The largest of these smiling gods was broad-browed and great-eyed, with very long black hair and a thick beard: the robe he wore was fashioned out of five hundred and forty and three goatskins, and with his left hand he carried a spear of flickering fire. The second god was clothed in red, striped with fine flickering lines of white, and in his yellow hair were two white plumes: between the thumb and the forefinger of his left hand he held a white bull, as yet only partially eaten. But the third god was copper-colored, and he was by so much the least of the divine three that, now he also sat cross-legged upon the ground, his head rose but a little way above the taller locust-trees of the garden. About his head flew swallows. He was naked save that wrapped everywhere around his body was a darkly gleaming snake which whispered into the ear of its master with an ever flickering tongue.
Such were the appearances of Kuri and of Uwardowa and of Kogi, who were the supreme gods of Rorn. And each of them was smiling now that Alfgar had won to his heart’s desire. It was a great joy to Alfgar to see that these gods bore toward him no grudge. Instead, each god had lifted up his right hand, in blessing and in forgiveness.
Then these gods arose and went away laughingly. The power was not yet gone out of them.
It was in this way that the garden between dawn and sunrise was emptied of all living creatures save Ettarre and Horvendile, and that at their feet you saw, still faintly simmering, that which the forgiveness of the gods of Rorn had left of King Alfgar.
PART FIVE: Of Horvendile and Ettarre
“Nor do They Get from their Playing any Joy.”
Chapter XX. We Regard Other Wanderers
THE gods provide for him that holds to his faith,” said Horvendile, with a slow smiling. “These jealous and rather pig-headed Heavenly Ones have very smoothly rounded off our playing with this tall, over-faithful fooclass="underline" and so the saga of King Alfgar, after all, ends neatly enough.”
But Ettarre did not smile. “This man was better and more fine than we are. I would that I could weep for this brave outcast king of men whose folly was more noble than is our long playing. . . . Dear Horvendile, and why may you give me no human heart?”
The eternal artist looked very sadly toward her who was the pulse of all his dreams’ desire, in the while that she waited there beyond the blackened and ruined body of King Alfgar. “And why may you give me no happiness, Ettarre, such as—in this tall fool’s one moment,—we gave to him?”
Thereafter Horvendile parted from the witch-woman, but not for long. For all happiness must end with death, and all that which is human must die. But Horvendile and his Ettarre, who are not either happy nor quite human, may not, their legend tells us, ever die, nor have they yet parted from each other for the last time.
And yet, this legend tells us also, they must live in eternal severance, in that it stays his doom that he only of her lovers may not hope to win Ettarre. In recompense, he may not ever wholly lose her, as must all they who approach too near to the witch-woman lose her eternally, along with all else which they have.
Some say this Horvendile is that same Madoc who first fetched Ettarre from out of the gray Waste Beyond the Moon, to live upon our earth in many bodies. The truth of this report is not certainly known. But it is known that these two pass down the years in a not ever ending severance which is their union. And it is known that in their passing they allure men out of the set ways of life, and so play wildly with the lives of men for their diversion. As they beguiled Alfgar, so have these beguiled a great sad host of other persons upon whom Horvendile and Ettarre have put a summoning for their diversion’s sake, lest these two immortals should think too heavily of their own doom.
To those men of whom they get their sport they give at worst one moment of contentment. But Horvendile and his Ettarre have only an unfed desire as they pass down the years together; and because of that knowledge which they share, hope does not travel with them, nor do they get from their playing any joy. For each of these tricked lovers knows that each is but an empty shining, and that, thus, each follows after the derisive shadow of a love which the long years have not made real.