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.
Where she could go to no man knew,for she had been ban-ished from the Many-Coloured Land and could not return there.She was forbidden entry to the Shi'by Angus Og,and she could not remain in Ireland.She went to Sasana and she became a queen in that country,and it was she who fostered the rage against the Holy Land which has not ceased to this day.
