He knew that Terra’s lover was also the Keeper of the Winds. And while he could not know the exact galactic place, he knew the great Father-Spirit sat starward in the breeding place of suns. His light-blazed dais was founded on the filaments of constellations never seen on Terra. And there where all the universal light converged, and slightly to the right, stood erect the object of all universal joy—the Singer, who waited for Earthmaker to send him back again into the world that they both loved.

As the planet measured time, the time was near. The third of Krios stood just a dawn away. And when it came, the Court of Ages Gone would wait in rapt salute until the Singer folded all his singing soul into the gracious wind. And then the raging gales would leave the splendor of foreverness and break in hurricanes of love upon the thirsty world.

The Madman rose from prayer and walked at noon toward the well. In the burning way he met a man who bore a shovel and a scroll.

“Good day, Sexton!” he called. “You feel compelled to bury scrolls?”

“No, Madman, I took it from the old woman who died in the water line,” the sexton answered. “Old women should be buried, but never books. Do you read?”

“I read,” the Madman said.

“Then here,” said the sexton as he handed him the woman’s one possession.

The Madman took the roll and stared in fascination at its crinkled skin. “The book is old,” he thought. “She must have started writing it when she was very young.”

He waited for his measure of water and then he left the well. He entered his barren room and waited in the shuttered silence for the dusk. He ate a crust of bread and drank a little water. The water, like the earth, was dead. Nothing sparkled on the tongue. When darkness came, he lit an oil wick and broke the heavy seal upon the scroll. It opened to the very place of promise and the ancient words stared up at him.

“The writer was the woman, prior to her blindness,” he said into the gloom.

She had indeed written all the scroll, this strange old Amazon, whose stories coursed with dragons and winged creatures she had seen. Sometimes she wrote of armies, their conflict set in blood. And then again she told of shepherds singing songs and maidens deep in love with unremembered sheiks. Sometimes she wrote the mindless, droning genealogies of her glorious heritage. Law was there.

Love was there.

Life, justice, death.

The lamp burned low before his eyes fell on the Song of Promise. The text came up in joy and hung about him, robed in the simple glory of its years:

“O clap your hands you dying heads of state!

His love will come to cleanse the practiced hate of fallen Terra.

Joy will come again to fill the deserts, level mountain chains.

Earthmaker is in love with loveless men.