Wrenogal: Act III, xxviii-xxxi

xxviii

So Rowden asked the crowd, “where to then first?”

and all the miners looked around, and hoped

another had the better of their worst,

but all failed the ideas for which they groped.

The leader looked back down toward the boy.

“You know your mother best. Speak on, don’t stay.

We’re men of orders. Give us an employ,

don’t hold that smarmy tongue of yours at bay.”

And little Durn grinned up at the tall one.

He had only known gossip at his lips

from when his speech had very first begun;

but all that gossip had given him tips.

“If she’s in charge, she wouldn’t think of me,

but of the town—that’s where her mind will be.”

xxix

“Then what you say brings heart to all of us,

to find her without those who we stayed for

would not be worth our faithfulness nor fuss.”

He took the wagon that, their spoils, bore.

“Tell a direction, boy. Or else, Eastward

I say, to Warponde. Closest place to go.

Unless your intuition can afford

a better course—we’ll trust the things you know.”

It was a little too much faith, I think,

but Durn was their employer, after all.

Or, at least, the managerial link

between them and from where their pay would fall.

But maybe Durn hid from me the detail

of how, sometimes, the hearts of good men fail.

xxx

However their peace or their backbites went,

they chose to go to Warponde. Though Durn, too,

thought that it simply was time better spent

to go to where civilization grew.

They could not have guessed then, what had become

of those they wished to follow. That, of course,

was kept by messengers who couldn’t run

where guessing was a matter of perforce.

Wyveria, though, had a different plan,

who cleverly reviewed what had been said

by Wrenogal, before his flight began:

how North must be his road, and wild his stead.

Faith, logic, and emotion fought in her,

but none of them enough to make her sure.

xxxi

Wyveria recalled her books. The ones

Wrenogal had requested from her store.

Durn knew how to survive—more than most sons,

and this was where she was needed far more.

That would be what Lydoria would want,

she said, secluded, to herself. Apace,

“No one love should all other lovers daunt

when ministering song and minstrel’s grace.”

She was no minstrel, and song was not hers,

but scripture had song been to her ofttime.

And this is what Wrenogal so assures

in her heart: more than character, his rhyme.

I’ll follow where he went, then. If he’s there,

She must not be that far behind, somewhere.