Quote:
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bearing the white ships that return from battles on the Dark Marches of which men know nothing.
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Few quick notes:
If the Elven mariners are 'coming home' their home must be Faerie itself, where Smith encounters them.
If 'men know nothing' of the battles on the Dark Marches then those battles cannot take place in the human world - they must take place 'elsewhere'. This means that there is a 'third' place - not the human world & not Faerie (because the Elven mariners are returning
to Faerie. 'Marches' are borderlands (like the Welsh Marches, the borderlands between England & Wales) - which implies that Faerie borders on some other realm & there is a territorial dispute of some kind going on. A further implication would be that, as the Marches are 'Dark' then the battle is some kind of war between Light & Darkness - or more precisely between 'Light' (their swords
shone and their spears
glinted and a piercing
light was in their eyes) & 'Unlight'.
So, we seem to be given a glimpse of an on-going cosmic battle, fought between Elves on the one side & ...what?.. on the other.