Wrenogal: Act III, viii-xi
viii
The wind blew over Durn. He stood among
the miners who had been out when the flame
had drenched Dustan, when all their hopes it wrung
from all their homes from whence their hoping came.
They were very distraught. Obviously,
but Durn found it distracting. He, too, mourned
the death and dread the flames forced him to see,
but sorrowing, instead of haste, he scorned.
He climbed onto a rock. “Do you know how
we bore the ore from here to where we sold?
We had a dragon! Somewhere, even now,
he flies—now, guess, is all the mountain’s gold
more than the families that our city had?
They might live! But don’t trust a little lad.”
ix
The men looked up as the boy crawled back down.
They eyed each other with a gaunted hope,
and looked once last toward the tortured town,
and gazed into their barrows with new scope.
Without words, they began to off their haul
of iron, all that must be smelted well
before it could be sold, and kept a small
gold bullion’s worth in a barrow-well.
One sauntered forward, sidling with Durn,
and turned toward the rest. A lucid face
reposed to eye the company in turn,
and lastly on Durn did his focus trace.
“You’ve said more than a boy of your age should.
But more than any of us grown men could.”
x
Wyveria had always handled well
those games of tactics, strategy, and scheme,
but now her game board to a fog befell,
with error bursting at its every seam.
Her pivotal piece—Wrenogal—withdrawn,
as he had every right to be right now.
Her rogue, her Durn, her son, was also gone,
but finding him she must not now allow.
He knows what he must do, she mutely said.
He has his angle, as he always has.
If I allow this tactless mother’s dread
to guide, I’m blind. Or at least half good as.
But this, the moment of her game the worst,
was one she might have let her heart choose first.
xi
While Nolda watched her worrying, alone,
and worrying, himself, he found among
the scattered ones who lived, his very own:
his wife and his dear daughters—too, too young.
And he knew what Wyveria could not,
whose eyes were woollened over by great need,
that these were what a mind could not have bought—
that these were what the heart must always feed.
He stayed with them alone for quite some time,
ignoring need for now—this one was more.
Instead of wood or water, they shared rhyme:
their bond could die, but rain could always pour.
And after his were his again, he stood,
and went for water and for firewood.