Chapter V: Book THREE: Toupan’s Bright Bees

“_The bee that is in the land of Assyria shall rest upon all bushes._”
—ISAIAH, vii, 18.

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_12._
_The Mage Emeritus_

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NOW the tale is no more of Gonfal, who was the first to perish of the lords of the Silver Stallion. The tale instead tells that, in the while of Gonfal’s adventuring in Inis Dahut, yet three other champions of the fellowship had left the Poictesme which under Dame Niafer’s rule was altering day by day. Coth of the Rocks, indeed, had ridden westward within the same month that Gonfal departed for the South. There was never any profitable arguing with Coth: and so, when he declared his intention of fetching back Dom Manuel into the Poictesme which women and holy persons and lying poets—as Coth asserted,—were making quite uninhabitable, nobody did argue. Coth blustered westward, unmolested and unreasoned with: and for that while no more was heard of him.

And it was in the May of this year that Kerin of Nointel, the Syndic and Castellan of Basardra, disappeared even more unaccountably than Dom Manuel had done, for about Kerin’s passing there were not even any rumors. Kerin, so far as anybody could learn, had vanished in the darkness of the night season just as unaidedly as that darkness itself had vanished in turn, and with just as slight vestigial traces of his passing. The desolation of Kerin’s young wife, Dame Saraïde, was such that dozens upon dozens of lovers might not content her for her widowhood, as was immediately shown: and of Kerin also, for that while, no more was heard.

And Miramon Lluagor, too, that under Manuel had been the Lord Seneschal of Gontaron, had now gone out of Poictesme,—sedately and unmysteriously departing, with his wife and child seated beside him upon the back of an elderly and quite tame dragon, for his former home in the North. It was there that Miramon had first encountered Dom Manuel in the days when Manuel was only a swineherd. And it was there that Miramon Lluagor hoped to pass the remainder of as long a life as his doom permitted him, in such limited comfort as might anywhere be possible for a married man.

Otherwise, he could foresee, upon the brighter side of his appointed and appalling doom, nothing which was likely to worry him. For Miramon Lluagor had very wonderfully prospered at magic, he was, as they say, now blessed with more than any reasonable person would ask for: and the most clamant of these superfluities appeared to him to be his wife.

They tell how Miramon was one of the Léshy, born of a people that was neither human nor immortal, telling how his ancestral home was builded upon the summit of the mountain called Vraidex. To Vraidex Miramon Lluagor returned, after the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion had been disbanded, and Miramon had ceased to amuse himself with the greatness of Manuel and with the other notions of Poictesme.

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 sorcerer, 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 Ranec, and to regard at close quarters this tall grave gray cockeyed 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 Gisèle had quite other notions, a whole set of notions, and her philosophy was that of belligerent individualism. And the sorcerer to keep peace, at least in the intervals between his wife’s more mordantly loquacious moments, must of necessity design such dreams as Gisèle 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 preëminent 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 preëminent. And Miramon hungered for the lost freedom of his bachelorhood.

His wife also was discontent, because the ways of the Léshy appeared to this mortal woman indecorous. The dooms that were upon the Léshy 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 Gisèle that her little boy Demetrios was predestinate to kill his father with the charmed sword Flamberge. This was a doom Gisèle 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 Gisèle 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 sorcerer, at a price.

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_13._
_Economics of Gisèle_

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NOW Madame Gisèle 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 Gisèle: 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—”

Gisèle 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 sorcery and piddling with vain dreams!”

“Then, wife,” said Miramon, “then why are you perpetually meddling with what you do not understand?”

“I think,” Ninzian observed at once, for Ninzian too was married, “I think that I had best be going.”

But Gisèle’s attention was reserved for her husband. “I meddle, as you so very politely call it, because you have no sense of what is right and proper, and no sense of morals, and no sense of expediency, and, in fact, no sense at all.”

Miramon said, “Now, dearest—!”

Ninzian was hastily picking up his hat.

And Gisèle continued, with that resistless and devastating onflow which is peculiar to tidal waves and the tongue of her who speaks for her husband’s own good.

“Women everywhere,” Gisèle generalized, “have a hard time of it: but in particular do I pity the woman that is married to one of you moonstruck artists. She has not half a husband, she has but the tending of a baby with long legs—”

“It is so much later than I thought, that really now—” observed Ninzian, ineffectively.

