My given name is Lyonesse. Note I do not say Christian name, for the one who gave it me were no Christian, nor am I. I am a Witch, and as such it be my job to see things as they be for true, not as they ought be. For this reason do I call myself Lyo, for I can see I am no lioness and would not invite ridicule calling myself such a lofty name. I am a hands-breadth-and-a-half shorter than an unremarkable woman, with unpleasing proportions and skin that hangs loose like a too-big kirtle. My eyes go in two different directions, though this isn't always apparent I am told. My hair is a patchwork of every different color in no special order. To put it plain: I am not a beauty. Nevertheless, I can work a grammar such that in the right light, I can appear beauteous.
Sir Hector first saw me in that light, but I did not maintain the illusion. He has never remarked upon it. He calls himself my student and champion and has followed me ever since the inn at T----, though I never invited or encouraged such devotion. In lieu of a squire, Sir Hector brings along his confessor. This mendicant friar, a very young man called Father Josephus, hears Sir Hector's confession after each conversation the knight has with me.
Having acknowledged that Hector is a knight and Josephus is a friar and priest, I will forgo now in my private recordings to use these tiresome titles.
It seems Hector has found a way to study the Old Ways without damning himself; to learn what he can from me and immediately confess the sin of these idolatrous learnings to Josephus. Josephus has expressed misgivings about this method, and I share in his skepticism albeit from a different vantage.
The way of thinking and seeing I practice cannot be fully entered into by one who believes it is evil, a sinful fetish to be cast aside after one has slipped from the right path.
Hector was knighted at the court of the High King just shy of three years ago and has been wandering the country since in search of quests. When I met him last spring, at the inn, he told me of the quests he had completed in that time:
He had retrieved a crown from the bottom of a pond and returned it to the queen of C---, who gave him a medal of Saint Michael as thanks.
He had killed the wyrm which was poisoning the well of the Village of G--- upon S--- and kept its skin, which made a protective shirt tougher and lighter than chain mail.
He had rescued a prince and princess, Brunor and Igraine if Vilainvue, the son and daughter of the Wizard King Sagramore, from kidnappers working on behalf of a neighboring king.