Brandoch Daha smiled, but his look was ghastly. “Blame us not overmuch, dear Queen. Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush.” His voice broke in his throat; the whites of his eyes rolled up; he caught at the Queen’s hand like a frightened child. Then with a mighty effort mastering himself, “I pray bear with me a little,” he said. “After a little good meats and drinks taken ’twill pass. I pray look to Juss: is a dead, think you?”
Days passed, and months, and the Lord Juss lay yet as it were in the article of death tended by his friend and by the Queen in that pavilion by the lake. At length when winter was gone in middle earth, and the spring far spent, back came that last little martlet on weary wing, she they had long given up for lost. She sank in her mistress’s bosom, almost dead indeed for weariness. But the Queen cherished her, and gave her nectar, so that she gathered strength and said, “O Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the Gods, I flew for thee east and south and west and north, by sea and by land, in heat and frost, unto the frozen poles, about and about. And at the last came to Demonland, to the range of Neverdale. There is a tarn among the mountains, that men call Dule Tarn. Very deep it is, and men that live by bread do hold it for bottomless. Yet hath it a bottom, and on the bottom lieth an hippogriff’s egg, seen by me, for I flew at a great height above it.”
“In Demonland!” said the Queen. And she said to Lord Brandoch Daha, “It is the only one. Ye must go home to fetch it.”
Brandoch Daha said, “Home to Demonland? After we spent our powers and crossed the world to find the way?”
But when Lord Juss knew of it, straightway with hope so renewed began his sickness to depart from him, so that he was in a few weeks’ space very well recovered.
And it was now a full year gone by since first the Demons came up into Koshtra Belorn.
XV: QUEEN PREZMYRA
HOW THE LADY PREZMYRA DISCOVERED TO LORD GRO WHAT SHE WOULD HAVE BROUGHT ABOUT FOR DEMONLAND, IN WHICH SHOULD ALSO APPEAR HER LORD’S YET MORE GREATNESS AND ADVANCEMENT: AND HOW HER TOO LOUD SPEAKING OF HER PURPOSE WAS THE OCCASION WHEREBY THE LORD CORINIUS WAS TO LEARN THE SWEETNESS OF BLISS DEFERRED.