EPILOGUE
As new life shall come from death, a new story is formed, molded from the rich loam of the old, and a new path parts from the straight road like a budding branch from a hoary, old tree, still clinging to the trunk for sustenance, perhaps, but seeking its own place in the sun nonetheless. Tatya did indeed reach the fabled land of Gondor, and its once glorious capitol, Minas Tirith, with its great gates shod of mithril and steel, now thrown into tumult as war encompassed all the lands from Hildor to Harad.
There is an old curse that goes 'may you live in interesting times'; but to a young scholar like Tatya Reecho, such a curse was a curious boon and a baleful blessing dangling like a knife's edge. To chronicle the great events of one's time, to breath the rarified air in which the lofty heroes of the era lived and loved and warred. Ah! 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished for an aspiring scribe. Peace has its attributes, surely, and dying comfortably in one's own bed is a far sight better than bleeding to death on the battlefield; but the mystique of war and the tales it engenders burns with a sanguine yearning in the heart of a poet and the head of a historian. One such martial minstrel once wrote:
"My heart is filled with gladness when I see
Strong castles besieged, stockades broken and overwhelmed,
Many vassals struck down,
Horses of the dead and wounded roving at random.
And when battle is joined, let all men of good lineage
Think of naught but the breaking of heads and arms,
For it is better to die than be vanquished and live. . . .
I tell you I have no such joy as when I hear the shout
'On! On!' from both sides and the neighing of riderless steeds,
And groans of 'Help me! Help me!'
And when I see both great and small
Fall in the ditches and on the grass
And see the dead transfixed by spear shafts!
Lords, mortgage your domains, castles, cities,
But never give up war!"
This, of course, was not the style of the sensible Tatya, who would have despised the poet as much as he did the corsair Attar Kiryatin; nevertheless, the apprentice had been nurtured on the lusty and bloody tales of his master, and although he was a cautious soul, adventure was ever the lure that drove him beyond his wary constraints, emboldened his spirit and caused the pen to burn along the parchment with the fire of inspiration. And so it was with Tatya, who chronicled the Great War of the Fourth Age, and the most daring of quests, in which a disparate band of warriors and poets, weavers and wanderers, sought to solve the riddle of the enigmatic Mouth of Sauron, and to seek the destruction of this seemingly deathless Dark Lord, who was said to be mortal, yet waged war on Middle-earth with the ageless savagery of an immortal.
But that, as they say, is another story.