"Tell me what knight you are. For never did I meet a man of your prowess before."
"I am Balan," was the answer, "brother to the good knight Balin."
"Alas!" cried Balin, "that ever I should see this day!" and he fell to the earth in a swoon.
Then Balan dragged himself up on his hands and feet, and took off his brother's helmet, but the face was so scarred and blood-stained that he did not know it. But when Balin came to himself he cried,--
"Oh, Balan, my brother, thou hast slain me, and I thee! Fate has done deadly work this day."
"Heaven aid me!" cried Balan. "I should have known you by your two swords, but your shield deceived me."
"A knight in the castle caused me to leave my own shield," said Balin. "If I had life enough left me I would destroy that castle for its evil customs."
"And I should aid you," said Balan. "They have held me here because I happened to slay a knight that kept this island. And if you had slain me and lived, you would have been held in the same way as their champion."
As they thus conversed there came to them the lady of the castle, with four knights and six ladies and as many yeomen. The lady wept as she heard them moan that they as brothers had slain each other, and she promised them that they should be richly entombed on the spot in which the battle had been fought.
"Now will you send for a priest," asked Balan, "that we may receive the sacrament?"
And so she sent for a priest and gave them the rites of the church.
"When we are buried in one tomb," said Balin, "and the inscription is placed over us telling how two brothers here slew each other in ignorance and valor, there will never good knight nor good man see our tomb but they will pray for our souls, and bemoan our fate."
At this all the ladies wept for pity. Soon after Balan died, but Balin lived till midnight. The lady thereupon had them both richly buried, and the tomb inscribed as they had asked, though she knew not Balin's name.
But in the morning came the magician Merlin, who wrote Balin's name upon the tomb in letters of gold, as follows: "Here lieth Balin le Savage, the knight with the two swords, and he that smote the Dolorous Stroke."
More than this did Merlin, through this magic art. In that castle he placed a bed, and ordained that whoever should lie therein would lose his wits. And he took the sword which Balin had won from the damsel, and removed its pommel, placing upon it another pommel. Then he asked a knight beside him to lift that sword, but he tried to do so in vain.