If Elfarran be not my own, I will unsay Segoy’s word,
I will unmake the islands, the white waves will whelm all.
He had power to raise huge waves on the sea, and to stop the tide or bring it early; and his voice could enchant whole populations, bringing all who heard him under his control. So he turned Morred’s people against him. Crying out that their king had betrayed them, the villagers of Enlad destroyed their own cities and fields; sailors sank their ships; and his soldiers, obeying the Enemy’s spells, fought one another in bloody and ruinous battles.
While Morred sought to free his people from these spells and to confront his enemy, Elfarran returned with their year-old child to her native island, Solea, where her own powers would he strongest. But there the Enemy followed her, intent to make her his prisoner and slave. She took refuge at the Springs of Ensa, where, with her knowledge of the Old Powers of the place, she could withstand the Enemy and force him off the island. “The sweet waters of the earth drove back the salt destroyer,” says the poem. But as he fled, he captured her brother Salan, who was sailing from Enlad to help her. Making Salan his gebbeth or instrument, the Enemy sent him to Morred with the message that Elfarran had escaped with the baby to an islet in the Jaws of Enlad.
Trusting the messenger, Morred entered the trap. He barely escaped with his life. The Enemy pursued him from the east to the west of Enlad in a trail of ruin. On the Plains of Enlad, meeting the companions who had stayed loyal to him, most of them sailors who had brought their ships to Enlad to aid him, Morred turned and gave battle. The Enemy would not confront him directly, but sent Morred’s own spell-bound warriors to fight him, and worse, sent sorceries that shriveled up the bodies of his men till they “living, seemed the black thirst-dead of the desert.” To spare his people, Morred withdrew.
As he left the battlefield it began to rain, and he saw his enemy’s true name written in raindrops in the dust.
Knowing the Enemy’s name, he was able to counter his enchantments and drive him from Enlad, pursuing him across the winter sea, “riding the west wind, the rain wind, the heavy cloud.” Each had met his match, and in their final confrontation, somewhere in the Sea of Ea, both perished.
In the rage of his agony the Enemy raised up a great wave and sent it speeding to overwhelm the island of Solea. Elfarran knew this, as she knew the moment of Morred’s death. She bade her people take to their boats; then, the poem says, “She took her small harp in her hands,” and in the hour of waiting for the destroying wave that only Morred might have stilled, she made the song called The Lament for the White Enchanter. The island was drowned beneath the sea, and Elfarran with it. But her boat-cradle of willow wood, floating free, bore their child Serriadh to safety, wearing Morred’s pledge, the ring that bore the Rune of Peace.
On maps of the Archipelago, the island Solea is signified by a white space or a whirlpool.
After Morred, seven more kings and queens ruled from Enlad, and the realm increased steadily in size and prosperity.
THE KINGS OF HAVNOR
A century and a half after Morred’s death, King Akambar, a prince of Shelieth on Way, moved the court to Havnor and made Havnor Great Port the capital of the kingdom. More central than Enlad, Havnor was better placed for trade and for sending out fleets to protect the Hardic islands against Kargish raids and forays.
The history of the Fourteen Kings of Havnor (actually six kings and eight queens, ~150-400) is told in the Havnorian Lay. Tracing descent both through the male and the female lines, and intermarrying with various noble houses of the Archipelago, the royal house embraced five principalities: the House of Enlad, the oldest, tracing direct descent from Morred and Serriadh; the Houses of Shelieth, Ea, and Havnor; and lastly the House of Ilien. Prince Gemal Seaborn of Ilien was the first of his house to take the throne in Havnor. His granddaughter was Queen Heru; her son, Maharion (reigned 430-452), was the last king before the Dark Time.