The High King

"It's lovely," answered Eilonwy. "Yes, I shall treasure it. But that's what I mean, too. I'm not saying you aren't a good Assistant Pig-Keeper, because I'm sure you're the best in Prydain, but there's something more―"

"You speak truth, Princess," put in Coll. "He left us a pig-keeper and comes back looking as if he could do all he set his hand to, whatever."

Taran shook his head. "I learned I was neither swordsmith nor weaver. Nor, alas, a shaper of clay. Gurgi and I were already homeward bound when Kaw found us, and here shall we stay."

"I'm glad of that," replied Eilonwy. "All anyone knew about you was that you were wandering every which where. Dallben told me you were seeking your parents. Then you met someone you thought was your father but wasn't. Or was it the other way round? I didn't altogether understand it."

"There is little to understand," Taran said. "What I sought, I found. Though it was not what I had hoped."

"No, it was not," murmured Dallben, who had been watching Taran closely. "You found more than you sought, and gained perhaps more than you know."

"I still don't see why you wanted to leave Caer Dallben," Eilonwy began.

Taran had no chance to reply, for now his hand was seized and shaken vigorously.

"Hullo, hullo!" cried a young man with pale blue eyes and straw-colored hair. His handsomely embroidered cloak looked as though it had been water-soaked, then wrong out to dry. His bootlacings, broken in several places, had been retied in large, straggling knots.

"Prince Rhun!" Taran had almost failed to recognize him. Rhun had grown taller and leaner, though his grin was as broad as it had ever been.

"King Rhun, actually," the young man answered, "since my father died last summer. That's one of the reasons why Princess Eilonwy is here now. My mother wanted to keep her with us on Mona to finish her education. And you know my mother! She'd never have left off with it, even though Dallben had sent word Eilonwy was to come home. And so," he proudly added, "I finally put my foot down. I ordered a ship fitted out, and off we sailed from Mona Haven. Amazing what a king can do when he sets his mind to it!

"We've brought someone else along, too," Rhun continued, gesturing toward the fireside where Taran for the first time noticed a pudgy little man sitting with a cook-pot between his knees. The stranger licked his fingers and wrinkled a flabby nose at Taran. He made no attempt to rise, but only nodded curtly while the scraggly fringe of hair around his bulbous head stirred like weeds under water.

Taran stared, not believing what he saw. The little man drew himself up and sniffed with a mixture of haughtiness arid wounded feelings.

"One should have no trouble remembering a giant," he said testily.

"Remember you?" replied Taran. "How could I not! The cavern on Mona! Last time I saw you, though, you were― bigger, to say the least. But it is you, nevertheless. It is, indeed! Glew!"

"When I was a giant," Glew said, "few would have forgotten me so quickly. Unfortunate that things worked out as they did. Now, in the cavern―"

"You've started him off again," Eilonwy whispered to Taran. "He'll go on like that until you're fairly wilted, about the glorious days when he used to be a giant. He'll only stop talking to eat, and only stop eating to talk. I can understand his eating, since he lived on nothing but mushrooms for so long. But he must have been wretched as a giant, and you'd think he'd want to forget it."

"I knew Dallben sent Kaw with a potion to shrink Glew back to size," Taran answered. "Of what happened to him since then, I've had no word."

"That's what happened to him," said Eilonwy. "As soon as he got free of the cavern, he made his way to Rhun's castle. No one had the heart to turn him away, though he bored us all to tears with those endless, pointless tales of his. We took him with us when we sailed, thinking he'd be grateful to Dallben and want to thank him properly. Not a bit of it! We almost had to twist his ears to get him aboard. Now that he's here, I wish we'd left him where he was."

"But three of our companions are missing," Taran said, glancing around the cottage. "Good old Doli, and Fflewddur Fflam. And I had hoped Prince Gwydion might have come to welcome Eilonwy."

"Doli sends his best wishes," said Coll, "but we shall have to do without his company. Our dwarf friend is harder to root out of the Fair Folk realm than a stump out of a field. He'll not budge. As for Fflewddur Fflam, nothing can keep him and his harp from any merrymaking, whatever. He should have been here long since."

"Prince Gwydion as well," Dallben added. "He and I have matters to discuss. Though you young people may doubt it, some of them are even weightier than the homecomings of a Princess and an Assistant Pig-Keeper."