by Jeremy Marr
Christina DeBold
Or so I’ve been told,
Is the one God who loves us the best.
She had the world at her feet,
But then she took a seat,
And hugged all the land to her breast.
There she has stayed,
Since the day she was made,
And she loves it, so try not to cry.
Our lives we would lose
If Christina did choose
To unhug us and let us all fly.
Gravi-tee is her gift,
For without it we’d lift
Along with all things great and tiny.
That hug keeps us bound,
That’s the reason, I’ve found,
When you trip, you soon land on your hinny.
(The beat tempo rise slightly)
Bal’Derick Kessela’s small stocky frame
Bent down with ease and grace
HE dug HER a crater fifty leagues,
For MOM to wash HER face.
The dirt He dug went not to waste,
HE threw it with his hand.
Great mounds and hills He did create
Con – tor – ing His land.
Great thorny bushes
HE made next,
Then added stocks of grasses.
HIS throne he placed
Under all this
With hollow downward passes,
Hollow downward passes.
Tuskin Veemara gazed upon His part –
Its weakness made Him moan.
On His knees, He punched the dirt
And turned it into stone.
He grabbed the stone
And pulled it up
Each mountain He made higher.
He shaped them
As a stone tooth cloak
Protecting His home’s spire.
Protecting His home’s spire.
His land, like He, was now rock tough
He was the first stonemason
And as His gift, His white caps melt
To fill His mother’s basin,
Fill His mother’s basin.
Everon Ferlaymin, tall and thin,
Moved like a re – leased bow string.
The God could laugh, the God could dance
But God help Him – mim to sing!
Ha-ha-ha—ho-ho-ho and a
Fidder-fadder-pidder-padder-bay
Tra-ha-ha—see-sigh-say and a
Golly heck ain’t life gay?
He squatted down,
Cupped hands on dirt
And sang “The Song of First Birth”
Then He jumped back
Arms crossed on chest,
A’ watching His first tree’s girth.
The Mother Tree gave birth to more
And soon a forest be–came
He added birds and animals
And these He let His mom name.
And these He let His mom name.
Oak trees, redwood, pine and fir;
With maple, figs and spruces.
Chipmunks, woodchucks, squirrels and rabbits
Eagles, hawks and gooses.
All the creatures
Great and small
To make them, He made his choir.
And when His mom
Did name them all,
He started making HER more.
Started making HER more.
(Music now becomes dark, sinister and slow)
Sinasin Toyvoe,
Thin and stickly.
Ghost white skin
Made Death feel sickly.
Bad attitude?
When it was not hard and prickly.
Not friendly,
Made solitude and quickly.
(Drums become deep bass and guitar light and fluffy)
She took most of Eastland
By decree
From the lake side
To the sea
Made it swampy
Just like She
In it monsters
She set free.
As Her gift
She guards the door
From lake beaches
To the shore
She is so deadly
To the core,
So of Her
I’ll say no more.
In the pause between one verse and the next, Brystal Silverhand, Gleeman extraordinaire, got a very sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Brystal knew that feeling very well, probably better than anyone alive. Somewhere to the West, magic was being used, and from the distance from which it was felt, a lot of it was in play. His hands and feet kept producing the music that held the crowd like a poisonous snake he had once seen almost become hypnotized by a man playing a lute for coin in the mostly human populated city of Caverndose, a fair distance to the West and South of where he was now in Bek’noni.
Silverhand used one of the oldest spells known to him and partitioned off two small amounts of his mind. One to monitor the wild display of magic to the West, and then another to comb through his memory in hopes of finding anything out about the magic itself. He could not recall off the cusp what base of magic it was, and that was troubling him. He had always thought of himself as an expert on the subject.