“—And I might have had a dozen husbands—”

Miramon said, “But, surely, no woman of your well-known morality, my darling—”

“—I might, as you very well remember, have married Count Manuel himself—”

“I know. I can recall how near you came to marrying him. He was a dull, a cold-blooded and a rather dishonest clod-hopper: but the luck of Manuel Pig-Tender did not ever desert him,” said Miramon, sighing, “not even then!”

“I say, I might have had my pick of a dozen really prominent and looked-up-to warriors, who would have had the decency to remember our anniversary and my birthday, and in any event would never have been in the house twenty-four hours a day! Instead, here I am tied to a muddle-head who fritters away his time contriving dreams that nobody cares about one way or the other! And yet, even so—”

“And yet, even so—as you were no doubt going on to observe, my dearest,—even so, since your soliloquy pertains to matters in which our guest could not conceivably be interested—”

“And yet,” said Gisèle, with a heavier and a deadlier emphasis, “even so, if only you would be sensible about your silly business I could put up with the inconvenience of having you underfoot every moment. People need dreams to help them through the night, and nobody enjoys a really good dream more than I do when I have time for it, with the million and one things that are put upon me. But dreams ought to be wholesome—”

“My darling, now, as a matter of esthetics, as a mere point of fact—”

“—But dreams ought to be wholesome, they ought to be worth while, they ought to teach an uplifting moral, and certainly they ought not to be about incomprehensible thin nonsense that nobody can half way understand. They ought, in a word, to make you feel that the world is a pretty good sort of place, after all—”

“But, wife, I am not sure that it is,” said Miramon, mildly.

“Then, the more shame to you! and the very least you can do is to keep such morbid notions to yourself, and not be upsetting other people’s repose with them!”

“I employ my natural gift, I express myself and none other. The rose-bush does not put forth wheat, nor flax either,” returned the sorcerer, with a tired shrug. “In fine, what would you have?”

“A great deal it means to you,—you rose-bush!—what I prefer! But if I had my wish your silly dream-making would be taken away from you so that we might live in some sort of reputable and common-sense way.”

All the while that she reasoned sensibly and calmly with her husband for his own good, Gisèle had feverishly been dusting things everywhere, just to show what a slave she was to him, and because it irritated Miramon to have his personal possessions thus dabbed at and poked about: and now, as she spoke, Gisèle slapped viciously with her scouring-rag at the black cross. And a thing happened to behold which would have astonished the innumerous mages and the enchanters who had given over centuries to searching for the cantrap which would release the bees of Toupan. For now without any exercise of magic the scouring-rag swept from the stone one of the insects. Koshchei, who made all things as they are, had decreed, they report, that these bright perils could be freed only in the most obvious way, because he knew this would be the last method attempted by any learned person.

Then for an instant the walls of the ivory tower were aquiver like blown veils. And the bee passed glitteringly to the window and through the clear glass of the closed window, leaving a small round hole there, as the creature went to join its seven fellows in the Pleiades.

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_14._
_The Changing That Followed_

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NOW, when this eighth bright bee had joined its seven fellows in the Pleiades, then Toupan, afloat in the void, unclosed his ancient unappeasable eyes. Jacy returned to his aforetime estate in the moon: all plants and trees everywhere were withered, and the sea also lost its greenness, and there were no more emeralds. And the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds were troubled, and They cried out to Koshchei who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations to remain in eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.

Koshchei, for reasons of his own, did not reply.

Then Jacy whispered to Toupan: “Now is the hour of thy release, O Toupan! now is the hour that Koshchei falls. For among the things that are there stays no verdancy anywhere, and without green things nobody can keep health and strength.”

Toupan answered: “I am diminished. My bones have become like silver, and my members have turned into gold, and my hair is like lapis-lazuli.”

“Thine eyes remain unchanged,” said the slow whispering of Jacy. “Send forth thine eyes, O Toupan, against the work of Koshchei, who has blasphemed against the Old Ones, and who has created things as they are.”

“Though he acknowledge both of these misdoings, why need my eyes be troubled—as yet?”

