Into the granite city of Teloth wandered the youth, vine-crowned, his
yellow hair glistening with myrrh and his purple robe torn with briers of
the mountain Sidrak that lies across the antique bridge of stone. The men
of Teloth are dark and stern, and dwell in square houses, and with frowns
they asked the stranger whence he had come and what were his name and
fortune. So the youth answered:
"I am Iranon, and come from Aira, a far city that I recall only
dimly but seek to find again. I am a singer of songs that i learned in
the far city, and my calling is to make beauty with the things remembered
of childhood. My wealth is in little memories and dreams, and in hopes
that I sing in gardens when the moon is tender and the west wind stirs
the lotus-buds."
When the men of Teloth heard these things they whispered to one
another; for though in the granite city there is no laughter or song, the
stern men sometimes look to the Karthian hills in the spring and think of
the lutes of distant Oonai whereof travellers have told. And thinking
thus, they bade the stranger stay and sing in the square before the Tower
of Mlin, though they liked not the colour of his tattered robe, nor the
myrrh in his hair, nor his chaplet of vine-leaves, nor the youth in his
golden voice. At evening Iranon sang, and while he sang an old man prayed
and a blind man said he saw a nimbus over the singer's head. But most of
the men of Teloth yawned, and some laughed and some went to sleep; for
Iranon told nothing useful, singing only his memories, his dreams, and
his hopes.
"I remember the twilight, the moon, and soft songs, and the window
where I was rocked to sleep. And through the window was the street where
the golden lights came, and where the shadows danced on houses of marble.
I remember the square of moonlight on the floor, that was not like any
other light, and the visions that danced on the moonbeams when my mother
sang to me. And too, I remember the sun of morning bright above the
many-coloured hills in summer, and the sweetness of flowers borne on the
south wind that made the trees sing.
"Oh Aira, city of marble and beryl, how many are thy beauties! How i
loved the warm and fragrant groves across the hyline Nithra, and the
falls of the tiny Kra that flowed though the verdant valley! In those
groves and in the vale the children wove wreathes for one another, and at
dusk I dreamed strange dreams under the yath-trees on the mountain as i
saw below me the lights of the city, and the curving Nithra reflecting a
ribbon of stars.
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