Fall of Thanes

In the twilight of the First Age, when the One Race was drifting towards its final, fatal war against the Gods, they sent an envoy into the high Tan Dihrin. His name was Martanan, and he climbed through storm and snow to the peak of peaks, where the turning sky struck fire from the utmost pinnacle.

There he found, cut into the rock of that summit, the great stone throne he sought, and he knelt before it and called out to the God whose place it was to appear before him. The God came, and filled the throne with his dark form. And his raven companions came, and settled upon his shoulders. Martanan bowed his head at first, for he was afraid to look upon the fell countenance he had called forth. But he was the emissary of his people, and he owed them courage, so he lifted his eyes and spoke.

“We call you He Who Waits, great one, and live in fear of your attention. We call you Death, and your shadow is long, falling across us even in the midst of life. I am sent to ask you this question: why must it be so? Why have you, the immortal Gods, made us so frail and fragile? Why do you keep the boon of life unending only for yourselves?”

When Death replied, his voice was deep and terrible, and it sprang from the mouths of his ravens.

“Because without endings there can be no beginnings. To live for ever is a burden, though you know it not. We choose not to inflict its weight upon you.”

“If burden it is, still my people desire it. The burdens we bear now are no less. Those we love die, and we are beset by grief. We ourselves die, and are forgotten. We die, and all that we have built and laboured for is undone after us.”

“Even so,” the God said. “Even so. There must be death in this world, lest all meaning be lost.”

“Yet still we would choose otherwise,” Martanan said, and at that the ravens rose into the air and their black wings assailed him.

“You may choose how you live,” the God cried through his birds. “You may choose how you shape meaning out of my shadow. We grant you that freedom. But choice is empty in the absence of consequence. Without it, you and everything you did would mean nothing more than does the aimless motion of a cloud in the sky. There must be consequence, and I am its final measure and its shape and its weight. Every one of you, sooner or later, will come into my embrace.”

From First Tales transcribed by Quenquane the Simple