Glyneth looked at him sidelong. "You love me and Dhrun loves me, but I think that you are speaking of Aillas. ... Is he outside?"
"No. I gave him no hint that the quaver was open. If you were not at the hut or if you had come to harm, he would only be tortured all over again. Kul did not fail and Murgen did not fail; and you are here. Now I will bring Aillas here by magic. You may come out when I call you."
Shimrod departed the hut. Glyneth went to the table and looked down upon the swords Zil and Kahanthus, and her mind went back to Tanjecterly and the long way to Asphrodiske. For a moment she wondered as to Visbhume.
A minute passed. From outside she heard voices, and started to go out, then, remembering Shimrod's instructions, waited.
Shimrod called: "Glyneth! Are you there? Or have you gone back to Tanjecterly?"
Glyneth went to the door and into the dappled sunlight of the forest. Beside a carriage Aillas waited for her.
Shimrod carried the swords to the carriage and said: "I will await you at Watershade; do not loiter along the way!" He went off through the forest and was gone.
Aillas came forward and took Glyneth in his arms. "My beloved Glyneth, I will never let you leave me again."
After a moment he released her and looked carefully into her face.
Glyneth, smiling, asked: "Why do you look at me so?"
"Because under my very eyes you have become the most beautiful and appealing of all maidens alive."
"Truly, Aillas? Despite my soiled clothes and dirty face?"
"Truly."
Glyneth laughed. "Sometimes I despaired of attracting your attention."
"No fear of that now. In fact I am afflicted with all the tremors and doubts of the uncertain lover. I am anxious to learn of your adventures. How did your paladin Kul serve you?"
"He served me so well that I came to love him too! I should say, I came to love that part of Kul which was you. I saw glimpses of the feroce and of Kul the Killer and both frightened me; and then always you seemed to appear and set things right."
Aillas said ruefully: "I seem to have done much which I do not remember... . Well, no matter. Kul brought you back to me, so I must not be jealous. Here is our carriage. Let us be away to Watershade, and the happiest banquets the old stones have ever known."
Epilogue THE GREEN PEARL is locked in a bottle and Tamurello's guise, the skeleton of a crouching weasel in green aspic, is probably the least comfortable of any he has yet known... . The Forest of Tantrevalles shades a deep dank soil; somewhere under this mold lies the carcass of a snake which in better times used the name Visbhume; he no longer tippety-taps and moves and jerks to the rhythms of a propulsive inner music; and sometimes one wonders in cases like this: here is the dead thing; where has the music gone?
Tamurello and Visbhume are extraordinary folk, beyond a doubt, and both have come to grief. Still, the Elder Isles abound with remarkable folk, whose ambitions often transcend the advisable and sometimes even the possible.
As an example the Ska renegade Torqual might be cited. He has survived his wounds and now mends his strength in his inaccessible castle. Here he thinks bitter thoughts and forms gloomy plots, and he has vowed revenge upon the young Troice warrior who worked such grievous mischief upon him.
Queen Sollace of Lyonesse fervently hopes to build a cathedral. Father Umphred assures her that if King Casmir were converted to Christianity, he might be more sympathetic to the cathedral. Queen Sollace agrees, but how to convert King Casmir? Perhaps with the aid of some holy relic. Several centuries before, Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail down to the Elder Isles from Glastonbury Abbey; for Queen Soilace's purposes the Holy Grail would serve very well, and Father Umphred enthusiastically agrees.
King Casmir is still perturbed by the prediction of Persilian the Magic Mirror and still lacks knowledge as to the identity of Suldrun's first-born son.
The Princess Madouc of Lyonesse occupies an unenviable position. King Casmir knows her to be a changeling, with none of his blood flowing in her veins. Still, she may serve him some useful purpose when she reaches marriageable age. Madouc, by the very nature of things, is a strange little creature, with even less patience than the tragic Princess Suldrun for the conventions of the court at Haidion.
Glossary I
THE ELDER ISLES during the course of ten thousand years had known incursions, migrations, armed invasion, as well as the coming and going of traders to their commercial depots, at Ys, Avallon, Domreis and Bulmer Skeme: all founded by foreign traders.
From every direction came the newcomers: pre-glacial folk with identities lost to history; what indigenes they discovered can only be a matter of speculation. Later came Kornutians, Bithynians, a remarkable folk known as the Golden Khaz, and presently contingents of Escquahar (precursors elsewhere to the Basques, the Berbers of Morocco, the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the Blue Men of Mauretania).
Then later, and sometimes in a succession of waves: Pelasgians, blond Sarsele from Tingitana, Danaans and Galicians from Spain, Greeks from Hellas, Sicily and Low Gaul; a few shiploads of Lydians turned away from Tuscany; Celts from all directions under a host of names; and in due course Romans from Aquitania, who toyed with the idea of conquest but presently departed, taking with them the Christian doxology. A few Goths and Armoricans settled along the shores of Wysrod, while new bands of Celts from Britain and Ireland took advantage of weak Daut rulers to establish the Kingdom of Godelia. Finally, from Norway by way of Ireland* came the Ska, who settled on Skaghane and other of the Outer Isles, from which they moved into North Ulfland.
*See Glossary II. this book. Also see LYONESSE 1: Suldrun's Garden, Glossary III.
Glossary II
THE HISTORY OF THE SKA was an epic in itself. Originally the indigenous inhabitants of Norway since before the ice-age, they were expelled by invading Aryan Ur-Goths and driven south to Ireland where they entered Irish history as the Nemedians.
The Ur-goths, now supreme in Scandinavia, adopted Ska folk-ways and in due course sent hordes back into Europe: Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Gepids, Lombards, Angles, Saxons, and other German tribes. Those who remained in Scandinavia called themselves ‘Vikings' and using boats built after the Ska designs, ranged the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the navigable rivers of Europe.
The Ska, defeated in Ireland by the Fomorians, again were compelled to migrate. They sailed south from Ireland to Skaghane, westernmost of the Elder Isles, where they found an environment much to their liking.
At a Grand Moot, they bound themselves by three great vows, which are basic to any understanding of the complex and contradictory Ska character:
First: Never again would the Ska be driven from their homeland. Second: The Ska were at war with all the world's peoples: so it had been demonstrated; so it was. Third: The blood of the Ska race ran pure. Interbreeding with Otherling sub-folk was a crime as abominable as treachery, cowardice or murder.
Glossary III
AiLLAS HAD BEEN THE LOVER of Casmir's daughter, Suldrun, and the father of their son, Dhrun, who had been taken by the fairies of Thripsey Shee and replaced with the half-fairy changeling who became the Princess Madouc of Lyonesse.
Happily for King Casmir's peace of mind, he knew nothing of these facts and so was mightily perplexed by the prophecy uttered by the magic mirror Persilian, to the effect that Suldrun's first-born son before his death would sit on the throne Evandig and also in honour and authority at the Board of Notables, the ancient ‘Gairbra an Meadhan'—this table in fact, the model for the Round Table of King Arthur of Cornwall, still two generations in the future.