{"sf1_id":1695987,"sf2_id":"XnrrQPnz","title":"The Holy Mountain of Vengeance","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1220,"posted_at":"2021-03-15T22:07:00.000Z","tags":["Dactylic Pentameter","Hymn","Poetry"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1695987-the-holy-mountain-of-vengeance","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/XnrrQPnz","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/94/9b/949bca03-5e91-4b4c-8203-c882a9553187","description":"#4 of poetry\n\nDactylic Pentameter (I think that's the correct classification for this?) is really good for Doing A Mythology In.","content":"In the land of seven rivers, where the gates of death are builded,\n\nStands a mountain (I can see it on the days when clouds are lifted)\n\nThat is sacred to Odurum of the everlasting anger,\n\n(Who sets the forest blazing with his everlasting anger,)\n\nThey say it vomits brimstone and its smoke blots out the sunrise,\n\nAlthough nowadays it's quiet, and it sleeps in pristine glaciers.\n\nThey say that he who climbs it may petition to Odurum\n\n(Of the ever-tended anger, may his eye turn not upon us,)\n\nAnd he who has not justice, there he may at least find vengeance\n\nIf the Lord of Endless Anger looks with empathy upon him.\n\nFor myself I could not tell you, I have never dared to climb it\n\nAny further than the river that roars down from pristine glaciers,\n\nThan the ever-raging river that roars through the misty forest,\n\nWhere the gates of death are builded, in the land of seven rivers.\n\n  \n\nWhen the sun shone on the glaciers, on the days when clouds were lifted,\n\nBright Ishamantaru looked (or so the tales say) on Odurum\n\nAs he walked his path of heaven every day. And in the evening\n\nCame the mortal wanderer Coren to the foothills of the mountain.\n\nTo the ever-misted forest on the rough knees of the mountain,\n\nWhere he waited in the darkness for the howl of dawn to raise him\n\nOnce again into the heavens, with his face a blaze of glory,\n\nWhere again Ishamantaru treads his path across the heavens.\n\n(Glory to Ishamantaru in the highest of the heavens)\n\nThere in the deepest midnight lifted only by the embers,\n\nBy the embers of his campfire, and the stars through cedar branches,\n\nDid Odurum come to Coren, with the darkness to conceal him,\n\n(And his eye burned in the darkness, like the deep heart of the mountain)\n\nAnd he said \"I know you watch me from the sky, Ishamantaru.\n\nDo not bother to deny it. I have seen you silhouetted\n\nOn the peaks cumulonimbus, even whiter than my glaciers.\n\nDo you think I fear the sunlight? That it will outshine my anger?\n\nI am not the lord of darkness that your haloed head imagines,\n\nAnd from my purposed vengeances you shall dissuade me never.\"\n\n  \n\n\"I am not Ishamantaru,\" answered Coren in the firelight\n\nIn the feature-dulling firelight, where he might have been but shadows,\n\n\"He exists within the daylight he creates, and that creates him.\n\nIn the daylight I've not witnessed since I stumbled into godhead.\n\nAnd I know no more than you do of the thoughts he may be thinking\n\nWhen he looks upon your mountain, fast asleep beneath the glaciers,\n\nFor to be him is as waking from a dream that you remember\n\nAnd remember only dimly,\" Coren whispered to the embers.\n\n\"If you have any enmity with the sun, you must be patient,\n\nAnd patience is a virtue I have always heard you cherish,\n\nAt least until the morning, when into him I will vanish.\"\n\nCoren palmed his knife and waited for the anger-god to smite him.\n\n  \n\nOdurum's voice came softly from across the firelight fading,\n\nLike hum of drunken hornets in the orchard in the autumn,\n\nLike dull heat of the lanterns in the early nights of autumn,\n\n\"You are not Ishamantaru. He is not the hero Coren.\n\nBut the one does the wear the other as a mask and a persona,\n\nAnd words that one is thinking by the other may be spoken.