“I fear for us both if you slumber here,” said Fedelma.
“I must sleep, and I pray that you let me lay my head on your lap.”
“I know not what would awaken you if you slumber here.”
“I will awaken,” said the King’s Son, “but now I must sleep, and I would slumber with my head on your lap.”
She got down from the Slight Red Steed and she bade it stay by a rock; she put his sword by the place he would sleep and she took his head upon her lap. The King’s Son slept.
As she watched over him a great fear grew in Fedelma. Every hour she would say to him, “Are you near waking, my dear, my dear?” But no flush of waking appeared on the face of the King of Ireland’s Son.
Then she saw a man coming across the nameless place, across the broken ground, with its dead grass and black rocks and with its roots and stumps of trees. The man who came near them was taller than any man she had seen before—he was tall as a tree. Fedelma knew him from what she had heard told about him—she knew him to be the King of the Land of Mist.
The King of the Land of Mist came straight to them. He stood before Fedelma and he said, “I seek Fedelma, the daughter of the Enchanter of the Black Back-Lands and the fairest woman within the seas of Eirinn.”
“Then go to her father’s house and seek Fedelma there,” said she to him.
“I have sought her there,” said the King of the Land of Mist, “but she left her father’s house to go with the King of Ireland’s Son.”