“You don’t live as long as I and work your trade as long as I and not become an expert in the field,” his latest book of memoirs, “The Dissipation of Magic”, began. Over the last few centuries, the number of those with the natural born innate qualities to use the residual flows of energy, used when the world was first created, has been dwindling. The energy, over the last four hundred and twenty-seven years, has remained constant. Of this, he was sure. The exact reason fewer and fewer beings could call upon the flows greatly baffled him. Though he thought he knew every combination of the basic five Groups of Flows, and being one of the only masters of all, the fact that the feeling in his stomach was one that, for all his many years alive, he could not put to words as any spell he recognized, unnerved him. It was actually frightening. “Better play it safe,” he thought. As anxious as he was to find the answers, he slowed the part of him that was combing his knowledge, just for the added comfort of making certain that if he had ever heard, or read of it, he would find it without question the first time around his mental storeroom.
With him confident that the magic being used was stationary, he continued his performance, adding a little more fun and fanfare to the music and words. If for nothing else then to make himself look as though nothing was wrong.
Gullisen Jentry,
Barbaric God,
Seven foot tall, if an inch,
With muscles a’ plenty
A heavenly body,
So brave He knew not how to flinch.
He pointed His arm
Towards the North and the West
Where the water had froze into ice.
He winked, God the charm
Then said, “Truly, I jest?
Nay, the harshest of life will suffice.”
(The music calms down and sounds more like a love ballot)
His kind heart keeps Him warm there,
To Him it’s the norm there
His ice castle did form there
Where there’s always a storm there
(The music picks back up to the same tempo as before)
As His gift,
His cold winds blow
For the five
Sea-sons to know
That the time for their change
Has drawn near,
From Spiring to Seednier
To Sumner and Faltumn,
With Wanter to conclude the year.
The sick feeling in his stomach, without any kind of warning, multiplied to such an extent that his legs buckled and his hands cramped up. He found himself with just enough time to lay his twelve-string flat on his lap before he involuntarily doubled over it. He used every ounce of self-control he possessed to squash the urge to empty his stomach right then and there.
Thunde
r could be heard rumbling from the West, an extension of the storm he felt brewing from within him. It was the cause of the nausea sweeping through his guts, and he just realized that it had just jumped forward at least half the distance that was separating him from the unknown magic source when he first sensed it.
One of the serving girls, who had been delivering more of the constantly flowing rounds of ale and rum, heard the music as it suddenly stopped and looked over in time to see Brystal double over. She, as well as a number of spectators in the audience, gasped in surprise. She dropped her serving try on the closest table to her and jolted over to the now trembling musician. Putting her face close to his, she could not only see the many beads of perspiration forming on the man’s forehead, but she was able to see just how bad of a condition he truly was in.
“Are you OK, sir?” she asked while producing a clean rag from the inside of her left sleeve. As the woman brought the rag up to wipe his brow, a trembling hand shot off the instrument and clutched her forearm with such speed and surprising strength, the girl let out a little squeak of fright.
“Mikel,” Brystal forced out with all his might, thought it sounded more like almost a whisper. With his throat clenched almost as tight as his jaw, he did not have the energy to increase the volume. At this point, he was not even sure he could repeat the two-syllable name again without losing control of his body and the urge to sick up. He did not release his one-step-below-a-death-grip on her arm until he saw recognition in her eyes and knew that she knew that he wanted her to go get Mikel Bourque, the Barbarian owner of the Bladed Hammer. He did not know what his friend would be able to do other then just get him out of the common room. That in itself would be enough, he reasoned. He needed to go somewhere quieter, somewhere where he would be able to think and not have everyone staring at him as if he was dying right in front of him or her. He had many things to go over and try to reason out, and the storm he felt was on the top of the list. He saw the barmaid as she started running in between the wall and the throngs of people who were just now starting to get up off their chairs with worried, or just curious, looks.
“What manor of mayhem,” he started thinking, when he was interrupted by the deafening thud of the front door to the inn as it slammed open, carrying with it, the sounds of someone shouting from outside.
CHAPTER SIX
AS IT WERE WRITTEN