Then Jacy said, “Send forth thine eyes, O Toupan, so that we Old Ones may rejoice in the dreadfulness of thy overlooking!”

Toupan answered: “I was before the Old Ones. My soul was before thought and time. It is the soul of Shu, it is the soul of Khnemu, it is the soul of Heh: it is the soul of Night and of Desolation, and there is a thinking about my soul which looks out of the eyes of every serpent. My soul alone keeps any knowledge of that dark malignity which everywhere encompasses the handiwork of Koshchei who made things as they are. Why need my soul be troubled, therefore,—as yet?”

But Jacy said again: “Give aid now to the Old Ones! Already thy bees go forth, that shall rest upon all bushes, and already no verdancy remains. Send forth thine eyes now, also, in which there is the knowledge denied to Koshchei!”

And Toupan answered: “The time of my release is not yet at hand. Nevertheless, between now and a while, when yet another bee is loosed, I shall bestir my soul, I will send forth my eyes, so that all may perceive the dreadfulness of my overlooking.”

At that the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds cried out again to Koshchei.

Then Koshchei answered Them: “Have patience! When Toupan is released I perish with You. Meanwhile I have made all things as they are.”

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_15._
_Disastrous Rage of Miramon_

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NOW also, when this eighth bright bee had joined its fellows in the Pleiades, in that same instant Miramon Lluagor, as he stood appalled in his ivory tower, was aware of a touch upon his forehead, as if a damp sponge were passing over it. Then he perceived that, with the petulant voicing of his damnable wife’s desire, he had forthwith forgotten the secret of his preëminence.

Something he could yet recall, they say, of the magic of the Purin and the cast stones, of the Horse and the Bull of the Water, and most of the lore of the Apsarasas and the Faidhin remained to him. He could still make shift, he knew, to control the roving Lamboyo, to build the fearful bridge of the White Ladies, or to contrive the dance of the Korred. He retained his communion with Necksa and Paralda, those sovereign Elementaries. He kept his mastery of the Shedeem who devastate, of the Shehireem who terrify, and of the Mazikeen who destroy. Nor had he lost touch with the Stewards of Heaven,—of whom at this period Och had the highest power and was customarily summoned by Miramon Lluagor, for a brief professional consultation, every Sunday morning at sunrise.

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 Gisèle, 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.

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_16._
_Concerns the Pleiades and a Razor_

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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.”

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_17._
_Epitome of Marriage_

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BUT Miramon, in his ivory tower upon Vraidex, knew only that his wish had been granted, for Gisèle 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 sorcerer 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—”

“The fact is,” Ninzian returned, with a depressed but comprehending smile, “you are a married man. So am I. Well, then, you have one wish remaining, and no more. You can at will desire to have back again the control of your lost magics or you can have back your wife to control you—”

“Yes,” Miramon agreed, forlornly.

“And indeed,” sleek Ninzian went on, with that glib optimism reserved for the dilemmas of one’s friends, “indeed it is in many ways a splendid thing for you to have the choice clear cut. Nobody can succeed alike at being an artist and a husband. I hold no brief for either career, because I think that art is an unreasonable mistress, and I think also that a wife is amenable to the same description. But I am certain no man can serve both.”

Miramon sighed. “That is true. There is no marriage for the maker of dreams, because he is perpetually creating finer women than earth provides. The touch of flesh cannot content him who has arranged the shining hair of angels and modeled the breasts of the sphinx. The woman that shares his bed is there of course, much as the blanket or the pillow is there, and each is an aid to comfort. But what has the maker of dreams, what has that troubled being who lives inside the creature which a mirror reveals to him, to do with women? At best, these animals provide him with models to be idealized beyond the insignificant truth, somewhat as I have made a superb delirium with only a lizard to start on. And at worst, these animals can live through no half-hour without meddling where they do not understand.”

Now Miramon kept silence. He was fingering the magic colors with which he blazoned the first sketches of his dreams. Here was his white, which was the foam of the ocean made solid, and the black he had wrung from the burned bones of nine emperors. Here was the yellow slime of Scyros, and crimson cinnabaris composed of the mingled blood of mastodons and dragons, and here was the poisonous blue sand of Puteoli. And Miramon, who was no longer a potent sorcerer, considered that loveliness and horror which a moment ago he had known how to evoke with these pigments, he who had now no power to lend life to his designs, and who kept just skill enough it might be to place the stripings on a barber’s pole.

