A Dreamer\'s Tales
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Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett] >> A Dreamer\'s Tales
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But the diviner rose and passed out of the hall, brushing the crumbs from
him with his hands and smoothing his robe as he went.
Then Camorak said, "There are many things to be planned, and counsels to
be taken, and provender to be gathered. Upon what day shall we start?" And
all the warriors answering shouted, "Now." And Camorak smiled thereat, for
he had but tried them. Down then from the walls they took their weapons,
Sikorix, Kelleron, Aslof, Wole of the Axe; Huhenoth, Peace-breaker;
Wolwuf, Father of War; Tarion, Lurth of the Warcry and many another.
Little then dreamed the spiders that sat in that ringing hall of the
unmolested leisure they were soon to enjoy.
When they were armed they all formed up and marched out of the hall, and
Arleon strode before them singing of Carcassonne.
But the talk of the Weald arose and went back well fed to byres. They had
no need of wars or of rare perils. They were ever at war with hunger. A
long drought or hard winter were to them pitched battles; if the wolves
entered a sheep-fold it was like the loss of a fortress, a thunder-storm
on the harvest was like an ambuscade. Well-fed, they went back slowly to
their byres, being at truce with hunger; and the night filled with stars.
And black against the starry sky appeared the round helms of the warriors
as they passed the tops of the ridges, but in the valleys they sparkled
now and then as the starlight flashed on steel.
They followed behind Arleon going south, whence rumours had always come of
Carcassonne: so they marched in the starlight, and he before them singing.
When they had marched so far that they heard no sound from Arn, and even
inaudible were her swinging bells, when candles burning late far up in
towers no longer sent them their disconsolate welcome; in the midst of the
pleasant night that lulls the rural spaces, weariness came upon Arleon and
his inspiration failed. It failed slowly. Gradually he grew less sure of
the way to Carcassonne. Awhile he stopped to think, and remembered the way
again; but his clear certainty was gone, and in its place were efforts in
his mind to recall old prophecies and shepherd's songs that told of the
marvelous city. Then as he said over carefully to himself a song that a
wanderer had learnt from a goatherd's boy far up the lower slope of
ultimate southern mountains, fatigue came down upon his toiling mind like
snow on the winding ways of a city noisy by night, stilling all.
He stood, and the warriors closed up to him. For long they had passed by
great oaks standing solitary here and there, like giants taking huge
breaths of the night air before doing some furious deed; now they had come
to the verge of a black forest; the tree-trunks stood like those great
columns in an Egyptian hall whence God in an older mood received the
praise of men; the top of it sloped the way of an ancient wind. Here they
all halted and lighted a fire of branches, striking sparks from flint into
a heap of bracken. They eased them of their armour, and sat round the
fire, and Camorak stood up there and addressed them, and Camorak said: "We
go to war with Fate, who has doomed that I shall not come to Carcassonne.
And if we turn aside but one of the dooms of Fate, then the whole future
of the world is ours, and the future that Fate has ordered is like the dry
course of an averted river. But if such men as we, such resolute
conquerors, cannot prevent one doom that Fate has planned, then is the
race of man enslaved for ever to do its petty and allotted task."
Then they all drew their swords, and waved them high in the firelight, and
declared war on Fate.
Nothing in the somber forest stirred or made any sound.
Tired men do not dream of war. When morning came over the gleaming fields
a company that had set out from Arn discovered the discovered the
camping-place of the warriors, and brought pavilions and provender. And
the warriors feasted, and the birds in the forest sang, and the
inspiration of Arleon awoke.
Then they rose, and following Arleon, entered the forest, and marched away
to the South. And many a woman of Arn sent her thoughts with them as they
played alone some old monotonous tune, but their own thoughts were far
before them, skimming over the bath through whose deeps the river tumbles
in marble Carcassonne.
When butterflies were dancing on the air, and the sun neared the zenith,
pavilions were pitched, and all the warriors rested; and then they feasted
again, and then played knightly games, and late in the afternoon marched
on once more, singing of Carcassonne.
And night came down with its mystery on the forest, and gave their
demoniac look again to the trees, and rolled up out of misty hollows a
huge and yellow moon.
