The Secret Left by the Poet

At the foot of the Sacred Mountain countless people stood gazing into the distance. Word had already reached them, and they were waiting for someone's return.

At last a travel-worn procession appeared at the edge of the wasteland, and a stir of excitement ran through the crowd. People surged forward to meet it.

They welcomed it from far off, and only as the procession came past did they part to open the road, kneeling along either side of it.

They pressed their lips to the ground, murmuring the words of the Redlichia Covenant.

Through it all no one spoke above a whisper. Nothing carried but the sound of devout prayer.

A strange stillness hung over the scene.

Among the procession's guards was the blind poet Tito, King Redlichia's inscribed stone tablet cradled in his hands.

The guards around Tito and the tablet halted at the foot of the Sacred Mountain, and Tito alone set out on the road to the Sky Temple.

The poet set his foot on the first step and raised his eyes.

His mental power could not reach the scene above, yet the image of it had already risen out of his memory.

There stood the towering God-Servant City and its soaring temple, blue sky for a backdrop, white clouds curling about them.

An overwhelming lightness settled over the poet. He let out a long breath and thought to himself.

"Ah!"

"I'm finally home."

Guards bearing long spears lined both sides of the pilgrim's stairway, all the way up to God-Servant City at the summit. Each knelt on one knee with a fist pressed to their chest.

The Star Luo Kingdom had prepared a grand ceremony to welcome the poet home from the God-Given Land, and to receive King Redlichia's inscribed stone tablet.

The poet climbed higher, step by step.

He entered God-Servant City, and every servant of God knelt in devotion.

He entered the Sky Temple, and even the Queen and her priests bowed their heads to either side.

He laid the broken, inscribed stone tablet to rest within the Sky Temple, together with the Hymn of the King of Wisdom he had already completed.

They would become sacred relics of the Sky Temple, handed down through the generations.

The poet set down the sacred relics and turned, and the priests who had knelt there rose one after another.

The Star Luo Queen, high priestess of the Sky Temple as well, came before him with her scepter in hand and gave him her blessing.

"Glory be upon you. Yours was a great journey, and all people shall remember what you have achieved. You and your mythic epic shall be undying together."

"Tito, what is it you want?"

Tito shook his head. "There is no need, Your Majesty."

"All that I wanted, I have already found upon this journey."

"I wish only that the Hymn of the King of Wisdom might spread far and wide, and that all people might come to sing this poem."

"That every child of Yinsai might know where we came from, and why we live."

"I hope that all people will remember our glory, and remember the gifts and the power the divine granted us."

The Star Luo Queen replied, "This great poem, the myth of Yinsai and King Redlichia, shall endure forever throughout the kingdom and the world of Yinsai."

The poet nodded, and took his leave of the Queen and the priests who had once looked down upon him from so great a height.

Attending the feast and the celebration never once crossed his mind. He went straight back to his own home.

At home, his aged father sat on a stone bench gazing outside. The moment he heard the stir out there he leapt to his feet, then sat back down again, feigning calm.

But Tito's mental power caught it all.

Tito could imagine how many days and nights his father had stood watch, waiting for his return.

Tears sprang to Tito's eyes at once. "Father!"

His aged father rose and looked at Tito, running a hand over the scars on his face. "You are finally home."

"It seems you have suffered a great deal."

Tito nodded. "Father!"

"You were not wrong."

"When I fell into the Abyss, when I stood before death and the loss of everything."

"I once said that I would never regret it. Those words are laughable to me now."

The young poet smiled at his father. "I did regret it, at the time. I raged and cursed and wailed, and every wretched part of me showed."

His old, worn father answered him. "But you walked out of that suffering. And then you did the impossible."

The poet rose to his feet, and father and son embraced.

Sunlight streamed in from beyond the door, and light and shadow shifted as the sun moved.

Then the moon rose beyond the window, and the city settled from its clamor into quiet.

Sun and moon turned, one cycle after another.

The furnishings of the house changed, again and again.

The poet, who had once called another man father, now heard his own children call him by that name.

The poet bent over his desk, and once more he was carving something into a bone tablet with his knife.

This was not a poem, but a record of all he had seen and heard on his journey.

He had written myths, written epics, written of heroes.

And at the last, he wrote a story that belonged to him alone.

In it were the brutal lord of Sal, the wise Old Stone Helm, the king of the Demon Abyss Kingdom, and the God-Given Land in full bloom with its Sun Cup flowers, and the splendid, sacred hall wrapped within a dream.

And in that story, he set down a secret he had never once spoken of to another soul.

He had set out on that journey not only to seek the God-Given Land, but to escort the divine artifact, the Divine Cup.

Over a dozen thin bone tablets were strung together, and at the front of them he carved four characters.

Tito's Travelogue

He set it carefully upon the shelf, already crowded with bone and stone tablets.

Just then the children came bursting in from outside, wrestling and laughing, and gathered before Tito.

"Father, tell us one of your stories!"

Tito swept a child up into his arms without a thought and sat down before the table.

"Mm."

"Then let me tell you about the most beautiful creature your father ever saw!"

"There are strange beings in the legends, ones that bear the very form of the divine."

"In the halls of the divine, the messengers of God are a kind of spirit called dream spirits."

"They hold a power as wondrous as any dream, and can conjure whatever you desire straight out of a dream."

The children's eyes went wide, and one after another they cried out in amazement. "Can they really make anything appear?"

Tito nodded. "Of course."

"They can make anything you want appear. They're the messengers of God, after all."

The children asked, "Then how do we find a dream spirit? I want to make the things in my dreams appear too."

The poet rose with the child still in his arms, and the other children came chasing after his steps.

"Dream spirits have names too, true names that belong to them alone."

"Call their true names while you dream, and perhaps you'll see them."

"Haven't you ever heard the legend of Divine Messenger Polo?"

"When Queen Star called Divine Messenger Polo's name, the messenger of God descended."

A few of the children crowded noisily around the poet, pressing him further. "Then how are we supposed to learn a dream spirit's name?"

Tito did not answer.

His gaze lingered on the Sun Cup blooming in the flowerpot in the corner, a treasure the Queen herself had once given him.

The poet recalled all at once the sight of Divine Messenger Polo, once seen amid a sea of flowers, and he began to laugh.

The stars wheeled through the heavens, and time flowed on.

After the great poet Tito, who had once reached the halls of the divine, passed away, a legend began to spread among the people of Yinsai.

Some said that poet Tito had come back from the God-Given Land with something more precious than King Redlichia's inscribed stone tablet alone.

He had learned a secret of the God-Given Land, a secret enormous enough to shake the world.

Some said the great poet had hidden it all within a mural.

Some said the great poet had hidden the secret within one of his poems.

And some said it was an unpublished manuscript, a travelogue recording the poet's journey to the God-Given Land.

Whoever could find the secret the great poet had left behind would receive a reward beyond imagining.

It was power enough to overturn an age, to carve open the future.