Don Rodriguez; Chronicles of Shadow ValleyDunsany, Lord
Science
Don Rodriguez; Chronicles of Shadow Valley
Dunsany, Lord
Fantasy fiction, English; Magicians -- Fiction; Spain -- Fiction
Now lights appeared showing that someone moved. Window after window
showed to the bare dark mountain its gleaming yellow glare; there in
the night the house forsook the dark rocks that seemed kin to it, by
glowing as they could never glow, by doing what the beasts that haunted
them could not do: this was the lair of man. Here was the light of
flame but the rocks remained dark and cold as the wind of night that
went over them, he who dwelt now with the lights had forsaken the
rocks, his neighbours.
And, when all were lit, one light high in a tower shone green. These
lights appearing out of the mountain thus seemed to speak to Rodriguez
and to tell him nothing. And Morano wondered, as he seldom troubled to
do.
They pushed on up the steepening path.
"Like you the looks of it?" said Rodriguez once.
"Aye, master," answered Morano, "so there be straw."
"You see nothing strange there, then?" Rodriguez said.
"Master," Morano said, "there be saints for all requirements."
Any fears he had felt about that house before, now as he neared it were
gone; it was time to put away fears and face the event; thus worked
Morano's philosophy. And he turned his thoughts to the achievements
upon earth of a certain Saint who met Satan, and showed to the
sovereign of Hell a discourtesy alien to the ways of the Church.
It was dark now, and the yellow lights got larger as they drew nearer
the windows, till they saw large shadows obscurely passing from room to
room. The ascent was steep now and the pathway stopped. No track of any
kind approached the house. It stood on a precipice-edge as though one
of the rocks of the mountain: they climbed over rocks to reach it. The
windows flickered and blinked at them.
Nothing invited them there in the look of that house, but they were now
in such a forbidding waste that shelter had to be found; they were all
among edges of rock as black as the night and hard as the material of
which Cosmos was formed, at first upon Chaos' brink. The sound of their
climbing ran noisily up the mountain but no sound came from the house:
only the shadows moved more swiftly across a room, passed into other
rooms and came hurrying back. Sometimes the shadows stayed and seemed
to peer; and when the travellers stood and watched to see what they
were they would disappear and there were no shadows at all, and the
rooms were filled instead with their wondering speculation. Then they
pushed on over rocks that seemed never trodden by man, so sharp were
they and slanting, all piled together: it seemed the last waste, to
which all shapeless rocks had been thrown.
Morano and these black rocks seemed shaped by a different scheme;
indeed the rocks had never been shaped at all, they were just raw
pieces of Chaos. Morano climbed over their edges with moans and
discomfort. Rodriguez heard him behind him and knew by his moans when
he came to the top of each sharp rock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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