Thus everything at first went nicely enough. But when the company of Morvyth’s lovers, with all their swords drawn, had approached the altar, for the consecrating, and in the while that they ascended the smooth porphyry steps, then limping Gonfal stumbled or else he slipped. He thus dropped his sword. The tall champion, clutching hastily at this sword as it fell, caught up the weapon by the newly sharpened blade; and he grasped it with such rather unaccountable vigor that he cut open his right hand to the bone, and cut also the muscles of his fingers.
“Decidedly,” said Gonfal, with a wried smile, “there is some fatality in this; and the quest of Morvyth is not for me.”
He spoke the truth, for his sword-bearing days were over. Gonfal must seek for a physician and bandages, while his rivals’ swords were being consecrated. The Queen noted his going, and, from a point midway between complacence and religious scruples, said under her breath, “One must perforce somewhat admire this realist.”
She heard, from afar, a dwindling resonance of horns and knew that once more the seven heroic lovers of Queen Morvyth had ridden forth to ransack the world of its chief riches. But fair-bearded Gonfal stayed in the pagan Isles of Wonder, and beneath the same roof that covered Morvyth, and cared for no riches except the loveliness of Morvyth, whom he saw daily. And with time the hurt in his hand was cured, but the fingers on that hand he could not ever move again. And for the rest, if people whispered here and there, the susurrus was a phenomenon familiar enough to the economy of court life.
Chapter VIII. How the Princes Bragged
Now, when the year was over, and the south wind was come again into Inis Dahut, the seven lovers returned, bringing with them yet other prodigies acquired by heroic exploits.
Here, for example, was the effigy of a bird carved in jade and carnelian.
“With the aid of this inestimable bird,” explained Prince Chedric of Lorn,—who, upon a very dreadfully inhabited peninsula, if one elected to believe him, had wrested this talisman from Morskoi of the Depths,—“you may enter the Sea Market, and may go freely among a folk that dwell in homes builded of coral and tortoise-shell, and tiled with fishes’ scales. Their wisdom is beyond the dry and arid wisdom of earth: their knowledge derides the fictions which we call time and space: and their children prattle of mysteries unknown to any of our major prophets and most expert geomancers.”
“Ah, but,” cried Prince Balein of Targamon, “but I have here a smoke-colored veil embroidered with tiny gold stars and ink-horns; and it enables one to pass through the ardent gateway of Audela, the country that lies behind the fire. This is the realm of Sesphra: there is no grieving in this land, and happiness and infallibility are common to everybody there, because Sesphra is the master of an art which corrodes and sears away all error, whether it be human or divine.”
Prince Duneval of Ore said nothing. His mutely tendered offering was a small mirror about three inches square. Morvyth looked into this mirror: and what she saw in it was very little like a sumptuous dark young girl. She hastily put aside that gleaming and over-wise counselor: and the Queen’s face was troubled, because there was no need to ask what mirror Duneval had fetched to her from out of Antan.
But Thorgny of Vigeois did not love silence. And he was the next suitor.
“Such knickknacks as I notice at your feet, my princess,” stated Thorgny of Vigeois, “have their merits. Nobody denies their merits. But I, who may now address you with the frankness which ought to exist between two persons already virtually betrothed, I bring that sigil which gave wisdom and all power to Apollonius, and later to Merlin Ambrosius. It displays, as you observe, an eye encircled with scorpions and stags and”—he coughed,—“with winged objects which do not ordinarily have wings: and it controls the nine million spirits of the air. I need say no more.”
“I need to,” said Prince Gurguint. “I say that I have here the shining triangle of Thorston. And to say that, is to say a great deal more than Thorgny has said. For this triangle is master of the wisdom of the Duergar and of all peoples that dwell underground. Moreover, madame, when this triangle is inverted—thus,—it enables you to bless and curse at will, to converse with dead priests, and to control the power and the seven mysteries of the moon.”
“To such hole and corner wisdom, to such cavemen devices, and more especially to your lunar vaporings, I cry out like a bird upon the house-tops, and I cry, Cheap, cheap!” observed Prince Clofurd. “For I have here, in this shagreen case, the famous and puissant and unspeakably sacrosanct ring of Solomon, to whose wearer are subject the Djinns and the ass-footed Nazikeen and fourteen of Jahveh’s most discreet and trustworthy seraphim.”
Prince Grimauc said: “Solomon had, in his archaic way, his wisdom, a good enough sort of workaday wisdom, but yet a limited wisdom, as it was meted out to him by the god of Judea: but I have here an altar carved from a block of selenite. Within this altar you may hear the moving and the dry rustlings of an immortal. Let us not speak of this immortaclass="underline" neither the sun’s nor the moon’s light has ever shone upon him, and his name is not lovable. But here is the Altar of the Adversary; and the owner of this little altar may, at a paid price, have access to the wisdom that defies restraint and goes beyond the bounds permitted by any god.”
Such were the gifts they brought to Morvyth. And, for reasons of not less than two kinds, the Queen found difficulty in saying which of these offerings was the worthiest to be her bridal gift.
Chapter IX. The Loans of Wisdom
But Gonfal, when the Queen consulted him in private, as she was now apt to do about most matters, tall handsome Gonfal shrugged. He said that, to his finding,—as a, no doubt, unpractical realist,—her lovers had, once more, fetched back no gifts, but only loans of very dubious value.
“For I have seen Dom Manuel purchase a deal of just such wisdom from unwholesome sources: and I have seen too what came of it when the appointed season was at hand for that gray knave to be stripped of his wisdom. Just so, madame, must every sort of wisdom be reft away from everybody. These wise men that had all this knowledge in the old time, do they retain it now? The question is absurd, since the dirt that once was Solomon keeps no more sentiency than does the mud which formerly was Solomon’s third under-scullion. Indomitable persons have, before to-day, won to the wisdom of Audela or of the Sea Market; and that Freydis with whom Dom Manuel lived for a while in necromantic iniquity, and that unscriptural Herodias who was Tana’s daughter, these women, once, attained to the wisdom of Antan: but might they carry any of this wisdom into the grave?”
“I see,” said Morvyth, reflectively; and she smiled.
“Equally,” Gonfal continued, “where now is your Thorston or your Merlin? All which to-day remains of any one of these thaumaturgists may well, at this very instant, be passing us as dust in that bland and persistent wind which now courses over Inis Dahut: but the mage goes undiscerned, unhonored, impotent, and goes as the wind wills, not as he elects. Ah, no, madame! These quaint, archaic toys may for a little while lend wisdom and understanding: but, none the less, within four-score of years—”
“Oh, have done with your arithmetic!” she begged of him. “It serves handily, and I approve of your mathematics. I really do consider it is perfectly wonderful, sweetheart, how quickly you realists can think of suitable truisms. But, just the same, I begin to dislike that wind: and I would much rather talk about something else.”