Being The First Installment Of 'Gedion' Poem by Sophia White

I
A land so vast it might have been a world
A land enreathed in magic, ancient charm
The soil steeped with enchanments long cast
The wind carrying spells and fairy dust
The forests groves of antique charms
Laid by long forgotten wielders of the Flame
The people all with magic in their veins
Not unused to seeing the supernatural
A self-scrubbing pot, a shifting hat,
A disappearing cloak or a charmed brush –
All ordinary sights in old, old Avendon.

II
Over Avendon a shadow lay
Lay as deeply as the night’s own cloak
Shadow of Death, Decay, and Doom,
Cast by one absolute monarch
The Dai’maryen of old Avendon.
The Dai’maryen of the ages past
All had been wise and just and fair
Strong in Magic, Charms, and Enchants,
All good men, rulers deserving their throne.
But Ashreal the Dark was darker than night
His workings all for evil and the dread
Ashreal the Dark, the Lord of Avendon,
Put shame to the sacred name Dai’maryen.
And all Avendon lay helpless in his grip
For thirty years, Avendon lay captive.

III
The Wonder Workers were the men and women
Who pledged themselves to Good and the Light
They met in secret, forced so by Ashreal
Death awaited Workers who were revealed.
Death at the hands of Vadi, Ashreal’s men
The Workers, small in number, lived their lives
As citizens of no importance, seeming,
Blending with the people of Avendon
Who used Magic, but in the smallest ways,
Unskilled, base, and weak in the Charms.
The Workers hid, and waited, biding time…


IV
One night, as the wind howled angrily
Through hamlet Sadlehem in Avendon,
An inn so small it might have been a house,
Eight Workers met to finally lay their plot.
One, a Vietlander, strong and broad,
Second, from Khalata, dark and slim,
Third, a fair-haired lass from Tel,
Fourth, an elder of the Ring in Chael,
Fifth, the Lord of the House Damroni,
Sixth, a poor tailor from Yegrie,
Seventh, a woman great with child,
Eighth, a redhead sailor of Maresh Sea.
While the tailor watched the night for feared Vadi,
The seven left brought forth their Fragments.
The Fragments were ancient words first laid
By Baribar, the Dai’maryen greatest of all,
The most skilled and powerful Wielder of Charm
In all the long history of Avendon.
The Fragments, handed down from father to son,
By Workers, through the generations run
At last came together through long toil
To meet and piece together the puzzle.
Eight pieces laid on the table – cloth
Remnants of Baribar’s finest robe
On which, in the tongue Vreddaire,
The Pieces of the legend Puzzle lay.

V
“A time will come three thousand years hence
When men will all bow to one, the Dark.
All will seem dead and lost in that day.
But forth will come one greater that even I!
Gedion he shall be called by the True.
The Light embodied, Good taken flesh,
Though a mere man he may first be.
Seek him in the Willows, faithful eight.”
Each sentence one of the pieces eight
Together placed by the Workers brave
And when at last the puzzle had been solved,
Only one last thing to them remained:
To seek him in the Willows.
To find the legendary saviour, Gedion.

…………………to be continued……………………