As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts
Both form and matter.”
With those words spoken dropped silence again like a pall athwart that banquet table, more tristful than before and full of heaviness.
On a sudden Lord Brandoch Daha stood up, unbuckling from his shoulder his golden baldrick set with apricot-coloured sapphires and diamonds and fire-opals that imaged thunderbolts. He threw it before him on the table, with his sword, clattering among the cups. “O Queen Sophonisba,” said he, “thou hast spoken a fit funeral dirge for our glory as for Witchland’s. This sword Zeldornius gave me. I bare it at Krothering Side against Corinius, when I threw him out of Demonland. I bare it at Melikaphkhaz. I bare it in the last great fight in Witchland. Thou wilt say it brought me good luck and victory in battle. But it brought not to me, as to Zeldornius, this last best luck of all: that earth should gape for me when my great deeds were ended.”
The Queen looked at him amazed, marvelling to see him so much moved that she had known until now so lazy mocking and so debonair.
But the other lords of Demonland stood up and flung down their jewelled swords on the table beside Lord Brandoch Daha’s. And Lord Juss spake and said, “We may well cast down our swords as a last offering on Witchland’s grave. For now must they rust: seamanship and all high arts of war must wither: and, now that our great enemies are dead and gone, we that were lords of all the world must turn shepherds and hunters, lest we become mere mountebanks and fops, fit fellows for the chambering Beshtrians or the Red Foliot. O Queen Sophonisba, and you my brethren and my friends, that are come to keep my birthday with me to-morrow in Galing, what make ye in holiday attire? Weep ye rather, and weep again, and clothe you all in black, thinking that our mightiest feats of arms and the high southing of the bright star of our magnificence should bring us unto timeless ruin. Thinking that we, that fought but for fighting’s sake, have in the end fought so well we never may fight more; unless it should be in fratricidal rage each against each. And ere that should betide, may earth close over us and our memory perish.”
Mightily moved was the Queen to behold such a violent sorrow, albeit she could not comprehend the roots and reason of it. Her voice shook a little as she said, “My Lord Juss, my Lord Brandoch Daha, and you other lords of Demonland, it was little in mine expectation to find in you such a passion of sour discontent. For I came to rejoice with you. And strangely it soundeth in mine ear to hear you mourn and lament your worst enemies, at so great hazard of your lives and all you held dear, struck down by you at last. I am but a maid and young in years, albeit my memory goeth back two hundred springs, and ill it befitteth me to counsel great lords and men of war. Yet strange it seemeth if there be not peaceful enjoyment and noble deeds of peace for you all your days, who are young and noble and lords of all the world and rich in every treasure and high gifts of learning, and the fairest country in the world for your dear native land. And if your swords must not rust, ye may bear them against the uncivil races of Impland and other distant countries to bring them to subjection.”
But Lord Goldry Bluszco laughed bitterly. “O Queen,” he cried, “shall the correction of feeble savages content these swords, which have warred against the house of Gorice and against all his chosen captains that upheld the great power of Carcë and the glory and the fear thereof?”
And Spitfire said, “What joy shall we have of soft beds and delicate meats and all the delights that be in many-mountained Demonland, if we must be stingless drones, with no action to sharpen our appetite for ease?”
All were silent awhile. Then the Lord Juss spake saying, “O Queen Sophonisba, hast thou looked ever, on a showery day in spring, upon the rainbow flung across earth and sky, and marked how all things of earth beyond it, trees, mountain sides, and rivers, and fields, and woods, and homes of men, are transfigured by the colours that are in the bow?”