And Miramon Lluagor said: “It would be a sad happening if I were never again to sway the sleeping of men, and grant them yet more dreams of distinction and clarity, of beauty and symmetry, of tenderness and truth and urbanity. For whether they like it or not, I know what is good for them, and it affords to their starved living that which they lack and ought to have.”

And Miramon said also: “Yet it would be another sad happening were my poor wife permitted eternally to scold the shivering earthquakes in the middle of next week. What does it matter that I do not especially like her? There is a great deal about myself that I do not like, such as my body’s flabbiness and the snub nose which makes ludicrous the face I wear: but do I hanker to be transformed into a sturdy man-at-arms? do I view the snout of an elephant with covetousness? Why, but, Ninzian, I am astonished at your foolish talking! What need have I of perfection? what would I have in common with anybody who was patient with me and thought highly of my doings?”

Miramon shook his head, with some sternness. “No, Ninzian, it is in vain that you pester me with your continuous talking, for I am as used to her shortcomings as I am to my own shortcomings. I regard her tantrums with the resignation I extend to inclement weather. It is unpleasant. All tempests are unpleasant. Ah, yes, but if life should become an endless clear May afternoon we could not endure it, we who have once been lashed by storms would cross land and sea to look for snow and pelting hail. Just so, to have Gisèle about keeps me perpetually fretted; but now that she is gone I am miserable. No, Ninzian, you may spare your talking, you need say no more, for I simply could not put up with being left to live in comfort.”

Ninzian had heard him through without impatience, because they were both married men. Now Ninzian, shrugging, said, “Then do you choose, Miramon, for your wife and no more dreams, or for your art and loneliness?”

“Such wishing would be over-wasteful,” Miramon replied, as he dusted away the third bee. “Since I can bear to give up neither my wife nor my art, no matter how destroyingly they work against each other, I wish for everything to be put back just where it was an hour ago.”

The third bee flew in a wide circle, and returned to the cross. The knowledge which Miramon had lost was put back into his mind.

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_18._
_Koshchei is Vexed_

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EVEN as the knowledge which Miramon had lost was put back into his mind, just so did life reawaken in all else which had perished in that hour. Gauracy’s baleful sun was gone, and the dislodged and incinerated worlds, with all their satellites, were revolving trimly in their proper places, undamaged. And the gods who were worshiped in these worlds now made a celestial rejoicing, because once more there were only seven Pleiades. The Old Ones had sunk back into their sleeping; things, for the while, stayed as they are; and even Toupan now seemed harmless enough....

For the eyes were closed wherein lurked tireless and unappeasable malignity, and a remembrance of all that which was before Koshchei’s time, and an undivulged foreknowledge which withered Toupan shared with brisk little Koshchei alone. Nobody could speak certainly about this: yet it was whispered that both of these well knew that, in the end, the Old Ones would return, and that only Toupan knew in what manner and at what hour....

But above the gods who in the multitudinous heavens and paradises were now rejoicing over their regained omnipotence, far higher than these junketing gods stood the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds, each in the appointed place, and each once more set in eternal watchfulness over all things as they are. And the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds said, soberly, to Koshchei:

“Sir, your protection is established. You are protected as the guide of the things which exist and of the things which are not yet created. You are protected as a dweller in the realm which goes round about Those who are over Hidden Things. For now the Old Ones sleep again, and not any new thing anywhere shall ever gain the mastery over you, who are our only master: and all things as they are stay yours forever.”

Koshchei replied, rather absent-mindedly: “What need was there to worry? Did I not make my creatures male and female? and did I not make the tie which is between them, that cord which I wove equally of love and of disliking? Eh, sirs, but that is a strong cord, and though all things that are depend upon it, my weaving holds.”

They answered him, “Your weaving holds, sir, assuredly: yet you do not rejoice, as we rejoice.”

“Why, but,” said Koshchei, “but I do so hate flat incivility! And after overlooking my handiwork, the fellow might very well have said something intelligent. Nobody minds an honest criticism. Just to say nothing—and in that rather marked way, you know,—is stupid!”

For Koshchei also, they relate, was, in his fashion, an artist.

