Requiem for Rivenguild
Sepdet reaches for the words of St. Katran to try to make sense of the fall of a great Age, Rivenguild. I admired your Age from afar but never ventured far past the first page, and now can only imagine it from the words you bring with you, like pages torn from Books. I read between the lines of Catherine's journal and your own posts, to find some truth that stands for both."There were many voices, but I understood none of them - like hundreds of people whispering..."
Katran speaks...
Can you imagine how it is to live in a world under the clutches of one great Power, by whose whim you, your family, your friends, the very trees and sky may live or die? To know he owns you, to know all his desires to guide and nurture your world stem not from compassion, but from his need to create a great empire, a library of which all the world you know is only -- to him -- a single modest Book? One which may be burned or discarded when its use is finished?
"Some believe that I wll overthrow Gehn. Others believe that I will bring them to paradise."
Yet once I served him, almost married him. There are compromises one must make when choices are few.
And yet it turned out well, did it not? A door opened, unexpectedly, and allies I did not know I had came to my rescue. Atrus and Anna.
An imperfect solution.
Fitting then that a betrayal forced me to return to my people, try to rescue them from the wreck and ruin Gehn had wrought upon my world. His Age? My life.
The womb from which the cry released,
has suffered hurt; will suffer death.
When Riven fell, I feared I would not be able to save any of them. Or only the Moiety, leaving half my people to die. Again, the timely aid of strangers, and my own will, my determination, fashioned a Linking Book through which we might pass to begin anew...
"It is beautiful and I am pleased. At last, my people will live in safety and comfort. They stand under the bare sky, unafraid, and dazzled by their freedom. They are happy."
I left a part of myself behind in Riven. It is a wound one will always bear, the losing of a home. But so long as we keep writing new Ages, make refuges for our loved ones and beautiful worlds in which the children have space to play, all is not lost. As Atrus said, "To dwell in the past is to die in the present."
I will dream.