Wrenogal: Act II, lii-lv
lii
Nevgondian had much to think on now.
But I won’t tell you what his true thoughts were.
He wouldn’t want to tell you anyhow,
but I’ll give that from which you may infer.
Suffice to say, he did what he’d been asked.
He took a quiet ship and made away
to where he’d picked up Erison was last,
ignoring his own squire’s plea to stay.
He told no sailor why he went to where
he bid them go. It would be bad indeed
for anyone to be welcome to share
the truth, and treasonous ideas feed.
And lone upon the prow, he ate his fear
at the same time as he shed his first tear.
liii
“You seek the Peak?” the captain said to he
who wouldn’t tell why he had picked his route.
“No-one sails there. It is all misery—
the winds there force all ships to come about.
We can’t get close unless we row.” “I’ll take
a dinghy when we come too close. You’ll stake
your anchor ‘til I venture back, and make
do, ‘til we, like the wind, that isle forsake.”
So, without explanation, they sailed then
to Jarod’s Peak: upon the Eastern sea,
where that insightful, sure Nevgondian
thought that, not Erison, but answers be.
That shroud of his has less than dark in it,
just like the Peak that still remains unlit.
liv
The clouds grew denser with each passing mile
as, passing Thalynvriy, the voyage took
their last glance at a harbor for awhile—
it was a long, and very heavy look.
“That’s why we never sail to Ostia
from here,” the captain said. “These sails will tear
if we don’t have leave of Lydoria
to go. Do you still dare to go out there?”
“I do. Lydoria will care for you.
She will not see that my ship is now sunk.”
He thought her songs would make his voyage true,
but knew not that such love songs are love-drunk.
“Then take the tender, lads!” The captain called.
“He means it!” But the men still looked appalled.
lv
The ship went out as far as it could go,
about a league out from that wretched Peak,
which broke the surface of the sea just so,
it seemed the cruel jaw of a crow’s beak.
The clouds had not relented: godly dark,
they spoke to hearts of ends too far from home,
of warnings that even the foolish hark,
a miasma that roars you will not roam
herein. Turn back. Beware ye, and avast.
Nevgondian looked on that haze, and broke
his lips into a grin, of times now past,
when Aerandel a similar threat spoke.
She’d barred him from her study at that time.
He wondered what had been, that time, her crime.