The Song of the Sword Mothers
The Kingdoms and Ages of Siluvaria
The history of Siluvaria is measured in kingdoms lost, gods divided, and the three great catastrophes by which the shape of the modern world was made. In Old Khepathia, some seven and a half millennia ago, when Bahamut and Tiamat were yet joined in love, the six Swords of Creation were forged amid the wars of the Cathidic Blight. That first age perished in the Sundering, about 4000 DR, when the divine wyrms were divided and the world passed into the age of Ethilistyr, the Dream Water. There Bahamut and Tiamat made war, the first Scintilliant spread across Siluvaria, and the six women remembered as the Anum Batai, the Sword Mothers, came at last to Highspire. Ethylistyr ended in the Rending, around 2000 DR, with the death of Tiamat and the ruin of the old order. Thereafter arose the soaring elven kingdoms of Orsolon, the flying cities and the great Mythals, in the high Age of the Scintilliant. That age in turn passed away with the First Rime of the Frostmaiden, at the beginning of Dale Reckoning, 1,510 years ago.
What follows is called The Song of the Sword Mothers, composed by Verenestra, archfey of the court of Lady Vivianna of Gildensong. Tradition holds that Verenestra wrote the verses upon dried leaves in an ink of wine, soot, and her own blood, and made only three copies: one for the Lady of the Valley, one for the Bladesong Knight Loralin Galdirion, and one for Lady Glasshair of Rainmark.
THE SONG OF THE SWORD MOTHERS
As written upon the Autumn Leaves by Verenestra
Six Mothers came beneath the starry glow,
The Anum Batai, summoned by Mystra’s word,
Five thousand five hundred years ago.
Yet older were the Blades beneath their hand,
For twice a thousand years before their choosing
They had been wrought in lost Khepathia’s land.
There love had kindled in the elder light,
When Bahamut lay beside Tiamat,
And Glory had not yet been sundered from the night.
Six swords they wrought while yet the gods were one,
Three born for Glory and three born for Doom,
Before the marriage of the wyrms was done.
Then Volukai dreamed beneath the poisoned deep,
And through the earth the Cathidic Blight awakened,
Like blackened roots arising out of sleep.
And hatred entered where love once had lain,
Till Bahamut and Tiamat took their names apart,
And heaven learned the ancient taste of pain.
Thus came the Sundering beneath a wounded sky,
The first of three great wounds that shaped the ages,
When love divided and the stars learned how to die.
Yet Mystra gathered what the gods had wrought,
Lest six unmastered swords unmake the Weave,
And bound their fury unto mortal thought.
For steel alone remembers neither breath,
Nor pity, grief, nor consequence of choosing,
And power without a heart is kin to death.
Therefore she sought six keepers for each blade,
Six living tethers fastened to the world,
That mortal hands might govern what gods had made.
Before the Seven Daughters came to fame,
There were the Six, the Mothers of the Swords,
And every blade was wedded to a name.
Three were given unto shining Glory,
And three unto the darker house of Doom,
And thus divided stood the ancient story.
Yet neither good nor evil dwelt alone,
For every sword remembered its first forging,
When dragon love had made all six as one.
Through Ethylistyr the Mothers kept their ward,
While Dream Water shimmered beneath the moons,
And mortal hands grew accustomed to the sword.
Then from the swords arose the Mythal fire,
As elves first learned to weave the land with magic
And lift their hidden cities ever higher.
The Cathidic Blight withdrew from root and stone,
And Volukai passed eastward into darkness,
While green returned to countries overgrown.
In those years the young Scintilliant took wing,
Beyond the ancient bounds of Ethylistyr,
And elves first dreamed of Orsolon’s coming spring.
Then concord flowered for a little while,
And all six Mothers journeyed north together,
Through forest deep and many a starlit mile.
At Alenthia Feiren they made their spire,
The house that later tongues would call Highspire,
Where sixfold magic burned like sleepless fire.
Long ere the Rending, there the temple stood,
Raised unto Mystra and the living Weave,
White above mountain, river, field, and wood.
There every Sword of Creation found its rest,
And all six Mothers dwelt beneath one roof,
Each blade made still against its keeper’s breast.
Even dragons came beneath that sacred stone,
Ghinaetria and Angmehridon together,
When copper and green had not yet warlike grown.
First among the Mothers stood Sciabelle the bright,
Priestess of Corellon, keeper of the Emerald,
Thalorien gleaming with green and deathless light.
Then came the Sisters, three who walked with Doom,
Acertiana bearing cold Rendgray,
Whose shadow made the brightest chamber gloom.
Thayertiala bore Rendlereign the Pale,
Whose edge could sever sovereignty from kings,
And make the mightiest covenant grow frail.
Aetheiatala bore Rendpyre’s crimson flame,
The blade that makes immortal blood remember
That even deathless things may lose their name.
And Mystra trusted these three hearts to hold,
The darkness sleeping in the Swords of Doom,
For mortal love seemed stronger then than gold.
But high above, the stars began to bleed,
For Tiamat’s wrath had entered all creation,
And hatred ripened from an ancient seed.
