Lord Dunsany - The Book of Wonder

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Book of Wonder

BY LORD DUNSANY

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 Sombelenë. What legend of Sombelenë'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 Sombelenë 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

Sombelenë.

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 Sombelenë, 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 Sombelenë 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 Sombelenë 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

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12BookofWonderBYLORDDUNSANY3PREFACEComewithme,ladiesandgentlemenwhoareinanywisewearyofLondon:comewithme:andthosethattireatalloftheworldweknow:forwehavenewworldshere.THEBRIDEOFTHEMAN-HORSEInthemorningofhistwohundredandfiftiethyearShepperalkthecentaurwenttothegoldencoffer,whereinthetreasureofthecentau...

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