And still nothing happened: and Kerin could see only endless looking waters and, above them, those monotonously dancing corpse candles.
Kerin nevertheless well knew, as a loyal son of the Church, the efficacy of prayer; and he now began, in consequence, to pray to the corpse candles, because these might, he reflected, rank as deities in this peculiarly depressing place. And his comfort was considerable when, after an ave or two, some of these drifting lights came flitting toward him; but his surprise was greater when he saw that each of the ignes fatui was a living creature like a tiny phosphorescent maiden in everything except that each had the head of a lizard.
“What is your nature?” Kerin asked, “and what are you doing in this cold dark place?”
“Should we answer either of those questions,” one of the small monsters said, in a shrill little voice, as though a cricket were talking, “it would be the worse for you.”
“Then, by all means, do not answer! Instead, do you tell me if knowledge and truth are to be found hereabouts, for it is of them that I go in search.”
“How should we know? It was not in pursuit of these luxuries that we came hither, very unwillingly.”
“Then, how does one get out of this place?”
Now they all twittered together, and they flitted around Kerin with small squeakings. “One does not get out of this place.”
Kerin did not cry pettishly, as Saraide would have done, “Good Lord!” Instead, he said, “Dear me!”
“Nor have we any wish to leave this place,” said the small lizard-women. “These waters hold us here with the dark loveliness of doom; we have fallen into an abiding hatred of these waters; we may not leave them because of our fear. It is not possible for any man to imagine the cruelty of these waters. Therefore we dance above them; and all the while that we dance we think about warmth and food instead of about these waters.”
“And have you no food here nor any warmth, not even brimstone? For I remember that, up yonder in Poictesme, our priests were used to threaten—”
“We do not bother about priests any longer. But a sort of god provides our appointed food.”
“Come, come now, that is much better. For, as I was just saying to my wife, supper is a matter of vital importance, after a rather hard day of it—But who is this sort of god?”
“We do not know. We only know that he has nineteen names.”
“My very dear little ladies,” said Kerin, “your information appears so limited, and your brightness so entirely physical, that I now hesitate to ask if you know for what reason somebody is sounding that far-off gong which I can hear?”
“That gong means, sir, that our appointed food is ready.”
“Alas, my friends, but it is quite unbearable,” declared Kerin, “that food should be upon that side of the dark water, and I, who have had rather a hard day of it, should be upon this side!”
“No, no!” they reassured him, “it is not unbearable, for we do not mind it in the least.”
Then the squeaking little creatures all went away from Kerin, flitting and skimming and twinkling over broad waters which seemed repellently cold and very dreadfully deep. Nevertheless, Kerin, in his desperation,—now that no god answered his prayer, and even the ignes fatui had deserted him, and only a great hungering remained with Kerin in the darkness,—Kerin now arose and went as a diver speeds into those most unfriendly looking waters.
The result was surprising and rather painfuclass="underline" for, as Kerin thus discovered, these waters were not more than two feet in depth. He stood up, a bit sheepishly, dripping wet, and rubbing his head. Then Kerin waded onward in a broad shallow puddle about which there was no conceivable need to bother any god.
Kerin thus came without any hindrance to dry land, and to a place where the shining concourse of lizard-women had already begun to nibble and tug and gulp. But Kerin, after having perceived the nature of their appointed food, and after having shivered, walked on beyond this place, toward the light he detected a little above him.
“For supper,” he observed, “is a matter of vital importance; and it really is necessary to draw the line somewhere.”
Chapter XLIV. Fine Cordiality of Sclaug
Now Kerin seemed in the dark to be mounting a flight of nineteen stairs. He came thus into a vast gray corridor, inset upon the left side with nineteen alcoves: each alcove was full of books, and beside each alcove stood a lighted, rather large candle as thick about as a stallion’s body. And Kerin’s surprise was great to find, near the first alcove, that very Sclaug with whom Kerin pleasurably remembered having had so much chivalrous trouble, and such fine combats, before, some years ago, this Sclaug had been killed and painstakingly burned.
Nevertheless, here was the old yellow gentleman intact and prowling about restively on all fours, in just the wolf-like fashion he had formerly affected. But after one brief snarl of surprise he stood erect; and, rubbing together the long thin hands which were webbed between the fingers like the feet of a frog, Sclaug asked whatever could have brought Kerin so far down in the world.
For Kerin this instant was a bit awkward, since he knew not quite what etiquette ought to govern re-encounters with persons whom you have killed. Yet Kerin was always as ready as anybody to let bygones be cast off. So Kerin frankly told his tale.
Then Sclaug embraced Kerin, and bade him welcome, and Sclaug laughed with the thin, easy, neighing laughter of the aged.
“As for what occurred at Lorcha, dear Kerin, do not think of it any more than I do. It was in some features unpleasant at the time: but, after all, you burned my body without first driving a stake through my rebellious and inventive heart, and so since then I have not lacked amusements. And as for this knowledge and truth of which you go in search, here is all knowledge, in the books that I keep watch over in this Naraka,—during the intervals between my little amusements,—for a sort of god.”
Kerin scratched among the wiry looking black curls of Kerin’s hair, and he again glanced up and down the corridor. “There are certainly a great many of them. But Saraide desired, I think, all knowledge, so near as I could understand her.”
“Let us take things in the order of their difficulty,” replied Sclaug. “Do you acquire all knowledge first, and hope for understanding later.”
The courteous old gentleman then provided Kerin with white wine and with food very gratefully unlike that of the ignes fatui, and Sclaug placed before Kerin one of the books.
“Let us eat first,” said Kerin, “for supper, in any event, is a matter of vital importance, where knowledge and truth may turn out to be only a womanish whim.”
He ate. Then Kerin began comfortably to read, after, as he informed Sclaug, rather a hard day of it.
Now the book which Kerin had was the book written by the patriarch Abraham in the seventy-first year of his age: and by and by Kerin looked up from it, and said, “Already I have learned from this book one thing which is wholly true.”
“You progress speedily!” answered Sclaug. “That is very nice.”
“Well,” Kerin admitted, “such is one way of describing the matter. But no doubt other things are equally true: and optimism, anyhow, costs nothing.”
Chapter XLV. The Gander Also Generalizes
So began a snug life for Kerin. The nineteen candles remained always as he had first seen them, tranquilly lighting the vast windless corridor, burning, but not ever burning down, nor guttering, nor even needing to be snuffed: and Kerin worked his way from one candle to another, as Kerin read each book in every alcove. When Kerin was tired he slept: all the while that he waked he gave to acquiring knowledge: he had no method, nor any necessity, of distinguishing between his daily and his nocturnal studies.