The Book of Wonder
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Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany >> The Book of Wonder
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Charles Bidwell
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THE BOOK OF WONDER
BY
LORD DUNSANY
CONTENTS
Preface
The Bride of the Man-Horse
Distressing Tale of Thangobrind The Jeweller
The House of the Sphinx
Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men
The Injudicious Prayers of Pombo the Idolater
The Loot of Bombasharna
Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon Of Romance
The Quest of the Queen's Tears
The Hoard of the Gibbelins
How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles
How One Came, As Was Foretold, to the City Of Never
The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap
Chu-Bu and Sheemish
The Wonderful Window
Epilogue
PREFACE
Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of
London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know:
for we have new worlds here.
THE BRIDE OF THE MAN-HORSE
In the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk the
centaur went to the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of the
centaurs was, and taking from it the hoarded amulet that his father,
Jyshak, in the year of his prime, had hammered from mountain gold and
set with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put it upon his wrist, and
said no word, but walked from his mother's cavern. And he took with
him too that clarion of the centaurs, that famous silver horn, that in
its time had summoned to surrender seventeen cities of Man, and for
twenty years had brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege of
Tholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods, what time the centaurs waged
their fabulous war and were not broken by any force of arms, but
retreated slowly in a cloud of dust before the final miracle of the
gods that They brought in Their desperate need from Their ultimate
armoury. He took it and strode away, and his mother only sighed and
let him go.
She knew that today he would not drink at the stream coming down from
the terraces of Varpa Niger, the inner land of the mountains, that
today he would not wonder awhile at the sunset and afterwards trot
back to the cavern again to sleep on rushes pulled by rivers that know
not Man. She knew that it was with him as it had been of old with his
father, and with Goom the father of Jyshak, and long ago with the
gods. Therefore she only sighed and let him go.
But he, coming out from the cavern that was his home, went for the
first time over the little stream, and going round the corner of the
crags saw glittering beneath him the mundane plain. And the wind of
the autumn that was gilding the world, rushing up the slopes of the
mountain, beat cold on his naked flanks. He raised his head and
snorted.
"I am a man-horse now!" he shouted aloud; and leaping from crag to
crag he galloped by valley and chasm, by torrent-bed and scar of
avalanche, until he came to the wandering leagues of the plain, and
left behind him for ever the Athraminaurian mountains.
His goal was Zretazoola, the city of Sombelenė. What legend of
Sombelenė's inhuman beauty or of the wonder of her mystery had ever
floated over the mundane plain to the fabulous cradle of the centaurs'
race, the Athraminaurian mountains, I do not know. Yet in the blood of
man there is a tide, an old sea-current, rather, that is somehow akin
to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far
away, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered;
and this springtide of current that visits the blood of man comes from
the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, of old; it
takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to
ancient song. So it may be that Shepperalk's fabulous blood stirred in
those lonely mountains away at the edge of the world to rumours that
only the airy twilight knew and only confided secretly to the bat, for
Shepperalk was more legendary even than man. Certain it was that he
headed from the first for the city Zretazoola, where Sombelenė in her
temple dwelt; though all the mundane plain, its rivers and mountains,
lay between Shepperalk's home and the city he sought.
When first the feet of the centaur touched the grass of that soft
alluvial earth he blew for joy upon the silver horn, he pranced and
caracoled, he gambolled over the leagues; pace came to him like a
maiden with a lamp, a new and beautiful wonder; the wind laughed as it
passed him. He put his head down low to the scent of the flower, he
lifted it up to be nearer the unseen stars, he revelled through
kingdoms, took rivers in his stride; how shall I tell you, ye that
dwell in cities, how shall I tell you what he felt as he galloped? He
felt for strength like the towers of Bel-Narana; for lightness like
those gossamer palaces that the fairy-spider builds 'twixt heaven and
sea along the coasts of Zith; for swiftness like some bird racing up
from the morning to sing in some city's spires before daylight comes.
He was the sworn companion of the wind. For joy he was as a song; the
lightnings of his legendary sires, the earlier gods, began to mix with
his blood; his hooves thundered. He came to the cities of men, and all
men trembled, for they remembered the ancient mythical wars, and now
they dreaded new battles and feared for the race of man. Not by Clio
are these wars recorded; history does not know them, but what of that?
