Life After Ys

In The Dog And The Wolf (London, 1989) by Poul and Karen Anderson, ex-king Gratillonius' daughter Nemeta clarifies a couple of otherwise ambiguous points.Yes, she does still worship the Three of Ys when working as a witch after the fall of Ys. Yes, Dahut's powers as a mermaid do derive from the Three, not from any other Power.

Further, Nemeta as owl is insubstantial, a mere Sending, whereas Dahut as mermaid has an intermediate status, solid and substantial enough to pull men under the sea but supernatural or spiritual enough to affect and harm Nemeta as owl.

Meanwhile, Gratillonius has almost imperceptibly been moving towards accepting Christianity. Earlier in the King of Ys tetralogy, when he instructed another character in the Mystery of Mithras, Gratillonius presented at face value implausible stories about a primordial past. Now he accepts without question supernatural stories about Christ, in particular that the latter could have called on a legion of angels... I suspect that, although Jesus, unlike Mithras, existed, he did not have access to any angelic legion.

However, the tetralogy is a historical fantasy in which supernatural events, like the owl, the mermaid and angelic messages, do occur. In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol Series, a time traveller says that he cannot in honesty argue for Christ but that series is historical science fiction, not historical fantasy.

For readers who cannot empathise with Gratillonius' conversion to Christianity, there is one character whose worldview is much closer to modern secularism. Gratillonius' handfast man, Rufinus, professes unbelief in any of the Gods but Gratillonius, unlike many of his co-religionists, retains the good sense to befriend and employ such an able man as Rufinus.