so that a clear patch of red would flare on each of the high cheekbones deliciously. But no horse was of that delicious delicate color, about which a blacksmith had no more reason to think than he had to think about the doings of a king and a queen when they in bed together, oh, God, but you could not endure the thought of those royal doings! You could only long to break, and to hurt, and to torture unhurriedly, without killing either one of them, until you had quite requited such lechery. So you must think about other matters, if but for your own sanity’s health, Volmar decided; and he groaned aloud.

    “Well, at all events,” said Volmar, “there is more happiness in Rorn than there is in my smithy. And I have served for their own good the King and the Queen of that kingdom loyally.”

    “But there is no queen in Rorn,” said a tiny voice.

    Then Volmar uttered a half-frightened cry; and his arms clasped about Sonia before he had recollected this was a person whom he peculiarly hated. He thrust her away from him, and he shouted,—

    “Why do you return to be plaguing me?”

    “It was merely,” said, in the darkness, the urbane voice of Mr. Smith, “that the new Queen of Rorn, just before we reached Garian, thought of a fact which might ease your conscience. So she has mercifully returned to tell you about that fact, because all facts are of considerable interest to a sound logician.”

    “It was merely,” said Sonia’s voice, “that, as we were riding along, I thought about the bold lie which you told in my father’s great hall publicly.”

    Volmar said: “I have paid for that bragging lie with a life’s failure. Because of it, I, who might have been Lord of Druim—yes, and a not ever troubled demigod in Auster likewise—stand here, a mere blacksmith, without any honor in this world, and with a dead heart inside me. That ought to content you, Sonia.”

    “The wealth and the high station which you have flung away, hard-headed Volmar, content me,—ah, but quite utterly do they content me! Yet you said then that I had given you my fancy, and that until life ends, I would be remembering you with love.”

    “I spoke infamy, babbling a sot’s drunken lies,” replied Volmar; “and so, after all this while, you must be returning to remind me of my infamy. That is very like you, most hateful of women.”

    “Oh, stubborn and most foolish of all living creatures, save only one creature, perhaps,” replied Sonia, laughing somewhat ruefully, “but it occurred to me, just as we were riding along, and when there was not much else to think about, that you had spoken the truth.”

    He cried out, hoarsely: “Do not tempt me, Queen of Rorn! Do not mock my exceeding folly!”

    “But here is no Queen of Rorn,” her grave sweet voice declared, steadfastly, and without any hesitating, in the kindly darkness. “Here is only a stubborn and a very foolish girl who dislikes you and your childish blustering weakness, O my dearest, with all her judgment, and who yet loves you—Volmar the Sober Truth-Speaker—with all her heart.”

    “There is no reasonableness in her love,” he returned, sombrely, “because there is no reasonableness in me, and not much control over myself either.”

    She admitted this, saying—with a small, wonderful, low outburst of laughter,—“No.”

    Then the man said: “If there be any happiness in the time to come, Sonia, that will be a miracle and no less. Out of the dark I cry to you, my one love: and I say, Beware of Volmar! I say that I shall strive to be worthy of you, O my dear Sonia. And I say also that I shall fail. I cry to you, in the while that my arm goes about you, Do you leave me, Sonia! Do you not put any faith in Volmar!”

    She replied, with strange soberness: “And I also shall fail you, perhaps. I shall turn even more quick-tempered, it may be; and when I am angry, why, then no doubt, I shall talk endlessly about the grand Feodor whom I might have married. Yes, that is very likely, Volmar; we both know far too well how to hurt each other: and the veiled future frightens me as I speak here with you, thus truthfully, in this deep darkness. We shall have our one hour of happiness; and after that will follow, as I fear, O my dearest, our black misery, black as this darkness.”

    “Do you be wise, Sonia! for in Garian a fine throne and a young king of men await you.”

