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_ In the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk the
centaur went to the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of the
centaurs was, and taking from it the hoarded amulet that his father,
Jyshak, in the year of his prime, had hammered from mountain gold and
set with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put it upon his wrist, and
said no word, but walked from his mother's cavern. And he took with
him too that clarion of the centaurs, that famous silver horn, that in
its time had summoned to surrender seventeen cities of Man, and for
twenty years had brayed at star-girt walls in the Siege of
Tholdenblarna, the citadel of the gods, what time the centaurs waged
their fabulous war and were not broken by any force of arms, but
retreated slowly in a cloud of dust before the final miracle of the
gods that They brought in Their desperate need from Their ultimate
armoury. He took it and strode away, and his mother only sighed and
let him go.
She knew that today he would not drink at the stream coming down from
the terraces of Varpa Niger, the inner land of the mountains, that
today he would not wonder awhile at the sunset and afterwards trot
back to the cavern again to sleep on rushes pulled by rivers that know
not Man. She knew that it was with him as it had been of old with his
father, and with Goom the father of Jyshak, and long ago with the
gods. Therefore she only sighed and let him go.
But he, coming out from the cavern that was his home, went for the
first time over the little stream, and going round the corner of the
crags saw glittering beneath him the mundane plain. And the wind of
the autumn that was gilding the world, rushing up the slopes of the
mountain, beat cold on his naked flanks. He raised his head and
snorted.
"I am a man-horse now!" he shouted aloud; and leaping from crag to
crag he galloped by valley and chasm, by torrent-bed and scar of
avalanche, until he came to the wandering leagues of the plain, and
left behind him for ever the Athraminaurian mountains.
His goal was Zretazoola, the city of Sombelene. What legend of
Sombelene's inhuman beauty or of the wonder of her mystery had ever
floated over the mundane plain to the fabulous cradle of the centaurs'
race, the Athraminaurian mountains, I do not know. Yet in the blood of
man there is a tide, an old sea-current, rather, that is somehow akin
to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far
away, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered;
and this springtide of current that visits the blood of man comes from
the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, of old; it
takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to
ancient song. So it may be that Shepperalk's fabulous blood stirred in
those lonely mountains away at the edge of the world to rumours that
only the airy twilight knew and only confided secretly to the bat, for
Shepperalk was more legendary even than man. Certain it was that he
headed from the first for the city Zretazoola, where Sombelene in her
temple dwelt; though all the mundane plain, its rivers and mountains,
lay between Shepperalk's home and the city he sought.
When first the feet of the centaur touched the grass of that soft
alluvial earth he blew for joy upon the silver horn, he pranced and
caracoled, he gambolled over the leagues; pace came to him like a
maiden with a lamp, a new and beautiful wonder; the wind laughed as it
passed him. He put his head down low to the scent of the flower, he
lifted it up to be nearer the unseen stars, he revelled through
kingdoms, took rivers in his stride; how shall I tell you, ye that
dwell in cities, how shall I tell you what he felt as he galloped? He
felt for strength like the towers of Bel-Narana; for lightness like
those gossamer palaces that the fairy-spider builds 'twixt heaven and
sea along the coasts of Zith; for swiftness like some bird racing up
from the morning to sing in some city's spires before daylight comes.
He was the sworn companion of the wind. For joy he was as a song; the
lightnings of his legendary sires, the earlier gods, began to mix with
his blood; his hooves thundered. He came to the cities of men, and all
men trembled, for they remembered the ancient mythical wars, and now
they dreaded new battles and feared for the race of man. Not by Clio
are these wars recorded; history does not know them, but what of that?
Not all of us have sat at historians' feet, but all have learned fable
and myth at their mothers' knees. And there were none that did not
fear strange wars when they saw Shepperalk swerve and leap along the
public ways. So he passed from city to city.
