And now Lansenet, weary in every limb, goes to his lodging. Quickly he strips off the armour of the Green Rider and places the helmet, still adorned with the perilous fangs of Gulgrudur, in a place of safety. Without resting, he hastens back to the stables to fetch Damarâw, the great warhorse, who has passed through so many scenes of terror and sorrow, and brings him, limping somewhat, to the smithy of Hadhríka the Smith, which lies not far from the Queen’s House. There Hadhríka is at her anvil in the fiery gloom of the smithy. Her sinewy arms glisten as she beats out the metal. She wears a sleeveless jerkin, a kerchief knotted around her neck, and breeches such as the Thendâ favour for riding. Her hair is bound up, and her face bedewed with sweat.
She turns to greet Lansenet and Damarâw respectfully, and at once prepares to tend to the horse. And Lansenet kneels by the horse’s flank, gently lifting the injured hoof for Hadhríka to inspect and to tend. But as Hadhríka turns her eyes that way, the colour drains from her face and she stands stock-still. Then she steps back and seats herself on a nearby stool, her hands to her head, her eyes shut.
Lansenet, full of concern, says:
‘Dame Hadhríka, is aught amiss? Are you sick suddenly? Or is it Damarâw? Pray tell me!’
‘My Lord Lansenet! I — I know not what to say! Oh! I can hardly speak!’
‘Take your time, Dame Hadhríka. Then tell me your trouble!’
After a while, Hadhríka begins to recover. She wipes her face with her kerchief. Then she begins hesitatingly:
‘My Lord Lansenet! Your hand. I saw — forgive this strange request, but pray reach out again your left hand.’
Wondering greatly, Lansenet stretches forth his left hand, showing her the three straight fingers and the little one, the earfinger, misshapen ever since his birth.
And Hadhríka, trembling, raises before him her outspread hand, also the left. The least finger likewise is misshapen, bent exactly as Lansenet’s.
‘My Lord,’ she says, ‘know you any other in all this realm whose hand bears such a misshapen finger?’
‘To say truly, I do not; though neither do I turn my gaze upon every man and woman’s hand!’
Hadhríka goes on, with growing agitation:
‘But such a finger had my mother and her mother before her; and, alas! so also my brother and sister who are lost and likely dead, by the cruelty of Nanôr. It is a mark of our family; we are hereditary smiths, we are the Yamúdat Zengri; so are all the women of our line, for we learned the smithing skill of the blessed Thendâ, who befriended the people of the Vurwë Yamudúna. And all the children of our line have such a finger, and so we are nicknamed Yankuvithri, crook-fingered ones.’
She pauses, breathing hard and gazing with a strange, soft look upon Lansenet.
‘My Lord, do you not see! You believe you are an orphan — you were fostered up, were you not? Surely it must be — you must be — the child I gave away to save him from the grasp of the Valkari when they captured us and sold us to the folk of Fíbor!’
Lansenet steps back in astonishment. He cannot speak for a moment. Then a thought strikes him, and he says:
‘But this misshapen finger — my sister, who lies deathly sick in the Queen’s House — has not! I know her hands like my own, and they are straight and beautiful!’
‘Your sister? My Lord! I never bore a daughter. Just the one babe I had with my husband before he was lost. I dare say that the Lady Thilfri the White, on whom be peace and healing, is no sister of yours!’
Then Lansenet, overcome by his riding and his quest, his battles and his anxiety, faints to the stable floor; and Hadhríka hastens to call men to bear him off to his bedchamber, where he falls into a deep sleep.
When the next morning comes, the people of the household are concerned that he still sleeps. And as they look on him, it seems that he grows pale and stirs not at all. They perceive that he has fallen under some sickness, and they call healers. But they can find out no cause for his distemper. But in truth, it is, above all his other trials, the curse of Murnag ta-Valka that has caught up with him.
And so the Queen’s house is troubled by not one, but two sick sleepers, each in their chamber: Thilfri the White, and he who was hitherto accounted her brother, Lansenet; whom people begin to name, on account of his gaining of the Rune of Healing from the Lady Endáyra, Lansenet of the Lake.
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