The tactic of their treachery was fear. At every city gate they shouted their demand that citizens within receive the Mark. If refused, they called flying Vollkons to raze the villages with fire. The Vollkons numbered only seven but the terror they inspired was beyond all measure. Terra’s children sang a monstrous song:

“Seven princes on the spire,

Seven diamonds in the mire,

Seven Vollkons dropping fire

Upon the burning forests.

Who keeps the dragons in their lairs?

Elan, Lord of Ellanor.”

Their rhyme was more than nonsense.

Elan kept his ugly pets in frigid eyries in the Crystal Range. Their strength demanded each be chained alone in isolated caves. Even Elan quailed before the Vollkons as a group. He knew the horror they inspired. When he unleashed them, death emerged.

The war began with what was called the small atrocity.

One misty morning in the Season of the Center Star, the village of Varge was waking from the silent night just passed. Suddenly the sky broke clear, and through the clearing fog came screaming Vollkons, giant claws distended. Canisters of death ore fell and fire was everywhere. Children wailed and clung in flaming death to flaming forms. All life convulsed and died. Smoke tumbled thick above the Steppes. Surrounding cities saw the smoke and feared.

Word of this atrocity spread through the Steppes. And when the smoke cleared, Elan ordered his men into the fear-filled world. At every city’s gate, the citizens remembered Varge and welcomed Elan’s troops. Each was made to buy the chain of Elan and wear the heavy medal at his throat. Elan’s bronzed medallion held but one inscription: “Elan, Lord of Ellanor.”

On the back of every medal was a silver mirror where each man could behold the hope of men.

VI

Hell’s logic consists in preventing murder by murdering all murderers.

Heaven’s logic greets every murderer with grace, dying when the time comes with a beatific face.

On the evening following the passing of Varge, Dreamer finished his portion of gruel. He walked to one of the abandoned caverns to be with those Singerians who shared the drudgery of Elan’s mines.

They met to sing their ancient songs and pray. But this was a special night. On the eve before, a miner had laid aside the seal of Elan and had become unchained. And on this night he waited to receive the Stigmon of the Troubadour.

While some Singerians knelt and sang the Star-Song, the miner felt the joy of wet earth in his palm. He felt a young man trace the Singer’s sign upon his brow and heard him say:

“Remember as your hand is stained

That his was crushed and torn by pain

That men of Terra fully know

There is no depth he would not go

To Love.

Earthmaker, Singer and Invader be

The substance of infinity.”

After the rite they read passages of hope from THE FINALE. The brazen chain of Elan slept in dust beneath their feet as they sang: