PART FIVE THE BOOK OF LYTREIA
15. At Tenjo’s Court
“Whether you boil or roast snow, you can have but water of it!”
GERALD passed on, riding upon the stallion Kalki, down a valley of cedar-trees, into the realm of Tenjo of the Long Nose. This was the land of Lytreia, they told him. But, here too, dejection overbrooded all, and the atmosphere was elegiac, for people everywhere were lamenting that vigor and resiliency and liveliness had gone out of their noses, so that no man in Lytreia was able to sneeze or to employ his nose in any other normal way.
“Well, now, suppose you take me to this king of yours,” said Gerald, “for it may be I can re-awaken hereabouts all the lost joys of influenza.”
“And who shall we say to him has come into Lytreia, red-headed and riding upon the back of this huge and sparkling horse with the splendid nose?”
“You will say to your king that this land is honored by a visit from Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, as he passes toward his appointed kingdom in Antan, riding in very terrible estate upon the back of his famous silver stallion Kalki, a beast which, strictly speaking, has no nose, but only nostrils at the tip of his long, noble head.”
They also seemed unimpressed. “No god is of terrible estate except the Holy Nose of Lytreia; nor do we concede the existence of any kingdom not his. Nevertheless, you may come with us.”
“Upon my word,” thought Gerald, “but in these parts the people pay very inadequate homage to us gods and are little better than heretics.”
But he went with these over-sceptical persons quietly to their King Tenjo.
And Tenjo received the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones more affably. First, though, the grave, white-bearded King shared with the visiting god a quite excellent dinner, which was handsomely served to them by ten pages in ermine and a seneschal in vermilion silk: not until dinner was over, and the two sat drinking their spiced wine out of gold goblets, would the King talk about his troubles. Then Tenjo complained that his nose was fallen and flabby. It was no longer worshipful. That was in all ways deplorable, said the King, refilling his goblet, inasmuch as his people worshipped a nose, and could respect no male creature who had not a large and high-standing and robust and succulent nose.
Gerald was a little puzzled, because this seemed to him a queer sort of calamity to be befalling anybody, unless it was caused by the magic of the wu. But Gerald made no comment. He asked only how this sad state of affairs had come about.
He was told that all the youth and vigor had been taken out of the Holy Nose of Lytreia, and out of Tenjo’s nose, and out of the nose of every man in the kingdom, by the blighting magic of a sorceress who had lately established her residence in the tomb of King Peter the Builder.
“It is there,” said Tenjo, “the veiled Mirror of the Two Truths is hidden: but not even of that does this sorceress seem afraid.”
“Nor, for that matter, am I: for I am Lord of the Third Truth. Well, it is fairly evident this woman is a wu.”
“You may be right. I confess that dreadful possibility had not ever occurred to me—”
“Only we gods are omniscient, my dear Tenjo,” said Gerald, kindlily. “So there is no need for any mere king to be ashamed of his human blindness.”
“—Because, as I must tell you, before this minute I had not ever heard of a wu.”
“You have been lucky. The less one hears of such creatures, the better for everybody. So, how is this woman called?”
“She is called Evaine,” said Tenjo; “and she is called also the Lady of Peter’s Tomb, now that she has taken possession of it.”
Then Gerald finished his fourth goblet, and Gerald hiccoughed, and Gerald said: “Your case, my dear fellow, while perplexing, is not wholly desperate. For I bring youth with me, and I will renovate your withered noses. I am competent to deal with any wu. I give you, in fact, my divine word that you shall be rid of this wu. Yes, Lytreia shall be rid of her, even though it is necessary that to undo her hoodoo I do with due to-do woo the wu, too—”
“Would you be so kind,” said Tenjo, looking troubled, “as to repeat that, rather more slowly?”
Gerald obliged him, and continued: “Yes, I assure you, upon the most sacred oath of our Dirghic heaven,—known only to the gods, my dear fellow, so that you will, I trust, pardon my not repeating it,—that I will subject this wu and this mirror also to my divine inspection—”
“Ah, but I must tell you,” said Tenjo, seeming yet more troubled, “that the man who looks into that mirror straightway finds himself transformed into two stones. For that reason it is hidden away in Peter’s Tomb, and it is kept veiled, and of course no man has ever dared go near it.”
“How, then, did this mirror ever manage to change anybody into two stones if nobody ever dared go near it?”
“Why, but the mirror was compelled to change them into two stones because that was the law. It was not at all the mirror’s fault. Surely, you who are a god and are omniscient, and who are now nearly drunk enough to see everything double, can see that much?”
“So far as your explanation goes, I can see the mirror’s blamelessness in the face of an obdurate physical law. Nor does any god object to a physical law which concerns other people.”
“And they kept away from the mirror because they knew about this law. Surely, that too was natural?”
“In a way, yes. But how could they be certain about this law?”
“How could they help it, how could anybody be ignorant of one of our very oldest and most famous laws, which comes down to us, indeed, from sources so august and venerable that they antedate all history?”
“Why, then, who enacted this law?”
“How should I know, when, as I was just telling you, this law is older than any recorded history?”
. “But in a thousand pounds of law there is not an ounce of pleasure, and there are entirely too many laws,” said Gerald, shaking his red head above his golden goblet rather despondently. “There is common, statutory, international, maritime, ecclesiastical, and martial law. There is the law of averages, the Salic law, and Grimm’s law of the permutations of consonants. There is Jewish sacred law; there is prize law; there is the law of gravity; there is John Law, who first developed the natural wealth of the Mississippi, and William Law, who was a great mystic. There are, in logic, the laws of thought, just as in astronomy and physics and political economy there are, severally, the well-known laws of Kepler and Prevost and Gresham. In fine, there are laws everywhere, and they are very often a nuisance. He that goes to law loses time and money and rest and friends. Law is a lottery, law is a bottomless pit, law is an ass which slaps his tail in every man’s face. So it very well may be, my dear fellow, that in a world so legally overstocked this law of yours is superfluous, and therefore wrong.”
But Tenjo was not convinced by Gerald’s relentless logic. Tenjo said only:
“I do not any more know what you are talking about than you do. But I do know that”—here Tenjo hiccoughed, with judicial graveness,—“that it does not alter the principle of the thing. So this mirror will continue to transform into two stones all men who look into it, although I cannot see how it matters the worth of one box of matches in hell, because so long as the law is such, no man will ever look into this mirror.”