And the men of Arn lit fires, and sudden shadows arose and leaped
fantastically away. And the night-wind blew, arising like a ghost, and
passed between the tree trunks, and slipped down shimmering glades, and
waked the prowling beasts still dreaming of day, and drifted nocturnal
birds afield to menace timorous things, and beat the roses of the
befriending night, and wafted to the ears of wandering men the sound of a
maiden's song, and gave a glamour to the lutanist's tune played in his
loneliness on distant hills; and the deep eyes of moths glowed like a
galleon's lamps, and they spread their wings and sailed their familiar
sea. Upon this night-wind also the dreams of Camorak's men floated to
Carcassonne.
All the next morning they marched, and all the evening, and knew they were
nearing now the deeps of the forest. And the citizens of Arn kept close
together and close behind the warriors. For the deeps of the forest were
all unknown to travellers, but not unknown to those tales of fear that men
tell at evening to their friends, in the comfort and the safety of their
hearths. Then night appeared, and an enormous moon. And the men of Camorak
slept. Sometimes they woke, and went to sleep again; and those that stayed
awake for long and listened heard heavy two-footed creatures pad through
the night on paws.
As soon as it was light the unarmed men of Arn began to slip away, and
went back by bands through the forest. When darkness came they did not
stop to sleep, but continued their flight straight on until they came to
Arn, and added there by the tales they told to the terror of the forest.
But the warriors feasted, and afterwards Arleon rose, and played his harp,
and led them on again; and a few faithful servants stayed with them still.
And they marched all day through a gloom that was as old as night, but
Arleon's inspiration burned in his mind like a star. And he led them till
the birds began to drop into the treetops, and it was evening and they all
encamped. They had only one pavilion left to them now, and near it they
lit a fire, and Camorak posted a sentry with drawn sword just beyond the
glow of the firelight. Some of the warriors slept in the pavilion and
others round about it.
When dawn came something terrible had killed and eaten the sentry. But the
splendour of the rumours of Carcassonne and Fate's decree that they should
never come there, and the inspiration of Arleon and his harp, all urged
the warriors on; and they marched deeper and deeper all day into the
forest.
Once they saw a dragon that had caught a bear and was playing with it,
letting it run a little way and overtaking it with a paw.
They came at last to a clear space in the forest just before nightfall. An
odour of flowers arose from it like a mist, and every drop of dew
interpreted heaven unto itself.
It was the hour when twilight kisses Earth.
It was the hour when a meaning comes into senseless things, and trees
out-majesty the pomp of monarchs, and the timid creatures steal abroad to
feed, and as yet the beasts of prey harmlessly dream, and Earth utters a
sigh, and it is night.
In the midst of the wide clearing Camorak's warriors camped, and rejoiced
to see stars again appearing one by one.
That night they ate the last of their provisions, and slept unmolested by
the prowling things that haunt the gloom of the forest.
On the next day some of the warriors hunted stags, and others lay in
rushes by a neighbouring lake and shot arrows at water-fowl. One stag was
killed, and some geese, and several teal.
Here the adventurers stayed, breathing the pure wild air that cities know
not; by day they hunted, and lit fires by night, and sang and feasted, and
forgot Carcassonne. The terrible denizens of the gloom never molested
them, venison was plentiful, and all manner of water-fowl: they loved the
chase by day, and by night their favourite songs. Thus day after day went
by, thus week after week. Time flung over this encampment a handful of
moons, the gold and silver moons that waste the year away; Autumn and
Winter passed, and Spring appeared; and still the warriors hunted and
feasted there.
One night of the springtide they were feasting about a fire and telling
tales of the chase, and the soft moths came out of the dark and flaunted
their colours in the firelight, and went out grey into the dark again; and
the night wind was cool upon the warriors' necks, and the camp-fire was
warm in their faces, and a silence had settled among them after some song,
and Arleon all at once rose suddenly up, remembering Carcassonne. And his
hand swept over the strings of his harp, awaking the deeper chords, like
the sound of a nimble people dancing their steps on bronze, and the music
rolled away into the night's own silence, and the voice of Arleon rose:
"When there is blood in the bath she knows there is war in the mountains
and longs for the battle-shout of kingly men."
