faded from green into red,
into brown and untenable gold,
the orb was a prison
and above Thon-Thalas
the long wingbeat
of the dragon approached,
and the trees bent and bowed
in a sinister wind
as Lorac beheld this
all through the light of the orb,
and the dragon, the Bloodbane,
came with its whispers,
and under its words
the old stones tilted,
and the Tower of Stars,
as white as a sepulchre,
twisted and torted
as the trees rained blood
and the animals shrieked
their cries like torn metal
in a charmed and perpetual midnight.
V
So it was as the centuries
gathered and telescoped
into the passage
of a dozen years,
as the bristling heart
of Silvanesti
festered and doubled
and hardened like crystal.
And always the promise
of Cyan Bloodbane,
of the dragon coiled
on the crystal globe,
always the promise
was nothing and nothing
and the forest the map
of a strangled country,
land of stillbirth, of fever,
of warped and gangrenous age
and of long unendurable dying,
until from the North
came another invasion
of hard light and lances
as the Heroes, the Fellowship,
the fashioned alliance
of elf and dwarf,
of human and gnome and kender
came to the forest
through the nest of nightmare,
through the growing entanglement,
through bone, through crystal,
through all the forgotten
banes and allures
of the damaged heart,
to Silvanost and the disfigured Tower,
to Lorac, to the imprisoning Orb,
and they freed the Speaker
the Tower and town,
the forest, the people,
the bright orb they freed
and like a survivor
tumbled the globe through the years
through the centuries lodged
in the pale hands of others
and its old polished carapace
bright and reflecting
the hourglassed eyes
of its ultimate wielder.
But the sands were draining
over the Speaker of Suns,
and the knowledge of Lorac,
vaulted and various,
numbered and faceted,
descended and simplified
into a knowledge of evil,
as the forest unfolded,
stripped of the long light,
bare of bedazzlement
and at last Silvanesti
was free of his mind,
torn from the labyrinth
bearing forever the scars of belief
to the last syllable of eventual time,
and Lorac died in his daughter’s arms,
his thoughts in the Tower
entombed and surrendered,
his last wish a burial
underneath Silvanost,
driving the green
from the body’s decay,
resolving to forest,
resolving to Silvanost
forever and ever, his enabling ghost
to ascribe and deliver
the land that he dreamt of,
as thought was translated to dream.
And yes, it is always like this,
for the country is haunted
with old supposition,
and no matter the stories,
no matter the rumors
of legend and magic
that illumine you through
the curtain of years,
you come to believe
in the web of yourself
that history twines
in the veins of your fingers,
that it knits all purpose,
all pardon and injury,
recovers the lapsed
and plausible blood,
until finally, in the midst of believing,
you contrive among rumors
the story, the old convolution
of breath and forgetting,
in which you will say,
beyond truth and belief,
THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS,
FOR ONCE AND AT LAST
WHAT IT ALWAYS MEANT,
NO MORE THAN I KNEW
FROM THE WORLD’S BEGINNING
IS ALL THAT IT MEANS FOREVER.
Raistlin and the Knight of Solamnia
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
It was a chill night for spring, undoubtedly
the reason there were so many people in the inn. The inn
wasn’t accustomed to such crowds. In fact, it wasn’t
accustomed to any crowds, for the inn was new, so new
that it still smelled of fresh-hewn wood and paint instead
of stale ale and yesterday’s stew. Called “Three Sheets,”
after a popular drinking song of the time, the inn was
located in – . But where it was located doesn’t matter. The
inn was destroyed five years later in the Dragon Wars and
never rebuilt. Small wonder, for it was on a road little
traveled then and less traveled after the dragons leveled
the town.
It would be some time yet before the Queen of
Darkness plunged the world into what she hoped would be
eternal night, but already, in these years just prior to the