BUT NOT AS MUCH as… MAYBE I SHOULD SAY,
His policy decisions were painful to watch. By the time the Companions had reached Solace, Tanis had taken to standing on battlements, dressed in black and holding a skull in one hand, discussing with the skull (or with Armavir, when the poet had nothing better to do or when it was not bath time among the Companions) as to which hamlet, which village the party should pass through next. But judging from the text of the letter above, the half-elf was, if possible, more pathetic in matters of the heart than in matters of the head. "Laurana or Kitiara," he would whine, to Armavir or the skull: "Tell me which one?" To which the poet, making Tanis a party to his secret observa tions (see note to lines 46–50), perhaps unwittingly planted the seed of resentment that was to grow into the ingratitude with which our esteemed leader would later conceal Armavir's contribution to history.
Line 81: After this line in Armavir's original text, the following stanza:
The next from the intricate mountains, believing
The deed the design of the word arising
From the light on the sword, from the netted darkness,
Called like the others, but called into memory
So that the deeds rise like water from stone.