bit low-spirited now and then, it was not for any especial cause: and Morvyth—that, as yet, for her permitted season, was Queen of the five Isles of Wonder,—could hear the trumpets and the heralds proclaiming the entry of Prince Chedric of Lorn....

58

He, then, was the first to return of those perfectly detestable little meddlers who out of love for her had, now for a third time, ransacked the riches of the world: and he had rather nice eyes. Morvyth tidied her hair.

59

BOOK THREE

TOUPAN’S BRIGHT BEES

Isaiah

61

 12.The Mage Emeritus

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NOW the tale is no more of Gonfal, who was the first to perish of the lords of the Silver Stallion. The tale instead tells that, in the while of Gonfal’s adventuring in Inis Dahut, yet three other champions of the fellowship had left the Poictesme which under Dame Niafer’s rule was altering day by day. Coth of the Rocks, indeed, had ridden westward within the same month that Gonfal departed for the South. There was never any profitable arguing with Coth: and so, when he declared his intention of fetching back Dom Manuel into the Poictesme which women and holy persons and lying poets—as Coth asserted,—were making quite uninhabitable, nobody did argue. Coth blustered westward, unmolested and unreasoned with: and for that while no more was heard of him.

And it was in the May of this year that Kerin of Nointel, the Syndic and Castellan of Basardra, disappeared even more unaccountably than Dom Manuel had done, for about Kerin’s passing there were not even any rumors. Kerin, so far as anybody could learn, had vanished in the darkness of the night season 62just as unaidedly as that darkness itself had vanished in turn, and with just as slight vestigial traces of his passing. The desolation of Kerin’s young wife, Dame Saraïde, was such that dozens upon dozens of lovers might not content her for her widowhood, as was immediately shown: and 

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