And suddenly all shouted, "Carcassonne!" And at that word their idleness
was gone as a dream is gone from a dreamer waked with a shout. And soon
the great march began that faltered no more nor wavered. Unchecked by
battles, undaunted in lonesome spaces, ever unwearied by the vulturous
years, the warriors of Camorak held on; and Arleon's inspiration led them
still. They cleft with the music of Arleon's harp the gloom of ancient
silences; they went singing into battles with terrible wild men, and came
out singing, but with fewer voices; they came to villages in valleys full
of the music of bells, or saw the lights at dusk of cottages sheltering
others.
They became a proverb for wandering, and a legend arose of strange,
disconsolate men. Folks spoke of them at nightfall when the fire was warm
and rain slipped down the eaves; and when the wind was high small children
feared the Men Who Would Not Rest were going clattering past. Strange
tales were told of men in old grey armour moving at twilight along the
tops of the hills and never asking shelter; and mothers told their boys
who grew impatient of home that the grey wanderers were once so impatient
and were now hopeless of rest, and were driven along with the rain
whenever the wind was angry.
But the wanderers were cheered in their wandering by the hope of coming to
Carcassonne, and later on by anger against Fate, and at last they marched
on still because it seemed better to march on than to think.
For many years they had wandered and had fought with many tribes; often
they gathered legends in villages and listened to idle singers singing
songs; and all the rumours of Carcassonne still came from the South.
And then one day they came to a hilly land with a legend in it that only
three valleys away a man might see, on clear days, Carcassonne. Tired
though they were and few, and worn with the years which had all brought
them wars, they pushed on instantly, led still by Arleon's inspiration
which dwindled in his age, though he made music with his old harp still.
All day they climbed down into the first valley and for two days ascended,
and came to the Town That May Not Be Taken In War below the top of the
mountain, and its gates were shut against them, and there was no way
round. To left and right steep precipices stood for as far as eye could
see or legend tell of, and the pass lay through the city. Therefore
Camorak drew up his remaining warriors in line of battle to wage their
last war, and they stepped forward over the crisp bones of old, unburied
armies.
No sentinel defied them in the gate, no arrow flew from any tower of war.
One citizen climbed alone to the mountain's top, and the rest hid
themselves in sheltered places.
Now, in the top of the mountain was a deep, bowl-like cavern in the rock,
in which fires bubbled softly. But if any cast a boulder into the fires,
as it was the custom for one of those citizens to do when enemies
approached them, the mountain hurled up intermittent rocks for three days,
and the rocks fell flaming all over the town and all round about it. And
just as Camorak's men began to batter the gate they heard a crash on the
mountain, and a great rock fell beyond them and rolled into the valley.
The next two fell in front of them on the iron roofs of the town. Just as
they entered the town a rock found them crowded in a narrow street, and
shattered two of them. The mountain smoked and panted; with every pant a
rock plunged into the streets or bounced along the heavy iron roof, and
the smoke went slowly up, and up, and up.
When they had come through the long town's empty streets to the locked
gate at the end, only fifteen were left. When they had broken down the
gate there were only ten alive. Three more were killed as they went up the
slope, and two as they passed near the terrible cavern. Fate let the rest
go some way down the mountain upon the other side, and then took three of
them. Camorak and Arleon alone were left alive. And night came down on the
valley to which they had come, and was lit by flashes from the fatal
mountain; and the two mourned for their comrades all night long.
But when the morning came they remembered their war with Fate, and their
old resolve to come to Carcassonne, and the voice of Arleon rose in a
quavering song, and snatches of music from his old harp, and he stood up
and marched with his face southwards as he had done for years, and behind
him Camorak went. And when at last they climbed from the third valley, and
stood on the hill's summit in the golden sunlight of evening, their aged
eyes saw only miles of forest and the birds going to roost.
Their beards were white, and they had travelled very far and hard; it was
the time with them when a man rests from labours and dreams in light sleep
of the years that were and not of the years to come.
Long they looked southwards; and the sun set over remoter forests, and
glow-worms lit their lamps, and the inspiration of Arleon rose and flew
away for ever, to gladden, perhaps, the dreams of younger men.
And Arleon said: "My King, I know no longer the way to Carcassonne."
And Camorak smiled, as the aged smile, with little cause for mirth, and
said: "The years are going by us like huge birds, whom Doom and Destiny
and the schemes of God have frightened up out of some old grey marsh. And
it may well be that against these no warrior may avail, and that Fate has
conquered us, and that our quest has failed."
