Rodzher Mur - The Reign of Istar

The reign of Istar

Edited by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Six Songs For the Temple of Istar

Michael Williams

Astralas, called into song
by the fluted god
Branchala of the leaves,
called when I haunted
the woods of Silvanost,
two thousand and sixty years
since the signing of scrolls,
since the sheathing of armies.

O when the god called me,
the twin moons crossed
on the prow of my ship,
and the ocean was red on silver,
encircling light
upon inarticulate light
from the settled darkness
rushing, awaiting my song.

And O when the god called me,
this was my singing,
my prophecy compelled
in a visitation of wind.

The language of wind
is one tongue only,
pronounced in the movement
of cloud and water,
voiced in the rattle of leaves
in the breath between waiting
and memory, it stalks
elusive as light and promise.

The language of wind
is the vanishing year
preserved in recollection,
and always it yearns
for a season the heart
might have been in its wild anointing.
And the wind is always your heartbeat,
is breathing remote
as the impassive stars,
and it moves from arrival to leaving,
leaving you one song only:

Oh, that was the language of wind,
you say, and what does it mean
To the leaves and the water,
always, what does it mean?

So it found me the first time
at the banks of Thon-Thalas,
at the last edge of river,
after the ministries
of inkwell and tutor,
after the damaged heirloom of days,
when the long thoughts burrow
and the childhood dances
on dark effacements of memory,
losing the self in the dance.
I remembered too much,
unabled for the sword and buckler,
for spellbook and moon,
for altar and incense,
for the birds veiled grammar
and the seasons alembic,
and always the river
was telling me telling me
Come, Astralas, come to the waters:
I am the last home, it was saying,
The refuge of dreams
And the sleep of reason.
Come to midcurrent, Astralas.
I shall carry you past your failures.
Come to midcurrent and open your arms
As you fall into spindrift,
To movement, to light on the water,
To water itself, enraptured and lost
As the whole world vanishes.

And always the river
spoke like this, always the dark current
lulling the heart and the mind
into that undertow
where the homelands shift
behind you and fade,
and you think they have vanished
in the necessity of rivers,
in the battlements of forest,
so that if you return
to recover your path
you are lost in the maze
of leaf and inevitable current,
of fore and aft,
of the homelands always receding.

So spoke the river,
and darkly I hearkened,
suspended in darkness,
in the hearts surrender.

A boat for the passage
I began to fashion,
hides stripped in the lime pits
sealed with tallow
and stitched by the tendon of flax
as the awl and the needle
passed through and over
the supple and skeletal wood.

The sails bellied forth
in carnivorous winds,
and in dark, in surrender,
the ship moved rudderless,
launched on insensible currents,
borne to the South
where the Courrain covers
the edge of the world.
And borne to the South
I lay on the deck,
and the boat was a cradle, a brides bed,
a gray catafalque carried into the night,
it was strong wine and medicine,
sleep past remembrance
and past restoration,
and as I lay down
in the veinwork of halyards
I decided to rise up no longer.
And the date of my
death was my embarkation.

Something there is
in the rudderless sailing,
abandoning hope
as the husk of desire,
architectures of boat and body
coalesce with the water
and the disburdening wind.
In the south, the sails filled with words
and the boat took wing
above the denial of waters.
Softly the wind spoke
under the pulse of the sails:

Come, Astralas, ride into prophecy:
I am the breath of a God,