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                CANTICLE OF THE DRAGON
Hear the sage as his song descends like heaven's rain or tears,
          and washes the years, the dust of the
                    many stories
        from the High Tale of the Dragonlance.
        For in ages deep, past memory and word,
            in the first blush of the world
          when the three moons rose from the
                lap of the forest,
            dragons, terrible and great,
          made war on this world of Krynn.

        Yet out of the darkness of dragons,
            out of our cries for light
    in the blank face of the black moon soaring,
        a banked light flared in Solamnia,
          a knight of truth and of power,
        who called down the gods themselves
         and forged the mighty Dragonlance,
                piercing the soul
        of dragonkind, driving the shade of
                  their wings
      from the brightening shores of Krynn.

          Thus Huma, Knight of Solamnia,
            Lightbringer, First Lancer,
        followed his light to the foot of the
                Khalkist Mountains,
          to the stone feet of the gods,
        to the crouched silence of their temple.
       He called down the Lancemakers, he took on
          their unspeakable power to crush the
                unspeakable evil,
           to thrust the coiling darkness
             back down the tunnel of the
                dragon's throat.

        Paladine, the Great God of Good,
            shone at the side of Huma,
    strengthening the lance of his strong right arm,
        and Huma, ablaze in a thousand moons,
          banished the Queen of Darkness,
      banished the swarm of her shrieking hosts
        back to the senseless kingdom of
          death, where their curses
       swooped upon nothing and nothing
       deep below the brightening land.

    Thus ended in thunder the Age of Dreams
        and began the Age of Might,
      When Istar, kingdom of light and
         truth, arose in the east,
      where minarets of white and gold
    spired to the sun and to the sun's glory,
       announcing the passing of evil,
      and Istar, who mothered and cradled
          the long summers of good,
            shone like a meteor
       in the white skies of the just.

       Yet in the fullness of sunlight
     the Kingpriest of Istar saw shadows:
     At night he saw the trees as things
         with daggers, the streams
      blackened and thickened under the
               silent moon.
    He searched books for the paths of Huma,
        for scrolls, signs, and spells
       so that he, too, might summon the
             gods, might find
        their aid in his holy aims,
       might purge the world of sin.

      Then came the time of dark and death
       as the gods turned from the world.
       A mountain of fire crashed like a
            comet through Istar,
    the city split like a skull in the flames,
    mountains burst from once-fertile valleys,
    seas poured into the graves of mountains,
       the deserts sighed on abandoned
            floors of the seas,
       the highways of Krynn erupted
      and became the paths of the dead.

      Thus began the Age of Despair.
        The roads were tangled.
    The winds and the sandstorms dwelt
        in the husks of cities,
    The plains and mountains became our home.
      As the old gods lost their power,
        we called to the blank sky
    into the cold, dividing gray to the ears
              of new gods.
     The sky is calm, silent, unmoving.
      We have yet to hear their answer.