Others the poet holds back:
For words and the silence
Defining each other
In spaces of holiness.
Softly the old hand rose and descended, the harp-handling fingers at rest on the brow of the bold and mysterious boy.
The apprenticeship was sealed in Orestes's bravado, the name of HIERONYMO fixed to the terms of indenture, all in the luck of an hour, and depth of a season, but somewhere within it a darker invention that sprawled in the depths of the heart and the dwindling earth.
VII
So masked in intention, in a sacred name for a year and a day
Orestes surrendered his anger to music and wind, apprenticeship honed on the laddered wires of a harp that the gods whispered over, of a wandering in lore and the cloudy geographies tied to the fractured past, and he dwelt by the poet and traveled to Dargaard to the heart of Solanthus, to imperiled Thelgaard, to nameless castles of memory where the knights abided in yearning for something that moved in the channels of history, redeeming the damaged blood of the rose, while the story that Arion sang, his back to the dream and incredulous fire, discovered the years and the fading arm of the sword.
Seven songs of instruction arose from the fire and the dreaming: the spiral of Quen love's first geometry the wing of Habbakuk brooding above the world the circle of Solin rash and recurrent heart the arc of Jolith dividing intention from deed the white fire of Paladine perfected song of the dragon the prayer of Matheri merciful grammar of thought and the last one the high one light of Branchala that measures all song in the shape of words
Alone in the margin of darkness, Orestes surrendered and listened singing reluctantly, joyfully, as the gods and the planets and the cycle of years devolved in a long dream of murder and the cleansing of harp strings.
VIII
A year and a day the seasons encircled, according to fable and ancient decrees of enchantment, as the gnats' choir of autumn surrendered to ice and the turn of the year approached like a death and the listening castles mislaid under snow.
Orestes's apprenticeship led to a circle of fire, where the harp he had mastered and the seven songs and the fourteen modes of incalculable magic circled him back to the night and the keep and the wintry eyes of the bard singing memory into flesh, into stone, into dreaming and wind, and
Arion, he said, and Arion, tell me of time
Of the rending of Krynn and betrayals.
The bard took the harp in the foreseen night: for his memory darkened the edge of the past when knowing devises the shape of creation, and the Rending changed as he spoke of its birth in the spiral of prophecy, the brush of its wing on the glittering domes and spires of Istar the swelling of moons and the stars' convergence and voices and thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes and Arion told us that night by the hearth that hail and fire in a downpour of blood tumbled to earth, igniting the trees and the grass, and the mountains were burning, and the sea became blood and above and below us the heavens were scattered, and locusts and scorpions wandered the face of the planet, as Arion told us, and Orestes leaned closer and ARION, he said, and
Arion, teach me of time
Of the famine and plague and Pyrrhus Alecto.
Arion stroked the harp and began, his white hair cascading across the gold arm of the harp as though he were falling through song into sleep and the winter stilled at the touch of the string, and he sang the last verses as hidden Orestes reclined and remembered and listened:
Down in the arm of Caergoth he rode:
Pyrrhus Alecto, The knight of the night of betrayals
Firebrand of burning that clouded the straits of Hylo,
The oil and ash on the water, ignited country.
Forever and ever the villages burn in his passage,
And the grain of the peasantry, life of the ragged armies
That harried him back to the keep of the castle
Where Pyrrhus the Firebringer canceled the world
Beneath the denial of battlements,
Where he died amid stone with his covering armies.
For seventeen years the country of Caergoth
Has burned and burned with his effacing hand,
A barren of shires and hamlets,
And Firebringer history hangs on the path of his name.
Orestes listened, as honor and song, as blood and adoption warred in the cell of his thoughts, his father redeemed by poison, by blade by the song of the harp string rendered a garrotte, closing the eloquent throat of Arion silencing song, reclaiming his father, and transforming Caergoth from desert to garden: yet the hand of Orestes stilled in the arc of reprisal, and into the night he warred and remembered, and as I tell you this, memory wars with him still.
IX
The mourning began when the doves circled Vingaard: the poison had passed through the veins like imagined fires: and alone in his quarters, the poet's apprentice abided the funerals, settled accounts, awaited the search of the Order through ravaged Solamnia for rivals and villains, for the trails of assassins, and late on the fifth night after the burning, when the ashes had settled on Arion's pyre, only then did Hieronymo bring forth the harp
(though some there were curious, who late in the night had heard, or had thought they heard, the apprentice weeping and playing the sonorous mode of the Rending), and late on the fifth night after the burning
Hieronymo sang for the host at the Vingaard Keep and the Rending changed as he spoke of its birth in the spiral of prophecy, the brush of its wing on the glittering domes and spires of Istar the swelling of moons and the stars' convergence and voices and thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes as Hieronymo told them that night by the hearth that hail and fire in a downpour of blood tumbled to earth, igniting the trees and the grass, and the mountains were burning, and the sea became blood and above and below us the heavens were scattered, and locusts and scorpions wandered the face of
the planet, as Hieronymo told us, and then he leaned closer and now, he said,
Now, I shall teach you of time
Of the famine and plague and Pyrrhus Alecto.
Down in the arm of Caergoth he rode:
Pyrrhus Alecto, the knight on the night of betrayals.
When a firebrand of burning had clouded the Straits of Hylo.
Like oil on water, he soothed the ignited country.
Forever and ever the villages learn his passage
