Explore "The Worm Ouroboros" by E.R. Eddison on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Of news brought unto Gorice the King in Carcë out of the south, where the Lord Laxus lying in the straits with his armada held the fleet of Demonland prisoned in the midland sea.
On a night of late summer leaning towards autumn, eight weeks after the sailing of the Demons out of Muelva as is aforewrit, the Lady Prezmyra sate before her mirror in Corund's lofty bedchamber in Carcë. The night without was mild and full of stars. Within, yellow flames of candles burning steadily on either side of the mirror rayed forth tresses of tinselling brightness in twin glories or luminous spheres of warmth. In that soft radiance grains as of golden fire swam and circled, losing themselves on the confines of the gloom where the massy furniture and the arras and the figured hangings of the bed were but cloudier divisions and congestions of the general dark. Prezmyra's hair caught the beams and imprisoned them in a tawny tangle of splendour that swept about her head and shoulders down to the emerald clasps of her girdle. Her eyes resting idly on her own fair image in the shining mirror, she talked light nothings with her woman of the bedchamber who, plying the comb, stood behind her chair of gold and tortoiseshell.