But such accomplishments, as Miramon despairingly knew, were the stock in trade of mere hedge wizards, they were the rudiments of any fairly competent sorcerer anywhere: and that supreme secret which had made Miramon Lluagor the master of all dreams was gone away from him completely.
He was very angry. He was the angrier for that he saw, just for an instant, a sort of frightened and bewildered remorse in his wife’s foolish face, and he desperately foreknew himself to be upon the brink of comforting her.
“Accursed woman!” Miramon cried out, “now indeed has your common-sense completed what your nagging began! This is the doom of all artists that have to do with well-conducted women. Truly has it been “said that the marriage-bed is the grave of art. Well, I have put up with much from you, but this settles it, and I will not put up with your infatuation for a reputable and common-sense way of living, and I wish you were in the middle of next week!”
With that he caught the soiled scouring-rag from the hand of Gisele, and he slapped at one of the remaining bees, and he brushed it from the black cross. And this bee departed as the other had done.
Chapter XVI. Concerns The Pleiades And A Razor
WHEN this bright bee had departed as the other had done before him, then Toupan moved his wings, and he made ready to overlook the work of Koshchei: and in the instant that Toupan moved, the worlds in that part of the universe were dislodged and ran melting down the sky. It was Gauracy who swept all the fragments together and formed a sun immeasurably larger than that which he had lost, and an obstreperous mad conflagration which did not in anything conform with the handiwork of Koshchei.
And Gauracy then shouted friendlily to Toupan, “Now is the hour of thy release, O Toupan! now is the hour of the return of the Old Ones, now is the hour that Koshchei falls!”
Toupan answered: “The hour of my release is not yet come. But this is the hour of my overlooking.”
Then Gauracy bellowed, as he swept yet other worlds into the insatiable flaming of his dreadful sun, “I kindle for you a fine light to see by!”
And now the gods who were worshiped in those worlds which remained, these also cried out to Koshchei. For now, in the intolerable glare of Gauracy’s malefic sun, they showed as flimsy and incredible inventions. And the gods knew, moreover, that, if ever the last remaining bee were freed from the cross, the dizain of the Pleiades would be completed, and Toupan would be released, and the power of the Old Ones would return; and that a day foretold by many prophets, the day upon which every god must shave with a razor that is hired, would be at hand; and that, with the falling about of this very dreadful and ignominious necessity, the day of the divine contentment of all gods in any place would be over, forever.
Meanwhile the eyes of Toupan went forth, among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds. It was They who, under Koshchei, had shaped the earths and the waters, and who had knit together the mountains, and who had fashioned all other things as they are. It was They who had woven the heavens, and who had placed the soul of every god within him. They were the makers of the hours and the creators of the days and the kindlers of the fires of life, and They were powers whose secret and sustaining names were not known to any of the gods of men. Yet now the eyes of Toupan went among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds, and Toupan regarded them one by one; and wheresoever the old eyes of Toupan had rested there remained no world nor any Warden watching over it, but only, for that instant, a very little spiral of thin sluggish vapor.
And those of Them who were not yet destroyed cried piteously to Koshchei, who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations to keep eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.
Now there is no denying that, in the manner of artists, Koshchei had cleared his throat, and had fidgeted a little, in the while that Toupan was overlooking Koshchei’s handiwork. But when the Wardens and the Star Warriors cried out to him for aid, then Koshchei, lifting never a finger, said only:
“Eh, sirs, have patience! For I made all things as they are; and I know now it is my safeguard that I made them in two ways.”
Chapter XVII. Epitome of Marriage
But Miramon, in his ivory tower upon Vraidex, knew only that his wish had been granted, for Gisele had gone just as a bubble breaks, and she was now somewhere in the middle of next week.
“And a good riddance, too!” said Miramon. He turned to Ninzian, that smiling large philanthropist. “For did you ever see the like of such outrageousness as her outrageousness!”
“Oh, very often,” replied this Ninzian, who too was married. Then Ninzian asked, “But what will you do next?”
Said Miramon, “I shall wish to have back the secret and the solace of my art.”
But to Ninzian this seemed less obvious. “You can do that, readily enough, by releasing the third bee which my devices have procured for you out of the land of Assyria. Yes, Miramon, you can in this manner get back your art, but thus also you will be left defenseless against the doom which is appointed. So, friend, by my advice you will, instead, employ the cantrap as you at first intended, and you will secure for yourself eternal life by wishing that Flamberge may vanish from this world of men.”
And Ninzian waved toward the sword with which according to the foreordainment of the Norns great Miramon Lluagor was to be killed by his own son.
The fallen magician answered, “Of what worth is life if it breed no more dreams?” And Miramon said also, “I wonder, Ninzian, just where is the middle of next week?”
Sleek Ninzian spoke, secure in his peculiar erudition. “It will fall upon a Wednesday, but nobody knows whence. Olybrius states it is now in Aratu, where all that enter are clothed like a bird with wings, and have only dust and clay to eat in the unchanging twilight—”
“She would not like that. She had always a delicate digestion.”
“Whereas Asinius Pollio suggests, not unplausibly, that it waits beyond Slid and Gjold, in the blue house of Nostrand, where Sereda bleaches the unborn Wednesdays, under a roof of plaited serpents—”
“Dear me!” said Miramon, disconsolately rubbing at his nose, “now that would never suit a woman with an almost morbid aversion to reptiles!”
“—But Sosicles declares it is in Xibalba, where Zipacna and Cabrakan play at handball, and the earthquakes are at nurse.”
“She would be none the happier there. She does not care for babies, she would not for one moment put up with a fractious young earthquake, and she would make things most uncomfortable for everybody. Ninzian,”—and Miramon cleared his throat,—“Ninzian, I begin to fear I have been a little hasty.”
“It is the frailty of all you artists,” the man of affairs replied. “So my advice, about Flamberge, is not to the purpose?”
“Well, but, you see,” said Miramon, very miserably, “or perhaps I ought to say that, while of course, still, when you come to look at it more carefully, Ninzian, what I really mean is that the fact is, as it seems to me—”