    “But in this ruined dark smithy, Volmar, I find love and you whom I choose without overmuch hopefulness—and yet without any faltering either. There is no joy in my heart, O wild-hearted Volmar, now that I lay this cold hand of mine upon your hot large hand, but only a distrust of you and of your doings in the bleak time to come, and a strong need of you. Even from that first day of ours, in my father’s orchard, it was true that I had given you my fancy along with my distrust. Yes, and it remains true, O very dear, weak, loud-tongued Volmar, that until my life ends, I shall be remembering you with love,—at all times of course, except when we are quarreling.”

    Then Volmar said, “Do you go away, Mr. Smith, and leave the two of us doomed persons together.”

    “Indeed,” replied Mr. Smith, “I suspect that Urc Tabaron has been a little rash in this special matchmaking. Nevertheless, my dear boy, I obey you.”

    “
Consolidation of the railways of Evain, comprising 3,028 miles, formerly operated by twenty-six companies, into one operating company known as the Stairth if Branlon Rapid Transit, Inc., was completed early in 1932, under the direction of seven financial genii. The authorized capital in 1934 was £38,911,604; gross receipts £4,979,809; operating expenditures £46,154,181. Vessels entering the five ports of Evain in 1934 numbered 13,629 (including sailing vessels and the galleons of romance) of 8,682,470 tons.
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    Now the tale speaks of the second magic of Urc Tabaron, telling how Fergail, the young Queen of Evain, let it be known in the lands beyond common-sense that she would become the wife of him who brought to her the charm, or the elixir—or, in brief, a thaumaturgy of any sort—by which her youth might be made steadfast.

    There was no woman more comely than Fergail. Her wealth in oaken houses, in tilled lands, and in white and black cattle, was beyond counting; so likewise were the numbers of men that wooed her. But now, because of the second magic of Urc Tabaron, now in the mind of Fergail moved a gray thought of how patiently time waited to despoil her of all such pleasantries; and in the Queen’s silver mirror smiled back at her a fair-colored assurance that so long as youth lasted, in a worldful of persuadable male creatures, Fergail need lack the fulfilling of no desire.

    She summoned her druids. In their presence she laid both hands on the private parts of the image which was called the Red Stallion of Stairth, and she made publicly that oath which only the queens and the kings of Evain might make, and, breaking which, they also must be broken, into four pieces. Fergail thus made her oath to marry the champion who should procure for her a dependable magic by which, in derision of time’s malice, her young beauty would be made perpetual.

    Hearing her, Elair the Song-Maker laughed high-heartedly. He got ready his horse, his sword, his fine harp of maple-wood, and his pistols. After that, he rode out of Evain, well armed in all respects except that upon his head showed a wreath of rowan berries in place of a helmet. He rode eastward, .thinking always about the sea-green color of Fergail’s eyes and about the red color in the curved lips of Fergail and about the clear gold of young Fergail’s hair. There was not in this world her twin for loveliness.

    Thus likewise, upon the highways and down the pleasant lanes of the lands beyond common-sense, rode yet other enamored horsemen. Among them were kings and princes, a brace of fine emperors, and many dozens of lean poets and burly men-at-arms, each one of them led by his desire of Fergail and by memories of her bright beauty. To all these came adventures, and to some of these came death, in their searching for a magic which would make eternal the dear youth of Fergail: but with none of these men have we any concern.

    The tale follows Elair the Song-Maker, whom the Master of Gods begot upon Airel, a conversation woman; and the tale narrates how Elair rode out of Evain, looking for Urc Tabaron and for such aid as this wizard had once given in the old days to Elair’s mother, Airel of the Brown Hair.

    Now in those days to be a young champion riding at adventure through the traditionary lands beyond common-sense, upon that immemorial business of a champion, the pursuit of a quest, was a fine calling, with few idle moments in it. The countryside abounded in matters of interest; and the local doings afforded to the wayfarer every one of the more handsome improbabilities of romance.

