The magical ship sails on overnight, ultimately ending up out on the rocks near the land of Logris.  Oddly, there’s another ship of the same rich enough design, moored on the rocks.

“That’s ours,” says Mags.  “Definitely.  Let’s go.  For so is Our Lord’s will.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so.” She leads Galahad, Percivale, and Bors across the rocks and onto the second ship.  The four of them look around.  It’s a nice enough ship, but just like the ship Nacien gave Percivale, it’s unoccupied, with neither man nor woman therein.  Bors finds a message carved above the entryway:

“If you’re aboard this ship, you’d better be virtuous; for I am the ship of Faith.”

Mags has noticed that Percivale doesn’t recognize her.  She explains she’s his sister, King Pellinore’s daughter, and that the two of them will find the Grail together.  Percivale forgot he had a sister, so this is a nice surprise!

Meantime Galahad has found the master bedroom and a bed with silk sheets and a crown of silk and also a magical sword that only he can draw.

It’s got a stone pommel studded with gemstones of every color, and its blade is two bones, sharpened together.  One is a bone from a serpent which was conservant in Calidone, and is called the serpent of the fiend.  Its magic is such that anyone who wields it will never be weary nor hurt, which is pretty good!  The other bone is from a fish found only in the Euphrates river, called Ertanax.  Its magic is such that anyone who wields will, in addition to the no-tired thing, possess tremendous capacity to focus on the project at hand and not be lost to daydreams or browsing the internet.  Also pretty good!

Percivale and Bors would both happily accept this magic sword, but it’s only for Galahad; neither of them can draw it.  Galahad doesn’t really want it, and is a little worried about a sword that Percivale and Bors can’t draw.  Is it evil?  But Mags assures him it’s okay.

She tells a story that goes like this.  Once upon a time in Logris, which is where they found the ship, there was a war going on.  This war raged between King Labor (Galahad’s mother’s father’s father), and King Hurlame.  And the war climaxed in a huge orgiastic battle on the beach, which Hurlame lost.  Hurlame fled aboard this very ship, that happened to be there.  He found this magical stone-pommeled sword and drew it, and used it to maim Labor.  When Labor went down, the very land shuddered: great pestilence and great harm befell both their kingdoms.  All the corn and grass and fish died, and the land which had once been fecund and fertile became the waste land, all thanks to that dolorous stroke.

Like Balin’s dolorous stroke, but a generation earlier.  Crazy, I know.  But that’s the story of the sword.  Afterwards Hurlame returned to the magic ship and hid there until he died.

“If you think that was a nutso story,” says Mags, “just wait until you hear about the scabbard!”