Tale of Dayelin
Date: 97-03-19 20:07:57 EST
I.
Can you see how the pieces fit together? Not just the visible ones, like the towers of sunset, but those unseen, like the heart of a man or the soul of a wizard.
Not that you will necessarily believe. Patterns work that way, for each individual is captured by their own patterns, even as they must reconcile them.
The lady named Sand, if indeed if that is her only name, sees all the patterns, yet for all she sees and says, for all the truth in history, both logic and reason fail. Logic indeed is a frail structure to hold a reality that must encompass both order and chaos.
Even logic must fall to understanding, to those few who can laugh at their own chains and shatter chaos and upend order, even more so than the so-called Gods and those who call upon them. Or the Fury that has followed the Tanu to this place.
Has there been a god in Coriliane? Did the Tanu once fall upon Mt. Kolvir, and were the ones who truely named it? How true is History? The patterns supply no answers, but any story must start somewhere, even if it's beginning seems like the ending of another tale, or the middle of a third epic. And patterns never tell the whole story, the Masters of Flux and Anchor notwithstanding.
As for towers of sunset, the home of the lost Tanu...
Though this child, this musician, this caller of Gods, has seen them- the towers of sunset- rearing above the needle peaks of the north, who has dwelt there?
Another look and they are no more, just towering clouds, strafing the foothills with the lashes of the gods. In the golden light of this morning, the winter's rivulets of ice would verify the anger of...
But Dayelin does not see any more than the Lady Sand and her Husband that he goes forth to meet for the first time. Patterns are after all, just patterns.
What does a house tell of it's builder? A sword of it's owner? Or of those who stop to admire the lines of each?
The musician smiles briefly. That is all he can do. That, and bring to music what his eyes have seen, for he will sing to the Queen of Coriliane about the towers of the sunset.
Who else looks to the towers? Who, if anyone built them? The Tanu? The musicians knows no such answers except those of his music, his craft, his tools of Making... and his heart. And those things colder than the strings of the guitar he carries with him.
Suffice it to say the Castle is Tilaine
II.
"I have set things in motion. He will be prepared when the time comes."
"If I call correctly, it was that same dependence on long term planning that failed us the last time."
"By the Principals! We're not talking about arms." The speaker jabbed a finger in the face of his companion, and then skyward, his face smiling. "We're talking about love."
"What does that have to do with the Fury?"
"I have sent Dayelin to Tilaine, such alliteration, does it not sound pretty? Dayelin to Tilaine?"
"But... how? The Realm is beyond us now."
"Ha! The gods are not the only ones with a few tricks. Brede is not the only thing of an age gone by."
"For what purpose?"
"To see that the education goes properly, that he will not be unprepared."
"And the love you spoke of?"
"To ensure the teacher remains near the pupil."
"She has a mate, I do believe."
"We have time, the man is not eternal."
"But how much time if the Fury already is on the move?"
For once the first speaker had no reply.
III.
The guitarist strums an ordered cadence, almost a march, so precise are the notes, so clear the tones. He does not sing.
A single look, underlined with a brief flare of light from the stone seat on the left, the one upholstered with a gold cushion stops the guitarist. "Your pardon, your highness." His voice is as musical as the strings he plays, evoking a sense of dusky summer that has yet to come this year to Corilaine.
The King reaching out to take the hand of the woman beside him, "Perhaps you should consider a trip to the south, or if you could manage a disguise, to Menius. There they might welcome such solemn tones."
"Perhaps I should, if that is your wish." His eyes darken ever so slightly as he looks toward the boy.
In turn, the blonde toddler hanging on to the arm of his red cushioned chair of his mother glances to the silver-haired musician, to his Mother and Father, and then back again.
The woman stares at the musician's eyes, her look unnoticed by her husband. It's a measuring look, as if weighing and balancing the substance of his being. Her features soften for just an instant.
The musician catches the look, and holds it in his heart. Not now, it says to him, nor tomorrow.. but not forever. All things in their time, that is something the Sidhe understand.
In the interm, she grasps her husbands hand tighter, and looks to his face searchingly. Looking for urgently for something.
The King of Corilaine sees his wife's face, and perhaps not completely understanding, he does at least do one thing to break the uncomfortable pause.
"Play a song of summer, Master Dayelin," he commands.
She nods in approval.
"As you wish, Sire."
As the notes cascade from the strings of the guitar, an unseen fire lifts the chill from the stone walls of the room, and even the slender guitarist's breath no longer steams in the dim afternoon of the Corilainian winter.
The toddler see the notes as they climb from the strings into the air, and he lets go of the stone support of Sand's chair, and clutches at a single fragment as it passes beyond his grasp.
Neither the King or the Queen remark upon the child's sudden drop to the red rug covered granite beside the chair he has released. Nor do they notice the glimmer of gold he clutches within his pink fingers and how he turns to see the light it bears.
The musician notices.
Nor do the King and Queen see the wetness in the child's eyes when the gold dissipates from within his grasp as he watches.
His jaw set, the chubby-legged child struggles upright untill he stands next to the smaller chair that is his, his hands reaching out once more toward the magic that is behind the making in the sounds that he both sees and hears.
But the song of summer has come to an end, with tears unshed in the eyes of the guitarist.
Beyond the great stone walls, the wind howls, and the snow continues to fall.
--End--