Not all of us have sat at historians' feet, but all have learned fable
and myth at their mothers' knees. And there were none that did not
fear strange wars when they saw Shepperalk swerve and leap along the
public ways. So he passed from city to city.
By night he lay down unpanting in the reeds of some marsh or forest;
before dawn he rose triumphant, and hugely drank of some river in the
dark, and splashing out of it would trot to some high place to find
the sunrise, and to send echoing eastwards the exultant greetings of
his jubilant horn. And lo! the sunrise coming up from the echoes, and
the plains new-lit by the day, and the leagues spinning by like water
flung from a top, and that gay companion, the loudly laughing wind,
and men and the fears of men and their little cities; and, after that,
great rivers and waste spaces and huge new hills, and then new lands
beyond them, and more cities of men, and always the old companion, the
glorious wind. Kingdom by kingdom slipt by, and still his breath was
even. "It is a golden thing to gallop on good turf in one's youth,"
said the young man-horse, the centaur. "Ha, ha," said the wind of the
hills, and the winds of the plain answered.
Bells pealed in frantic towers, wise men consulted parchments,
astrologers sought of the portent from the stars, the aged made subtle
prophecies. "Is he not swift?" said the young. "How glad he is," said
the children.
Night after night brought him sleep, and day after day lit his gallop,
till he came to the lands of the Athalonian men who live by the edges
of the mundane plain, and from them he came to the lands of legend
again such as those in which he was cradled on the other side of the
world, and which fringe the marge of the world and mix with the
twilight. And there a mighty thought came into his untired heart, for
he knew that he neared Zretazoola now, the city of Sombelenė.
It was late in the day when he neared it, and clouds coloured with
evening rolled low on the plain before him; he galloped on into their
golden mist, and when it hid from his eyes the sight of things, the
dreams in his heart awoke and romantically he pondered all those
rumours that used to come to him from Sombelenė, because of the
fellowship of fabulous things. She dwelt (said evening secretly to the
bat) in a little temple by a lone lakeshore. A grove of cypresses
screened her from the city, from Zretazoola of the climbing ways. And
opposite her temple stood her tomb, her sad lake-sepulchre with open
door, lest her amazing beauty and the centuries of her youth should
ever give rise to the heresy among men that lovely Sombelenė was
immortal: for only her beauty and her lineage were divine.
Her father had been half centaur and half god; her mother was the
child of a desert lion and that sphinx that watches the pyramids;--she
was more mystical than Woman.
Her beauty was as a dream, was as a song; the one dream of a lifetime
dreamed on enchanted dews, the one song sung to some city by a
deathless bird blown far from his native coasts by storm in Paradise.
Dawn after dawn on mountains of romance or twilight after twilight
could never equal her beauty; all the glow-worms had not the secret
among them nor all the stars of night; poets had never sung it nor
evening guessed its meaning; the morning envied it, it was hidden from
lovers.
She was unwed, unwooed.
The lions came not to woo her because they feared her strength, and
the gods dared not love her because they knew she must die.
This was what evening had whispered to the bat, this was the dream in
the heart of Shepperalk as he cantered blind through the mist. And
suddenly there at his hooves in the dark of the plain appeared the
cleft in the legendary lands, and Zretazoola sheltering in the cleft,
and sunning herself in the evening.
Swiftly and craftily he bounded down by the upper end of the cleft,
and entering Zretazoola by the outer gate which looks out sheer on the
stars, he galloped suddenly down the narrow streets. Many that rushed
out on to balconies as he went clattering by, many that put their
heads from glittering windows, are told of in olden song. Shepperalk
did not tarry to give greetings or to answer challenges from martial
towers, he was down through the earthward gateway like the thunderbolt
of his sires, and, like Leviathan who has leapt at an eagle, he surged
into the water between temple and tomb.
He galloped with half-shut eyes up the temple-steps, and, only seeing
dimly through his lashes, seized Sombelenė by the hair, undazzled as
yet by her beauty, and so haled her away; and, leaping with her over
the floorless chasm where the waters of the lake fall unremembered
away into a hole in the world, took her we know not where, to be her
slave for all centuries that are allowed to his race.
Three blasts he gave as he went upon that silver horn that is the
world-old treasure of the centaurs. These were his wedding bells.
