| This is a tale of the coming of the Wise to the Salis Plain beyond the eastern marshes. Drwyds, they are sometimes called in error, for it was thought they bore the wisdom of the ancient oak trees. Some say they came from an emerald isle in the west, others that they once lived in lands beside a great sea in the middle of the earth. Still others claim they had their origin in four mystical cities at the far corners of the world, and are children of the Goddess Danu, or that they began along the banks of an eastern river sacred to that goddess, which flows into a wide black sea. Here is the tale the people of the marshes tell, and no one knows from whence it comes, for the land it describes is forever lost. The marsh people call this lost land Iwerydd, for the great sea that circles our Brythonic island. But those who once lived there knew it as Atlandes, the Fatherland . . . |
