VIII: THE FIRST EXPEDITION TO IMPLAND
OF THE HOME-COMING OF THE DEMONS, AND HOW LORD JUSS WAS TAUGHT IN A DREAM WHITHER HE MUST SEEK FOR TIDINGS OF HIS DEAR BROTHER. AND HOW THEY TOOK COUNSEL AT KROTHERING, AND DETERMINED OF THEIR EXPEDITION TO IMPLAND.
MIDSUMMER night, ambrosial, starry-kirtled, walked on the sea, as the ship that brought the Demons home drew nigh to her journey’s end. The cloaks of Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha, who slept on the poop, were wet with dew. Smoothly they had passage through that charmed night, where winds were hushed asleep and nought was heard save the waves talking beneath the bows of the ship, the lilting changeless song of the steersman, and the creak, dip, and swash of oars keeping time to his singing. Vega burned like a sapphire near the zenith, and Arcturus low in the north-west, beaconing over Demonland. In the remote south-east Fomalhaut rose from the sea, a lonely splendour in the dim region of Capricorn and the Fishes.
So rowed they till day broke, and a light wind sprang up fresh and keen. Juss waked, and stood up to scan the gray glassy surface of the sea spread to vast distances where sky and water faded into one. Astern, great clouds bridged the gates of day, boiling upwards into crags of wine-dark vapour and burning plumes of sunrise. In the stainless spaces of the sky above these sailed the horned moon, frail and wan as a white foam-flower blown from the waves. Westward, facing the thunder-smoke of dawn, the fine far ridge of Kartadza was like cut crystal against the sky: the first island sentinel of many-mountained Demonland, his topmost cliffs dawn-illumined with pale gold and amethyst while yet the lesser heights lay obscure, lapped in the folds of night. And with the opening day the mists swathing the mountain’s skirts were lifted up in billowy masses that grew and shrank and grew again, made restless by the wayward winds which morning waked in the hollow mountain side, and torn by them into wisps and streamers. Some were blown upward, steaming up the great gullies in the rocks below the peak, while now and then a puff of cloud swam free for a minute, floated a minute’s space as ready to sail skyward, then indolently stooped again to the mountain wall to veil it in an unsubstantial fleece of golden vapour. And now all the western seaboard of Demonland lay clear to view, stretching fifty miles and more from Northhouse Skerries past the Drakeholms and the low downs of Kestawick and Byland, beyond which tower the mountains of the Scarf, past the jagged sky-line of the Thornbacks and the far Neverdale peaks overhanging the wooded shores of Onwardlithe and Lower Tivarandardale, to the extreme southern headland, filmy-pale in the distance, where the great range of Rimon Armon plunges its last wild bastion in the sea.
As a lover gazing on his mistress, so gazed Lord Juss on Demonland rising from the sea. No word spake he till they came off Lookinghaven-ness and could see where beyond the beaked promontory the sound opened between Kartadza and the mainland. Albeit the outer sea was calm, the air in the sound was thick with spray from the churning of the waters among the reefs and swallowing shoals. For the tide ran like a mill-race through that sound, and the roaring of it was plain to hear at two miles’ distance where they sailed. Juss said, “Mindest thou my shepherding of the Ghoul fleet into yonder jaws? I would not tell thee for shame whenas the fit was on me. But this is the first day since the sending came upon us that I have not wished in my heart that the Races of Kartadza had gulped me down also and given me one ending with the accursed Ghouls.”
Lord Brandoch Daha looked swiftly upon him and was silent.
Now in a short while was the ship come into Lookinghaven and alongside of the marble quay. There amid his folk stood Spitfire, who greeted them, saying, “I made all ready to bring three of you home in triumph from your ship, but Volle counselled against it. Glad am I that I took his counsel, and put by those things I had prepared. They had cut me to the heart to see them now.”
Juss answered him, “O my brother, this noise of hammers in Lookinghaven, and these ten keels laid on the slips, show me ye have been busied on things nearer our needs than bay-leaves and the instruments of joy since thou camest home.”