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The Sky and the Sun and the Dawn

• A sun in cream shimmers on a pale blue sea
• Casts a path hailing over the horizon where
• Bands of grey and golden clouds caught the sun
• Sheepskin sky contrasts with stark lines rising
• Round towers rising in two uneven triangles
• Kneeling knights flank the gate with naked swords
• Sloping castle walls rise in uneven stones to a crown
• Carved of cubes, slits squinting in suspicion
• The castle proper rises up in rounds of cubes,
• Slender windows staring at sunrise and sunset
• Shadowed to the south and sunlit to the north
• Shields in relief facing inland inform those passing
• This coastland castle belonged to the Callower clan
• The wind winds its way through widowed halls
• The sun shadows silent windows and shines
• From a sky that has not seen a soul in centuries
• Dawn encounters neither friend nor enemy
• Gates sag into an old man's grieving stance
• If they could talk, they would tell this tale

• We welcomed once the wealthiest of all
• From everywhere they came to eat the elk
• And trade the finer treasures of warm north
• For furs they could find in no other place
• Stored in the halls hollowed from the earth
• Beneath us they fabricated fantastical spaces
• All the treasures from the territory held
• Securely within our stone and iron arms
• The Aridion in the mounains, the masons
• The Sigonauts of the fields, the smiths
• The Capladun from the forests, the cutters
• They fashioned us and they fed the halls
• Their arts and their crafts cunningly worked
• Riches swelled the Callower storerooms

• The last Callower king met his last breath
• At the hands of his own handsome son
• His greed had grown his impatience
• It stretched from the mountains to the sea
• So he took with him ten hundred men
• From forests and mountains and fields
• Hebidian was his name, the handsome
• For his hair shone like dawn on the sea
• The king of the Callower men rode out
• His courageous guard counted three hundred
• And a hundred horses streaked with blue
• From tail to mane and hoof to top
• Blue proclaimed their prowress in battle
• The king loved his son, no cunning was his
• Weldorp the Wellboned he was called
• Beautiful as the boy his wife had birthed
• The rule of the land rewarded his family
• With wealth and beauty and wisdom
• Growing each season until this son saw
• So much gold it giddied his mind
• He rode out against his ruler and father
• The sooner to crown himself Callower king

• Ten hundred men rode through hills until
• They came to the coast where the castle stood
• Three hundred men and a hundred horses
• Stood against the assault upon the king
• They rode against each other in the Roka
• The Roka valley where a river ran
• Named for the spring in the mountainside
• Where the maid Rowke once wetted her face
• An enamoured mountaingod enchanted her
• She became a stone, wedded to stone
• Maid became the mountain's still bride
• And from her feet flows the Roka river

• The clang of spear and sword echoed
• A fierce clamouring that frightened all
• But the warbeasts heard it and went
• To the air and ground they took again
• As ever they shall when man slays man
• Bald girs wheeled over black arrows
• Flying and wounding friend and enemy
• Of the king and his son and the Callowmen
• Wolves paced towards the slaughter in packs
• They fell upon the wounded fallen there
• Caws and ravens cackled blackly over eyes
• It is said it gives them second sight
• And sometimes gift a single man or maid
• With a sign that could save their life

• Before the Callow castle the battle clashed
• It raged until the sun sat low over the sea
• Its dying rays bleeding into the red sky
• While red stained the ground of the Roka
• Its waters turned rosy rushing past dead
• Wounded groaning, gurgling and gasping
• The glint of proud silver dulled by a sea
• Of defeated defenders lying without a dirge
• But a screech or bark or caw of beasts

• The son and the king still stood together
• Their swords giving steel kisses to each other
• To the death that followed, a dire clanging
• Father's torn heart was rent in two truly
• The son who lost his mind, lost his head
• Thus the Callowmen lost king and king's heir
• In one day, and most of their brothers lay dead
• The rest fled from the rust-coloured Roka
• Their homes unguarded from usurpers now
• They retreated into the safer hills, runners
• Their kinsmen, those courageous Callowers
• Lay unburied on the field, fill for scavengers
• The cowardly Callowers all that was left
• Shepherds dead, the sheep scattered under the sun

• The ghosts of the Callowmen grieved on the Roka
• Their souls bound to the desecrated battlefield
• They cursed the castle and the cowards that left
• So that their kinsmen soon collapsed under robbers
• One after another, spread out and afraid to fight
• They could no longer be the brave Callower clan
• That had guarded the coveted treasure in the castle
• And the treasures were taken away by the traders
• That found gold without guards and silver in the cellars
• When they heard the ghosts moaning on the grounds
• They took fright and fled to their ships, away
• Aradionians made their home still in the mountains
• The Sigonauts found the ghosts and fled again
• The Capladun remained content in their forests
• The castle stands on the coast unclaimed, cold
• The gates moan with the ghosts of battle still
• Of the Callowmen's tragedy up until today
• No souls will look upon this sky shining
• With a dawn inviting anyone inside, outside
• An unseen sun shimmers on an empty sea