Now the last comer to Aphelos, when all the other fugitives from Dúmiel had been received, was Hergal, the cousin of the Lady Díamun.
It happened that one day the whole of Ingos’s people, men and women and children, were gathered together by the hill called Ingos’s throne, in the shadow of the Great Tree. This tree was now the tallest in Aphelos, and the trees of that land were all greater than those of the middle world. Under the tree sat the Lord Ingos and the Lady Díamun.
Suddenly there stumbled into that assembly a mortal man, who seemed, beside the glory of that company, small and spectral. He wore the rags of clothes and a leather belt with a great axe in it. Those clothes, that belt, and that blade, fashioned from plant, beast, and the ground, were the first things made with human hands ever to enter Aphelos. The Aphelossamê were surprised, but the man far more so. He fell on his knees and seemed dazzled and perplexed. When he looked up once more he beheld Queen Díamun.
‘Sister!’ he cried, ‘I…nay, I will depart and cast these defilements from me!’ he said, and before Ingos could address him, he had backed away from the company and disappeared into the trees.
‘Is this your brother, Lady?’ asked Ingos.
‘It is Hergal, our cousin, but he was a brother to us — at one time,’ returned Díamun.
‘We did not think to see him here,’ said Beinun.
A shadow seemed to pass across the brows of Díamun and her brother.
‘It is good that he casts away those rags and that grim axe,’ said Ingos. ‘For you know there has been no made thing in Aphelos from the beginning, unless I reckon the Messenger’s harp, pipe, and horn, which he carried away with him. And we have no need to chop or fell.’
‘It is good, indeed,’ said Dóna, with a frown and a blaze in her eyes, ‘for our cousin was a man of strange ways —’
‘Peace, sister,’ said Díamun, ‘let sleep what is dead in our old mortal existence. For Hergal shall be an immortal too, and be set free from his former life, however it was!’
And the shadows passed away from the faces of all three. Then said Ingos to Beinun, ‘Go now, my brother, to your cousin yonder and clothe him with a sky-blue robe; and bring him hither again.’
Then Ingos went to the Tree and took down a fruit for Hergal and a fruit for himself, touching the joining-places with his staff. He handed them to the Lady Díamun. Then he stood to receive Hergal.
‘Let our brother come and eat the food of Immortals with us,’ he cried, and Hergal came, now with a radiant smile, and his brother and sisters smiled on him. When they had eaten together, the whole company set up a joyful shout, as was always their custom in receiving a newcomer to Aphelos.
And thus with love and mirth, Hergal the Deceiver was received in Aphelos the Golden.
Hergal was a solitary man. This was not thought amiss by the people of Ingos, for they set no rules for one another. Obrámus the Wise spent much of his time alone also, as befits a Wise-man, learning the lore and meaning of the trees and the plants, the earth, the beasts, and the birds. Indeed he had been absent on the very day of Hergal’s reception in Aphelos; if he had not been, his counsel might have led Ingos to act otherwise. Such was the decree of fate, that he was wandering far off beyond the great lake of Aphelos, and his counsel was lacking at that time.
Like Obrámus, Hergal spent much time wandering. It was thought that he, too, might be a Wise-man, but he spoke few words and none of wisdom. No man knows if ever these two met afield, and, if they did, of what they spoke.
As companion to Hergal sometimes went Usta, the younger child of Lord Ingos and Lady Díamun, whose full name was Usmun-ta Urnuï, for he was the last to be born and grow up in Aphelos.
‘For,’ said Hergal with a kindly countenance, ‘the other young folk are older than he, and each has his own companion. But just as he was the last to be born in Aphelos, I was the last to come here to land. So let me be his companion.’
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