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/ They Did Not Bind The Tree /
Story Bible
They Did Not Bind The Tree
642 words
Chapter text
[Verse 1] There stands a city on the coast that no host ever breached, whose builder left no name at all and sleeps, and can be reached. Its towers do not hold by stone. Its towers hold by will. And the three that sit inside the Spire are sitting in it still. [Verse 2] I was born on the eastern slope where the terraces are thin, of the twisted line, the warning tale, the two-in-hundred kin. They do not kill us any more. That was an older age. They bind us now, and count us, and write us on a page. [Verse 3] The Edict came out of the north the year the wells ran dry: that every soul in Siniath would swear, and none deny. They carve it. It is not a word. They carve it in the hand, by the fire of the Fiery Judge, so no false thing can stand. [Verse 4] It did not take my memory. Note that. It never does. It took the saying, not the thing. It left me what there was. I cannot say my mother's name. I cannot say the year. I cannot say the word we had for what they did us here. [Chorus] Isnu Yusilal, Hesin Sos — Eternal Arcana, Pure Blood. I gave them every word I had. I gave them every word I could. They bound my tongue at Ael'theryn. They did not bind the tree. [Verse 5] Now in the groves there stands a kind of tree with runes for bark, hesyaziz, that holds the state's own past and keeps it in the dark. They are the memory of Thalon. They are the sacred wood. No axe may touch a rune-tree. The law on that is good. [Verse 6] So I went out in the eighth year and I did not speak a word. I cut my mother's name in bark where it could not be heard. I cut the year. I cut the count. I cut each name they took. The binding was upon my mouth. It was not on the book. [Verse 7] The tree took it. The tree kept it, and grew the letters wide, and now it stands in the sacred grove with my treason on its side. They cannot cut it. It is theirs. It is the state's own wood. The scribes go out at Veil-Lifting and read it, as they should. [Verse 8] And they read a name. And they read a year. And a count they do not know. And they copy it to the archive, because that is how it goes. And the archive is a holy thing, and the holy is not weighed, and somewhere in the memory of Thalon my mother is not unmade. [Chorus] Isnu Yusilal, Hesin Sos — Eternal Arcana, Pure Blood. I gave them every word I had. I gave them every word I could. They bound my tongue at Ael'theryn. They did not bind the tree. [Bridge] And over the strait at Kormistahl, where the exiles keep the shore, they sing a thing they say came out of a grove, and not a door. They do not know who cut it in. They will not know from me. They bound my tongue at Ael'theryn. They did not bind the tree. [Verse 9] So I have kept my oath entire. Ask the fire, if you doubt. I swore that I would never say it, and I never said it out. And when they come to burn the grove — and lords, they always do — the ash of it goes up the coast and the coast is full of you. [Outro] They bound my tongue at Ael'theryn. They did not bind the tree. They bound my tongue at Ael'theryn. They did not bind the tree. Isnu Yusilal, Hesin Sos. They did not bind the tree.
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