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 one of the
temples of the Sea, but the three kings trusted more to the beauty of
Hilnaric even than to the power of the oath.

The next day Athelvok came to the palace of Arizim with the morning, over
the fields to the East and out of the country of Toldees, and Hilnaric
came out along her balcony and met him on the terraces. And she asked him
if he had ever slain a gariach, and he said that he had slain three, and
then he told her how he had killed his first down by the pool in the wood.
For he had taken his father's spear and gone down to the edge of the pool,
and had lain under the azaleas there waiting for the stars to shine, by
whose first light the gariachs go to the pools to drink; and he had gone
too early and had had long to wait, and the passing hours seemed longer
than they were. And all the birds came in that home at night, and the bat
was abroad, and the hour of the duck went by, and still no gariach came
down to the pool; and Athelvok felt sure that none would come. And just as
this grew to a certainty in his mind the thicket parted noiselessly and a
huge bull gariach stood facing him on the edge of the water, and his great
horns swept out sideways from his head, and at the ends curved upwards,