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