Then suddenly and unawares an ice-cold air struck chill into his inmost being, the bright earth was obscured and the sun grew dark in the heavens and menacing voices were heard and horrid forms of evil, monstrous, not to be described, came against him, and they bade him return as he had come or they would tear him limb from limb in that forest.  Yet the son of Usna was by no means dismayed, only he flushed with wrath and scorn and he drew his sword and went on against the phantoms.  In truth Naysi was at that moment passing through the zone of terror which the Ultonian Druids had shed around the dun where Deirdre was immured.  The phantoms gave way before him and Naysi passed beyond the zone.  “Surely,” he said, “there is some chief jewel of the jewels of the world preserved in this place.”

He came to an opening in the forest.  Beyond it there was a great space which was cleared and girt all round by trees.  There was a dun in its midst.  Scarlet and white were the walls of that dun.  There was a watch-tower on one side of the dun and a man there sitting in the watchman’s seat; a grianan on the other with windows of glass.  The roof of the dun was covered all over with feathers of birds of various hues, and shone with a hundred colours.  The doorway was the narrowest which Naysi had ever seen.  The door pillars were of red yew curiously carved, having feet of bronze and capitals of carved silver, and the lintel above was a straight bar of pure silver.  A knotted band or thickening ran round the walls of the dun like a variegated zone, for the colours of it were many and each different from the colours on the walls.  In the world there was no such prison as there was no such captive as that prison held.  Armed men of huge stature and terrible aspect went round the dun.  Their habiliments were black, their weapons without ornament, the pins of their mantles were of iron.  With each company went a slinger having his sling bent, an iron bolt in the sling, and his thumb in the string-loop, men who never missed their mark and never struck aught, whether man or beast, that they did not slay.  Great hounds such as were not known amongst the Ultonians went with those men.  They were grey above and tawny beneath, as large as wild oxen after the growth of one year.  They were quick of sight and scent, fiercer than dragons and swifter than eagles; they were not quick of sight and scent to-day.  The Lady Levarcam had great power.  In and around that dun were three hundred men of war, foreigners, picked men of the great fighting tribes of Banba.  Such was the decree of the Ultonians and their wise King, so greatly did they fear concerning those prophecies and omens and concerning the child who in Emain Macha shrieked out of her mother’s womb.  Naysi regarded the dun with wonder and amazement, and with amazement the astonishing rigour of the watch and ward which were kept there, and the more he looked the more he wondered.  It seemed to the hunter