    There was hardly a bush by the roadway but concealed, until you had come to it, a meddlesome sorcerer, or a dragon unamiably prepared to have lunch with you, or a metallically clothed gentleman, with his visor down and his lance ready, politely desirous of a combat to support the contention that his lady in domnei was the most fair and worshipful of this world’s ladies. Nor was it only in the meadows and the lowlands that adventure prospered, because upon at least one hill out of every three hills stood a castle which either diffused, or else was beset by, this or the other kind of enchantment.

    Of these castles some were square-shaped, gray stone fortresses, having at each corner a round tower capped with a shining, steeply pointed lead roof; and about such castles were moats filled with clear water in which swam red fish and white fish. Yet other castles, builded throughout of marble, arose to a superb flowering into pinnacles and into vaporous looking domes, which seemed like huge bubbles moored overhead; and these castles stood among very broad terraces of marble which were guarded only by large lions carved variously in the old purple porphyry of Egypt and in the green porphyry of Greece. Still other castles, erected by architects more ambiguous, were to the eye of the traveller just shining black precipices, with remote clouds floating—in an indescribably sinister manner—about and into their lower windows. But in each castle lived wonder and beauty and danger.

    And about the highways also roved these three, so that at every bend of his road the glories and the prettiness and the quaint horrors of myth now jostled Elair’s passing. To begin with, from a broad clump of elder-bushes, a centaur arose, tilted back rather remarkably until his hind legs were up, to grin at Elair in pleased surprise. Then witches, bloated with dropsy, croaked to him like foul frogs, telling about the worshipped joys of their wickedness. And a golden cat sang to Elair the strange tale of this cat’s love for a wood nymph and of her partial response to this love.

    To Elair came Luridan, in the likeness of a slim boy who was rather unpleasantly beautiful. His eyes sparkled under delicate arched brows; his lips were like coral. He chaunted those fatal songs which, under the name of Behelah, he had made very long ago in Jerusalem, in the days of Solomon; and Luridan chaunted also the poems and the false prophecies which he made in Cymry, where he was called Wadd. All these were most poisonous songs which tempted their hearer to follow after Luridan to a foreknown but delicious destruction. But after Luridan now followed, instead, a great tawny man, having the thighs and the legs of a goat; and this Balkin, who was Lord of the Northern Mountains, made safe the road of Elair, with a large flaming broom, which swept away Luridan and destroyed his bad loveliness, for that while.

    A young emperor, in a purple robe embroidered in scarlet with the twelve signs of the Zodiac, each displayed upside down, whispered to Elair about that desire which had drawn down this lost whisperer into the Place of the Crocodiles, and about how that desire had been satiated in a musk-smelling twilight. In a pavilion of shining stone, having a cupola of alabaster, and containing a pillar of fretted gold upon which stood the figure of a golden bird with a diamond serpent in its beak, a naked dark woman, who was wholly beautiful except for the fact that her feet were affixed backwards, clung to Elair’s elbow in the while that she lamented the ill bargain which had procured for her an immortal soul. And a crowned maiden came to him in such royal robes as were once worn in Babylon, carrying a cushion of green velvet. On it lay a stone which shone with a great light. Behind her walked six maidens in white robes, who carried torches of transparent glass in which burned balsam. They told him of the stone’s virtues, offering it to Elair at a price which he declined to pay.

    And in Nettan, Elair rode for some while with a company of such beings as hunted the unicorns of Nettan. All these, of course, were deaf-mutes, with long yellow hair; and they wore, as was customary, their mantles of green and bright silver shoes. They carried bows made from the rib-bones of their mortal enemies; their arrows were of bog-wood tipped with white flint and dipped in the dew of hemlock; their quivers were fashioned of snake-skin. Such was the appearance and the gear of these deaf-mutes; but of their needs and of their doings, among the rose-colored cliffs of Nettan, perhaps the less said, the better.

    Moreover, with the affairs of one or another royal family—families which to a noteworthy degree inclined to consist of a golden-haired princess, of three princes, of two brunette step-sisters, of an industriously abominable stepmother, and of a king with a weakness for asking riddles—the incidents of travel involved Elair time and again.