By night he lay down unpanting in the reeds of some marsh or forest;
before dawn he rose triumphant, and hugely drank of some river in the
dark, and splashing out of it would trot to some high place to find
the sunrise, and to send echoing eastwards the exultant greetings of
his jubilant horn. And lo! the sunrise coming up from the echoes, and
the plains new-lit by the day, and the leagues spinning by like water
flung from a top, and that gay companion, the loudly laughing wind,
and men and the fears of men and their little cities; and, after that,
great rivers and waste spaces and huge new hills, and then new lands
beyond them, and more cities of men, and always the old companion, the
glorious wind. Kingdom by kingdom slipt by, and still his breath was
even. "It is a golden thing to gallop on good turf in one's youth,"
said the young man-horse, the centaur. "Ha, ha," said the wind of the
hills, and the winds of the plain answered.
Bells pealed in frantic towers, wise men consulted parchments,
astrologers sought of the portent from the stars, the aged made subtle
prophecies. "Is he not swift?" said the young. "How glad he is," said
the children.
Night after night brought him sleep, and day after day lit his gallop,
till he came to the lands of the Athalonian men who live by the edges
of the mundane plain, and from them he came to the lands of legend
again such as those in which he was cradled on the other side of the
world, and which fringe the marge of the world and mix with the
twilight. And there a mighty thought came into his untired heart, for
he knew that he neared Zretazoola now, the city of Sombelene.
It was late in the day when he neared it, and clouds coloured with
evening rolled low on the plain before him; he galloped on into their
golden mist, and when it hid from his eyes the sight of things, the
dreams in his heart awoke and romantically he pondered all those
rumours that used to come to him from Sombelene, because of the
fellowship of fabulous things. She dwelt (said evening secretly to the
bat) in a little temple by a lone lakeshore. A grove of cypresses
screened her from the city, from Zretazoola of the climbing ways. And
opposite her temple stood her tomb, her sad lake-sepulchre with open
door, lest her amazing beauty and the centuries of her youth should
ever give rise to the heresy among men that lovely Sombelene was
immortal: for only her beauty and her lineage were divine.
Her father had been half centaur and half god; her mother was the
child of a desert lion and that sphinx that watches the pyramids;--she
was more mystical than Woman.
Her beauty was as a dream, was as a song; the one dream of a lifetime
dreamed on enchanted dews, the one song sung to some city by a
deathless bird blown far from his native coasts by storm in Paradise.
Dawn after dawn on mountains of romance or twilight after twilight
could never equal her beauty; all the glow-worms had not the secret
among them nor all the stars of night; poets had never sung it nor
evening guessed its meaning; the morning envied it, it was hidden from
lovers.
She was unwed, unwooed.
The lions came not to woo her because they feared her strength, and
the gods dared not love her because they knew she must die.
This was what evening had whispered to the bat, this was the dream in
the heart of Shepperalk as he cantered blind through the mist. And
suddenly there at his hooves in the dark of the plain appeared the
cleft in the legendary lands, and Zretazoola sheltering in the cleft,
and sunning herself in the evening.
Swiftly and craftily he bounded down by the upper end of the cleft,
and entering Zretazoola by the outer gate which looks out sheer on the
stars, he galloped suddenly down the narrow streets. Many that rushed
out on to balconies as he went clattering by, many that put their
heads from glittering windows, are told of in olden song. Shepperalk
did not tarry to give greetings or to answer challenges from martial
towers, he was down through the earthward gateway like the thunderbolt
of his sires, and, like Leviathan who has leapt at an eagle, he surged
into the water between temple and tomb.
He galloped with half-shut eyes up the temple-steps, and, only seeing
dimly through his lashes, seized Sombelene by the hair, undazzled as
yet by her beauty, and so haled her away; and, leaping with her over
the floorless chasm where the waters of the lake fall unremembered
away into a hole in the world, took her we know not where, to be her
slave for all centuries that are allowed to his race.
Three blasts he gave as he went upon that silver horn that is the
world-old treasure of the centaurs. These were his wedding bells. _
Read next: Distressing Tale of Thangobrind The Jeweller
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