Wrenogal: Act III, iv-vii
iv
Zlyr pierced a pigeon with a crossbow bolt.
His page reported: “she is still away,
but left one in her place—a pleasant colt,
who says no explanation did she say.”
Zlyr went to fetch the pigeon, but he stopped.
He turned back. “Claim it. Take it home tonight.”
He left without a word, his brow grease-topped,
unused to Tolno, for his sleepless night.
“My king?” the page, surprised, put toward him.
Zlyr nodded, pinning up a pleasant smile.
“I’ll talk myself to this ‘colt’. It is grim
that Aerandel has been gone all this while.”
The grateful page ate up the bird, and died:
a poison lived within its crossbowed hide.
v
“Lamentable? With such a cheerful face?”
The Wren descended down to where she sat.
“I am a sorry presence in this place,
she said. “It does not like me more than that.”
She stood, and traced her hands on fallen logs,
approaching Wrenogal, who stood his ground.
Something about her canniness played odds
with reactions his intuition found.
“You say it all without a touch of shame.
It must not be your fault that it is so,
whatever is this place’s hatred’s blame,
it must not be you that it calls its foe?”
“Not hatred. Sorrow. Know you not as well
the lie that is a castle’s signal bell?”
vi
The eyes of Wrenogal now drew up wide,
“you know more than you seem, I see,” said he.
“Tell me your name, and from what watcher’s side
did you see what Zlyr’s signals did to me?”
The woman now was merely steps away.
Her eyes were as the tears of dawn. “Lya,”
she said. She stopped, beside a stump, to stay.
“My mother named me for Lydoria.”
“A mother who indeed has taught you well.
But how, I ask again, are you aware
of what occurred that I will never tell—
what happened in a viper’s signal snare?”
“My mother told me. She indeed was wise,
and many-seeing are her evening eyes.”
vii
The forest echoed with a gust of wind
that seemed to emanate from where they stood,
that seemed to be, somehow, a little thinned,
despite its shudder passing through the wood.
“Your namesake seems to speak. I’ll trust your word.
I’ve learned a little since some weeks ago:
Lydoria does not lightly afford
her voice to those she doesn’t kindly know.”
He had indeed borrowed a book or two,
Wyveria’s collection had been good.
He knew, now, that the Seraph of Wind flew
only o’er those who tried the good they could.
“She does indeed,” said Lya to the Wren.
“But false trust can be good, now and again.”