The text in short

 

While the enemies assault the Fanes’ castle, Lujanta reappears and puts them to flight using her sister’s bow. But the castle is lost anyway. The queen reconciles with marmots; they explain Lujanta how to evacuate the last defenders from the castle through an underground path, and foretell the chance to recover their lost kingdom.

 

The last defenders of the castle escape through an underground passage, but are being closely chased. The dwarfs save them, by deviating a waterfall (the “Morin di Salvans”, i.e. Dwarfs’ Mill) so that it separates them from their pursuers. Eventually the arrive at a large hall, where marmots are hibernating. In the meanwhile the enemies pillage the country and destroy everything. Spina-de-Mul recovers his Raietta.

 

Here we can see the “resurgence” daydream unfolding. The story of reconquering one peak every year is plain nonsense; and marmots here are just talking (and prophecying) animals. This is a fable all right, not any longer a legend . But hard reality surfaces between the lines: the climatic conditions are getting worse and worse, and the Fanes’ survivors are compelled to spend winters underground. As a matter of fact, the climatic factor was responsible, on one hand of desolating the land to the barren plateaus we can see nowadays, on the other of frustrating any possible attempt to restore the lost kingdom. At this point a new esoterical theme appears, that of the conditions that must be satisfied, no one knows why, in order to make the revenge possible. Several versions of this theme exist, basically of two types:
- either Lujanta (or Dolasilla) should marry Ey-de-Net (i.e. the key male character),
- or a king’s descendant (by male lineage) should recover the magic arrows.
This latter condition has an Arthurian flavour all right, but everything reminds of the Middle-Ages, when not even the slightest memory of the pristine matriarchate had been preserved.

 

In the island of the one-armed people, the Eagle-prince has become a happy husband. Three years later, the Flame Eagle arrives to take him back to the Fanes’ country and recover the unfailing arrows, so that the kingdom may be restored to its greatness. But his wife, who had been foretold that her husband would never return, sends the eagle away with a pretext. Before another year has elapsed, she casts him into a state of apparent death, and so cheats the fierce bird again. Three other years elapse this way. On the seventh year, the prince suddenly hears the Fanes’ trumpets blowing and wakes up at once. The day after, the eagle comes back, and he greets his wife and son, who was born in the meanwhile (with both arms), and leaves never to come back again.

 

The Fanes and their enemies come to a peace settlement: the Fanes will get back the land that had been a part of their territory since ever, but none of their late conquests. When the pact is close to be agreed upon, the Eagle-prince comes back and rejects everything. As any further agreement proves impossible, war is declared.

 

Wolfes, crows and vultures are banqueting upon the Fanes’ bodies: men and women, old people and children, all of them massacred during the last desperate battle fought in their country’s heart, on the Furcia dai Fers, against an immense coalition collected from every corner of the world.

 

Just about twenty people, all women and children, including the queen and Lujanta, escaped the massacre hiding among the marmots. The Flame Eagle arrives carrying the small boy who is Eagle-prince’s son. He foretells that the kingdom will be reborn if the boy is able to retrieve the unfailing arrows and be found at the right place when the silvery trumpets blow for the “great time”. The eagle takes the job to lit a sacred flame every year in memory of the Fanes’ kingdom. He will fly the boy to Contrin, where he will learn the profession of arms by king Odolghes.

 

Every year, by moonlight, the queen and Lujanta row around the Braies lake, coming out from the stone gate that gave its name (Sass dla Porta, i.e. “Peak of the Gate”) to the dominant Croda del Becco. They are waiting for the queen’s grandson to come back with the unfailing arrows. But he never comes. And one night the “great time” arrives: the silvery trumpets can be heard blowing from every mountain. But nobody is there to answer their call. The queen listens to them for a last time, then disappears to sleep forever on the lake bottom. But one day the “promised time” will come, when everyone will be resurrected and will live in peace.