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would have been treated with ridicule by Bards, who were pragmatically historical in many of their studies. Their belief in prophecy, for example, was not connected to a belief in a God who foresaw everything, but to a certain set of theories about time: Bards believed that linear time was illusory, that the present was coexistent with all other times, and Seers were those Bards able to pierce the veil of the present and perceive its multiple realities. See Knowing the Light: Comparative Studies in Annaran Spiritual Practice, ed. Charles A. James (Oxford: Cipher Press, 2001) and also The Ethics of Balance: Ecology and Morality in Annar by Jennifer Atkins (Chicago: Sorensen Academic Publishers, 2003).

11. Tulkan of Lirion, a Bard of Afinil, wrote one of the most popular lays, but it was only one of innumerable variants on this theme. Tulkan’s is particularly attractive, as it is written in the complex metrical pattern known in Old Lironese as inel-fardhalen. It is notoriously difficult to translate, as Old Lironese had many more rhyming words than Annaren. Old Lironese was little used in Lirigon after the Restoration, as most people spoke Annaren, but Cadvan of Lirigon was a famous scholar and translator from this archaic tongue and made the most widely quoted translation. The song is worth quoting in full, for its insight into the nature of Ardina as much as its own virtues, and here is my own translation from the Annaren.

When Arkan deemed an endless cold

And greenwoods rotted bleak and sere,

The moon wept high above the world

To see its beauty dwindling:

To earth fell down a single tear

And there stepped forth a shining girl

Like moonlight that through alabaster

Wells, its pallor kindling.

Such beauty made all beauty dim

And homage called from voiceless stone:

Like whitest samite was her skin

Or seafoam softly glimmering:

A star that lit the night alone

She stepped the winter woods within,

A pearl a-glisten in the gloam,

A moonbeam fleetly shimmering.

Then wild amazement fastened on

The Moonchild’s heart, and far she ran,

Through all the vales of Lirion

Her voice like bellnotes echoing:

And from the branches blossom sprang

In iron groves of leafmeal wan,

And Spring herself woke up and sang,

The gentle Summer beckoning.

She passed into the mountain keeps

Where stormdogs guard the ravined walls,

A moonbeam piercing dismal deeps,

Down jagged ridges clambering:

Until she found a crystal fall,

A river frozen in its leap,

And in its depths a marble hall

Of lofty spires was trembling.

In wonderment she silent fell,

And stood before the wall of glass

Enraptured by the citadel,

Its endless, sparkling mullions:

Like lilies caught in sudden frost,

Which grow no more, but comely still,

Forlornly cast those towers of ice

Their cold and lifeless brilliance.

She knew not that the hours passed

Nor noticed that the darkness fell;

And as she looked, she thought at last

Her heart must break with heaviness:

She wept, though why she could not tell:

For love unborn, for beauty lost,

For all that lives and breathes and will

Grow cold and lose its loveliness.

And in the icy halls a king

Woke from his spellbound sleep and saw

A vision of the banished spring,

A form so fair and luminous

That from his frosted eyes the hoar

Ran down like tears and, marveling,

He felt the chains of winter thaw

And years of thraldom ruinous.

Ardina met his eyes, and through

Her moonlit veins a shudder ran

That kissed her skin with fiery dew,

Its marble pallor chastening:

A doom it seemed to see this man

In whose dark eyes such ardor grew,

A grief stored up through summer’s span

From joy to winter hastening.

Between them stood the wall of ice

And round them barren winter waste,

But each saw in the other’s face

The light of springtime lingering:

Like thunder broke the charméd frost,

And freed at last to bitter bliss

Immortal maid and man embraced,

Their light and shadow mingling.

So swore Ardina and Ardhor

That ever would the other cleave,

And heavy was the