The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  “His majesty,” replied the barons of Ecben, “speaks as a king should; and we of Ecben are well rid of an unbeliever who has offered any such affront to our most holy and excellent gods.”

  “In fact, the man’s attitude toward religious matters was always dubious, where his morals were, alas, but too well known,” remarked the late archbishop of Ecben, as he hastily put on the robes of the high priest of Kuri.

  And Ettaine bent toward her husband fondly. All happiness adorned Ettaine: she was as fair and merry as sunlight upon the sea: you saw that Ettaine was the most beautiful of all the women of this world.

  “Delight of both my eyes,” said Queen Ettaine, “you speak as a king should. And, as for that Alfgar—!” A shrug rounded off her exact opinion.

PART TWO: Of Alfgar in His Journeying

  “Loyalty is a Fine Jewel; yet Many that Wear it Die Beggars.”

Chapter VI. We Come to Davan

  IT IS told that young Alfgar fared alone to the dark wood of Darvan. This was an unwholesome place into which, of their own accord, entered few persons whose intentions were philanthropic: yet Alfgar journeyed toward Darvan now that the summoning of Ettarre had led him out of the set ways of life. And it is told also that under the outermost trees of this forest sat a leper wrapped about with an old yellow robe so that his face might not be seen. Beside him, to the left side of this leper, was grazing a red he-goat.

  This leper rang a little bell, and he cried out, “Hail, brother! and do you give me now a proper gift in the king’s name.”

  “There are many kings,” said Alfgar, “and the most of them are no very notable creatures. Yet in so far that a king is royal, a dream rules in his heart: so must each king of men serve one or another dream which is not known to lesser persons.”

  “Do you give me my asking, then,” the leper replied, with a dryness suited to his more practical trend of thought, “in the name of Ulf, that is King over Rorn and Ecben. For my hands are frail; they are wasted with my disease: and I cannot do all the destroying I desire.”

  Alfgar said to this leper: “Ulf is but a little king, whom my cunning overthrew at Strathgor, and whom my pleasure raised up again in Ecben. Yet Ulf is royal, in that he would not forsake his gods, for all that they had forsaken him. Moreover, Ulf is my king now. And therefore I may not deny you.”

  So then the leper told his asking, and for the moment Alfgar seemed unpleased. But he smiled by and by; and, in that grave and lordly manner of his, which merely rational persons found unendurable, young Alfgar said:

  “To you that ask in my king’s name I must give perforce your asking. For I will not depart from the old way of Ecben. And besides, my hands have touched the hands of Ettarre, and in the touch of sword-hilts and of sceptres and of money bags there is no longer any delight.”

  The leper then touched Alfgar’s hands, and straightway they were frail and shriveled. They became as the hands of an aged person. They shook with palsy, and all strength was gone out of the hands which had made an end of many warriors in the noisy press of battle.

  Then yet another queer thing happened upon the edge of the wood of Darvan. It was that Ettaine and Ulf, and all the lords that yesterday had served King Alfgar, and all the houses and the towers of Tagd and Sorram and Pen Loegyr, and of every other town which was in Ecben, now passed by this unwholesome place in the seeming of brightly colored mists. And Alfgar wondered if these matters had ever been true matters, or if all the things which Alfgar had known in the days of his wealth and hardihood were only a part of some ancient dreaming. But the leper put off his yellow robe, and in the likeness of a very old, lean man he pursued these mists and tore and scattered them with strong hands.

Chapter VII. ‘The King Pays!’

  SO WAS it Alfgar gave that which was asked in his king’s name, and the fallen champion passed as a weakling into the dark wood, and came near to the fires which burned in Darvan. They that dwelt there then swarmed about him, squeaking merrily,—

  “The King pays!”

  To every side you saw trapped kings in their torment, well lighted by the sputtering small fires of their torment, so that you saw each king was crowned and proud and silent. And to every side you saw the little people of Darvan inflicting all the democratic infamies which their malice could devise against these persons who had dared to be royal.

  Alfgar went down beneath a smothering cluster of slender and hairy bodies, smelling of old urine, which leapt and cluttered everywhere about him, scrambling the one over another like playful rats. He could do nothing with the frail hands which the leper had given him, nor indeed could the might of any champion avail against the people of Darvan when they had squeaked,—

  “The King pays!”