As he dreamt, it seemed he saw a kingdom mighty in expanse, that stretched across the space of the lands to the uttermost end of the world. The king of that place was puissant of will and deed, and greatly was given to the right dividing of justice. Beside the waters of his kingdom he bestirred himself to walk one day, and he saw the most royal of all birds coming forth from the ocean: a gryphon white as wrung darkness. He loved the gryphon and called it his own. He would not suffer to pen its wildness, but came to the dark cliffs beside the stormy sea to see her throw herself across the sky. And he fashioned a diamond for himself that the flight of the bird that he might always see in the limpid stone her fit marvellous beauty. The jewel was wrought with a most wondrous magic, for the gryphon could draw upon its brightness and shine like unto a star; or again, bind itself to the stone and gaze upon the visage of the king. So the king presented the stone as a royal gift to the gryphon, whom he loved.

Now there was a witch in this kingdom, who hated the dominion of the king, and long she dwelt in secret thinking on her grievance: the king would not give her what she desired most, the right to mete out justice in his name. So she called her familiar to her, and bid it fetch her the diamond of the king, and creeping through the night it came to the gryphon’s cloud and clasped the diamond in filthy hands. When it was far off and almost to its mistress, in the kingdom of the ancient clouds the gryphon came awake in unease, and thrusting herself into the stone she saw nothing but the hands of the familiar.

In dark of night the witch invested all her gall into the clean stone, and because the king had not bound it to any stricture it was as mud to her workings; by daybreak it was as vile and misshapen as any of her twisted thoughts. Holding it aloft, she called the bird, and when she came, she caught him and forced a geas upon him to destroy the king and all that was of his making.

The next day there came a black gryphon to soar in the skies above the lands, and the king knew all, and mourned. Going to the witch, he saw her with evil light grasping the stone and wresting it to her will, and he hailed her.

‘Fell woman,’ he cried with the force of his power, and knowing her answer, ‘what would you have from me?’ She spoke no word, but came forward, her hands becoming the claws of a serpent, and she stung him with her poison as he took the stone which once was perfect. As the king’s hands bled ichor and the poison twisted his limbs, he wrought again the stone, and repaired the flaw that the witch had engraved. Casting down the witch into her own hut, he cried out in a mighty voice for his beloved, and she came, white again before the wings of the dawn.

And the Man woke, and began his first step into the deeps of Padin. And the flowers rejoiced.