SWORD, SON, BEFORE HE HARDENS INTO STONE, and
another before you all green scales and arms, who is falling
then over the parapet, head and metallic jaw collapsed
beneath the swift rising hammer of the dwarf, and the
thought clears for a moment again to discover three more of
them crouched in a file on the battlements, small red eyes
flickering behind the bristle of curved weapons like some
horrible boars in a thicket you are supposed to remember
but cannot, so you let the thought alone and try the sword
again, one of them falling and two of them trampled in a
flood of knights which in turn is bearing you like baggage
or a fallen comrade down the steps from the battlements so
quickly that for a moment you feel you are falling, assuring
yourself that this cannot be, for a fall would take place
much more slowly, but then in the final fall who was to say
how time would collapse or how the mind would suspend
the fragment of years, trying to remember everything, but
then, on your feet and buoyed by your own heavy running,
you see the doors of the tower and within them the elf
maiden shining, and you think, So THIS IS DEATH WHICH
IS MORE THAN I EXPECTED BUT EVERYTHING I
IMAGINED, but then you are inside the tower with the last
of them, the heavy doors closing behind you and the sound
of bolt upon bolt upon bolt staying them fast.
No, it is not pretty to write, and be sure it is not pretty
to tell. But there is more, and soon I will speak from
recollection of sound and rumor only. Soon the story
continues without eyes, and the ugliness passes. Bear with
me, my dear, my nurturing one, the last hour of the telling.
The magic of the tower was sealed for the last time, and
there for the first time I knew what it was that the kender
had discovered in a deep chamber. No larger than a dove,
than the heart of a child, the orb was glowing with a light
and whiteness surpassing the downpour of sun on the snow
we had ridden through days on end, we had watched from
the walls in our waiting. And it seemed fitting that before
the darkness all things should resolve once more into white,
as the elf maiden Laurana began to instruct us, quietly and
urgently, in the final dance we were too stubborn, to noble
to learn when the dance would avail us. The lances,
surprisingly light, we placed at arrest, in the noble absurd
salute to the thing we knew was coming because we heard
from beyond the walls the stuttering thunder of heavy
wings, the breathing, and though we could not guess
through which wall, which aperture it would drive its
ancient and sinuous head, it was coming, we knew.
And the mortar and stones of the northern wall shook
and flaked, and Laurana seized the orb (though never again
would I see her as I turned northwards, lifting the flange of
the lance to my shoulder, its butt secure beneath my arm
that was stronger now, having something to do at last after
all the cold and the waiting and the loss of Breca and of
Heros, it seemed, who was not among us and somehow
forgiven by his absence and the meaning of his absence)
and a great sweetness fell upon me, whether from the orb
itself, as the legends say, or from that moment of repose in
the mind when, pushed past all endurance, you can say AT
LEAST THERE IS NO MORE OF THIS, NOTHING LEFT
BUT A BRIEF PAIN AND THEN PEACE SURPASSING.
We proffered the lances: the Solamnic salute, the prayer
that our lives henceforth be worthy of the taking of lives,
and again I offered the prayer with the others, thinking of
Heros, of Breca, that through all the silliness of the prayer
their wounds somehow were made cleaner.
And there was confusion, a shrapnel of walls, for a
moment those dull reptilian eyes glowing a red that was
lifeless in its ancient light, and I thought of Breca’s eyes and