They narrate that this magician dabbled no more in knight-errantry, for which the Seneschal of Gontaron—who through his art was also lord of the nine kinds of sleep and prince of the seven madnesses,—had never shown any real forte. He righted no more wrongs, in weather as often as not unsuited to a champion subject to rheumatism, and he in no way taxed his comfort to check the prospering of injustice. Instead, he now maintained, upon the exalted scarps of Vraidex, the sedate seclusion appropriate to a veteran artist, in his ivory tower carved out of one of the tusks of Behemoth; and maintained also a handsome retinue of every sort of horrific illusion to guard the approaches to his Doubtful Palace; wherein, as the tale likewise tells, this mage resumed his former vocation, and once more designed the dreams for sleep.
Thus it was that, upon the back of the elderly and quite tame dragon, Miramon returned to his earlier pursuits and to the practice of what he—in his striking way of putting things,—described as art for art’s sake. The episode of Manuel had been, in the lower field of merely utilitarian art, amusing enough. That stupid, tall, quiet posturer, when he set out to redeem Poictesme, had needed just the mere bit of elementary magic which Miramon had performed for him, to establish Manuel among the great ones of earth. Miramon had, in consequence, sent a few obsolete gods to drive the Northmen out of Poictesme, while Manuel waited upon the sands north of Manneville and diverted his leisure by contemplatively spitting into the sea. Thereafter Manuel had held the land to the admiration of everybody but more particularly of Miramon,—who did not at all agree with Anavalt of Fomor in his estimation of Dom Manuel’s mental gifts.
Yes, it had been quite amusing to serve under Manuel, to play at being lord of Gontaron and Ranee, and to regard at close quarters this tall, grave, gray, cock-eyed impostor, who had learned only not to talk. . . . For that, thought Miramon, was Manuel’s secret: Manuel did not expostulate, he did not explain, he did not argue; he, instead, in any time of trouble or of uncertainty, kept quiet: and that quiet struck terror to his ever-babbling race; and had earned for the dull-witted but shrewd fellow—who was concealing only his lack of any thought or of any plan,—a dreadful name for impenetrable wisdom and for boundless resource.
“Keep mum with Manuel!” said Miramon, “and all things shall be added to you. It is a great pity that my wife has not the knack for these little character analyses.”
Yes, the four years had been an amusing episode. But dreams and the designing of dreams were the really serious matters to which Miramon returned after this holiday outing in carnage and statecraft.
And here, too,—as everywhere,—his wife confronted him. Miramon’s personal taste in art was for the richly romantic sweetened with nonsense and spiced with the tabooed. But his wife Gisele had quite other notions, a whole set of notions, and her philosophy was that of belligerent individualism. And the magician to keep peace, at least in the intervals between his wife’s more mordantly loquacious moments, must of necessity design such dreams as Gisele preferred. But he knew that these dreams did not express the small thoughts and fancies which harbored in the heart of Miramon Lluagor, and which would perish with the falling of his doom unless he wrought these fancies into dreams that, being fleshless, might evade carnivorous time.
He was preeminent among the dream-makers of this world, he was the dreaded lord (because of his retinue of illusions) over all the country about Vraidex: but in his own home he was not dreaded, he, very certainly, was not preeminent. And Miramon hungered for the lost freedom of his bachelorhood.
His wife also was discontent, because the ways of the Leshy appeared to this mortal woman indecorous. The dooms that were upon the Leshy seemed not entirely in good taste, to her who had been born of a race about whom destiny appeared not to bother. In fact, it was a continual irritation to Gisele that her little boy Demetrios was predestinate to kill his father with the charmed sword Flamberge. This was a doom Gisele found not the sort of thing you cared to have imminent in your own family: and she felt that the sooner the gray Norns, who weave the fate of all that live, were spoken to quite candidly, the better it would be for everybody concerned.
She was irritated by the mere sight of Flamberge. So her thinking was not of silk and honey when, after polishing the sword as was her usage upon Thursday morning, she came into Miramon’s ivory tower to hang the fatal weapon in its right place.
With Miramon under the green tasseled canopy sat one whom Gisele was not unsurprised to see there. For closeted with Miramon to-day was Ninzian, the High Bailiff of Yair and Upper Ardra, who was the most famous for his piety of all the lords of the Silver Stallion. The dreadful need and the peculiar reason which Ninzian had for being pious and philanthropic were matters not known to everybody: but Miramon Lluagor knew about these things, and therefore he made appropriate use of Ninzian. Indeed, upon this very afternoon, the two were looking at that which Ninzian had fetched out of the land of Assyria, and had procured for the magician, at a price.
Chapter XIII. Economics of Gisele
Now Madame Gisele also was looking at that which Ninzian had procured for her husband at a price. She looked at it—upon the whole—with slightly less disfavor than she afterward looked at the two men.
“A good day and a grand blessing to you, Messire Ninzian!” said Madame Gisele: and she extended her hand, along with her scouring-rag, for him to kiss, and she inquired about his wife Dame Balthis, pleasantly enough. She spoke then, in a different tone, to Miramon Lluagor. “And with what are you cluttering up the house now?”
“Ah, wife,” replied Miramon, “here, very secretly fetched out of the land of Assyria, are those bees about whom it is prophesied that they shall rest upon all bushes. Here are the bright bees of Toupan, a treasure beyond word or thinking. They are not as other bees, for theirs is the appearance of shining ice: and they crawl fretfully, as they have crawled since Toupan’s downfall, about this cross of black stone—”
“That is a very likely story for you to be telling me, who can see that the disgusting creatures have wings to fly away with whenever they want to! And, besides, who in the world is this Toupan?”
“He is nobody in this world, wife, and it is wiser not to speak of him. Let it suffice that in the time of the Old Ones he made all things as they were. Then Koshchei came out of Ydalir, and took the power from Toupan, and made all things as they are. Yet three of Toupan’s servitors endure upon earth, where they who were once lords of the Vendish have now no privilege remaining save to creep humbly as insects: the use of their wings is denied them here among the things which were made by Koshchei, and the charmed stone holds them immutably. Oho, but, wife, there is a cantrap which would free them, a cantrap which nobody has as yet discovered, and to their releaser will be granted whatever his will may desire—”
“This is some more of your stuff and nonsense, out of old fairy tales, where everybody gets three wishes, and no good from any of them!”
“No, my love, because I shall put them to quite practical uses. For you must know that when I have found out the cantrap which will release the bees of Toupan—”
Gisele showed plainly that his foolishness did not concern her. She sighed, and she hung the sword in its accustomed place. “Oh, but I am aweary of this endless magic and piddling with vain dreams!”