“No, Singerians are the true believers. Don’t you see that when they die there is no emptiness of soul? Only they are free who die in joy.”

“Tell me, Knight, would the Singer ever ask that children die in caves?”

The knight, seeing the burden of Praxis’ guilt, asked, “Have you heard the Star-Song yet?”

“Once when coming to this city I listened while Everyman sang its majesty of hope. Then it seemed a pagan hymn. Now I do not know …” His voice trailed off again. “I remember just a few lines.”

In a low voice the knight began to sing the words Praxis first heard on the open sea …

“His melody fell upward into joy

And climbed its way in spangled rhapsody.

Earthmaker’s infant stars adored his boy,

And blazed his name through every galaxy.

‘Love,’ sang the Spirit Son and mountains came.

More melody, and life began to grow.

A song of light and darkness fled in shame

Before a universe in embryo.”

The fullness and the quiet of majesty began to settle on them both. The Invader came in heavy presence to the star-hung canopy of crumbled stone. Mysterious light came gusting through the ghetto.

As the final strains of the Song faded, Praxis cried out to be unchained and the scales of his reluctance fell away. The awful burden of his crime was lifted and the Invader, powerful and whole, swirled light into the darkest fissures of his soul. Praxis felt the buoyant delirium of that great discovery that indeed he had a soul.

“Please, Knight, grant to me the Stigmon,” he pled. The knight picked up a bit of soil and traced the Singer’s Sign upon the sculptor’s face. He spoke the words of life so glorious to those who were unchained …

“Earthmaker, Singer and Invader be

The substance of infinity.”

He and the knight embraced and parted in the joy he knew was his forever. He stopped in the dark street, threw back his head and laughed a free man’s laughter. He shouted to the stars that had absorbed Invader’s outer light: “I love you Singer, Prince of Planets, Troubadour of Life.”

And then, he paused and remembered he was still a part of Urbis and a servant of the Poet King—or was he? He turned toward the temples of the city and shouted fearlessly, “Sarkon, wherever you are, your grasp of death is over! I am a Singerian! Yes, Yes!” he laughed and shouted. “I, Praxis, am a Singerian!”

None had ever sung it quite so loudly in the streets of upper Urbis.

XXIII

Creativity can sometimes be a curse.

Ask Dr. Frankenstein.

In half an hour Praxis approached his studio. Two guards were waiting at the door. One thing was left to care for before he submitted to arrest, and then of course to death.

As he had hoped, the back door was unguarded. He slipped the key into the lock and edged the door ajar. The great leather hinges held their peace and did not creak. Once in the studio he felt his way from surface to surface till his fingers felt the head of his greatest hammer. He lifted it in silence from its place and stole away. The guards in front were unaware that he had come and gone.