“Their land also is full of idols: they worship the work of their own hands.”
—Isaiah, ii, 8.
20.
Idolatry of an Alderman
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NOW the tale is again of Coth, and of how Coth went blustering westward to fetch back Dom Manuel into his Poictesme, which, as Coth asserted, skinny women and holy persons and lying poets were making quite uninhabitable. It is probable that Coth thus more or less obliquely referred to the Countess Niafer herself, as well as to Holy Holmendis and to pious Ninzian and to the most virtuous but not plump Madame Balthis, the wife of Ninzian, since these three nowadays were the advisers of Dame Niafer in everything. It is certain that, even in these early days, Dom Manuel had already become a legend; and the poets everywhere were rehearsing his valor and his wisdom and his noble excellencies in all the affairs of this life.
But Coth of the Rocks twirled his mustachios, and he disapprovingly shook his great bald head, and he went very quickly away from all these reformings of Poictesme and of the master whom his heart remembered and desired. Coth of the Rocks traveled westward, without any companion, faring alone by land and sea. Coth broke his journeying, first, at Sorcha, and he companioned there with Credhê of the Red Brown Hair: he went thence to the Island of Hunchback Women, and it was in that island (really a peninsula) he had so much pleasure, and deadly trouble too, with a harlot named Bar, the wife of Ögir. But in neither of these realms did Coth get any sure news of Dom Manuel, although there was a rumor of such a passing. Then, at Kushavati, in a twilit place of rustling leaves and very softly chiming little bells, Coth found, with the aid of Dame Abonde, the book of maps by which he was thereafter to be guided.
Coth journeyed, in fine, ever westward, with such occasional stays to rest or copulate or fight as were the natural concomitants of travel. In some lands he found only ill-confirmed reports that such a person as Dom Manuel had passed that way before him: in other lands there was no report. But Coth had reason, after what Abonde had showed him in that secluded place under the rustling leaves, to put firm faith in his maps.
So he went on, always westward, with varied and pleasant enough adventures befalling him, at Leyma, and Skeaf, and Adrisim. He had great sorrow at Murnith, in the Land of Marked Bodies, on account of a religious custom there prevalent and of the girl Felfel Rhasif Yedua; and—at Ran Reigan,—the one-legged Queen Zélélé held him imprisoned for a while, in her harem of half a hundred fine men. Yet, in the main, Coth got on handily, in part by honoring the religious customs everywhere, but chiefly by virtue of his maps and his natural endowments. These last enabled him amply to deal with all men who wanted a quarrel and with all women whom he found it expedient to placate and to surprise: and as far as to Lower Yarold, and even to Khaikar the Red, his maps served faithfully to guide him, until Coth perforce went over the edge of the last one, into a country which was not upon any map; and in this way approached, though he did not know it, to the city of Porutsa.
Thus, it was near Porutsa that Coth found a stone image standing in a lonely field which was overgrown with pepper plants. Among these plants, charred thighbones and ribs and other put-by appurtenances of mankind lay scattered everywhither rather dispiritingly: and before the image were the remnants of yet other burnt offerings, upon a large altar carved everywhere with skulls.