8.How the Princes Bragged
══════════════════════════════════════════════════
NOW, when the year was over, and the south wind was come again into Inis Dahut, the seven lovers returned, bringing with them yet other prodigies acquired by heroic exploits.
Here, for example, was the effigy of a bird carved in jade and carnelian.
“With the aid of this inestimable bird,” explained Prince Chedric of Lorn,—who, upon a very dreadfully inhabited peninsula, if one elected to believe him, had wrested this talisman from Morskoï of the Depths,—“you may enter the Sea Market, and may go freely among a folk that dwell in homes builded of coral and tortoise-shell, and tiled with fishes’ scales. Their wisdom is beyond the dry and arid wisdom of earth: their knowledge derides the fictions which we call time and space: and their children prattle of mysteries unknown to any of our major prophets and most expert geomancers.”
“Ah, but,” cried Prince Balein of Targamon, “but I have here a smoke-colored veil embroidered with tiny gold stars and ink-horns; and it enables one to passthrough the ardent gateway of Audela, the country that lies behind the fire. This is the realm of Sesphra: there is no grieving in this land, and happiness and infallibility are common to everybody there, because Sesphra is the master of an art which corrodes and sears away all error, whether it be human or divine.”
Prince Duneval of Orc said nothing. His mutely tendered offering was a small mirror about three inches square. Morvyth looked into this mirror: and what she saw in it was very little like a sumptuous dark young girl. She hastily put aside that gleaming and over-wise counselor: and the Queen’s face was troubled, because there was no need to ask what mirror Duneval had fetched to her from out of Antan.
But Thorgny of Vigeois did not love silence. And he was the next suitor.
“Such knickknacks as I notice at your feet, my princess,” stated Thorgny of Vigeois, “have their merits. Nobody denies their merits. But I, who may now address you with the frankness which ought to exist between two persons already virtually betrothed, I bring that sigil which gave wisdom and all power to Apollonius, and later to Merlin Ambrosius. It displays, as you observe, an eye encircled with scorpions and stags and”—he coughed,—“with winged objects which do not ordinarily have wings: and it controls the nine million spirits of the air. I need say no more.”
“I need to,” said Prince Gurguint. “I say that Ihave here the shining triangle of Thorston. And to say that, is to say a great deal more than Thorgny has said. For this triangle is master of the wisdom of the Duergar and of all peoples that dwell underground. Moreover, madame, when this triangle is inverted—thus,—it enables you to bless and curse at will, to converse with dead priests, and to control the power and the seven mysteries of the moon.”
“To such hole and corner wisdom, to such cave-men devices, and more especially to your lunar vaporings, I cry out like a bird upon the house-tops, and I cry, Cheap, cheap!” observed Prince Clofurd. “For I have here, in this shagreen case, the famous and puissant and unspeakably sacrosanct ring of Solomon, to whose wearer are subject the Djinns and the ass-footed Nazi-keen and fourteen of Jahveh’s most discreet and trustworthy seraphim.”
Prince Grimauc said: “Solomon had, in his archaic way, his wisdom, a good enough sort of workaday wisdom, but yet a limited wisdom, as it was meted out to him by the god of Judea: but I have here an altar carved from a block of selenite. Within this altar you may hear the moving and the dry rustlings of an immortal. Let us not speak of this immortal: neither the sun’s nor the moon’s light has ever shone upon him, and his name is not lovable. But here is the Altar of the Adversary; and the owner of this little altar may, at a paid price, have access to the wisdom that defiesrestraint and goes beyond the bounds permitted by any god.”
Such were the gifts they brought to Morvyth. And, for reasons of at least two kinds, the Queen found difficulty in saying which of these offerings was the worthiest to be her bridal gift.