“But,” said the prince, “not until I am king can I give thee my sister in marriage; for thou knowest that my sire would smite me to the dust, if I asked him to give the flower of our race to the son of the herdsman Osslah.”
“Thou speakest the words of truth. Go home and fear not: but, when thou art king, the sacrifice must be made, and Orna mine. Alas! how can I dare to lift my eyes to her! But so ordain the dread kings of the night!—Who shall gainsay their word?”
“The day that sees me king, sees Orna thine,” answered the prince.
Morven walked forth, as was his wont, alone; and he said to himself, “the king is old, yet may he live long between me and mine hope!” and he began to cast in his mind how he might shorten the time.
Thus absorbed, he wandered on so unheedingly, that night advanced, and he had lost his path among the thick woods, and knew not how to regain his home; so he lay down quietly beneath a tree, and rested till day dawned.
Then hunger came upon him and he searched among the bushes for such simple roots as those with which, for he was ever careless of food, he was used to appease the cravings of nature.
He found, among other more familiar herbs and roots, a red berry of a sweetish taste, which he had never observed before. He ate of it sparingly, and had not proceeded far in the wood before he found his eyes swim, and a deadly sickness come over him. For several hours he lay convulsed on the ground expecting death; but the gaunt spareness of his frame, and his unvarying abstinence, prevailed over the poison, and he recovered slowly, and after great anguish: but he went with feeble steps back to the spot where the berries grew, and, plucking several, hid them in his bosom, and by nightfall regained the city.
The next day he went forth among his father’s herds, and seizing a lamb, forced some of the berries into its stomach, and the lamb, escaping, ran away, and fell down dead. Then Morven took some more of the berries and boiled them down, and mixed the juice with wine, and he gave the wine in secret to one of his father’s servants, and the servant died.
Then Morven sought the king, and coming into his presence alone, he said unto him, “How fares my lord?”
The king sat on a couch, made of the skins of wolves, and his eye was glassy and dim; but vast were his aged limbs and huge was his stature, and he had been taller by a head than the children of men, and none living could bend the bow he had bent in youth. Grey, gaunt and worn, as some mighty bones that are dug at times from the bosom of the earth—a relic of the strength of old.