Chapter 37:: The Piper Will Lead Us To Reason

And it's whispered that soon if we all call a tune,
then the Piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long,
and the forests will echo with laughter.

- Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven

The following is an excerpt from The Chronicles of Azanthian Gespo, who was a historian and the third King of the Realm, 1490 -

Pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter.
Our lives are raining away


The Poet stopped the rain. It had rained for 3 and a half years in the continent of Calimshan. Nobody knew why. Some blamed the mer-folk and there interference with the ordained ways of the Mighty. Their sorceries of the sea. Some said it was what we deserved, the will of the maker. But by the third year, the crops had begun to fail. They rotted on the hilltops, soaked in the sickly sweet muddy water that ran down the hills all through the day and night. The fruit and foison of Calimshan grew pale and deathly. A leaden sky, weighed over the world, heavy like the thoughts of men. Those who lived on the sickly produce of the diseased earth, made war upon each other, oblivious of the fate which was to befall them, choosing in their arrogance to believe themselves the mightiest, forgetting the unnamed powers that stirred the furious winds into a frenzy.


Like old and forgotten sewage,
Left over at the end of the day.

Forgetting them who watched like steadfast pillars brooding over their subjects, they fought and killed. Their blood spilled upon Setabon and Acousticon, the capitals of the Zanthians and the Porthas. The rain did not stop the war, the Poet did. But while it rained, the soldiers fought on. They stirred like ants on a hill, melting into oblivion as the rain beat the very earth on which they stood into mud. The rivers ran crimson with the blood of men, swelling, spilling over their banks in wrath and fury. The Porthas and the Zanthians made war such as the world had never seen. Their troops bold and fearless, pitted might against magic, strength against intellect and brute instinct against cold machinations of death. Under shrouded skies they fought, cloven by the fires of heaven that streaked in ire across the unquiet vault of the Gods. And like the lightning, they dashed white-hot with anger, upon each other's ranks, hating, burning, killing. Death leaped from the heavens in gleeful malice and sat on their weary swords. Death sprang as steel thrust itself into flesh. Death shrieked like venom through the blood. Death shut the eyes of the dead and seeped slowly into their ashes, held in the warm hands of the living. Death sang its dirges in the dark. We on earth, cluttered together like wasteland weeds and all the time it rained, it rained.

There stood the spires in their need

The hills upon which the Porthas city of Acousticon were also being beaten down by endless rain. The court of Acousticon was then called not called so, for the origins of the name I shall explain herein. It was called Talon, so named for the innumerable towers that sprang up from the ground and clawed skywards, seeming to be made of the very bones of the earth. Nobody knew from where they came, but out of the depths of the city sprang towering growths of white rock, slender, straight and hollow, of varying lengths. The thin spires stood out of the earth as with a purpose, rising up to the clouds like the nails of a great beast, raging, gnashing, clawing as if to steal the liquid fire that flashed through the clouds and drink it to the earth. Some said they were the citadels of the Gods, when once they trod the earth we now walk upon, so frail, so temporal, so mortal. Some said they were mere aberrations, freaks of the earth and testament to her impulsiveness in creation. It was the Poet who called them the pipes of the heavens, and found how to sing to the powers above. It was the Poet, and the yellow herb, that brought an end to the rain. His name was Acronos.

There grew the herb in frozen seed.

He was at once a poet, a musician and a warrior. Some said he was a sorcerer too, for in days long past, he had dealings with the Mer-folk, who now were so reticent a race that few living could claim to have seen one. He came of a sudden to Acousticon, and he came bearing a seed. This seed was enclosed in ice that would not thaw till the Poet ordained it. The same Poet it was, that discovered the caves and tunnels beneath the Spires of Acousticon. It was found that just beneath these spires, were caves. Out of the roofs of these caves, the great spires grew. Within the deep, dark roots of the earth, where green things do not live, there he planted this seed enclosed in ice, and there by some miracle it grew. It grew to flower and abundance till the leaves of the herb in just a season were rich with their yellow pigment. And then he gathered these leaves and convening the greatest poets and musicians of the land, he held a great revelry, a festival in the dark of those very caves.

There piped a piper through a reed

The leaves of the plant he cured, and filling them in pipes made of the same blessed dark earth, he gave them to the people to inhale the incense the herb gave off when burnt. The smoke of the yellow herb filled the caves and hollows, filled the sacred dark of the tunnels and rose up in a mist through the Spires, towards the heavens. A mellow musing fell upon all convened there, their temporal thoughts ceased and at once they were filled with wonderment and an instinctual understanding of all creation. And then they felt the woe of the ceaseless storm, felt its disquiet in their very bones, there in the heart of darkness, in the remotest chamber of the world's heart. A great music rose up in them, as an answer. A music so rich and strange, so various and yet so harmonious that the spires that stretched to the heavens trembled with their song. They read no books, chanted no liturgy as the zealots did, but they versed the beatings of their own minds and brought into harmony the prayers of a people oppressed. The Poet himself was entranced, his eyes hazy in a dream as he played upon a slender pipe whose melody did lead and channel, did diversify and yet unite the collective music into one melodious whole. Clothed in mere rags, his arms outstretched as if in offering, in sacrifice, the piper played and as the melody of the people echoed through the spires that stretched to heaven, the clouds stirred a final time, all fell still again.


And all was still as sleep.


Thus the heavens fell silent, still and quiet. Thus did the storm cease at last, and thus was born Acousticon. The city of the Poet, Ascronos, who later would be Ascronos Hell. But for the time he was the herald of peace. The skies cleared and the clouds vanished, light returned to the world. The war ceased and music was restored to a world bereft of beauty. And so would it be in future ages, many wars followed by many an era of peace. Many storms and many silences, each following each in a great cycle of birth, passion, death and rebirth. Like a serpent biting its own tail, music and chaos shall turn forever in the great circle of time.