I no longer hold with some of it, but I'm sure you'll let me know what you disagree with anyway :).
This early Runo finds the former Death Lord Helden alone and self-absorbed (not to mention self-pitying), hiding in the gors of Far Point as he muddles his way back to understanding Life and Death, attempting d&m conversations with a spirit who's never had a body. Helden is a sophisticated Ralian, I can not imagine any Sartarite Humakti thinking in these sorts of terms.
(Next Runo he meets Cradledaughter, life-energy incarnate. He he he...)
John
FIRES OF MIST AND WIND BLOWN SNOW
RUNO II - SPIRIT
Lord of the Long Road, Humakt, Name-Quester
Cut short my days, destroy me.
Master of Silence, Bronze-Dyer, Illusion Render
Betray my hope, destroy me.
Wielder of the Truth that cuts
the pain that frees
Destroy me once, destroy me twice
till only you remain.
Great Ironbroker of corpses, StraightWill, Terrible Secret
I do not claim to judge you
to proclaim, 'this is just' or 'this is evil'
for you alone know Truth.
I know only to obey
surrender to your sharp command
that I may walk the long road, hear the silence
and free me from myself.
All I have is death, and company of swords to lift the weight of falsehood from my soul.
May fierce fate's frenzy dye our blades blood red
that we may suffer, suffer into truth.
"The Dawn Muster."
A Ralian Cohort Chant
circa 1615.
Iphara and her mist children had fled before the fury of Elmal's Golden Shield; the merest wisps now lingered along the ridge tops or curled about the lower valleys. It was the way of things, first laid down in the timelessness before the dawning. I still had not stirred from my place by the lowfire. All around me the mountain landscape resonated with the life-pulse of animals and elements and spirits; forces and powers, all the magical possibilities of life and growth and change.
I ignored them.
Other matters occupied my attention. Karis - more correctly, the sword in which she was bound - lay cradled in my arms.
"Were you born, Karis?"
"And will you die?"
At times like these, the gulf between us seemed insurmountable. The God had gifted me with an ally who had never possessed a body, a spirit with neither experience nor comprehension of the physical realm. Karis was a spirit of iron, a living drop of Humakt's holy blood. The world in which I suffered and toiled was something akin to a dream to her, while she perceived obscure spiritual truths as shapes and sounds and movements, mysteries I could not begin to comprehend. Only the God united us, the God and our commitment to the twin mysteries of Truth and Death.
Yet whatever the truth in Karis' deceptively simple words, I could not understand the meaning behind them. Why did I bother?
Because she was the only other voice in my universe.
"You... You truly have no emotions, no being?"
*I *am* an emotion, a sentient expression of the god, incarnate hope and will. *
I'd do better talking to the firesnakes nesting in the yew, or to the spirit of the yew itself. But there was something here I had to understand, that I needed to grapple with.
"I'm lost. Utterly lost. You must know that."
"What do you know about suffering!"
"But I'm no longer capable of following the god. My blade has rusted. I'm
trapped, paralysed. It's been four long seasons."
My ally, the temple catechist. These were the self-same words I might mouth to a young initiate more interested in sword play than the demands of the Long Path. Yet in Karis's toneless and unaffected delivery there was no trace of irony. If I had still been capable, I might have laughed aloud. Yet there was * something* in what she said. I knew the words by rote, though it was obvious I still did not understand them.
"And why do you persist with me?"
There was kindness in those words, and I dwelt upon them for a time in silence. Karis did not further intrude on my reverie, even when I found myself lost once again to memory and regret. The flames subsided to dull red embers, unfed and unnoticed. I watched in idle fascination as a mountain haggar despatched a hare on the open slopes below. Proud-swept wings, a sudden darting dive, flash of blue light as killing-magic rent the air, then a triumphant caw as death-sharp talons grasped the prey. Despite the season, the hare was as black as the days before the sun.
Another omen.
In the forest beneath the braich, a company of white necked ravens lifted in great circles, disturbed by the passage of something large through the undergrowth. Some horned boar, muddy and rooting in the beech wood? A roe deer perhaps, a solitary wolf... or something else?
"Karis..."
I waited long moments as her awareness lifted from my soul, focussing on the disturbance below. I felt the subtle flow of energies, my backbone tingling as she wove her spells, reaching across two worlds.
This was temple slang; it meant that Karis had both bad news and good.
"The red?"
"And the white?"
Cheers
John
===
"Out of the south she came, as mysterious and violent as the blessing winds of Sea Season, and just as beautiful. Out of the south, through gors deep and gallt wide, 'cross ice-shielded streams and shadow-dark valleys. Out of the south, till at last she came to the stead called Lagerwater, home to the Bluefoot Tovtaros, the true Orlanthi folk at the very centre of the world.."
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