19.Settlement: in Full
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
BUT that lesser artist, Miramon Lluagor—once more a potent sorcerer, in his ivory tower, and once more preëminent among the dream-makers of this world,—knew nothing of how he had played havoc with the handiwork of Koshchei who made things as they are. Miramon only knew that upon the black stone cross were buzzing fretfully three bees, who had now no luster and no power to grant wishes to anybody; and that his wife Gisèle also was making noises, not fretfully but in a tearing rage.
“A pretty trick that was to play on me!” she said. “Oh, but I pity the woman that is married to an artist!”
“But why do you perpetually meddle without understanding?” he replied, as fretful as the accursed bees, as angry as the intolerable woman....
And they went on very much as before....
They went on very much as before, because, as Miramon put it, the Norns, for all their strength, had not been able to contrive for him any doom more inflexible than he, like every other married man who holds his station unmurderously, had contrived out ofhis weakness. The way of Miramon Lluagor’s death, said he, was set and inescapable, because he was one of the Léshy: but the way of his life he blushed to find quite equally set and inescapable, because he was also a husband. In brief, he detested this woman; she pestered his living, she hampered his art, and with her foolish notions about his art she had, now, frittered away his immortality: but he was rather fond of her, too, and he was used to her.
Miramon, in any event, fell back upon his famous saying that the secret of a contented marriage is to pay particular attention to the wives of everybody else; and from this axiom he derived what comfort he could. He might, he reflected, have been married to that sallow, crippled, flat-faced Niafer, who in the South was upsetting all the familiar customs of Poictesme with her unrelenting piety, and who was actually imposing upon her associates that sort of reputable and common-sense way of living which Gisèle at worst only talked about. Niafer, indeed, seemed to be becoming wholly insane; for very curious tales reached Miramon as to the nonsense which this woman, too, was talking, about—of all mad fancies!—how that cockeyed husband of hers was to return by and by, in another incarnation.... Or Miramon, instead of his lost comrade Kerin of Nointel, might have been married to that chit of a Saraïde who had managed so artfully to dispose of her husband, in some undetected manner or another,and who was now providing poor Kerin with such a host of extra-legal successors.... Yes, Miramon would reflect (in Gisèle’s absence), he might—conceivably at least,—have been worse off. Yet, a bit later, with her return, this possibility would seem more and more dubious.
And—in fine,—they went on very much as before. And Miramon Lluagor was preëminent among the dream-makers of this world, and he was a dreaded lord: but in his own home he was not dreaded, and he, very certainly, was not preëminent.
Then, when the time was due, fell the appointed doom of Miramon, and he was slain by his son Demetrios with the charmed sword Flamberge. For this thing, people say, had long ago been agreed upon by the Norns, who weave the fate of all that live: to them it could not matter that Miramon Lluagor was preeminent among the dream-makers of this world, because the Norns do not ever sleep: and no sorcerer, through whatsoever havoc and upsetment of Koshchei’s chosen economy, has, in the end, power to withstand the Norns.
Then Demetrios went far oversea into Anatolia; and he married Callistion there, and in yet other ways he won a fine name for his hardihood and shrewdness. And in the years that followed, he prospered (for a while) without any check, and, because of a joke about Priapos, he pulled down one emperor of heathenry, toraise up in his stead another emperor with superior taste in humor. Demetrios held wide power and much land, and was a ruthless master over all the country between Quesiton and Nacumera. He was supreme there, as upon Vraidex Miramon Lluagor had been supreme. It was the boast of Demetrios that he feared nobody in any of the worlds beneath or above him, and that boast was truthful.
Yet none of these preëminencies could avail Demetrios, when the time was due, and when the doom of Demetrios fell in that manner and that instant which the Norns had agreed upon, and when he who had put his father out of life with the great sword was, in his turn, put out of life with a small wire. For this thing also, people say, had been appointed by Urdhr and Verdandi and Skuld as they sat weaving under Yggdrasill beside the carved door of the Sylan’s House: and to this saying the didactic like to add that no warrior, through whatsoever havoc and upsetment of human economy, has, in the end, power to withstand the Norns.
Now it was this Demetrios who married, among many other women, Dom Manuel’s oldest daughter Melicent, as is narrated in her saga.
BOOK FOURCOTH AT PORUTSA“Their land also is full of idols: they worship the work of their own hands.”—Isaiah, ii, 8.
BOOK FOURCOTH AT PORUTSA“Their land also is full of idols: they worship the work of their own hands.”—Isaiah, ii, 8.
BOOK FOUR
COTH AT PORUTSA
“Their land also is full of idols: they worship the work of their own hands.”
—Isaiah, ii, 8.