Читать книгу The Lays of Beleriand онлайн | страница 25

From the magic mazes of Melian the Queenthey haled unhappy Húrin’s offspring,lest he flee his fate; but they fared slowly705and the leagues were long of their laboured wayover hill and hollow to the high places,where the peaks and pinnacles of pitiless stonelooming up lofty are lapped in cloud,and veiled in vapours vast and sable;710where Eiglir Engrin, the Iron Hills, lieo’er the hopeless halls of Hell uprearedwrought at the roots of the roaring cliffsof Thangorodrim’s thunderous mountain.Thither led they laden with loot and evil;715but Beleg yet breathed in blood drenchédaswoon, till the sun to the South hastened,and the eye of day was opened wide.Then he woke and wondered, and weeping took him,and to Túrin Thalion his thoughts were turned,720that o’erborne in battle and bound he had seen.Then he crawled from the corpses that had covered him over,weary, wounded, too weak to stand.So Thingol’s thanes athirst and bleedingin the forest found him: his fate willed not725that he should drink the draught of death from foes.Thus they bore him back in bitter tormenthis tidings to tell in the torchlit hallsof Thingol the king; in the Thousand Cavesto be healéd whole by the hands enchanted730of Melian Mablui, the moonlit queen.

Ere a week was outworn his wounds were cured,but his heart’s heaviness those hands of snownor soothed nor softened, and sorrow-ladenhe fared to the forest. No fellows sought he735in his hopeless hazard, but in haste alonehe followed the feet of the foes of Elfland,the dread daring, and the dire anguish,that held the hearts of Hithlum’s menand Doriath’s doughtiest in a dream of fear.740Unmatched among Men, or magic-wieldingElves, or hunters of the Orc-kindred,or beasts of prey for blood pining,was his craft and cunning, that cold and deadan unseen slot could scent o’er stone,745foot-prints could find on forest pathwaysthat lightly on the leaves were laid in moonslong waned, and washed by windy rains.The grim Glamhoth’s goblin armiesgo cunning-footed, but his craft failed not750to tread their trail, till the lands were darkened,and the light was lost in lands unknown.Never-dawning night was netted clingingin the black branches of the beetling trees;oppressed by pungent pinewood’s odours,755and drowsed with dreams as the darkness thickened,he strayed steerless. The stars were hid,and the moon mantled. There magic founderedin the gathering glooms, there goblins even(whose deep eyes drill the darkest shadows)760bewildered wandered, who the way forsookto grope in the glades, there greyly loomedof girth unguessed in growth of agesthe topless trunks of trees enchanted.That fathomless fold by folk of Elfland765is Taur-na-Fuin, the Trackless Forestof Deadly Nightshade, dreadly naméd.Abandoned, beaten, there Beleg lyingto the wind harkened winding, moaningin bending boughs; to branches creaking770up high over head, where huge pinionsof the pluméd pine-trees complained darklyin black foreboding. There bowed hopeless,in wit wildered, and wooing death,he saw on a sudden a slender sheen775shine a-shimmering in the shades afar,like a glow-worm’s lamp a-gleaming dim.He marvelled what it might be as he moved softly;for he knew not the Gnomes of need delvingin the deep dungeons of dark Morgoth.780Unmatched their magic in metal-working,who jewels and gems that rejoiced the Godsaforetime fashioned, when they freedom held,now swinking slaves of ceaseless labourin Angband’s smithies, nor ever were suffered785to wander away, warded always.But little lanterns of lucent crystaland silver cold with subtlest cunningthey strangely fashioned, and steadfast a flameburnt unblinking there blue and pale,790unquenched for ever. The craft that lit themwas the jewel-makers’ most jealous secret.Not Morgoth’s might, nor meed nor tormentthem vowed, availed to reveal that lore;yet lights and lamps of living radiance,795many and magical, they made for him.No dark could dim them the deeps wandering;whose lode they lit was lost seldomin groundless grot, or gulfs far under.