Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,376

to where roots grew together

Of mountain-chains, ancient and scarred by the weather.

Whence a lightning-flash brighter than day

Lit up a vista that to Spring’s dismay

Was not what she’d hoped for. A fell prison

In place of the Fastness had risen.

Like a proud warrior, who, taken in fight,

Swarmed under by foes and reduced to the plight

Of a captive, with collar and chain,

His courage and beauty made perfectly vain,

The Fastness of Egdod, bright ornament there

In the deeps of the Knot and the turbulent air

Had been ruined. Not by breaking it down,

But despoiling its nature, lashing it round

With crude shackles. Bright airy Towers

Now lidded with iron, ’neath which gardens of flowers

Spring had once put there to make a fair park

Must be dead, brown petals, seeking light, finding dark.

Heavy upon the grim prison’s front gate

Sign of El’s victory and seal ’pon the fate

Of him captive, depended a lock

There to stay. There to mock

Any who came to this pass armed with hope.

There to mock Spring, if she thought she could open

That door. In old times El’s captive, when Adam and Eve

Were growing inside her, then suffered to leave

Without her two children, Spring understood better

Than anyone how strict were those fetters.

How fell the enchantments such that only one key,

Precious trophy of El, could ever set Egdod free.

Horror drove Spring from that place once so fair,

Now so abominable. Sparks pervaded her hair

As she recklessly fled, borne on storm’s wings,

Her only thought vengeance against the bright King

And to peel from the Usurper’s dead hand

The key that would set Egdod free in the land.

Halfway down, though, Spring encountered a bard

The Autochthons had sent off riding toward

Parts of the Land where descendants of Eve

Therefore of Spring herself, given leave

To exist round the Land’s wild rim,

Egdod remembered, still hoped for him

One day to return, the Fall to undo,

El to throw down, rulership true

To establish, peace with all folk

If they wanted it, once free from El’s yoke.

The grim charge of this minstrel being to spread

In such reaches the news that, though he was not dead,

Egdod might just as well be. News she told first

To Spring, when, telling the tale, she saved worst

For last: that Lord El in his spite

Had hurled the one key down into the night

Deep and eternal of chaos, from which fate

Naught returned. Spring was too late.

Too feeble for Spring’s grief were tears.

She went mad, and stayed mad for years.

Raged over the Knot-lands and country around,

To pinnacles lofty and chasms profound.

Spurned likewise that body in which she had dwelled

And roamed everywhere. It would never be held

In the arms of her lover, so could not please

Her, hadn’t in it her anguish to ease.

Shaped herself after, came one with the Storm,

Whose energies can’t be confined to one form,

But rampantly lash out and whirl and stray

As they burgeon and propagate every which way.

When air, Spring was lightning, making night into day

As her bright tendrils out from her aura would stray.

When water, a cataract, sundering hills

And emptying rivers that Pluto had filled.

When earth, Spring was adamant, throwing up walls

Traps and hazards, El’s troops to appall.

When fire, a forge, smelting stones into steel

To arm vengeant legions that in time she’d reveal.

For the greatest by far of all of Spring’s powers

Was to make life: not just birds, bees, and flowers,

But as well dreadful beasts armed with talon and horn

Who, when they mated, could make more to be born

And so on and so forth: which explained why El hated

Her, and all of her progeny, and never abated

His strife against Adam and Eve, and all of the Sprung

In so many battles of which stories are sung.

The task that Spring set herself, mad though she was,

Was to retake the Land and kill El. And because

El had warriors, she needed ones stronger,

More vicious, more swift, standing tall, marching longer.

And so in the depths of the wilderness fort

Spring set to work making beasts of a sort

So terrible . . .

“Hang on,” said Lyne. “Have you, Weaver, given any consideration to the effect that you are having on morale?”

“It’s okay,” said Weaver. “Eve shows up. Calms Spring down before things go too far. You’ll see.” And she drew breath to continue the stanza, but then she was interrupted again, this time by Pick.

“Are you that bard, Weaver?” he asked. “The one who encountered Spring in the wilderness and gave her the news that drove her mad?”

“I believe so,” said Weaver, and looked to Edda, who nodded to confirm it. “Since then I have passed on several times, and in my mind the distinction is not always perfectly clear between what I saw with my