In the land of seven rivers, where the gates of death are builded,
Stands a mountain (I can see it on the days when clouds are lifted)
That is sacred to Odurum of the everlasting anger,
(Who sets the forest blazing with his everlasting anger,)
They say it vomits brimstone and its smoke blots out the sunrise,
Although nowadays it’s quiet, and it sleeps in pristine glaciers.
They say that he who climbs it may petition to Odurum
(Of the ever-tended anger, may his eye turn not upon us,)
And he who has not justice, there he may at least find vengeance
If the Lord of Endless Anger looks with empathy upon him.
For myself I could not tell you, I have never dared to climb it
Any further than the river that roars down from pristine glaciers,
Than the ever-raging river that roars through the misty forest,
Where the gates of death are builded, in the land of seven rivers.
When the sun shone on the glaciers, on the days when clouds were lifted,
Bright Ashamantaru looked (or so the tales say) on Odurum
As he walked his path of heaven every day. And in the evening
Came the mortal wanderer Coren to the foothills of the mountain.
To the ever-misted forest on the rough knees of the mountain,
Where he waited in the darkness for the howl of dawn to raise him
Once again into the heavens, with his face a blaze of glory,
Where again Ashamantaru treads his path across the heavens.
(Glory to Ashamantaru in the highest of the heavens)
There in the deepest midnight lifted only by the embers,
By the embers of his campfire, and the stars through cedar branches,
Did Odurum come to Coren, with the darkness to conceal him,
(And his eye burned in the darkness, like the deep heart of the mountain)
And he said “I know you watch me from the sky, Ashamantaru.
Do not bother to deny it. I have seen you silhouetted
On the peaks cumulonimbus, even whiter than my glaciers.
Do you think I fear the sunlight? That it will outshine my anger?
I am not the lord of darkness that your haloed head imagines,
And from my purposed vengeances you shall dissuade me never.”
“I am not Ashamantaru,” answered Coren in the firelight
In the feature-dulling firelight, where he might have been but shadows,
“He exists within the daylight he creates, and that creates him.
In the daylight I’ve not witnessed since I stumbled into godhead.
And I know no more than you do of the thoughts he may be thinking
When he looks upon your mountain, fast asleep beneath the glaciers,
For to be him is as waking from a dream that you remember
And remember only dimly,” Coren whispered to the embers.
“If you have any enmity with the sun, you must be patient,
And patience is a virtue I have always heard you cherish,
At least until the morning, when into him I will vanish.”
Coren palmed his knife and waited for the anger-god to smite him.
Odurum’s voice came softly from across the firelight fading,
Like hum of drunken hornets in the orchard in the autumn,
Like dull heat of the lanterns in the early nights of autumn,
“You are not Ashamantaru. He is not the hero Coren.
But the one does the wear the other as a mask and a persona,
And words that one is thinking by the other may be spoken.”
Said Odurum, “Many worshippers have pilgrimaged my mountain,
From the land of seven rivers, where the mortal lives are living,
And none there are who seek it, but their hearts do know the reason,
And often in the seeking do they lose all but the reason.”
Odurum sat him down beside the fire, and he was dreadful
(A hero less than Coren would have fled before his visage)
“So if Ashamantaru shares a heart with mortal Coren,
So if Ashamantaru’s longing eyes are on my mountain,
I do think Coren can answer, and can speak the heart-held reason
Why the god of Holy Sunlight would have words to say to Vengeance.”
There was silence in the midnight, in the dark below the cedars.
Where not a living creature dared to breathe. At last did Coren
Whisper “Barolan, my father. He has hounded me forever.
My blood-brother is slain, and all my clan is lost and vanished,
And still am I pursued. How many centuries of mourning
Have I laid against the morning, for the howl of dawn’s light breaking,
That does lift me into godhead is a dour recrimination.
I’ll not fight his futile grudges, nay nor will Ashamantaru.
I’ll not carry petty battles, not for all that he begat me.”
Between teeth clenched like stones within a fortress’s foundation,
“I think Ashamantaru, were he here, would speak of patience.
(And patience is a virtue, I have heard, that he does cherish,)
Enlightenment, serenity, and non-cooperation,
But I am mortal Coren. And we mortals have less options.
It may yet be that vengeance is the nearest thing to freedom
From the everlasting vexing of my morning-bearing father.”
Oh the laughter of Odurum, lord of Vengeance, it was dreadful,
(May its echo never reach us, may our ears learn not its timbre.)
And he laughed “My ancient enemy! You have yourself confounded
More surely than my everlasting anger could have asked for!”
He exulted in the firelight that lit his face like magma,
Like the pyroclastic death cloud that ariseth from the magma,
Like the pyroclastic death cloud that ariseth from the magma,
“Oh Barolan, behold the son you schemed and you betrayed for,
Behold the sun of heaven you yourself have turned against you,”
He gloated over Coren in the nearly perfect darkness,
“Does better like thy enemy! If only I had done this!
Then could I count my vengeances all full fulfilled against you!”
His dreadful smile was pitiless and pristine as the glaciers,
“Say on, mortal immortal! For nothing has so pleased me
Since first the Father’s music did awake me from my madness,
What vengeance you would have, you need but name and you will taste it!
So sweareth grim Odurum, by my eye of Endless Anger!”
They say something stirred in Coren, like the sunshine on the water,
(Like the sun that may be joyous, or may pitilessly swelter)
But here the tales fall silent. Not one can tell the answer
That Coren to Odurum gave beneath the cedar darkness.
(One can only see the mountain on the days when clouds are lifted,
And if the clouds are lifted they are lifted only briefly.)
If Barolan has heard them I would guess that he must wonder
What plots his mortal son immortal dared whisper against him,
What promises his enemy of vengeances vouchsafed him,
But that is but a guess. I do not know the lonely Sunrise.
I have not dared the mountain of the unforgiving glaciers,
Any further then the river roaring through the misted forest.
(I will not speak of what I saw within that roaring forest.)
And they say not even Coren knows what Bright Ashamantaru
(Oh, the brightness of his countenance on days when clouds are lifted,)
Thinks to himself when daily he makes journey cross the heavens,
Over land of seven rivers, where the gates of death are builded.
