Margaret Weis - Love and War

And I heard, as they drew me to the window, through the bandages and the pain and the fading smell of my flesh and the flesh of others, Sturm's funeral begin in what must have been sunlight, and of the many words spoken over the body only these last in recollection, vivid and fathomless as the coded song of the birds I am hearing once more through the windows of the hospital, saying:

Free from the smothering clouds of war

As he once rose in infancy,

The long world possible and bright before him,

Lord Huma, deliver him.

Upon the torches of the stars

Was mapped the immaculate glory of childhood;

From that wronged and nestling country,

Lord Huma deliver him.

Lord Huma, deliver us all. And deliver especially you, my brother, for last night my nurse and I spoke briefly, spoke quietly of the world remaining after Sturm, after Breca, after Heros, after the passage of my eyes. And with the gift of the sighted for prophecy, she ran down the lists of light, describing the world made possible at the cost of despair, at the cost of the smell of the corpse fires lingering under the herbs and the metal and the fragrance of flowers and clean bedding, at the cost of the sun diminished to warmth only.

And within those lists lie the armies of the Dragon Highlord driven away, as Mother says, once again from our land and from those things we are honor bound to defend by the measure and the code , of Takhisis back into the void and somewhere unraveling in a dark I can only dream through my darkness, in a story that remains unimaginable because I cannot see its ending. Of the freedom to do what we want, of the wronged and nestling country made right as we raise our children in prosperity and peace, as we commit the young men not to the study of swords but to a study of lore and of history, a study finally of themselves.

She finds comfort in this. She writes the final page in this comfort. But I shall tell you, Bayard, no doubt frustrated by your brother and by history as you dance with the sword in our home. I shall tell you that when these studies commence, when once again young men begin to study themselves, that your training, your ardor, will not go without issue.

For when the time comes, we shall take up arms again.