\"\n\nSaid Odurum, \"Many worshippers have pilgrimaged my mountain,\n\nFrom the land of seven rivers, where the mortal lives are living,\n\nAnd none there are who seek it, but their hearts do know the reason,\n\nAnd often in the seeking do they lose all but the reason.\"\n\nOdurum sat him down beside the fire, and he was dreadful\n\n(A hero less than Coren would have fled before his visage)\n\n\"So if Ishamantaru shares a heart with mortal Coren,\n\nSo if Ishamantaru's longing eyes are on my mountain,\n\nI do think Coren can answer, and can speak the heart-held reason\n\nWhy the god of Holy Sunlight would have words to say to Vengeance.\"\n\n  \n\nThere was silence in the midnight, in the dark below the cedars.\n\nWhere not a living creature dared to breathe. At last did Coren\n\nWhisper \"Barolan, my father. He has hounded me forever.\n\nMy blood-brother is slain, and all my clan is lost and vanished,\n\nAnd still am I pursued. How many centuries of mourning\n\nHave I laid against the morning, for the howl of dawn's light breaking,\n\nThat does lift me into godhead is a dour recrimination.\n\nI'll not fight his futile grudges, nay nor will Ishamantaru.\n\nI'll not carry petty battles, not for all that he begat me.\"\n\nBetween teeth clenched like stones within a fortress's foundation,\n\n\"I think Ishamantaru, were he here, would speak of patience.\n\n(And patience is a virtue, I have heard, that he does cherish,)\n\nEnlightenment, serenity, and non-cooperation,\n\nBut I am mortal Coren. And we mortals have less options.\n\nIt may yet be that vengeance is the nearest thing to freedom\n\nFrom the everlasting vexing of my morning-bearing father.\"\n\n  \n\nOh the laughter of Odurum, lord of Vengeance, it was dreadful,\n\n(May its echo never reach us, may our ears learn not its timbre.)\n\nAnd he laughed \"My ancient enemy! You have yourself confounded\n\nMore surely than my everlasting anger could have asked for!\"\n\nHe exulted in the firelight that lit his face like magma,  \nLike the pyroclastic death cloud that ariseth from the magma,\n\n\"Oh Barolan, behold the son you schemed and you betrayed for,\n\nBehold the sun of heaven you yourself have turned against you,\"\n\nHe gloated over Coren in the nearly perfect darkness,\n\n\"Does better like thy enemy! If only I had done this!\n\nThen could I count my vengeances all full fulfilled against you!\"\n\nHis dreadful smile was pitiless and pristine as the glaciers,\n\n\"Say on, mortal immortal! For nothing has so pleased me\n\nSince first the Father's music did awake me from my madness,\n\nWhat vengeance you would have, you need but name and you will taste it!\n\nSo sweareth grim Odurum, by my eye of Endless Anger!\"\n\n  \n\nThey say something stirred in Coren, like the sunshine on the water,\n\n(Like the sun that may be joyous, or may pitilessly swelter)\n\nBut here the tales fall silent. Not one can tell the answer\n\nThat Coren to Odurum gave beneath the cedar darkness.\n\n(One can only see the mountain on the days when clouds are lifted,\n\nAnd if the clouds are lifted they are lifted only briefly.)\n\nIf Barolan has heard them I would guess that he must wonder\n\nWhat plots his mortal son immortal dared whisper against him,\n\nWhat promises his enemy of vengeances vouchsafed him,\n\nBut that is but a guess. I do not know the lonely Sunrise.\n\nI have not dared the mountain of the unforgiving glaciers,\n\nAny further then the river roaring through the misted forest.\n\n(I will not speak of what I saw within that roaring forest.)\n\nAnd they say not even Coren knows what Bright Ishamantaru\n\n(Oh, the brightness of his countenance on days when clouds are lifted,)\n\nThinks to himself when daily he makes journey cross the heavens,\n\nOver land of seven rivers, where the gates of death are builded.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1695983-this-poem-is-haunted.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1695995-cold-front.json"}}