In return
The Gods teach us compassion, teach us mercy
That compensation. Sometimes they succeed,
For I have felt the hot spit of injustice
Turn through those too weak to fight their brothers
For sustenance or love, and in that feeling
The pain lulled and diminished to a glow,
I pitied as you pitied me, and in that
Rose above the weakest of the litter.
You, my brother, in your thoughtless grace,
That special world in which the sword arm spins
The wild arm of ambition and the eye
Gives flawless guidance to the flawless hand,
You cannot follow me, cannot observe
The landscape of cracked mirrors in the soul,
The aching hollowness in sleight of hand.
And yet you love me, simple as the rush
And balance of our blindly mingled blood,
Or as a hot sword aching through the snow.
It is the mutual need that puzzles you,
The deep complexity lodged in the veins.
Wild in the dance of battle, when you stand,
A shield before your brother, it is then
Your nourishment arises from the heart
Of all my weakness.
When I am gone,
Where will you find the fullness of your blood?
Backed in the heart’s loud tunnels?
I have heard
The Queen’s soft lullaby, Her serenade
And call to battle mingling in the night;
This music calls me to my quiet throne
Deep in Her senseless kingdom.
Dragonlords
Thought to bring the darkness into light,
Corrupt it with the mornings and the moons—
In balance is all purity destroyed,
But in voluptuous darkness lies the truth,
The final, graceful dance.
But not for you.
You cannot follow me into the night,
Into the maze of sweetness. For you stand
Cradled by the sun, in solid lands,
Expecting nothing, having lost your way
Before the road became unspeakable
It is beyond explaining, and the words
Will make you stumble. Tanis is your friend,
My little orphan, and he will explain
Those things he glimpsed in the shadow’s path,
For he knew Kitiara and the shine
Of the dark moon on her darkest hair,
And yet he cannot threaten, for the night
Breathes in a moist wind upon my waiting face.