DISTRESSING TALE OF THANGOBRIND THE JEWELLER
When Thangobrind the jeweller heard the ominous cough, he turned at
once upon that narrow way. A thief was he, of very high repute, being
patronized by the lofty and elect, for he stole nothing smaller than
the Moomoo's egg, and in all his life stole only four kinds of
stone--the ruby, the diamond, the emerald, and the sapphire; and, as
jewellers go, his honesty was great. Now there was a Merchant Prince
who had come to Thangobrind and had offered his daughter's soul for
the diamond that is larger than the human head and was to be found on
the lap of the spider-idol, Hlo-hlo, in his temple of Moung-ga-ling;
for he had heard that Thangobrind was a thief to be trusted.
Thangobrind oiled his body and slipped out of his shop, and went
secretly through byways, and got as far as Snarp, before anybody knew
that he was out on business again or missed his sword from its place
under the counter. Thence he moved only by night, hiding by day and
rubbing the edges of his sword, which he called Mouse because it was
swift and nimble. The jeweller had subtle methods of travelling;
nobody saw him cross the plains of Zid; nobody saw him come to Mursk
or Tlun. O, but he loved shadows! Once the moon peeping out
unexpectedly from a tempest had betrayed an ordinary jeweller; not so
did it undo Thangobrind; the watchman only saw a crouching shape that
snarled and laughed: "'Tis but a hyena," they said. Once in the city
of Ag one of the guardians seized him, but Thangobrind was oiled and
slipped from his hand; you scarcely heard his bare feet patter away.
He knew that the Merchant Prince awaited his return, his little eyes
open all night and glittering with greed; he knew how his daughter lay
chained up and screaming night and day. Ah, Thangobrind knew. And had
he not been out on business he had almost allowed himself one or two
little laughs. But business was business, and the diamond that he
sought still lay on the lap of Hlo-hlo, where it had been for the last
two million years since Hlo-hlo created the world and gave unto it all
things except that precious stone called Dead Man's Diamond. The jewel
was often stolen, but it had a knack of coming back again to the lap
of Hlo-hlo. Thangobrind knew this, but he was no common jeweller and
hoped to outwit Hlo-hlo, perceiving not the trend of ambition and lust
and that they are vanity.
How nimbly he threaded his way thought he pits of Snood!--now like a
botanist, scrutinising the ground; now like a dancer, leaping from
crumbling edges. It was quite dark when he went by the towers of Tor,
where archers shoot ivory arrows at strangers lest any foreigner
should alter their laws, which are bad, but not to be altered by mere
aliens. At night they shoot by the sound of the strangers' feet. O,
Thangobrind, was ever a jeweller like you! He dragged two stones
behind him by long cords, and at these the archers shot. Tempting
indeed was the snare that they set in Woth, the emeralds loose-set in
the city's gate; but Thangobrind discerned the golden cord that
climbed the wall from each and the weights that would topple upon him
if he touched one, and so he left them, though he left them weeping,
and at last came to Theth. There all men worship Hlo-hlo; though they
are willing to believe in other gods, as missionaries attest, but only
as creatures of the chase for the hunting of Hlo-hlo, who wears Their
halos, so these people say, on golden hooks along his hunting-belt.
And from Theth he came to the city of Moung and the temple of
Moung-ga-ling, and entered and saw the spider-idol, Hlo-hlo, sitting
there with Dead Man's Diamond glittering on his lap, and looking for
all the world like a full moon, but a full moon seen by a lunatic who
had slept too long in its rays, for there was in Dead Man's Diamond a
certain sinister look and a boding of things to happen that are better
not mentioned here. The face of the spider-idol was lit by that fatal
gem; there was no other light. In spite of his shocking limbs and that
demoniac body, his face was serene and apparently unconscious.
A little fear came into the mind of Thangobrind the jeweller, a
passing tremor--no more; business was business and he hoped for the
best. Thangobrind offered honey to Hlo-hlo and prostrated himself
before him. Oh, he was cunning! When the priests stole out of the
darkness to lap up the honey they were stretched senseless on the
temple floor, for there was a drug in the honey that was offered to
Hlo-hlo. And Thangobrind the jeweller picked Dead Man's Diamond up and
put it on his shoulder and trudged away from the shrine; and Hlo-hlo
the spider-idol said nothing at all, but he laughed softly as the
jeweller shut the door. When the priests awoke out of the grip of the
drug that was offered with the honey to Hlo-hlo, they rushed to a
little secret room with an outlet on the stars and cast a horoscope of
the thief. Something that they saw in the horoscope seemed to satisfy
the priests.
