THE ROWAN CANTICLES - Canto XX - Excommunication
A Tale Told in the Ancient Manner
The Rowan Canticles is an epic poem written in doggerel tetrameter. In other words, although each line contains eight syllables and rhymes with other lines nearby, like Shakespeare, I’ve used enjambment (one line spilling over into the next) here and there, especially in dialog sections. Mostly, though, I’ve striven for iambic tetrameter, which makes for a nice rhythm. You’ll notice that couplets, quatrains and other rhyme schemes refresh with each long Canticle. The old school language of The Rowan Canticles can be dense, but hey, it’s fun and it fits the fantasy.
Each week I will post a fresh Canto here at Substack, adding to the story. You’ll find ninety-nine Cantos in all contained in the three Canticles. The work is 13,000 lines long, about the length of Homer’s The Odyssey.
I hope you enjoy it!
Odds Bodkin
Don’t forget to download the companion Glossary below for definitions of archaic words to smooth your read!
CANTO XX
EXCOMMUNICATION
Within the ranks of true belief,
A doubter looms large, like a thief
Of sorts, stealing completeness from
The others, lessening the sum
Of solidarity's tally.
Even thin streams cut a valley
If allowed to flow unceasing.
Faith erodes as well, decreasing,
That is, if doubt's streams flow unchecked.
And so it was, by moonlight flecked,
Around their silent Ocean Pool,
The Mages there invoked the Rule
Of Excommunication. True,
Not since Samden, throne-burned in yew,
Had paid self immolation's price
For his weak-willed and tawdry vice,
Had the Brotherhood of Mages
Issued from their velvet cages
Together, Wills aflame and joined.
Their unanimity, purloined
By one Harcto, fallen brother
Who'd dared make some slut a mother,
Now rose, renewed, as each one swore
Revenge upon him and his whore.
"Solaris plexus," they intoned.
"Delinquentarius," they moaned
As from their chests Will Leashes sprang
And through the Halls their chanting rang.
Away across the glinting bay,
Harcto beside his Silya lay,
Caressing her, now taut with child.
Feeling a kick, they both had smiled.
Yet now, she watched that sweet smile fade.
His face took on an ashen shade.
"What is it, love? Your eyes look dead!"
She gasped, as he leapt from the bed.
"What is it?” in terror she cried
As Harcto groaned and ran outside.
"No!" he screamed, enraged, indignant.
"You precious, pious, malignant
Fools!” The Temple’s spire lit the night.
Harcto watched the dark ground ignite,
Erupting plasms, blue and red.
Then foul miasmas, bright but dead,
Each one a half-formed, hissing thing
Plopped like wet dung outside his ring.
"No! No!" he bellowed, eyes arched wild
In horror that these things reviled
Had dared to enter earth's clean realm.
"Be gone! I call the Overwhelm!"
He cursed and felt his chest grow hot.
From inside, beams of will-force shot.
"Husband!" screamed Silya from the door.
"Stay back! Go in! Lie on the floor!"
He howled, then turned. "I know your names!"
The plasms vanished, leaving flames.
All trees along the marsh then bent,
Forced down by winds the Mages sent,
As clouds, gold-veined by lightning's blood,
Bespread the bay like some flash flood.
They churned its calmness to a froth
And turned the sea to muddy broth.
Green flames around the wizard rose
And thickened at the points he chose.
"Now come," he muttered, out of breath.
"This shall not be an easy death."
Across the bay, within the Hall,
The eldritch rite of Wizard's Fall
Had rarefied the ether's mass
Above the Pool, once smooth as glass,
But spinning now, a bubbling gyre
Whose eye glowed with the baleful ire
Of all those Mages seated by.
Then, up into the thinning sky,
The weapon of their gathered might
Arose, a proboscis of light,
Its burning roots held in their chests.
Outside, the seabirds fled their nests
Along the crags. The fish schools dived.
The scallops dug. The kelps contrived
To flatten themselves toward their holds.
Sheep blatted loudly in their folds,
While, out their doorways, townsfolk stared.
Above the Temple, something flared,
A writhing, burning, seeking thing
That quickly toward the west did swing,
Rose miles above the inlet's tide,
Then plunged down to its marshy side.
"All of you, within one Servant,"
Harcto thought, outmind observant.
"The Excommunication Braid.
I guess I now should be afraid."
Roaring, hissing, glowing, twisting,
Waves below it hot and misting,
The Braid struck him. Perforations
Blew through all his incantations,
Igniting cells, withdrawing spells,
Closing the rooms where knowledge dwells.
Scared by his screams, Silya could see
The lights stab through him. To his knee
He’d bent, nearly insubstantial,
His defense inconsequential.
The Braid, much like an angry snake,
Withdrew, then its next strike did take,
Over and over, here and there.
Its fangs of light singed off his hair
As they upon his mind orb worked,
Until, prostrate, his body jerked.
His bleeding eyes filled up with dirt.
Steam puffed from Harcto’s bloody shirt
As he lay savaged, all his art
Now burned away from ‘round his heart.
Continue to Canto XXI →
With Harcto’s mind destroyed, Silya faces giving birth with a husband who now speaks gibberish and cannot work. Terrified by the Excommunication Braid they saw in the sky, followed by stinks that rot their sails, the townsfolk shun Silya and Harcto. Only Bretta now visits, bringing food.