Moon-and-Star

Below the waterline in irons, dreaming of a storm A voice inside the thunder saying come to me, be born Then timber creaked and daylight speared the darkness of the hold And a stranger's hand was shaking me: we've landed, so I'm told Up the ladder into morning on a swamp-grey foreign bay Where insect-shelled colossi carried traders on their way And the trees grew wrong and wonderful, and spores hung in the light And the mountain on the skyline wore a scarf of smoke and blight The census clerk was patient with his ledger and his quill Recorded name and birthsign like the emptying of a will Then papers with an eagle seal, and irons struck away Released by the decree of one an ocean's breadth away No reason in the paperwork, no sentence and no chart Just a package for a stranger and a shove toward the start And I stood outside the office in the strangest land alive A prisoner at sunrise, and at noon, a life Landfall, and the chains are off my hands Ash on the wind of an elsewhere land Whatever I was sank with the tide Whoever I'll be is mine to decide And over the mountain, through smoke and scar Hung a crescent moon cradling a star I walked the swamp road northward past the egg-mines and the ferns Past silt-grey pools where lanternfish rehearsed their slow returns The locals eyed the outlander with courtesy and doubt Grey-skinned and red-eyed, cautious of what ships spit out And I couldn't blame their guarded looks, I couldn't name my task Just a package, and a name to find, and questions not to ask But under all the strangeness, like a bell below the sea Something in this ashen land was tolling out for me Landfall, and the chains are off my hands Ash on the wind of an elsewhere land Whatever I was sank with the tide Whoever I'll be is mine to decide And over the mountain, through smoke and scar Hung a crescent moon cradling a star They never tell the freed what the freedom's for Kings release their pieces to an unseen board Fine. I'll be a piece that learns the game Starting with the road, and a stranger's name Landfall, and the chains are off my hands Ash on the wind of an elsewhere land Whatever I was sank with the tide Whoever I'll be is mine to decide And over the mountain, through smoke and scar Hung a crescent moon cradling a star And the dream-storm voice, as I walked the sand Whispered welcome, like it planned

The package named a river town, a whitewashed maze of stairs And a greying man with sun-browned skin and precious little cares He read the seal, then read my face, then poured a bitter tea Said welcome to the quiet trade, you now report to me The empire keeps its eyes out here, the eyes need running feet Join a guild, earn honest coin, learn every crooked street Come back when you've a rank or two and callouses to show An agent no one notices is worth a legion, so Orders sealed in wax Learn the land through its cracks Ask, and remember what you hear So I ran the mages' ledgers, hauled the fighters' bounty slips Walked pilgrim roads for temple alms and guarded trader ships I learned which lords were laundering, which priests had blackmail debts Which tavern-keeper watered wine, which noble hid regrets And everywhere the same two whispers rode beneath the rest Strange dreams that crawl in from the east and steal the sleeper's rest And ashland nomads chanting of a hero come again The reborn saint, the incarnate, awaited among men Orders sealed in wax Learn the land through its cracks Ask, and remember what you hear Each report I carried back, the spymaster grew still Cross-checking dreams with cult arrests, sightlines with the hill He spread a map across the floor, weighed corners down with tea Said every nightmare's compass needle points identically The mountain. Always the mountain. The old enemy's old den The one the wall of souls was built to never breach again Then he looked at me too long, the way that handlers do Said the ashland chants describe someone remarkably like you An outlander, uncertain parents, birthsign in the chart Freed by an emperor's whimsy with a sealed decree to start Coincidence is possible The empire doesn't deal in it Orders sealed in wax Learn the land through its cracks Ask, and remember what you hear He burned his notes and poured more tea and spoke without the wry Said I won't order faith, my friend, I deal in where and why But dreams are marching westward and the wall of souls grows thin And the empire freed a prisoner whose stars say wade on in So here's your hardest errand yet, no blade required, no stealth Go out among the ashlanders and ask about yourself And whether you're the reborn saint or just a well-placed pawn Wake early. Prophecies prefer the dawn I packed at lamplight, paid my rent East, where the nightmares went

