A Dreamers Tales | Page 2

tends their younger vines, so they are kind to the
little woodland things and any rumour of the fairies or old legend. And
when the light of some little distant city makes a slight flush upon the
edge of the sky, and the happy golden windows of the homesteads stare
gleaming into the dark, then the old and holy figure of Romance,
cloaked even to the face, comes down out of hilly woodlands and bids
dark shadows to rise and dance, and sends the forest creatures forth to
prowl, and lights in a moment in her bower of grass the little
glowworm's lamp, and brings a hush down over the grey lands, and out
of it rises faintly on far-off hills the voice of a lute. There are not in the
world lands more prosperous and happy than Toldees, Mondath,
Arizim.
From these three little kingdoms that are named the Inner Lands the
young men stole constantly away. One by one they went, and no one
knew why they went save that they had a longing to behold the Sea. Of
this longing they spoke little, but a young man would become silent for
a few days, and then, one morning very early, he would slip away and
slowly climb Poltarnee's difficult slope, and having attained the top
pass over and never return. A few stayed behind in the Inner Lands and
became the old men, but none that had ever climbed Poltarnees from
the very earliest times had ever come back again. Many had gone up
Poltarnees sworn to return. Once a king sent all his courtiers, one by
one, to report the mystery to him, and then went himself; none ever
returned.
Now, it was the wont of the folk of the Inner Lands to worship rumours
and legends of the Sea, and all that their prophets discovered of the Sea
was writ in a sacred book, and with deep devotion on days of festival or
mourning read in the temples by the priests. Now, all their temples lay
open to the west, resting upon pillars, that the breeze from the Sea
might enter them, and they lay open on pillars to the east that the
breezes of the Sea might not be hindered by pass onward wherever the
Sea list. And this is the legend that they had of the Sea, whom none in
the Inner Lands had ever beholden. They say that the Sea is a river
heading towards Hercules, and they say that he touches against the

edge of the world, and that Poltarnees looks upon him. They say that all
the worlds of heaven go bobbing on this river and are swept down with
the stream, and that Infinity is thick and furry with forests through
which the river in his course sweeps on with all the worlds of heaven.
Among the colossal trunks of those dark trees, the smallest fronds of
whose branches are man nights, there walk the gods. And whenever its
thirst, glowing in space like a great sun, comes upon the beast, the tiger
of the gods creeps down to the river to drink. And the tiger of the gods
drinks his fill loudly, whelming worlds the while, and the level of the
river sinks between its banks ere the beast's thirst is quenched and
ceases to glow like a sun. And many worlds thereby are heaped up dry
and stranded, and the gods walk not among them evermore, because
they are hard to their feet. These are the worlds that have no destiny,
whose people know no god. And the river sweeps onwards ever. And
the name of the River is Oriathon, but men call it Ocean. This is the
Lower Faith of the Inner Lands. And there is a Higher Faith which is
not told to all. Oriathon sweeps on through the forests of Infinity and
all at once falls roaring over an Edge, whence Time has long ago
recalled his hours to fight in his war with the gods; and falls unlit by
the flash of nights and days, with his flood unmeasured by miles, into
the deeps of nothing.
Now as the centuries went by and the one way by which a man could
climb Poltarnees became worn with feet, more and more men
surmounted it, not to return. And still they knew not in the Inner Lands
upon what mystery Poltarnees looked. For on a still day and windless,
while men walked happily about their beautiful streets or tended flocks
in the country, suddenly the west wind would bestir himself and come
in from the Sea. And he would come cloaked and grey and mournful
and carry to someone the hungry cry of the Sea calling out for bones of
men. And he that heard it