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_19._
_Settlement: in Full_

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BUT that lesser artist, Miramon Lluagor—once more a potent sorcerer, in his ivory tower, and once more preëminent among the dream-makers of this world,—knew nothing of how he had played havoc with the handiwork of Koshchei who made things as they are. Miramon only knew that upon the black stone cross were buzzing fretfully three bees, who had now no luster and no power to grant wishes to anybody; and that his wife Gisèle also was making noises, not fretfully but in a tearing rage.

“A pretty trick that was to play on me!” she said. “Oh, but I pity the woman that is married to an artist!”

“But why do you perpetually meddle without understanding?” he replied, as fretful as the accursed bees, as angry as the intolerable woman....

And they went on very much as before....

They went on very much as before, because, as Miramon put it, the Norns, for all their strength, had not been able to contrive for him any doom more inflexible than he, like every other married man who holds his station unmurderously, had contrived out of his weakness. The way of Miramon Lluagor’s death, said he, was set and inescapable, because he was one of the Léshy: but the way of his life he blushed to find quite equally set and inescapable, because he was also a husband. In brief, he detested this woman; she pestered his living, she hampered his art, and with her foolish notions about his art she had, now, frittered away his immortality: but he was rather fond of her, too, and he was used to her.

Miramon, in any event, fell back upon his famous saying that the secret of a contented marriage is to pay particular attention to the wives of everybody else; and from this axiom he derived what comfort he could. He might, he reflected, have been married to that sallow, crippled, flat-faced Niafer, who in the South was upsetting all the familiar customs of Poictesme with her unrelenting piety, and who was actually imposing upon her associates that sort of reputable and common-sense way of living which Gisèle at worst only talked about. Niafer, indeed, seemed to be becoming wholly insane; for very curious tales reached Miramon as to the nonsense which this woman, too, was talking, about—of all mad fancies!—how that cockeyed husband of hers was to return by and by, in another incarnation.... Or Miramon, instead of his lost comrade Kerin of Nointel, might have been married to that chit of a Saraïde who had managed so artfully to dispose of her husband, in some undetected manner or another, and who was now providing poor Kerin with such a host of extra-legal successors.... Yes, Miramon would reflect (in Gisèle’s absence), he might—conceivably at least,—have been worse off. Yet, a bit later, with her return, this possibility would seem more and more dubious.

And—in fine,—they went on very much as before. And Miramon Lluagor was preëminent among the dream-makers of this world, and he was a dreaded lord: but in his own home he was not dreaded, and he, very certainly, was not preëminent.

Then, when the time was due, fell the appointed doom of Miramon, and he was slain by his son Demetrios with the charmed sword Flamberge. For this thing, people say, had long ago been agreed upon by the Norns, who weave the fate of all that live: to them it could not matter that Miramon Lluagor was preeminent among the dream-makers of this world, because the Norns do not ever sleep: and no sorcerer, through whatsoever havoc and upsetment of Koshchei’s chosen economy, has, in the end, power to withstand the Norns.

Then Demetrios went far oversea into Anatolia; and he married Callistion there, and in yet other ways he won a fine name for his hardihood and shrewdness. And in the years that followed, he prospered (for a while) without any check, and, because of a joke about Priapos, he pulled down one emperor of heathenry, to raise up in his stead another emperor with superior taste in humor. Demetrios held wide power and much land, and was a ruthless master over all the country between Quesiton and Nacumera. He was supreme there, as upon Vraidex Miramon Lluagor had been supreme. It was the boast of Demetrios that he feared nobody in any of the worlds beneath or above him, and that boast was truthful.

Yet none of these preëminencies could avail Demetrios, when the time was due, and when the doom of Demetrios fell in that manner and that instant which the Norns had agreed upon, and when he who had put his father out of life with the great sword was, in his turn, put out of life with a small wire. For this thing also, people say, had been appointed by Urdhr and Verdandi and Skuld as they sat weaving under Yggdrasill beside the carved door of the Sylan’s House: and to this saying the didactic like to add that no warrior, through whatsoever havoc and upsetment of human economy, has, in the end, power to withstand the Norns.

Now it was this Demetrios who married, among many other women, Dom Manuel’s oldest daughter Melicent, as is narrated in her saga.

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