his eye on the face
of the damaged world
like a rumor of history
he was forgetting
lost in the fathomless
maze of the orb.
But often at night
when the senses faltered
and the polished country
altered and coiled,
the shape of the dream
was the Speaker’s reflection:
The estranging trees
were nests of daggers,
the streams black and clotted
under a silent moon
that mourned for the day
and the fierce definition
of sunlight and knowledge
where the trees and towns
were named and numbered
and always, implacably
intended and purposed,
far from the tangle
of nightmare, the shadow
and weave of the forest
that wrangled to light
in the dreams of Lorac,
invading the day
with the glitter of flint,
subverting the pale
and anonymous sun.
IV
Then to the North
an evil arose
in the cloud-wracked skies,
for the Dragon Highlords
sent sword and messenger,
firebrand and word
to the Tower of Stars,
to rapt Silvanesti,
to the dwindling porches
of the elf king’s ear,
promising peace
and the forest’s asylum
in the discord of armies,
promising Silvanost free
in exchange for the promise
of silence, inaction,
for a nodding head
on the Green Throne.
And Lorac agreed,
his eye on the hooded orb,
where miraculous silence
promised a blessing of spears,
an end to all promise,
the dragons by summer.
And so Silvanesti
was emptied of silver,
emptied of lives
and the long dreaming blood
of its last inhabitants
as they took to the boats,
to the skiffs, to the coracles,
aimless on water
as cloudy as oracles
and the Wildrunners fought
in the wake of the water,
where their last breath billowed
in the spreading sails.
Alhana Starbreeze, the Speaker’s daughter,
stood at the helm
in the silver passage
as they sailed to the South
on the Paths of Astralas,
on the bard’s memory,
on history’s spindrift,
and Lorac behind them
ordered his soldiers
to leave the unraveling land
in the last of the ships,
for there in the dark
called the forest, called Silvanost,
the elm and aeterna
choiring like nightingales,
singing this song
to his turning ear,
AFTER THE LAST TEST
THERE IS NO OTHER.
O THE TESTS ARE BEHIND YOU
SPEAKER OF SUNS
AND THE SONG OF THE ORB
IS THE SONG OF YOUR MIND
IN THIS ANCIENT TOWER
HOLLOW AND LOVELESS
WITH LONG DEPARTURES.
O THE TESTS ARE BEHIND YOU
SPEAKER OF SUNS
BUT I SHALL LIE HERE
AS HISTORY FOLDS
IN THESE FLOURISHING WALLS
AS THE TOWER CRUMBLES
AND WITH IT THE MIND
THE FIRST HIGH BATTLEMENTS
THE HOUSE OF THE GODS
BUT I SHALL LIE HERE
AS THE FOREST WITHERS
AS THE PLAINS DESCEND
INTO WINTER AND NOTHING
UNLESS THE SONG OF YOUR THOUGHTS
WHICH IS EVERYTHING, IS THE WORLD,
CONTROLS AND SUBDUES
AND INFORMS THE MYSTERY.
KEEP ME IN SILVANOST
SPEAKER OF SUNS,
KEEP ME IN FREEDOM
IN THE COUNTRY OF GREEN ON GREEN.
It lay in the chambers
secret in stars,
above it the Tower
and a labyrinth of legends,
and the freedom it promised
at its crystalline heart
was green ice beckoning,
flame of the distant voice.
And drawn by its music,
by the unearthly chiming
of crystal and shifting thought
the Speaker of Suns descended alone
to the heart of the Tower
where time and the forest
and a shaft of moonlight
collapsed on the orb,
and he reached for the crystal
as a thousand voices
rose from its brimming fire,
all of them singing
the lure of the possible,
all of them singing
the song he imagined,
and his thoughts were a fortress,
phantasmal ramparts
of maple and ash and belief,
in his daylit dreams
the armies were breaking,
the edge of the forest
bristled with leaf and invention,
and summoned, he reached
for the crystal
as the globe and the world
dissolved in his terrible grasp.
He knew when the bones
of his fingers ignited,
when green fire danced
on the back of his hands,
in the damage of arteries,
and he knew at once
that the fire was the heart of his error,
that neither the strength
nor the words nor the mind
could govern the magic.
But the shadows of Silvanost