It was not like Thangobrind to go back by the road by which he had
come. No, he went by another road, even though it led to the narrow
way, night-house and spider-forest.
The city of Moung went towering by behind him, balcony above balcony,
eclipsing half the stars, as he trudged away. Though when a soft
pittering as of velvet feet arose behind him he refused to acknowledge
that it might be what he feared, yet the instincts of his trade told
him that it is not well when any noise whatever follows a diamond by
night, and this was one of the largest that had ever come to him in
the way of business. When he came to the narrow way that leads to
spider-forest, Dead Man's Diamond feeling cold and heavy, and the
velvety footfall seeming fearfully close, the jeweller stopped and
almost hesitated. He looked behind him; there was nothing there. He
listened attentively; there was no sound now. Then he thought of the
screams of the Merchant Prince's daughter, whose soul was the
diamond's price, and smiled and went stoutly on. There watched him,
apathetically, over the narrow way, that grim and dubious woman whose
house is Night. Thangobrind, hearing no longer the sound of suspicious
feet, felt easier now. He was all but come to the end of the narrow
way, when the woman listlessly uttered that ominous cough.
The cough was too full of meaning to be disregarded. Thangobrind
turned round and saw at once what he feared. The spider-idol had not
stayed at home. The jeweller put his diamond gently upon the ground
and drew his sword called Mouse. And then began that famous fight upon
the narrow way in which the grim old woman whose house was Night
seemed to take so little interest. To the spider-idol you saw at once
it was all a horrible joke. To the jeweller it was grim earnest. He
fought and panted and was pushed back slowly along the narrow way, but
he wounded Hlo-hlo all the while with terrible long gashes all over
his deep, soft body till Mouse was slimy with blood. But at last the
persistent laughter of Hlo-hlo was too much for the jeweller's nerves,
and, once more wounding his demoniac foe, he sank aghast and exhausted
by the door of the house called Night at the feet of the grim old
woman, who having uttered once that ominous cough interfered no
further with the course of events. And there carried Thangobrind the
jeweller away those whose duty it was, to the house where the two men
hang, and taking down from his hook the left-hand of the two, they put
that venturous jeweller in his place; so that there fell on him the
doom that he feared, as all men know though it is so long since, and
there abated somewhat the ire of the envious gods.
And the only daughter of the Merchant Prince felt so little gratitude
for this great deliverance that she took to respectability of the
militant kind, and became aggressively dull, and called her home the
English Riviera, and had platitudes worked in worsted upon her
tea-cosy, and in the end never died, but passed away in her residence.
THE HOUSE OF THE SPHINX
When I came to the House of the Sphinx it was already dark. They made
me eagerly welcome. And I, in spite of the deed, was glad of any
shelter from that ominous wood. I saw at once that there had been a
deed, although a cloak did all that a cloak may do to conceal it. The
mere uneasiness of the welcome made me suspect that cloak.
The Sphinx was moody and silent. I had not come to pry into the
secrets of Eternity nor to investigate the Sphinx's private life, and
so had little to say and few questions to ask; but to whatever I did
say she remained morosely indifferent. It was clear that either she
suspected me of being in search of the secrets of one of her gods, or
of being boldly inquisitive about her traffic with Time, or else she
was darkly absorbed with brooding upon the deed.
I saw soon enough that there was another than me to welcome; I saw it
from the hurried way that they glanced from the door to the deed and
back to the door again. And it was clear that the welcome was to be a
bolted door. But such bolts, and such a door! Rust and decay and
fungus had been there far too long, and it was not a barrier any
longer that would keep out even a determined wolf. And it seemed to be
something worse than a wolf that they feared.
A little later on I gathered from what they said that some imperious
and ghastly thing was looking for the Sphinx, and that something that
had happened had made its arrival certain. It appeared that they had
slapped the Sphinx to vex her out of her apathy in order that she
should pray to one of her gods, whom she had littered in the house of
Time; but her moody silence was invincible, and her apathy Oriental,
ever since the deed had happened. And when they found that they could
not make her pray, there was nothing for them to do but to pay little
useless attentions to the rusty lock of the door, and to look at the
deed and wonder, and even pretend to hope, and to say that after all
it might not bring that destined thing from the forest, which no one
named.
