Dragons of the Hourglass Mage

Hear the sage as his song descends

like heaven’s rain or tears,

and washes the years, the dust of many stories

from the High Tale of the Dragonlance.

For in ages deep, past memory and word,

in the first blush of the world

when the three moons rose from the lap of the forest,

dragons, terrible and great,

made war on this world of Krynn.

Yet out of the darkness of dragons,

out of our cries for light

in the blank face of the black moon soaring,

a banked light flared in Solamnia,

a knight of truth and of power,

who called down the gods themselves

and forged the mighty Dragonlance, piercing the soul

of dragonkind, driving the shade of their wings

from the brightening shores of Krynn.

Thus Huma, Knight of Solamnia, Lightbringer, First Lancer,

followed his light to the foot of the Khalkist Mountains,

to the stone feet of the gods,

to the crouched silence of their temple.

He called down the Lancemakers, he took on

their unspeakable power to crush the unspeakable evil,

to thrust the coiling darkness

back down the tunnel of the dragon’s throat.

Paladine, the Great God of Good, shone at the side of Huma,

strengthening the lance of his strong right arm,

and Huma, ablaze in a thousand moons,

banished the Queen of Darkness,

banished the swarm of her shrieking hosts

back to the senseless kingdom of death, where their curses

swooped upon nothing and nothing

deep below the brightening land.

Thus ended in thunder the Age of Dreams

and began the Age of Might,

when Istar, kingdom of light and truth, arose in the east,

where minarets of white and gold

spired to the sun and to the sun’s glory,

announcing the passing of evil,

and Istar, who mothered and cradled the long summers of good,

shone like a meteor

in the white skies of the just.

Yet in the fullness of sunlight

the Kingpriest of Istar saw shadows;

At night he saw the trees as things with daggers, the streams

blackened and thickened under the silent moon.

He searched books for the path of Huma,

for scrolls, signs, and spells

so that he, too, might summon the gods, might find

their aid in his holy aims,

might purge the world of sin.

Then came the time of dark and death

as the gods turned from the world.

A mountain of fire crashed like a comet through Istar,

the city split like a skull in the flames,

mountains burst from once-fertile valleys,

seas poured into the graves of mountains,

the deserts sighed on abandoned floors of the seas,

the highways of Krynn erupted

and became the paths of the dead.

Thus began the Age of Despair.

The roads were tangled.

The winds and the sandstorms dwelt in the husks of cities,

The plains and mountains became our home.

As the old gods lost their power,

we called to the blank sky

into the cold, dividing gray to the ears of new gods.

The sky is calm, silent, unmoving.

We had yet to hear their answer.

Then to the east, to the Sunken City

scarred in its loss of blue light,

came the Heroes, the Innfellows, heirs to the burdens,

out of their tunnels and their arching forests,

out of the lowness of plains, the lowness

of huts in the valleys,

the stunned farms under the warlords and darkness.

They came serving the light,

the covered flames of healing and grace.

From there, pursued by the armies,

the cold and glittering legions, they came

bearing the staff to the arms of the shattered city,

where below the weeds and the birdcall,

below the vallenwood, below forever,

below the riding darkness itself,

a hole in the darkness called to the source of light,

drawing all light to the core of light,

to the first fullness of its godly dazzle.