Board at the caravan platform where the great grey creature kneels A tower of patient chitin on its stilted walking wheels The driver works the nerve-cords like a harpist works her art And the whole horizon shivers as the leggy towers start Below us roll the ashlands where the dust-devils rehearse And boulders that were temples in some older, prouder verse The wind combs grey on greyer, and the road is just a scar And the strider sings us onward, under moon and star West, the mushroom towers where the wizards grow their thrones Stairless spires of gill and cap that hum in undertones South, the holy canton-city stacked like scripture on the bay Ten thousand pilgrims climbing where a living god holds sway East, the nomad wagons circling wells the maps forget Proud tents of hide and silence, keeping oaths the towns regret Every mile a stranger wonder than the last ones are And the strider sings us onward, under moon and star I've ridden roads on three coasts now, I thought I'd seen terrain But nothing shaped like this place wears the sunlight or the rain Netch like living lanterns drifting glowing over fields Racer plumes and scuttle-pots and guars in trader shields A land that shouldn't function, and functions like a hymn Strange past every question, sacred past every whim I came here as a stranger, and strangers we all are And the strider sings us onward, under moon and star But eastward now the passengers grow quiet in the sway The driver takes the long route round the mountain's smoking grey And a sleeping trader murmurs words that no one taught his tongue About a house with six proud pillars, and a dreamer's kingdom come So sing the striders westward, and sing the striders home Sing the canton bells at dusk-tide and the pilgrim roads of loam Sing a land worth every errand, worth the ash upon the air Worth defending from the dreamer who would dream it bare For I've learned to love this island like the locals love their dead Fiercely, without flattery, exactly as it's spread And whatever I turn out to be, saint or pawn or scar Let the strider sing us onward, under moon and star Platform bells, and journey's end East tomorrow, round the bend

It started in the corner-clubs, a stillness by the wall A dockhand standing hours with his back against the sprawl Eyes open, breathing slowly, and a smile not his own Reciting in a level voice a scripture no one's known The sixth house risen, says the man, the sleeping lord awake The old flame under ashes that the false ones couldn't take His wife in tears beside him with his dinner going cold And him reciting, gentle as a bedtime story told And every night the mountain leans a little nearer Sleepers in the doorways, dreamers in the lanes Something patient combing through ten thousand sleeping brains It doesn't come with armies, it doesn't come with flame It comes in on the pillow, and it calls you by your name And under every nightmare runs the same old ashen chord The dreams come from the mountain And the mountain's found its ward Then my own sleep changed its weather. First the storm, and then the voice Courteous as silver, offering a choice It praised my coming like a vintage, called me old familiar friend Said the false gods and the empire ride a lie toward its end Come up to the mountain, come and take my offered hand We'll wake the sleeping nation, sweep the strangers from the land And I woke with ash inside my mouth and dawn against the shutter And the kindness of that voice disturbed me more than any mutter And every night the mountain leans a little nearer Sleepers in the doorways, dreamers in the lanes Something patient combing through ten thousand sleeping brains It doesn't come with armies, it doesn't come with flame It comes in on the pillow, and it calls you by your name And under every nightmare runs the same old ashen chord The dreams come from the mountain And the mountain's found its ward The spymaster mapped the sleepers, drew the spiral of their spread The centre was a sea-cave shrine where smugglers feared to tread A house of bells and whispers, of statues six and proud Take torches, said the spymaster. And don't sleep in that crowd Sleepers in the doorways, dreamers in the lanes Something patient combing through ten thousand sleeping brains It doesn't come with armies, it doesn't come with flame It comes in on the pillow, and it calls you by your name And under every nightmare runs the same old ashen chord The dreams come from the mountain And the mountain's found its ward We lit the cave at midnight, blades and prayer And the bells of the sixth house were waiting there

The curse became the key The blight became the door What was sent to end me Made me something more The priest was waiting in the shrine below the bells and brine Half his face a garden of the mountain's new design He blessed me with a raking hand before my blade came due Said carry home our master's gift, he's generous to you Three days later came the fever, then the map beneath my skin The healers backed away from me before they'd well begun Corprus, said the oldest one, and named it while she wept The divine disease. Incurable. The mountain's promise kept The curse became the key The blight became the door What was sent to end me Made me something more But the spymaster burned his ciphers and he called in his last debt A wizard old as dynasties who hadn't given up yet A tower wrought of bronze and pride, four daughters, and a vault Where the corprus-changed were sheltered, treated kindly for the fault He studied me like scripture, brewed a cure of last resort Said this will kill the madness or kill you, be a sport I drank it down at moonrise with my heartbeat like a drum And the fever broke by morning. And the change stayed. And then some The curse became the key The blight became the door What was sent to end me Made me something more No blight can touch me now, no plague, no creeping age The disease keeps what it changes, I'm a walking turned page And the wizard laughed his dry old laugh and spoke to his own shelf The prophecy wants an incarnate immune. Well. Look at yourself The curse became the key The blight became the door What was sent to end me Made me something more The mountain sent its finest arrow And fletched the one it feared

