Prezmyra went to the window. Dawn was beginning, bleak and gray. After a minute she turned her head. Like a she-lion she looked, proud and dangerous-eyed. She was very pale. Her accents, level and quiet, called to the blood like the roll of a distant drum, as she said, “Succours of Demonland: late or never.”
Corund beheld her uneasily.
“Their oaths to me and to him!” said she, “sworn to us that night in Carcë. False friends! O, I could eat their hearts with garlic.”
He put his great hands on her two shoulders. She threw them off. “In one thing,” she cried, “Gro counselleth us well: to tarry no more on this sinking ship. We must raise forces. But not as he would have it, to uphold these Demons, these oath-breakers. We must away this night.”
Her lord had cast aside his great wolfskin mantle. “Come, madam,” said he, “to bed’s our nearest journey.”
Prezmyra answered, “I’ll not to bed. It shall be seen now, O Corund, if that thou be a king indeed.”
He sat down on the bed’s edge and fell to doing off his boots. “Well,” he said, “every one as he likes, as the good-man said when he kissed his cow. Day’s near dawning; I must be up betimes, and a sleepless night’s a poor breeder of invention.”
But she stood over him, saying, “It shall be seen if thou be a true king. And be not deceived: if thou fail me here I’ll have no more of thee. This night we must away. Thou shalt raise Pixyland, which is now mine by right: raise power in thine own vast kingdom of Impland. Fling Witchland to the winds. What care I if she sink or swim? This only is the matter: to punish these vile perjured Demons, enemies of ours and enemies of all the world.”
“We need ride o’ no journey for that,” said Corund, still putting off his boots. “Thou shalt shortly see Juss and his brethren before Carcë with three score hundred fighting men at’s back. Then cometh the metal to the anvil. Come, come, thou must not weep.”
“I do not weep,” said she. “Nor I shall not weep. But I’ll not be ta’en in Carcë like a mouse in a trap.”