shattered room. And a great silence seemed suddenly to descend upon captured Mruun.
Brian Cullan had stumbled to the pillars, to free Fand and Dagda, The girl clung sobbing to him. He turned, as Lugh entered the throne-room with more of his silver host.
But it was toward prostrate Tethra that Cullan turned. He bent over the Fomorian king, whose strong face looked up at him dark and proud even as it stiffened with the approach of death.
Tethra whispered, "You fought beside me as I dreamed once of my son fighting. Blood answers the call of its own, Cuchulain."
He was dead, with the whisper. Queerly, Cullan felt a stinging in his eyes. And he rose to see Giant Dagda make a gesture of salute toward the dead, black-mailed figure.
"Whatever else Tethra was, he was a warrior!" boomed the big Tuatha.
Lugh, his face still somber, was speaking to Cullan. "You proved this day that you were no enemy to our race despite your blood, outworlder. You can stay now in this world, if you wish."
If he wished? To stay here in this world of wonder and of beauty with Fand? Cullan took her in his arms for answer.
Golden mists, golden day, glowed warmly over the smiling yellow ocean as the fleet of Tuatha boats neared the end of its long journey homeward.
Lugh's craft drove beside that in which Brian Cullan sat with Fand.
The Tuatha lord called to them across the water.
"We go to Thandara. But you will to Ethne, for there is Fand's home as guardian of the Gateway. It has been cleared of its dead and others of my folk will re-people it."
Thus the fleet split, the smaller portion bearing Fand and Cullan and the recovered Gateway eastward through the remembered islands.
Through the golden mists, Ethne rose in all its bubble beauty beneath that eternal rainbow of water across the sky. Cullan, with Fand in his arms, looked raptly. He had found his lost elysium, had awakened from the drab dream of Earth. He was coming home at last.
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