It may be said I had chosen a gruesome house, but not if I had
described the forest from which I came, and I was in need of any spot
wherein I could rest my mind from the thought of it.
I wondered very much what thing would come from the forest on account
of the deed; and having seen that forest--as you, gentle reader, have
not--I had the advantage of knowing that anything might come. It was
useless to ask the Sphinx--she seldom reveals things, like her
paramour Time (the gods take after her), and while this mood was on
her, rebuff was certain. So I quietly began to oil the lock of the
door. And as soon as they saw this simple act I won their confidence.
It was not that my work was of any use--it should have been done long
before; but they saw that my interest was given for the moment to the
thing that they thought vital. They clustered round me then. They
asked me what I thought of the door, and whether I had seen better,
and whether I had seen worse; and I told them about all the doors I
knew, and said that he doors of the baptistry in Florence were better
doors, and the doors made by a certain firm of builders in London were
worse. And then I asked them what it was that was coming after the
Sphinx because of the deed. And at first they would not say, and I
stopped oiling the door; and then they said that it was the
arch-inquisitor of the forest, who is investigator and avenger of all
silverstrian things; and from that they said about him it seemed to me
that this person was quite white, and was a kind of madness that would
settle down quite blankly upon a place, a kind of mist in which reason
could not live; and it was the fear of this that made them fumble
nervously at the lock of that rotten door; but with the Sphinx it was
not so much fear as sheer prophecy.
The hope that they tried to hope was well enough in its way, but I did
not share it; it was clear that the thing that they feared was the
corollary of the deed--one saw that more by the resignation upon the
face of the Sphinx than by their sorry anxiety for the door.
The wind soughed, and the great tapers flared, and their obvious fear
and the silence of the Sphinx grew more than ever a part of the
atmosphere, and bats went restlessly through the gloom of the wind
that beat the tapers low.
Then a few things screamed far off, then a little nearer, and
something was coming towards us, laughing hideously. I hastily gave a
prod to the door that they guarded; my finger sank right into the
mouldering wood--there was not a chance of holding it. I had not
leisure to observe their fright; I thought of the back-door, for the
forest was better than this; only the Sphinx was absolutely calm, her
prophecy was made and she seemed to have seen her doom, so that no new
thing could perturb her.
But by mouldering rungs of ladders as old as Man, by slippery edges of
the dreaded abyss, with an ominous dizziness about my heart and a
feeling of horror in the soles of my feet, I clambered from tower to
tower till I found the door that I sought; and it opened on to one of
the upper branches of a huge and sombre pine, down which I climbed on
to the floor of the forest. And I was glad to be back again in the
forest from which I had fled.
And the Sphinx in her menaced house--I know not how she fared--whether
she gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the deed, remembering only in her
smitten mind, at which the little boys now leer, that she once knew
well those things at which man stands aghast; or whether in the end
she crept away, and clambering horribly from abyss to abyss, came at
last to higher things, and is wise and eternal still. For who knows of
madness whether it is divine or whether it be of the pit?
PROBABLE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE LITERARY MEN
When the nomads came to El Lola they had no more songs, and the
question of stealing the golden box arose in all its magnitude. On the
one hand, many had sought the golden box, the receptacle (as the
Aethiopians know) of poems of fabulous value; and their doom is still
the common talk of Arabia. On the other hand, it was lonely to sit
around the camp-fire by night with no new songs.
It was the tribe of Heth that discussed these things one evening upon
the plains below the peak of Mluna. Their native land was the track
across the world of immemorial wanderers; and there was trouble among
the elders of the nomads because there were no new songs; while,
untouched by human trouble, untouched as yet by the night that was
hiding the plains away, the peak of Mluna, calm in the afterglow,
looked on the Dubious Land. And it was there on the plain upon the
known side of Mluna, just as the evening star came mouse-like into
view and the flames of the camp-fire lifted their lonely plumes
uncheered by any song, that that rash scheme was hastily planned by
the nomads which the world has named The Quest of the Golden Box.