The Magic of Krynn

II

Riverwind, borrowed from night, grew as the eyes of the People, reading the air, the descending wind, the back of his mind a prophet, a jackal, while the cry of the leopard, unheard by the People except at the place where the world falls over, choired at the back of his head. And his hand, with the grace of the falconer's hand or the falcon herself, unjessed in the diving air, was the hand of the People, the left hand, the off-hand, the hand that steadies the bow. And so it would be, my sons and fathers, until the night of the dancing moons when the sky to the east was silver and black, red the sky in the westland falling, the night when we bring forth the daughters.

Robed in the friends of the people, robed in eland, robed in the fox, in the falcon's high feathers ten winters counting, came forth the daughter of chieftains, the daughter unwed to man or to sorrow, unwed to the things she could not be.

Grace of the fathers dove through her veins like a wind that the world obeyed. Heart of the hunter she was at the heart of the wandering, gold of the eyes imagining gold of the moon descended her naming night, and Riverwind knew that the journey, the truce with horizons, was ending in light and the promise of light. And holy the days he drew near her, holy the air that carried his songs of endearment, the country behind him a song like a choir of bees at the edge of hearing, telling him here is great sweetness here is pain and you will have to learn about this. And seven the summers in which she eluded him, winters in which the cold and the country collapsed on the words Chieftain's Daughter .

The halved heart of the eland steamed from the spinning ground below him and Old Man, Grandfather, Wanderer, reader of skies, reading the face of the boy arising out of the face of the man, as the binding of moons on his naming night, repeating the words like a charm, like a warding, Chieftain's Daughter , the old enduring story of love and of distance, of the borders at which the heart bows down. But the eyes of Wanderer never the lone eyes watching as these things came to pass, in the eyes of the daughter the leopard's eye reflected upon reflection, until it mirrors itself into forever like the thoughts of a long hall never the lone eyes watching, and the eyes of Goldmoon for the Chieftain looked on at the dance of the eyes and whispers, looked on from the place of judgment deciding this could not be, and he set for River-wind three tasks unapproachable, saying Pay court to my daughter only when you can return to my hearthside bearing the moon in your hands, the stars on a dying blanket, and when you can come from the east, bearing the crystal staff, the arm of the gods in forgotten country, the source of the magics. And Wanderer hearing this heard the NO and again the NO at the heart of the words, and knew that the magic was fractured light, the light at the heart of a crystal, bending and bending upon itself, forever becoming nothing. Knew that the magic was fractured light when Riverwind spread his cloak on the dew, when the waters gathered, spangling stars, and the hunter cupped water alight in the palms of his hands, and returned to the Chieftain, bearing the moon in his hands, the stars trapped on a dying blanket. And the third task then was the terrible one, for the others were easy, were riddles set before children set before huntsmen set before those whom the Chieftain could never remember, and the heart and the mind of Wanderer bent like the light of the one true crystal, turning to words and to whispers, to the counsel that Riverwind heard that night at the brink of the journey, and traveling eastward under the reeling moons toward the source of the light in the heart of the Staff, again that night was his naming night.