n on the
rocks and break the life within him," said he.

"Do not so," said Fedelma. "Tell me. If I go with you what would win me
back?"

"Nothing but the sword whose stroke would slay me--the Sword of Light,"
said the King of the Land of Mist. He held up the King of Ireland's Son
again, and again he was about to dash him against the rocks. The blue
falcon that was overhead flew down and settled on the rock behind her.
Fedelma knew that what she and the King of the Land of Mist would say
now would be carried some place and told to someone. "Leave my love, the
King's Son, to his rest," she said.

"If I do not break the life in him will you come with me, Fedelma?"

"I will go with you if you tell again what will win me back from you."

"The Sword of Light whose stroke will slay me."

"I will go with you if you swear by all your vows and promises not to
make me your wife nor your sweetheart for a year and a day."

"I swear by all my vows and promises not to make you my wife nor my
sweetheart for a year and a day."

"I will go with you if you let it be that I fall into a slumber that
will last for a year and a day."

"I will let that be, fairest maid within the seas of Eirinn."

"I will go with you if you will tell me what will take me out of that
slumber."

"If one cuts a tress of your hair with a stroke of the Sword of Light it
will take you out of that slumber."

The blue falcon that was behind heard what the King of the Land of
Mist said. She rose up and remained overhead with her wings outspread.
Fedelma took the ring off her own finger and put it on the finger of the
King of Ireland's Son, and she wrote upon the ground in Ogham letters,
"The King of the Land of Mist."

"If it be not you who wakens me, love," she said, "may it be that I
never waken."

"Come, daughter of the Enchanter," said the King of the Land of Mist.

"Pluck the branch of hawthorn and give it to me that I may fall into my
slumber here," said Fedelma.

The King of the Land of Mist plucked a flowering branch of hawthorn
and gave it to her. She held the flowers against her face and fell into
slumber. For a while she and the King of Ireland's Son were side by side
in sleep.

Then the King of the Land of Mist took Fedelma in his arms and strode
along that nameless place, over the broken ground with its dead grass
and its black rocks and its stumps and roots of trees and the three
ravens that had escaped the sword of the King of Ire-l