“Do you want to drive it from his mind that he has loved you? Go hide yourself in Fenrir’s mouth!”
But the King did not spring upon his foster-brother. Even as they looked, the fire went out in his eyes, spark by spark, until they were lustreless as ashes, and at last he put up his hand and wiped great drops from his forehead. “Never had you the keenness to father that judgment,” he said in a strangely dull voice. “It must be that a god spoke through your mouth.” Leaving them, he moved forward to the well and stood gazing into it, his fingers mechanically raking together and crushing the dead leaves that had fluttered down upon the curbing.
Dearwyn’s pretty lips began to quiver with approaching tears. “Randalin, I am miserably terrified. The air feels as though awful things were about to happen.”
“It seems that the world has begun to fall to pieces everywhere,” Randalin said wearily. The momentary forgetfulness which the happenings around her had created was beginning to give way before the weight in her breast. She drew herself up listlessly. “Is it of any use to remain up here, Dearwyn?”
But Dearwyn’s grasp had tightened. “See! the King is beginning to speak.”
Whom he was addressing was not quite clear even though he had turned back to the group of nobles, for his eyes still gazed into space, but his words sounded distinctly: “Heavy is it to lose faith in others, but heavier still to lose faith in one’s self... I know that no word of mine urged Edric to this deed, but what my eyes may have said, or some trick of my voice or my face, is not so sure... It may be that I wanted this thing to happen without knowing it. When I see what it has brought me, I cannot understand how I could help wanting it... It is true that I do not always know for certain what I have at heart.” His eyes came back from space to rest musingly on Elfgiva. “When I began this feasting-time, I thought I had grasped heaven with my hands, but now—” he spread out his fingers and released the little bunch of dead leaves that he had been rolling against his palm—“now I let not this go from me more easily... You see that a man is not sure even of his own mind.”
Again his head was sinking on his breast, when he raised it with a fierceness that startled them. “One thing only I am sure of, and that is that I have done forever with craft. Hereafter, if a man is a hindrance to me, Rothgar’s axe shall send him to Hel while it is broad daylight and all his friends are looking. Such is my luck with craft as though I had grasped a viper by the tail, in the belief that I had seized its snout... I have been finely treated... Not only have I been betrayed by all of you who have thought such thoughts of me, but now some troll has got into me and turned me false to myself so that I cannot give you punishment for your treason! Certainly the gods must think this crown of great value since, before they give it to me, they take from me all that I have thought my happiness, and rob me of my honor as well!”