第51章 BECUMA OF THE WHITE SKIN(7)

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.Agreat 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.