Figures of Earth | Page 6

I am wondering what sort
of a something is this geas."
"It is what you might call a bond or an obligation, sir, only it is of the
particularly strong and unreasonable and affirmative and secret sort
which the Virbolg use."

The stranger now looked from the figure to Manuel, and the stranger
deliberated the question (which later was to puzzle so many people) if
any human being could be as simple as Manuel appeared. Manuel at
twenty was not yet the burly giant he became. But already he was a
gigantic and florid person, so tall that the heads of few men reached to
his shoulder; a person of handsome exterior, high featured and blond,
having a narrow small head, and vivid light blue eyes, and the chest of
a stallion; a person whose left eyebrow had an odd oblique droop, so
that the stupendous boy at his simplest appeared to be winking the
information that he was in jest.
All in all, the stranger found this young swineherd ambiguous; and
there was another curious thing too which the stranger noticed about
Manuel.
"Is it on account of this geas," asked the stranger, "that a great lock has
been sheared away from your yellow hair?"
In an instant Manuel's face became dark and wary. "No," he said, "that
has nothing to do with my geas, and we must not talk about that"
"Now you are a queer lad to be having such an obligation upon your
head, and to be having well-nigh half the hair cut away from your head,
and to be having inside your head such notions. And while small harm
has ever come from humoring one's mother, yet I wonder at you,
Manuel, that you should sit here sleeping in the sunlight among your
pigs, and be giving your young time to improbable sculpture and
stagnant water, when there is such a fine adventure awaiting you, and
when the Norns are foretelling such high things about you as they spin
the thread of your living."
"Hah, glory be to God, friend, but what is this adventure?"
"The adventure is that the Count of Arnaye's daughter yonder has been
carried off by a magician, and that the high Count Demetrios offers
much wealth and broad lands, and his daughter's hand in marriage, too,
to the lad that will fetch back this lovely girl."

"I have heard talk of this in the kitchen of Arnaye, where I sometimes
sell them a pig. But what are such matters to a swineherd?"
"My lad, you are to-day a swineherd drowsing in the sun, as yesterday
you were a baby squalling in the cradle, but to-morrow you will be
neither of these if there by any truth whatever in the talking of the
Norns as they gossip at the foot of their ash-tree beside the door of the
Sylan's House."
Manuel appeared to accept the inevitable. He bowed his brightly
colored high head, saying gravely: "All honor be to Urdhr and
Verdandi and Skuld! If I am decreed to be the champion that is to
rescue the Count of Arnaye's daughter, it is ill arguing with the Norns.
Come, tell me now, how do you call this doomed magician, and how
does one get to him to sever his wicked head from his foul body?"
"Men speak of him as Miramon Lluagor, lord of the nine kinds of sleep
and prince of the seven madnesses. He lives in mythic splendor at the
top of the gray mountain called Vraidex, where he contrives all manner
of illusions, and, in particular, designs the dreams of men."
"Yes, in the kitchen of Arnaye, also, such was the report concerning
this Miramon: and not a person in the kitchen denied that this Miramon
is an ugly customer."
"He is the most subtle of magicians. None can withstand him, and
nobody can pass the terrible serpentine designs which Miramon has set
to guard the gray scarps of Vraidex, unless one carries the more terrible
sword Flamberge, which I have here in its blue scabbard."
"Why, then, it is you who must rescue the Count's daughter."
"No, that would not do at all: for there is in the life of a champion too
much of turmoil and of buffetings and murderings to suit me, who am a
peace-loving person. Besides, to the champion who rescues the Lady
Gisèle will be given her hand in marriage, and as I have a wife, I know
that to have two wives would lead to twice too much dissension to suit
me, who am a peace-loving person. So I think it is you who had better

take the sword and the adventure."
"Well," Manuel said, "much wealth and broad lands and a lovely wife
are finer things to ward than a parcel of pigs."