The riddle named a valley where the statues face the east A door that keeps no keyhole and admits no man or beast Until the dusk moon crested and the stone unsealed its seam And I stepped into a stillness like the inside of a dream A cavern hung with crystal light, and standing in the glow The dead of centuries waiting in a patient double row Warriors, poets, wanderers, each one had heard the call Each one had worn the question. And the question broke them all One spoke: I raised an army, and the army raised my grave One spoke: I mastered every blade, and died upon a stave One spoke: I memorised the lore and starved among my scrolls Failed, said each, and yet we wait, the patientest of souls And in the cavern's centre, on a plinth of dusk-lit stone A lady woven out of twilight, neither flesh nor bone Outlander. Uncertain child of an uncertain star Come closer. Do you know what these before you are Moon-and-star, the ring the hero wore Forged to know its bearer to the core On the true hand, covenant and crown On the false hand, it strikes the liar down And the failed ones watched me weigh my life against a band of light Prophecy is a mirror, little flame. Now look into it. Right I asked her, am I truly him, the hero come again Or just a well-placed stranger in a well-worn story's pen The failed were not impostors. They were answers come too soon The mirror does not flatter, and it does not grant the boon It shows the one who's looking. What they do decides the rest Wear it, or refuse it. Both are honest. Choose your test And the ghosts leaned in like winter trees when snow's about to fall And I took the ring of moon-and-star before the eyes of all Moon-and-star, the ring the hero wore Forged to know its bearer to the core On the true hand, covenant and crown On the false hand, it strikes the liar down One breath, two breaths, and the cavern held its light And the ring lay quiet on my hand. And burned benign. And bright Hail, incarnate. Or hail, the one who chose to be The mountain will not care which. But you might. Remember me And the failed ones bowed like grasses, and their waiting fell away Free at last, their question answered by an outlander's bright day I walked out under morning with the moon still in the blue One ring, one road, one mirror. And the face it showed was new

First the wagons of the wastes, four tribes of oath and ash The wise women read my wrists and stars, the champions talked in clash One camp demanded single combat, honour's oldest door I gave their champion back his blade and helped him off the floor One camp demanded cunning, riddles older than their wells One demanded pilgrimage to where their first mother dwells And tent by tent and test by test, beneath the ashen light The nomads named me theirs, and drummed the naming through the night Hortator, war-leader, one name on every horn Carry it like water through a land of ash and thorn Then the councilled houses, silk and stone and scheme The warrior house demanded I out-duel their rising dream Blade to blade at sunrise on a tower open wide And afterward he clasped my arm with something close to pride The merchant house wrote ledgers of the risks my naming cost I paid in favours, futures, and a smuggling ring they'd lost And the wizards in their mushroom spires barely looked around Said kill the mad one blocking us, or argue him aground Hortator, war-leader, one name on every horn Carry it like water through a land of ash and thorn I argued him aground, for once, the old worm liked the sport He named me with a shrug that shook his centuries of court And so by tent and tower, by duel, debt and creed Seven seals upon one title, prophecy agreed But titles paint a target in a land of jealous thrones For the temple's living gods have laws for heroes' bones Naming a new hortator wakes an old and buried fear And a summons came from holy town: the poet-god will hear Seven names. One bearer The mirror gathers faces And the mountain counts them too Hortator, war-leader, one name on every horn Carry it like water through a land of ash and thorn They warned me at the canton gates: the god you'll meet is strange A poet armoured in his myths, too old to want to change He's ordered heroes murdered for a rumour of your name Now he asks you up his tower. Go. But go aflame So I climbed the holy city with the ring against my skin Past murals of a battle that his scripture says he'd win And found not wrath but weariness upon the waiting throne A god with a confession, asking not to make it alone Doors of gold swung shut behind And the poet-god unwound his mind

