Elegy for the Fallen

Prelude: The Black-and-White Striped

In the waning of the year the shadow came,
Fell and fearsome, flanked by flame.
The innocent perished, their curtailed lives
spilt out in blood and unseen knives.
Who was our bane? Whose sullen wrath
and age-old vengeance fuelled his path?
This restless spirit, who understood
nothing of love or wisdom, nor of good.
Once slain, he sought to slay in turn;
Powerless in power to return.

I: The Lodge

Wooden walls and watchtowers overlooked
The forges and lodges of the warrior tribe.
With omens of dread the same halls shook
When the bloody circle there was scribed.
The breaker of bones was breaker of minds;
and claimed for his work an unwilling hand.
With the centaur's fall the Lakedancer unconfined,
And his death the breaking of the ancient band.

II: The Refuge of Song

The little light's cry rings in alarm;
No longer concerned with silence.
The flowing Voice, imprisoned,
Transforms into sparrows
Whose song she had loved.
The trees tremble,
The chains break.
All things
fall.

III: The Battle in the Caves

Now does the water rise surging in the lake,
Murmuring like a distant, dreaded storm
Leaving drowning wreckage in its wake.
No natural weather this -- but an angered swarm
of glah'rai naiads that the Lakedancer brought.
Fierce was the battle, and fiercer yet
The command of the master in the onslaught,
who bade his friends depart. No idle threat;
The crumbling stone shall fall on all alike.
Alone he stood, his blades held fast,
But against swift water no knife would strike.
So ended the master, in death as in life steadfast.

Now rests his cairn far from his native place,
In his chosen home, in the green earth's embrace.

IV: The Tower

Font of the lunar mysteries,
White spear of stone rising to brush the sky,
the lasting vault of our history,
Still clear and tall in my memory's eye--
No enemy band shall occupy
Your sacred halls. The priestess speaks;
Her athame bites deep in reply.
Moonfire flashes as her lifeblood leaks--
They will not find here what they seek.

V: The Dreaming

They who serve the Grove know the ways of Hart,
and the doom of all evil that may not be slain.
A binding, a dreaming, and ever-vigilance
Is the lot of the Guide, who taught so many,
And who sleeps now in his eternal watch.
Like a Child long ago he claims his fate,
Which we who remain have devised,
from wisdom or fear, none can tell.
He will instruct no more of the dedicants;
and when children ask who slumbers above,
Their elders must answer: our shield and sacrifice.

Aftermath: New Spring

All shall be well, the prophecy foretold,
Given by Ellindel and Glinshari of old.
They who have fallen have been avenged;
and the scars we bear in time shall mend.
Yet here we feel the ponderous weight
of history's touch, which consecrates
all that we do. There is no path
That leads us once more to the past.
But ever forward must we go--
In life, in healing, and in hope.