The Well at the World's End: A Tale

  CHAPTER 8

  They Come to the Sea of Molten Rocks

  When they woke again the sun was high above their heads, and they sawthe Sage dighting their breakfast. So they arose and washed the nightoff them in the stream and ate hastily, and got to horse on a fairforenoon; then they rode the mountain neck east from that valley; andit was a long slope of stony and barren mountain nigh waterless.

  And on the way Ursula told Ralph how the man who was scared by thewizardry last night was verily the nephew of the Lord from whom she hadstolen her armour by wheedling and a seeming promise. "But," said she,"his love lay not so deep but that he would have avenged him for myguile on my very body had he taken us." Ralph reddened and scowled ather word, and the Sage led them into the other talk.

  So long was that fell, that they were nigh benighted ere they gainedthe topmost, or came to any pass. When they had come to a place wherethere was a little pool in a hollow of the rocks they made stay there,and slept safe, but ill-lodged, and on the morrow were on their waybetimes, and went toiling up the neck another four hours, and came to along rocky ridge or crest that ran athwart it; and when they had cometo the brow thereof, then were they face to face with the GreatMountains, which now looked so huge that they seemed to fill all theworld save the ground whereon they stood. Cloudless was the day, andthe air clean and sweet, and every nook and cranny was clear to beholdfrom where they stood: there were great jutting nesses withstraight-walled burgs at their top-most, and pyramids and pinnaclesthat no hand of man had fashioned, and awful clefts like long streetsin the city of the giants who wrought the world, and high above all theundying snow that looked as if the sky had come down on to themountains and they were upholding it as a roof.

  But clear as was the fashion of the mountains, they were yet a long wayoff: for betwixt them and the ridge whereon those fellows stood,stretched a vast plain, houseless and treeless, and, as they beheld itthence grey and ungrassed (though indeed it was not wholly so) like ahuge river or firth of the sea it seemed, and such indeed it had beenonce, to wit a flood of molten rock in the old days when the earth wasa-burning.

  Now as they stood and beheld it, the Sage spake: "Lo ye, my children,the castle and its outwork, and its dyke that wardeth the land of theWell at the World's End. Now from to-morrow, when we enter into thegreat sea of the rock molten in the ancient earth-fires, there is noleast peril of pursuit for you. Yet amidst that sea should ye perishbelike, were it not for the wisdom gathered by a few; and they are deadnow save for the Book, and for me, who read it unto you. Now ye wouldnot turn back were I to bid you, and I will not bid you. Yet since thejourney shall be yet with grievous toil and much peril, and shall trythe very hearts within you, were ye as wise as Solomon and as mighty asAlexander, I will say this much unto you; that if ye love not the earthand the world with all your souls, and will not strive all ye may to befrank and happy therein, your toil and peril aforesaid shall win you noblessing but a curse. Therefore I bid you be no tyrants or builders ofcities for merchants and usurers and warriors and thralls, like thefool who builded Goldburg to be for a tomb to him: or like thethrall-masters of the Burg of the Four Friths, who even now, it may be,are pierced by their own staff or overwhelmed by their own wall. Butrather I bid you to live in peace and patience without fear or hatred,and to succour the oppressed and love the lovely, and to be the friendsof men, so that when ye are dead at last, men may say of you, theybrought down Heaven to the Earth for a little while. What say ye,children?"

  Then said Ralph: "Father, I will say the sooth about mine intent,though ye may deem it little-minded. When I have accomplished thisquest, I would get me home again to the little land of Upmeads, to seemy father and my mother, and to guard its meadows from waste and itshouses from fire-raising: to hold war aloof and walk in free fields,and see my children growing up about me, and lie at last beside myfathers in the choir of St. Laurence. The dead would I love andremember; the living would I love and cherish; and Earth shall be thewell beloved house of my Fathers, and Heaven the highest hall thereof."

  "It is well," said the Sage, "all this shalt thou do and be nolittle-heart, though thou do no more. And thou, maiden?"

  She looked on Ralph and said: "I lost, and then I found, and then Ilost again. Maybe I shall find the lost once more. And for the rest,in all that this man will do, I will help, living or dead, for I knownaught better to do."

  "Again it is well," said the Sage, "and the lost which was verily thineshalt thou find again, and good days and their ending shall betidethee. Ye shall have no shame in your lives and no fear in your deaths.Wherefore now lieth the road free before you."

  Then was he silent a while, neither spake the others aught, but stoodgazing on the dark grey plain, and the blue wall that rose beyond it,till at last the Sage lifted up his hand and said: "Look yonder,children, to where I point, and ye shall see how there thrusteth out aness from the mountain-wall, and the end of it stands like a bastionabove the lava-sea, and on its sides and its head are streaks ruddy andtawny, where the earth-fires have burnt not so long ago: see ye?"

  Ralph looked and said: "Yea, father, I see it, and its rifts and itsridges, and its crannies."

  Quoth the Sage: "Behind that ness shall ye come to the Rock of theFighting Man, which is the very Gate of the Mountains; and I will notturn again nor bid you farewell till I have brought you thither. Andnow time presses; for I would have you come timely to that cavern,whereof I have taught you, before ye fall on the first days of winter,or ye shall be hard bestead. So now we will eat a morsel, and then usediligence that we may reach the beginning of the rock-sea beforenightfall."

  So did they, and the Sage led them down by a slant-way from off theridge, which was toilsome but nowise perilous. So about sunset theycame down into the plain, and found a belt of greensward, and waterstherein betwixt the foot of the ridge and the edge of the rock-sea. Andas for the said sea, though from afar it looked plain and unbroken, nowthat they were close to, and on a level with it, they saw that it roseup into cliffs, broken down in some places, and in others arising highinto the air, an hundred foot, it might be. Sometimes it thrust outinto the green shore below the fell, and otherwhile drew back from itas it had cooled ages ago.

  So they came to a place where there was a high wall of rock round threesides of a grassy place by a stream-side, and there they made theirresting-place, and the night went calmly and sweetly with them.