A Bitter Reckoning

{distant sleigh bells} Hear the little silver bells Along the winter road

Aventis guides the fallen home

And bears Lymara’s load

Through blood-drained halls and crooked stone

The three descended low

Where blackened water held no stars And secret currents flowed

A ritual turned beneath the earth A mouth without a name And

every torch that neared the pool Burned cold instead of flame Aventis

stood against the dark

With bells upon his rein

But corrupted hands laid hold of him

And snapped his neck like cane

No final prayer escaped his lips

No warning left his breath

Only bells that shook once in the dark And marked the hour

of death

But the scale would not balance The bell would not ring

One soul for another

Is a bitter reckoning

The scale would not balance Though mercy took its toll

For no hand may give another life Without the weight of soul

{dynamic build} Then Evergreen,

in desperate need

Consumed what should have passed

She took the guide within herself To make her own breath last

When grief had cooled the battle’s rage She sought to give him

back But mercy found the scales uneven And all the world went

black

For the scale would not balance The bell would not ring

One soul for another

Is a bitter reckoning

The scale would not balance Though mercy took its toll And the

one who tried to free the dead Was parted from her soul

Nora knelt before Lymara And called into the deep

While Draven faced the shadowed door

Where hungers never sleep

He plunged beneath the blackened tide And wore the dark like skin

Then gathered what remained of them And bore the fragments in {slow

rising fiddle} Not whole enough for mortal breath Not lost beyond recall

He laid the pieces on the stone And gave Lymara all No

triumph rang within that place No hero raised a blade Only a

prayer, a broken guide And debts that must be paid {distant harmony}

The scale would not balance The bell scarcely rang

But somewhere past the veil of night A single sleigh bell sang

The scale would not balance

No matter what they gave Yet something of the fallen guide Was

carried from that cave {voice

and one bell} Hear the little silver bells Where blackened waters roll

And never claim another’s life

Can mend a wounded soul