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.
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The Man continued on his way in the land of Aram. Wandering intently across a broad flat plain the colour of the sky, at last he arrived beside a stream where another cast his nets.
Now it so happened that in the land of Aram there lived a man whose name was unknown. From his earliest years he lived in agony, unable to know himself yet acquainted with every other. Even those that he called friends were unable to admit his existence for one reason alone: no description could be pinned to his frame.
“Is it time?”
Adim leaned back against the hard veins of the tree. “No,” he said slowly, feeling the life pulsing through the tree as he did so. He looked up briefly, into the golden-green eyes of the Watcher. “I don’t think it is.” Silently, the sunlight glowed through the leaves that intertwined over their heads. There was utter stillness here, in the clearing in the heart of the most ancient forest in Barac.
