The Knight of Shifting Sands

Ten thousand suns have parched his hollow gaze,
Ten thousand moons distilled their frost to salt,
Yet still he seeks the locus of the maze—
A tower lost where stars and sand exalt.
No map endures, no guide but fevered dreams,
Where mirage-walls with every step retreat,
And phantom bells from buried cities seem
To toll the dirge of phantom foes he’ll meet.

One eve, as vultures traced their patient rings,
A gleam of white amidst the umber caught
His eye—not bone, but linen bound with strings,
A scroll half-buried, by the stormwinds brought.
He knelt (how strange, this tremor in his hand)
To brush away the centuries’ ashen veil,
Unfurling words no desert could withstand—
A script he knew as footprints know their trail.

*“To thee, my knight of laughter and of light,
Though leagues of war and silence stretch between,
This quill dares trace what lips dare not recite—
The truth that bleeds where stolen loves convene.
Three springs have died since last we watched the dawn
Paint silver o’er the orchards of our youth,
Three springs since vows to foreign thrones were sworn,
And honor’s blade severed the vine of truth.

They say you ride where death’s own breath grows thin,
Beyond the realms where mercy still holds court.
Come home, my ghostly love—let peace begin—
The tower stands, but keens its last report.
The roses weep where once your armor gleamed,
The chapel bells but sigh your battle-name.
Return, ere all becomes as you have dreamed—
A desert where no star recalls your flame.”*

The parchment cracked, its edges kissed by fire,
The date—how strange!—inscribed in hands long stilled.
Two hundred years had fed the funeral pyre
Since this was writ, yet now the void was filled.
He clutched the page as dying men clasp prayers,
While memory’s storm unbound its shackled flood—
A woman’s face, night-braided hair, the stairs
Of ivied towers where their whispers stood.

“Eleanor!” The dunes roared back her name,
A hollow chorus mocking mortal pain.
What cruel caprice of time’s unyielding flame
Had held this missive till he crossed again?
The tower—yes!—that lodestar of his quest,
Now risen clear in madness or in truth,
Its stones like frozen music, westward pressed,
Where sky and sand embraced in ageless ruth.

Through nights that bled to days then nights anew,
He drove his mount (now skeletal, yet proud)
Past pillars carved by siroccos, through
Valleys where the earth itself screamed loud.
At last, beneath a bruised and weeping sky,
It loomed—not relic, but alive, austere—
Its gates ajar as if to voice a sigh,
Its every stone a psalm to vanished years.

Within, the air hung thick with petals’ dust,
Rose and myrtle pressed in time’s closed book.
A marble stair, where once their knees found trust,
Now wound through shadows that no light forsook.
Upon the highest chamber’s splintered door,
A tarnished crest: two swallows, wings outstretched.
He crossed the threshold, armor scraping floor,
And saw—and fell—and wept—and screamed—and etched

His soul’s last cry upon that silent room:
A bed where lay two forms in lace’s embrace,
Her golden hair still bright against the gloom,
Her face preserved as moonbeams hold their grace.
Beside her, cradled close, a tiny frame—
A child unborn when last he rode to war.
No decay touched them; some enchanted flame
Had stayed the thief that steals what mortals are.

Upon her breast, a second letter slept.
With trembling hands, he broke the seal of grief:
*“I could not let the womb’s sweet promise slip
To darkness unannounced—though hope is brief.
We wait, my love, where time’s cold hand may pause,
In this last spell I learned at dreadful cost.
The child has your eyes. Come, breach the laws
That bind the living. Find us, though all’s lost.”*

Then madness, vast and fathomless, uncoiled
Within his breast—a serpent’s final strike.
He tore his helm away, his visage soiled
With tears that scored canyons through dust and like.
“I came!” he howled. “Though centuries conspired
To chain me to this graveyard of the real!
Take back your curse of life! Let me expire
Upon the pyre of what I could not heal!”

But silence answered, thicker than before.
The air grew heavy with unspoken rue.
He laid his sword beside her on the floor,
Its blade the shade of skies no longer blue.
Then, folding himself gently at her side,
He clasped her hand—still soft, still strangely warm—
“If not in life, then let in death abide
The dream that once outshone the sun’s own form.”

The tower watched, indifferent as the stars,
As ancient sorcery began to fray.
First one gray hair, then wrinkles, ancient scars,
Crept o’er the trio as time claimed its prey.
Dust filled the room, then flesh, then bone, then all
Dissolved to motes that danced in slanting light.
The desert breathed, and with one spectral call,
Erased the tower from the veil of night.

Now pilgrims claim that when the siroccos wail,
Three voices blend their sorrows with the storm—
A knight’s lament, a mother’s tender tale,
A babe’s first cry, now shapeless, yet still warm.
But scholars scoff—just winds and sand’s false lore.
Yet sometimes, when the moon bleeds copper hue,
A shadow rides where dunes meet sky’s dim shore,
Still seeking absolution never due.