The Book of Wonder

The Book of Wonder
by
Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord
Dunsany

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Title: The Book of Wonder
Author: Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7477] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 8, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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OF WONDER ***

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THE BOOK OF WONDER
BY LORD DUNSANY

CONTENTS
Preface The Bride of the Man-Horse Distressing Tale of Thangobrind
The Jeweller The House of the Sphinx Probable Adventure of the Three
Literary Men The Injudicious Prayers of Pombo the Idolater The Loot
of Bombasharna Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon Of Romance The
Quest of the Queen's Tears The Hoard of the Gibbelins How Nuth
Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles How One Came, As
Was Foretold, to the City Of Never The Coronation of Mr. Thomas
Shap Chu-Bu and Sheemish The Wonderful Window Epilogue

PREFACE
Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of
London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know:
for we have new worlds here.

THE BRIDE OF THE MAN-HORSE
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 Sombelenë. What legend of
Sombelenë's inhuman beauty or of the wonder of her mystery had ever
floated over the mundane plain to the fabulous cradle of the