Then came Kanre Charrir, dragonborn and white,
The sole non-elven Mother of the Six,
Who bore Aeltharion like a star of light.
The Ivory Blade was given to her line,
And blood remembers what the years have buried,
For oath and sword remain by old design.
But Vaelorin, the Crimson, went to one called fair,
An elven-seeming Mother named Emoria,
With midnight eyes and softly silvered hair.
Yet Emoria was a woven lie,
For underneath that borrowed face was Iggwilv,
Mother of witches, hidden from Mystra’s eye.
Thus poison entered quietly through the door,
Not borne by armies, dragonfire, or darkness,
But by one smiling woman on the temple floor.
She whispered where the Mothers came to pray,
And turned the hearts of Glory against Doom,
Until old fellowship began to rot away.
As sun and moon divided in the height,
So Glory looked on Doom with growing loathing,
And Doom mistrusted every child of light.
Beyond Highspire the Scintilliant spread wide,
Their kingdoms rooting beneath Orsolon’s shadow,
While mortal nations gathered at their side.
And Tiamat claimed the breathing earth,
While Bahamut withdrew unto the heavens,
And every quarrel found a darker birth.
For centuries the Anum Batai knew no peace,
The hidden splinter driven ever deeper,
Until even memory begged the wound to cease.
Then came the eve appointed unto fate,
Three thousand five hundred years before this singing,
When Doom’s three Mothers gathered at the gate.
There Acertiana and her Sisters swore the Kai,
The dreadful Vow of Immortnish unbroken,
And bound themselves to Doom, no more to die.
For lords of Dream Water had found beneath the ground
The sleeping flesh of Tiamat herself,
Where the Queen of Dragons lay in darkness bound.
Then came Azinon, master of the streams of time,
To guard Vaelorin from the gathering treason,
Walking through years as others walk a climb.
Before the Six he tore away the guise,
And Emoria was named as Iggwilv,
The Mother of Witches naked before their eyes.
Then Sister rose against Sister beneath the dome,
And Doom drew steel on Sciabelle and Kanre,
While thunder shook the ancient mountain home.
Azinon seized the Crimson from the fight,
And bore Vaelorin down the roads of time,
Beyond the reach of Doom and mortal sight.
Far hence he gave the blade to Springfield’s hand,
That one unborn might answer ancient treason
When Doom returned again to mortal land.
But Thalorien shattered in that bitter hour,
And Sciabelle fell beneath the Swords of Doom,
Her green blood burning through the stones like flower.
Then Tiamat was stricken beneath the world’s dark wall,
And Alenthia Feiren broke upon the mountain,
When heaven answered to the Dragon Queen’s fall.
That hour men afterward named the Rending,
The second wound by which the world was measured,
And Dream Water came unto its ending.
Thereafter came the Orsolon in flight,
Their silver cities wandering above the forests,
And Mythals burning underneath the night.
For long the Swords of Doom knew hidden rest,
Scattered from Highspire and from one another,
While Orsolon’s bright cities ruled the west.
But the three Sisters had escaped the grave’s dark door,
Their Vow transformed them into deathless wraiths,
Neither women of flesh nor Mothers anymore.
Then Matildae came beneath a veiled moon,
And with her brother stole the sword Rendgray,
And Highspire learned that Doom returns too soon.
Her brother then was called Vizix the Veiled,
Though Volukai moved behind the mortal naming,
And many truths beneath that name lay sealed.
They fled aboard the haunted Kellis Ilbyrn through the gloom,
And without their swords the three lost even themselves,
Becoming wandering Mothers bound to Doom.
Rendlereign vanished where the oldest shadows reign,
In forgotten corners of Siluvaria,
And none who sought its resting place returned again.
Rendpyre fled beyond the mortal wild,
Into the shifting countries of the Fey,
Where road and year and memory are beguiled.
Thus sword and Mother share one deathless chain,
And neither wholly lives without the other,
Nor may the wraiths be slain while blades remain.
Until the three return to Highspire’s stone,
The Anum Batai wander through the ages,
Seeking what was theirs and theirs alone.
Yet in their curse abides a bitter grace,
For while the Sword Mothers haunt the mortal world,
Doom cannot wholly show its final face.
The blades may murder, sunder, burn, and mar,
Yet something deeper sleeps within their making,
A final wound reserved for moon and star.
And Tiamat, long fallen, walks once more beneath the sky,
Returned when Vecna’s banishment tore the old seals,
And ancient wings are heard again on high.
But not until three Dooms return beneath the spire,
And Rendgray, Rendlereign, and Rendpyre stand together,
May the oldest purpose wake within their fire.
Then shall the Dragon Queen behold her ancient foe,
And all the Scintilliant shall hear Highspire calling,
From mountain crown to caverns far below.
Then shall the Sixteen gather beneath the darkened sun,
And Siluvaria remember its first morning,
When dragon, elf, and sword were newly one.
And whether Highspire shall become their tomb or door,
No Mother sings, no dragon knows, no god has spoken,
For that last verse is written nevermore.
Leave a comment