The chamber held no courtiers, no censers and no choir Just a being sat cross-legged in a robe of fading fire Half his face was midnight, half was gold that once was dawn And he spoke before I'd bowed to him: don't kneel. The kneeling's done You've come to hear the sermon that the temple never gives The one beneath the murals, where the honest version lives Sit, hortator, incarnate, whichever name is true For the story of my godhood is the story owed to you And that is what we did beneath the mountain We were counsellors, we three, to the finest lord alive The saint whose ring you're wearing, in whose shadow houses thrived There was war upon the mountain, and beneath it we all found A dead god's heart still beating in the deepest of the ground And our friend, your former self perhaps, forbade us every one Swear to me, he said, this power stays untouched, undone He died before that evening's end. The record's kind to us The record's ours. We wrote it. Note the craftsmanship. And thus That is what we did beneath the mountain We touched the heart. We drank the god. We rose as gods ourselves And we jailed the one companion who'd refused us for the shelves Your enemy, the dreamer, understand what makes him worst Of the four who stood at that forbidden heart, he touched it first But he touched it out of loyalty, to hold it for our lord And we cut him down as heresy and called it our accord Three thousand years of temple bells upon a broken oath We built a faith, we built a nation. And we built on murder, both That is what we did beneath the mountain And now the stolen fountain fails, our fingers lose the sun My siblings-in-divinity retreat to what they've done While he beneath the mountain, fed by the heart we share Grows stronger as we weaken, and dreams the land his heir So here: the dwarven gauntlet that lets mortal hands come near And the map to the two tools that broke a god-heart's harnessed sphere I cannot go. My going ends me faster than my stay Go do what we could never. Go undo us all. And pray For that is what we did beneath the mountain I asked him, when it's over, when the heart no longer beats What happens to a poet-god of half-remembered feats He smiled the tiredest smile I've seen on mortal or divine Said I become a hymn, perhaps. See that the tune is fine I left him writing in the dusk, at peace with his decline Gauntlet on my saddle, and his sins ahead of mine

I gathered up the hammer from a tomb of trapping stone And the blade that sings unmaking from a bandit-king's old throne I wrote three letters slowly that I hoped would not be read To the spymaster, the wizard, and a silver ghost ahead Then rode the last road eastward where the pilgrim traffic dies To the wall that walks the ridgelines with a light like watching eyes A fence of woven spirits, every family's honoured dead Volunteered across the centuries to hold the blight instead And the wall sang low as I approached alone The ghostfence burning silver on the shoulders of the land Ten thousand generations holding hand to spirit hand They gave their rest to be a wall, they gave their names to light So the living could keep living just outside the reach of night And the gate spun wide before me like a verdict finally read Go with our blessing, incarnate, said the nation of the dead We have held him for an age, and we can hold him one day more Finish it, and let us sleep. And the storm behind the door Inside the fence the world forgets what colour ever meant Ash above, ash under, ash the only element Blighted beasts with weeping hides came howling down the scree And the ring burned bright, and the frame held true, and none of them held me Up the mountain's broken shoulder where the dwarves once built their pride A citadel of brass and silence, doors a legion wide And past its sleeping wardens, down its stairways without end The heartbeat of the world grew loud. And with it, mine, my friend And the mountain sang low as I walked alone The ghostfence burning silver on the shoulders of the land Ten thousand generations holding hand to spirit hand They gave their rest to be a wall, they gave their names to light So the living could keep living just outside the reach of night And the gate spun wide before me like a verdict finally read Go with our blessing, incarnate, said the nation of the dead We have held him for an age, and we can hold him one day more Finish it, and let us sleep. And the storm behind the door At the last door in the deep I checked my gear the soldier's way Gauntlet, hammer, singing blade, and words I'd never say And from beyond the door, that courteous voice of dream and smoke Said come in, old friend, be welcome. And the mountain spoke The ghostfence burning silver on the shoulders of the land Ten thousand generations holding hand to spirit hand They gave their rest to be a wall, they gave their names to light So the living could keep living just outside the reach of night And the gate spun wide before me like a verdict finally read Go with our blessing, incarnate, said the nation of the dead We have held him for an age, and we can hold him one day more Finish it, and let us sleep. And the storm behind the door One door left, and one heartbeat's floor Old friend, he said once more