And after this they were silent.
Then they drew their swords, and side by side went down into the forest,
still seeking Carcassonne.
I think they got not far; for there were deadly marshes in that forest,
and gloom that outlasted the nights, and fearful beasts accustomed to its
ways. Neither is there any legend, either in verse or among the songs of
the people of the fields, of any having come to Carcassonne.
IN ZACCARATH
"Come," said the King in sacred Zaccarath, "and let our prophets prophesy
before us."
A far-seen jewel of light was the holy palace, a wonder to the nomads on
the plains.
There was the King with all his underlords, and the lesser kings that did
him vassalage, and there were all his queens with all their jewels upon
them.
Who shall tell of the splendour in which they sat; of the thousand lights
and the answering emeralds; of the dangerous beauty of that hoard of
queens, or the flash of their laden necks?
There was a necklace there of rose-pink pearls beyond the art of the
dreamer to imagine. Who shall tell of the amethyst chandeliers, where
torches, soaked in rare Bhyrinian oils, burned and gave off a scent of
blethany?
(This herb marvellous, which, growing near the summit of Mount Zaumnos,
scents all the Zaumnian range, and is smelt far out on the Kepuscran
plains, and even, when the wind is from the mountains, in the streets of
the city of Ognoth. At night it closes its petals and is heard to breathe,
and its breath is a swift poison. This it does even by day if the snows
are disturbed about it. No plant of this has ever been captured alive by a
hunter.)
Enough to say that when the dawn came up it appeared by contrast pallid
and unlovely and stripped bare of all its glory, so that it hid itself
with rolling clouds.
"Come," said the King, "let our prophets prophesy."
Then the heralds stepped through the ranks of the King's silk-clad
warriors who lay oiled and scented upon velvet cloaks, with a pleasant
breeze among them caused by the fans of slaves; even their casting-spears
were set with jewels; through their ranks the heralds went with mincing
steps, and came to the prophets, clad in brown and black, and one of them
they brought and set him before the King. And the King looked at him and
said, "Prophesy unto us."
And the prophet lifted his head, so that his beard came clear from his
brown cloak, and the fans of the slaves that fanned the warriors wafted
the tip of it a little awry. And he spake to the King, and spake thus:
"Woe unto thee, King, and woe unto Zaccarath. Woe unto thee, and woe unto
thy women, for your fall shall be sore and soon. Already in Heaven the
gods shun thy god: they know his doom and what is written of him: he sees
oblivion before him like a mist. Thou hast aroused the hate of the
mountaineers. They hate thee all along the crags of Droom. The evilness of
thy days shall bring down the Zeedians on thee as the suns of springtide
bring the avalanche down. They shall do unto Zaccarath as the avalanche
doth unto the hamlets of the valley." When the queens chattered or
tittered among themselves, he merely raised his voice and still spake on:
"Woe to these walls and the carven things upon them. The hunter shall know
the camping-places of the nomads by the marks of the camp-fires on the
plain, but he shall not know the place of Zaccarath."
A few of the recumbent warriors turned their heads to glance at the
prophet when he ceased. Far overhead the echoes of his voice hummed on
awhile among the cedarn rafters.
"Is he not splendid?" said the King. And many of that assembly beat with
their palms upon the polished floor in token of applause. Then the prophet
was conducted back to his place at the far end of that mighty hall, and
for a while musicians played on marvellous curved horns, while drums
throbbed behind them hidden in a recess. The musicians were sitting
crosslegged on the floor, all blowing their huge horns in the brilliant
torchlight, but as the drums throbbed louder in the dark they arose and
moved slowly nearer to the King. Louder and louder drummed the drums in
the dark, and nearer and nearer moved the men with the horns, so that
their music should not be drowned by the drums before it reached the King.
