The Mezentian Gate. E. Eddison R.

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      ‘You are a bold little she-cat,’ he said. Again a shivering took him, bred of some bite in the air. ‘There is frost in this garden.’

      ‘Is there? Your honour were wiser leave it and go to bed, then.’

      ‘You must first do me this kindness, mistress. Bring me to the old man your grandsire.’

      ‘At this time of night?’

      ‘There is a thing I must ask him.’

      ‘You are a great asker.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ he said, as might a boy caught unawares by some uncloaking of his mind he had safely supposed well hid.

      Anthea bared her teeth. ‘Do you not wish you had my art, to see in the dark?’ Then, with a shrug: ‘I heard him tell you, this afternoon, he had no answer to questions of yours.’

      ‘I cannot sleep,’ said Aktor, ‘for want of his answer.’

      ‘There is always the choice to stay awake.’

      ‘Will you bring me to him.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Tell me where he sleeps, then, and I will seek him out.’

      Anthea laughed at the moon. ‘Hearken how these mortals will ask and ask! But I am not your nurse, to weary myself with parroting of No, no, no, when a pettish child screams for the nightshade-berry. You shall have it, though it poison you. Wait here till I inform him, if so he may deign to come to you.’

      The prince saw her depart. As a silver birch-tree of the mountains, if it might, should walk, so walked she under the moon. And the moon, or she so walking, or the wine that was in his veins, or the thunder of his inward thought, wrought in him to think: ‘Why blame myself? Am I untrue to my friend and well-doer and dispenser of all my good, if I seek unturningly the good that seems to my incensed brain main good indeed? She is to him but an engine to breed kings to follow him. With this son bred, why, it hath long been apparent and manifest he is through with her: the pure unadulterate high perfection of all that is or ever shall be, is to him but a commodity unheeded hath served his turn. By God, what cares he for me either? That have held her today, thank the Gods (if any Gods there were, save the grand Devil perhaps in Hell that now, if flesh were or spirit were, which is in great doubt, riveth and rendeth my flesh and spirit), in my arms, albeit but for an instant only, albeit she renegued and rejected me, to know that, flesh by flesh, she must be mine to eternity? God! No, but to necessity: eternity is a trash-name. But this is now; and until my death or hers. And what of him? That, by my soul (damn my soul: for there is no soul, but only the animal spirits; and they unknown, save as the brief substance of a dream or a candle burning, that lives but and dies but in her): what surety have I (God damn me) that he meaneth not to sell me to the supplanter (I loathe him to the gallows) sits in my father’s seat? Smooth words and sweet predicaments: I am in a mist. Come sight but for a lightning-flash, ’tis folly and madness to trust aught but sight. Seeing’s believing. God or Hell, both unbelievable, ’tis time to believe whichever will show me firm ground indeed.’ He was in a muck sweat. And now, looking at that statue as an enemy, and in the ineluctable grip of indignation and love, each with the frenzy of other doubled upon it by desire, he began to say within himself: ‘Female Beast! Wisely was that done of men’s folly, to fain you a goddess. You, who devour their brains: who ganch them on your hook by their dearest flesh till they are ready to do the abominablest treasons so only they may come at the filthy anodyne you offer them, that is a lesser death in the tasting, that breaks their will and their manhood and, being tasted, leaves them sucked dry of all save shame and emptiness only and sickness of heart. Come to life, now. Move. Turn your false lightless lustful eyes here, that you may see how your method works with me. Would they were right cockatrice’s eyes, should look me dead, turn me to a stone, as you are stone: to nothing, as you are nothing.’

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