The Mezentian Gate

The Mezentian Gate
E. R. Eddison

Paul Thomas Edmund

The third volume in the classic epic trilogy of parallel worlds, admired by Tolkien and the great prototype for The Lord of the Rings and modern fantasy fiction.E. R. Eddison was the author of three of the most remarkable fantasies in the English language: The Worm Ouroboros, Mistress of Mistresses and A Fish Dinner in Memison. Linked together as separate parts of one vast romantic epic, fans who clamoured for more were finally rewarded 13 years after Eddison’s death with the publication of the uncompleted fourth novel, written during the dark years of the Second World War.This new edition of The Mezentian Gate includes additional narrative fragments of the story missing from the original 1958 edition. Together with an illuminating introduction by Eddison scholar Paul Edmund Thomas, this volume returns Edward Lessingham to the extravagant realm of Zimiamvia and concludes one of the most extraordinary and influential fantasy series ever written.

Copyright (#ulink_096ec862-eab9-504a-b732-d2ac535d8da4)

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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Introduction © Paul Edmund Thomas 1992

Copyright © E.R. Eddison 1958, 1992

Jacket illustration by John Howe © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 2014

E.R. Eddison asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007578177

Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007578184

Version: 2014-09-16

Dedication (#ulink_a2245c72-3720-5b19-9bc9-f8e0624e879d)

To you, madonna mia,

WINIFRED GRACE EDDISON

and to my mother,

HELEN LOUISA EDDISON

and to my friends,

JOHN AND ALICE REYNOLDS

and to

HARRY PIRIE-GORDON

a fellow explorer in whom (as in Lessingham)

I find that rare mixture of man of action and

connoisseur of strangeness and beauty in their

protean manifestations, who laughs where I laugh

and likes the salt that I like, and to whom I owe

my acquaintance (through the Orkneyinga Saga)

with the earthly ancestress

of my Lady Rosma Parry

I dedicate this book.

E. R. E.

Proper names the reader will no doubt pronounce as he chooses. But perhaps, to please me, he will keep the i’s short in Zimiamvia and accent the third syllable: accent the second syllable in Zayana, give it a broad a (as in ‘Guiana’), and pronouce the ay in the first syllable – and the ai in Laimak, Kaima, etc., and the ay in Krestenaya – like the ai in ‘aisle’; keep the g soft in Fingiswold: let Memison echo ‘denizen’ except for the m: accent the first syllable in Rerek and make it rhyme with ‘year’: pronounce the first syllable of Reisma ‘rays’; remember that Fiorinda is in origin an Italian name, Amaury, Amalie, and Beroald French, and Antiope, Zenianthe, and a good many others, Greek: last, regard the sz in Meszria as ornamental, and not be deterred from pronouncing it as plain ‘Mezria’.

Let me not to the marriage of true mindes

Admit impediments, love is not love

Which alters when it alteration findes,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no, it is an ever fixed marke

That lookes on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandring barke,

Whose worths unknowns, although his higth be taken.

Love’s not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickles compasse come,

Love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes,

But beares it out even to the edge of doome: