Magi'i of Cyador

XLI

LORN FOLDS THE heavy winter tunic and lays it on the bed next to the other uniforms he has folded before he will pack them in his kit bags.

As he lifts an undertunic, he catches a flash of greenish light and picks up the silver-covered volume. He flips through the pages he has not read recently. Had the ancient writer written aught about duty changes from a bad outpost to a worse one? His lips quirk as another question surfaces. Why is there no poetry written in Cyad? Lorn frowns. He cannot remember ever seeing a written poem before Ryalth-yet he had known what the verse had been. He stops at the one verse that catches his eye and reads softly, aloud, if barely.

Do not ask me which carillon has rung

or if the Forest’s silent god has sung.

Best you watch white granite towers,

raised in pride, doze in the dusky sun

until the altered green-bloody rivers run

down to the coming night where chaos cowers.

Wondering how and why chaos could cower, Lorn still winces at the images, and riffles through the unmarked pages until he comes to a short verse standing by itself-about smiles. Perhaps …

He reads.

Smiles are so fragile,

like images on the pond of being,

reflections only made possible

by the black depths beneath.

What had been written is not exactly a poem, he reflects. Still … do not smiles hide depths no one wishes to see?

Poetry will not help with the Accursed Forest, nor speed him to Cyad and Ryalth. He closes the book, and slips it into the bag between his smallclothes.