Eshtara Consyir

A dark history in verse; for my novel.

The founding of our nation great

Occurred some centuries ago.

A tow’r was built to celebrate,

Its rise and fall remembered so,

As history will say:

But newly was the country wrought,

A place of beauty, and so named.

Their skills the former pris’ners brought

To this monument, ever famed,

The greatest of its day.

And so was meant the mighty tow’r,

The symbol of a nation’s pow’r.

 

Of grey stone they constructed it,

Unrivalled seven levels tall.

A garden grew surrounding it,

A metal fence replaced a wall.

What need had they to fear?

They were the only humans who

Inhabited the stretch of land.

A fountain flowed with waters blue,

Above rose a spire, built by hand.

It took only a year.

Immortalised in song and rhyme,

It was a marvel of its time.

 

A week-long festival was held

When the construction reached its end.

A celebration that they all,

As one free nation, would attend.

Only the ill stayed home.

By the last midnight, revelry

Had reached its zenith, and no guest

Looked in the distance, so to see

The cloud approaching from the west.

In wilderness they roam,

The raiders, come from far away

On weary travellers to prey.

 

A child saw them, raised a cry;

The man beside him turned about.

He watched the boy, by arrow, die,

And fell himself ere he could shout.

All were in their power.

The revellers were all unarmed

And many died before they knew

That their companions had been harmed.

Of hundreds, survivors were few.

It lasted not an hour.

They took all things of value and

Set fire to the corpse-strewn land.

 

 The raiders then withdrew, but they

Did not go far. Survivors stirred,

 And raiders jumped, the rest to slay.

Their final victims had been lured,

And fire consumed the field.

And so the raiders swept away

As fire dried the crimson mud.

No flowers bloom there to this day;

Naught but thorns grow watered with blood.

The city never healed.

In bitter tears and flaming ire

Forever stands the Shadow Spire.

Author's Note

Eshtara Consyir means Grey Tower, and it is a city in northern Enrelatia (country of my invention) named for the most prominent feature around which it was built. This is its history. Shadow Spire, Eshta Consir, is a popular alternate name for it.