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Distributed Proofreading Team.









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 years 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 <DW72>s 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 Sombelene. What legend of
Sombelene's inhuman beauty or of the wonder of her mystery had ever
floated over the mundane plain to the fabulous cradle of the centaurs'
race, the Athraminaurian mountains, I do not know. Yet in the blood of
man there is a tide, an old sea-current rather, that is somehow akin
to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far
away, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered:
and this spring-tide of current that visits the blood of man comes from
the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, the old; it
takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to
ancient song. So it may be that Shepperalk's fabulous blood stirred in
those lonely mountains away at the edge of the world to rumours that
only the airy twilight knew and only confided secretly to the bat, for
Shepperalk was more legendary even than man. Certain it was that he
headed from the first for the city of Zretazoola, where Sombelene in her
temple dwelt; though all the mundane plain, its rivers and mountains,
lay between Shepperalk's home and the city he sought.

When first the feet of the centaur touched the grass of that soft
alluvial earth he blew for joy upon the silver horn, he pranced and
caracoled, he gambolled over the leagues; pace came to him like a
maiden with a lamp, a new and beautiful wonder; the wind laughed as it
passed him. He put his head down low to the scent of the flowers, he
lifted it up to be nearer the unseen stars, he revelled through
kingdoms, took rivers in his stride; how shall I tell you, ye that
dwell in cities, how shall I tell you what he felt as he galloped? He
felt for strength like the towers of Bel-Narana; for lightness like
those gossamer palaces that the fairy-spider builds 'twixt heaven and
sea along the coasts of Zith; for swiftness like some bird racing up
from the morning to sing in some city's spires before daylight comes.
He was the sworn companion of the wind. For joy he was as a song; the
lightnings of his legendary sires, the earlier gods, began to mix with
his blood; his hooves thundered. He came to the cities of men, and all
men trembled, for they remembered the ancient mythical wars, and now
they dreaded new battles and feared for the race of man. Not by Clio
are these wars recorded; history does not know them, but what of that?
Not all of us have sat at historians' feet, but all have learned fable
and myth at their mothers' knees. And there were none that did not
fear strange wars when they saw Shepperalk swerve and leap along the
public ways. So he passed from city to city.

By night he lay down unpanting in the reeds of some marsh or a forest;
before dawn he rose triumphant, and hugely drank of some river in the
dark, and splashing out of it