A marvellous scene it was when the tempestuous horns were halted before
the King, and the drums in the dark were like the thunder of God; and the
queens were nodding their heads in time to the music, with their diadems
flashing like heavens of falling stars; and the warriors lifted their
heads and shook, as they lifted them, the plumes of those golden birds
which hunters wait for by the Liddian lakes, in a whole lifetime killing
scarcely six, to make the crests that the warriors wore when they feasted
in Zaccarath. Then the King shouted and the warriors sang--almost they
remembered then old battle-chants. And, as they sang, the sound of the
drums dwindled, and the musicians walked away backwards, and the drumming
became fainter and fainter as they walked, and altogether ceased, and they
blew no more on their fantastic horns. Then the assemblage beat on the
floor with their palms. And afterwards the queens besought the King to
send for another prophet. And the heralds brought a singer, and placed him
before the King; and the singer was a young man with a harp. And he swept
the strings of it, and when there was silence he sang of the iniquity of
the King. And he foretold the onrush of the Zeedians, and the fall and the
forgetting of Zaccarath, and the coming again of the desert to its own,
and the playing about of little lion cubs where the courts of the palace
had stood.
"Of what is he singing?" said a queen to a queen.
"He is singing of everlasting Zaccarath."
As the singer ceased the assemblage beat listlessly on the floor, and the
King nodded to him, and he departed.
When all the prophets had prophesied to them and all the singers sung,
that royal company arose and went to other chambers, leaving the hall of
festival to the pale and lonely dawn. And alone were left the lion-headed
gods that were carven out of the walls; silent they stood, and their rocky
arms were folded. And shadows over their faces moved like curious thoughts
as the torches flickered and the dull dawn crossed the fields. And the
colours began to change in the chandeliers.
When the last lutanist fell asleep the birds began to sing.
Never was greater splendour or a more famous hall. When the queens went
away through the curtained door with all their diadems, it was as though
the stars should arise in their stations and troop together to the West at
sunrise.
And only the other day I found a stone that had undoubtedly been a part of
Zaccarath, it was three inches long and an inch broad; I saw the edge of
it uncovered by the sand. I believe that only three other pieces have been
found like it.
THE FIELD
When one has seen Spring's blossom fall in London, and Summer appear and
ripen and decay, as it does early in cities, and one is in London still,
then, at some moment or another, the country places lift their flowery
heads and call to one with an urgent, masterful clearness, upland behind
upland in the twilight like to some heavenly choir arising rank on rank to
call a drunkard from his gambling-hell. No volume of traffic can drown the
sound of it, no lure of London can weaken its appeal. Having heard it
one's fancy is gone, and evermore departed, to some coloured pebble agleam
in a rural brook, and all that London can offer is swept from one's mind
like some suddenly smitten metropolitan Goliath.
The call is from afar both in leagues and years, for the hills that call
one are the hills that were, and their voices are the voices of long ago,
when the elf-kings still had horns.
I see them now, those hills of my infancy (for it is they that call), with
their faces upturned to the purple twilight, and the faint diaphanous
figures of the fairies peering out from under the bracken to see if
evening is come. I do not see upon their regal summits those desirable
mansions, and highly desirable residences, which have lately been built
for gentlemen who would exchange customers for tenants.
When the hills called I used to go to them by road, riding a bicycle. If
you go by train you miss the gradual approach, you do not cast off London
like an old forgiven sin, nor pass by little villages on the way that must
have some rumour of the hills; nor, wondering if they are still the same,
come at last upon the edge of their far-spread robes, and so on to their
feet, and see far off their holy, welcoming faces. In the train you see
them suddenly round a curve, and there they all are sitting in the sun.
I imagine that as one penetrated out from some enormous forest of the
tropics, the wild beasts would become fewer, the gloom would lighten, and
the horror of the place would slowly lift. Yet as one emerges nearer to
the edge of London, and nearer to the beautiful influence of the hills,
the houses become uglier, the streets viler, the gloom deepens, the errors
of civilisation stand bare to the scorn of the fields.
Where ugliness reaches the height of its luxuriance, in the dense misery
of the place, where one imagines the builder saying, "Here I culminate.
Let us give thanks to Satan," there is a bridge of yellow brick, and
through it, as through some gate of filigree silver opening on fairyland,
one passes into the country.
To left and right, as far as one can see, stretches that monstrous city;
before one are the fields like an old, old song.
There is a field there that is full of king-cups. A stream runs through
it, and along the stream is a little wood of osiers. There I used often to
rest at the streams edge before my long journey to the hills.
There I used to forget London, street by street. Sometimes I picked a
bunch of king-cups to show them to the hills.
I often came there. At first I noticed nothing about the field except its
beauty and its peacefulness.
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