He went forward in his light bark, and at some moment found that he had
parted from those seas and was adrift on vaster and more turbulent
billows. From those dark-green surges there gaped at him monstrous and
cavernous jaws; and round, wicked, red-rimmed, bulging eyes stared fixedly
at the boat. A ridge of inky water rushed foaming mountainously on his
board, and behind that ridge came a vast warty head that gurgled and
groaned. But at these vile creatures he thrust with his lengthy spear or
stabbed at closer reach with a dagger.
He was not spared one of the terrors which had been foretold. Thus, in the
dark thick oak forest he slew the seven hags and buried them in the molten
lead which they had heated for him. He climbed an icy mountain, the cold
breath of which seemed to slip into his body and chip off inside of his
bones, and there, until he mastered the sort of climbing on ice, for each
step that he took upwards he slipped back ten steps. Almost his heart gave
way before he learned to climb that venomous hill. In a forked glen into
which he slipped at night-fall he was surrounded by giant toads, who spat
poison, and were icy as the land they lived in, and were cold and foul and
savage. At Sliav Saev he encountered the long-maned lions who lie in wait
for the beasts of the world, growling woefully as they squat above their
prey and crunch those terrified bones. He came on Ailill of the Black
Teeth sitting on the bridge that spanned a torrent, and the grim giant was
grinding his teeth on a pillar stone. Art drew nigh unobserved and brought
him low.
It was not for nothing that these difficulties and dangers were in his
path. These things and creatures were the invention of Dog Head, the wife
of Morgan, for it had become known to her that she would die on the day
her daughter was wooed. Therefore none of the dangers encountered by Art
were real, but were magical chimeras conjured against him by the great
witch.
Affronting all, conquering all, he came in time to Morgan’s dun, a place
so lovely that after the miseries through which he had struggled he almost
wept to see beauty again.
Delvcaem knew that he was coming. She was waiting for him, yearning for
him. To her mind Art was not only love, he was freedom, for the poor girl
was a captive in her father’s home. A great pillar an hundred feet high
had been built on the roof of Morgan’s palace, and on the top of this
pillar a tiny room had been constructed, and in this room Delvcaem was a
prisoner.
She was lovelier in shape than any other princess of the Many-Coloured
Land. She was wiser than all the other women of that land, and she was
skilful in music, embroidery, and chastity, and in all else that pertained
to the knowledge of a queen.
Although Delvcaem’s mother wished nothing but ill to Art, she yet treated
him with the courtesy proper in a queen on the one hand and fitting
towards the son of the King of Ireland on the other. Therefore, when Art
entered the palace he was met and kissed, and he was bathed and clothed
and fed. Two young girls came to him then, having a cup in each of their
hands, and presented him with the kingly drink, but, remembering the
warning which Credl had given him, he drank only from the right-hand cup
and escaped the poison. Next he was visited by Delvcaem’s mother, Dog
Head, daughter of the King of the Dog Heads, and Morgan’s queen. She was
dressed in full armour, and she challenged Art to fight with her.
It was a woeful combat, for there was no craft or sagacity unknown to her,
and Art would infallibly have perished by her hand but that her days were
numbered, her star was out, and her time had come. It was her head that
rolled on the ground when the combat was over, and it was her head that
grinned and shrivelled on the vacant spike which she had reserved for
Art’s.
Then Art liberated Delvcaem from her prison at the top of the pillar and
they were affianced together. But the ceremony had scarcely been completed
when the tread of a single man caused the palace to quake and seemed to
jar the world.
It was Morgan returning to the palace.
The gloomy king challenged him to combat also, and in his honour Art put
on the battle harness which he had brought from Ireland. He wore a
breastplate and helmet of gold, a mantle of blue satin swung from his
shoulders, his left hand was thrust into the grips of a purple shield,
deeply bossed with silver, and in the other hand he held the wide-grooved,
blue hilted sword which had rung so often into fights and combats, and
joyous feats and exercises.
Up to this time the trials through which he had passed had seemed so great
that they could not easily be added to. But if all those trials had been
gathered into one vast calamity they would not equal one half of the rage
and catastrophe of his war with Morgan.
For what he could not effect by arms Morgan would endeavour by guile, so
that while Art drove at him or parried a crafty blow, the shape of Morgan
changed before his eyes, and the monstrous king was having at him in
another form, and from a new direction.
It was well for the son of the Ard-Ri’ that he had been beloved by the
poets and magicians of his land, and that they had taught him all that was
known of shape-changing and words of power.
He had need of all these.
At times, for the weapon must change with the enemy, they fought with
their foreheads as two giant stags, and the crash of their monstrous
onslaught rolled and lingered on the air long after their skulls had
parted. Then as two lions, long-clawed, deep-mouthed, snarling, with rigid
mane, with red-eyed glare, with flashing, sharp-white fangs, they prowled
lithely about each other seeking for an opening. And then as two
green-ridged, white-topped, broad-swung, overwhelming, vehement billows of
the deep, they met and crashed and sunk into and rolled away from each
other; and the noise of these two waves was as the roar of all ocean when
the howl of the tempest is drowned in the league-long fury of the surge.
But when the wife’s time has come the husband is doomed. He is required
elsewhere by his beloved, and Morgan went to rejoin his queen in the world
that comes after the Many-Coloured Land, and his victor shore that
knowledgeable head away from its giant shoulders.
He did not tarry in the Many-Coloured Land, for he had nothing further to
seek there. He gathered the things which pleased him best from among the
treasures of its grisly king, and with Delvcaem by his side they stepped
into the coracle.
Then, setting their minds on Ireland, they went there as it were in a
flash.
The waves of all the world seemed to whirl past them in one huge, green
cataract. The sound of all these oceans boomed in their ears for one
eternal instant. Nothing was for that moment but a vast roar and pour of
waters. Thence they swung into a silence equally vast, and so sudden that
it was as thunderous in the comparison as was the elemental rage they
quitted. For a time they sat panting, staring at each other, holding each
other, lest not only their lives but their very souls should be swirled
away in the gusty passage of world within world; and then, looking abroad,
they saw the small bright waves creaming by the rocks of Ben Edair, and
they blessed the power that had guided and protected them, and they
blessed the comely land of Ir.
On reaching Tara, Delvcaem, who was more powerful in art and magic than
Becuma, ordered the latter to go away, and she did so.
She left the king’s side. She came from the midst of the counsellors and
magicians. She did not bid farewell to any one. She did not say good-bye
to the king as she set out for Ben Edair.
