Perion’s Dream
Let us return to King Perion. Occupied once more with the affairs of his kingdom, he still knew great heaviness of spirit because of a dream that he had had while at the Court of Garinter. It seemed to him in his dream that some one entered his sleeping-apartment, thrust a hand through his side, and, taking out his heart, cast it into the river that flowed through King Garinter’s garden. Crying out in his anguish, he was answered by a voice that another heart was still left to him. Troubled by memory of the dream, which he could not unriddle, he called together all the wise men of his realm and requested them to attempt its solution. Only one of them could unravel the mystery, and the sage who did so assured him that the heart which had been abstracted represented a son which a noble lady had borne him, while the remaining heart symbolized another son who would in some manner be taken away against the will of her who had cast away the first.
As the King left the wise man’s presence he encountered a mysterious damsel, who saluted him and said: “Know, King Perion, that when thou recoverest thy loss the kingdom of Ireland shall lose its flower”; and ere the King could detain or question her she had gone.
In course of time King Garinter died, and Perion and Elisena were formally wedded. But when Perion asked his wife if she had borne him a son, so bitterly ashamed was she of the part she had been forced to play in the matter of the child’s disappearance that she denied everything. Later, two beautiful children were born to them, a son and a daughter, called Galaor and Melicia. When Galaor was but two and a half years old, the King and Queen, at that time sojourning at a town called Banzil, near the sea, were walking in the gardens of the palace there, when suddenly a monstrous giant rose out of the waves and, catching up the little Galaor, made off with him before anyone could prevent him.
The monster, dashing into the water, clambered on board a ship and put out to sea, crying out joyfully, as he did so: “The damsel told me true!” The parents were deeply afflicted at the loss of their son, and in her grief Elisena admitted the casting away of Amadis. Then Perion knew that what the wise man had told him regarding the loss of the two hearts was the truth indeed.
Now the giant who had stolen the little Galaor was not of the race of evil monsters, but was generous in disposition and gentle in demeanour. Indeed, he took as much care of the child as if he had been one of his own gigantic brood. He was a native of Lyonesse, was known as Gandalue, and was the master of two castles in an island of the sea. He had peopled this island with Christian folk, and gave the little Galaor into the keeping of a holy hermit, with strict orders to educate him as a brave and loyal knight. He told the hermit that a damsel—the same who had addressed King Perion so strangely, and who was a powerful sorceress—had assured him that only a son of Perion could conquer his lifelong and ruthless enemy, the giant Albadan,[3] who had slain his father, and had taken from him the rock Galtares. And so Galaor was left in the care of the hermit.