The chamber was a furnace-hall a legend deep and wide And there, in chains of dwarven craft, against the mountainside The heart of the dead world-god hung, a sun of muscled flame Each beat a tide through bedrock, each beat a whispered name And beside it stood the dreamer, golden mask and easy stance Like a host at his own wedding, like a partner at a dance Welcome home, he said, old comrade, I have watched your every mile Come stand beside the heart with me and reminisce a while The heart of the world in a cage of brass Every lie in the land drinks power as it beats He kept the faith the way a wound keeps glass Sincere, and deep, and wrong Two hands were made to hold this song And one must let it go He asked me, was I truly him, the friend he once obeyed I said, does it matter, if the debt still must be paid He asked, would I not rather build the nation of his dream Sweep the empire seaward, wake the sleepers' golden scheme I said your sleepers do not wake, they hollow and recite You'd free the land by dreaming it, and dream it dead of light He sighed behind the golden mask, sincere as falling rain Said then you are him after all. He always was a pain The heart of the world in a cage of brass Every lie in the land drinks power as it beats He kept the faith the way a wound keeps glass Sincere, and deep, and wrong Two hands were made to hold this song And one must let it go And for a breath we stood there, no god, no saint, no sword Two survivors of a broken oath before their buried lord He said, I only ever loved this land. I said, I know That's the tragedy, old friend. It's also why you have to go Gauntlet to the hammer, hammer to the tuning blade Blade against the beating sun that every falsehood made He threw his storm against me and the ring burned like a vow And the dead god's heart, struck true, forgot its now The heart of the world slipped its cage of brass Every stolen godhood guttering as it fades He kept the faith the way a wound keeps glass Sincere, and deep, and gone Two hands were made to hold this song And mine has let it go The mountain groaned and settled, and the fire chamber dimmed And the dreamer and the heartbeat both went hymn

I climbed out of the mountain as the storms unlearned their spin The red haze thinning westward with nowhere to begin And down along the ridgelines, with a sound like long-held breath The silver fence unravelled as the land released its death Ten thousand generations rose like morning off a stream Homeward to their family tombs, at last allowed to dream And in the towns below me, in a hundred lamp-lit rooms The sleepers woke as their own selves, like gardens out of tombs The temple rang its questions and the poet-god replied With honesty, at long last, and the murals set aside Three gods becoming mortal with three thousand years to own He writes now, so they tell me, the best verses he has known The wizard sent a dry note: still immune, I trust. Well kept The spymaster sent nothing, which means somewhere, spies him wept And the nomads drummed my title round their fires in the waste And I rode the strider westward with the ash wind's cleaner taste And she came to me at dusk-fall where the road forgets its name The lady wove of twilight, with her stars and quiet flame She said the deed is finished and the land begins again And whether you were always him is ink for temple pen The mirror never flattered you. It never had to lie You looked, and chose, and carried it, incarnate So what does a fulfilled one do the morning after myth I think I'll learn this island that I bled for, and forthwith Walk its pilgrim roads unhurried, mend the wounds the blight has made Stand godfather to harvests, watch the mushroom towers trade Perhaps the hero's spirit rode within me all along Perhaps a well-placed stranger simply chose to right a wrong The failed ones in the cavern knew, the goddess knows it too The prophecy's a mirror. And the face I wear is new And she came to me at dusk-fall where the road forgets its name The lady wove of twilight, with her stars and quiet flame She said the deed is finished and the land begins again And whether you were always him is ink for temple pen The mirror never flattered you. It never had to lie You looked, and chose, and carried it, incarnate I keep the ring. It's quiet now, a moon around a star A covenant with no one but the person that you are And some nights on the balconies, when both moons ride the blue I swear the land breathes easier. I swear I breathe it too And she came to me at dusk-fall where the road forgets its name The lady wove of twilight, with her stars and quiet flame She said the deed is finished and the land begins again And whether you were always him is ink for temple pen The mirror never flattered you. It never had to lie You looked, and chose, and carried it, incarnate A prisoner woke on a boat one dawn, unwritten and unknown And woke again on a mountain, every waking his own