Page:A Dreamers Tales and Other Stories.djvu/28

8 When the Princess turned and saw his garb and his great spear she knew that he was a hunter of gariachs.

When the three kings heard the young man exclaim they said softly to one another:

“This must be the man.”

Then they revealed themselves to him, and spoke to him to try him. They said:

“Sir, you have spoken blasphemy against the Sea.”

And the young man muttered:

“She is more beautiful than the Sea.”

And the kings said:

“We are older than you and wiser, and know that nothing is more beautiful than the Sea.”

And the young man took off the gear of his head, and became downcast, and knew that he spake with kings, yet he answered:

“By this spear, she is more beautiful than the Sea.”

And all the while the Princess stared at him, knowing him to be a hunter of gariachs.

Then the King of Arizim said to the watcher by the pool:

“If thou wilt go up Poltarnees and come back, as none have come, and report to us what lure or magic is in the Sea, we will pardon thy blasphemy, and thou shalt have the Princess to wife and sit among the Council of the Kings.”

And gladly thereunto the young man consented. And the Princess spoke to him, and asked him his name. And he told her that his name was Athelvok, and great joy arose in him at the sound of her voice. And to the three kings he promised to set out on the third day to scale the slope of Poltarnees and to return again, and this was the oath by which they bound him to return:

“I swear by the Sea that bears the worlds away, by the river of Oriathon, which men call Ocean, and by the gods and their tiger, and by the doom of the worlds, that I will return again to the Inner Lands, having beheld the Sea.”

And that oath he swore with solemnity that very night in