a goose-feather bed and sheets of lawn these many weeks. If thou plague me now, by God, I will incontinently take horse over the Stile to Krothering, and let thee and thine affairs go to the devil.”
So Juss laughed and left him in peace. And later when they had eaten they walked in a plashed alley, where the air was cool and the purple shadow on the path was dappled with bright flecks of sunshine. Lord Brandoch Daha said, “Thou knowest that Koshtra Belorn is a great mountain, beside which our mountains of Demonland would seem but little hills unremarked, and that it standeth in the uttermost parts of earth beyond the wastes of Upper Impland, and thou mightest search a year through all the peopled countries of the world and not find one living soul who had so much as beheld it from afar.”
“This much I know,” said Lord Juss.
“Is thine heart utterly bent on this journey?” said Brandoch Daha. “Or is it not preposterous, and a thing to comfort our enemies, that we should thus at the bidding of a dream fly to far and perilous lands, rather than pay Witchland presently for the shame he hath done us?”
Juss answered him, “My bed is hallowed by spells of such a virtue that no naughty dream flown through the ivory gate nor no noisome wizardry hath power to trouble his sleep who sleepeth there. This dream is true. For Witchland there is time enow. If thou wilt not go with me to Koshtra Belorn, I must go without thee.”
“Enough,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “Thou knowest for thee I tie my purse with a spider’s thread. Then fare we must to Impland, and herein may I help thee. For listen while I tell thee a thing. Whenas I slew Gorice X. in Goblinland, Gaslark gave me along with other good gifts, a great curiosity: a treatise or book copied out on parchment by Bhorreon his secretary, wherein it speaketh of all the ways to Impland and what countries and kingdoms lie next to the Moruna and the fronts thereof, and the marvels that he found in those lands. And all that is writ in this book was set down faithfully by Bhorreon after the telling of Gro, the same which now hath part with the Witchlanders. Great honour had Gro as then from Gaslark for his far journeyings and for that which is written in this book of wonders; and this it was that had first put in Gaslark’s mind to send that expedition into Impland, which so reduced him and came so wretchedly to nought. If then thou wilt seek to Koshtra Belorn, come home with me to-day and I will show thee my book.”
So spake Lord Brandoch Daha, and Lord Juss straightway ordered forth the horses, and sent messengers to Volle under Kartadza and to Vizz at Darklairstead bidding them meet him at Krothering with what speed they might. It was four hours before noon when Juss, Spitfire, 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