(spoken at the ice tomb)

I. BLUE

You said, "I'll be careful." You said, "I'll be back."
I let the door close on the light at your back.
I taught you the cold, and I taught you the stone,
but never how not to come home on your own.

I found you in snow when the world had no name,
a castoff, a cinder too small for a flame.
I gave you my caves and my lessons, my rule.
You gave me a reason. I called it a school.

They broke your small fingers to plunder your mind.
You wept, and the cold that I taught you was kind:
your tears fell as ice on the floor of that cell.
I heard every shard. I have counted them well.

II. GREY

The Litany called, and your small feet obeyed,
for all of us answer, however we're made.
It found you again under Cyrene's bright air,
and you ran from the Fang, and the Fang was there.

But you died on my plains with your hand in my own,
grown lighter than ash and as quiet as bone.
I, robbed of my death, who was barred from that door,
learned there was a thing I could lose that was more.

And I bled
all the living around me to bring back the dead.
I fed them to Death for one breath in your chest,
and I'd feed him the rest.

III. GONE

And then, at the last, we were one, as I swore:
the meld we had owed for our lifetimes before.
No shame and no reason, no sorry, no plea.
I knew you. I knew you. You knew all of me.

You saw the old city I ground into dust.
I saw a small girl in the snow, and her trust.
Your hand found my fingers and gripped them, once, white.
Then blue became grey, and grey went out of sight,

and I knelt on the plains that still carry my name,
an emperor still, with no kingdom to claim.

The light is forbidden me. Let the world keep
its sun and its melds.
I'll go home. Then I'll go where the dark has no door,
and I'll give every one of them the word that I swore:

End.


[After the events of 725-734 AF, as recorded in the Events posts:
Hubris
A Matter of Record
Deviation
Unwinding
The North
Kidnapping
Through Dying Eyes
Cold as Ice
Silence Broken.]
Penned by my hand on the 14th of Scarlatan, in the year 1019 AF.