The Silver Path

Introduction, Opening Verse, Chapter One

Jun 11, 2025

𑁍 Chapters: | 1 | 2 | …

Introduction

The human mind is constantly distracted, reacting to every little thing. We socialise by verbalising this distracted mind untoward each other. As one who has meditated for over twenty-three years, I am grateful to know a realm of quiet peace. Though this peace is loving and empathetic, the world shuns it for that its stillness appears unsocial. Humanity cannot have a peaceful co-existence with those whose minds have arrived at a meaningful silence, where life is seen through mystic clarity. Like the convivial consumption of alcoholic beverage, the communal verbalisation of the unquiet mind reveals itself as a superficial harmony, causing an insidious harm to one’s adherence to life’s deeper principles.

In The Silver Path I wanted to play with this socio-psychological schism and install such a stillness into my characters. Of course, as dialogue is inevitably a part of a story, I could not always fully portray the conduct of the meditator with complete fidelity, but I did allow stillness to inspire my words. Words inspired by stillness, intended to inspire into stillness. The poetic rhythm in the phraseology, inspired by a deep tranquillity, will hopefully, to the ears of the soul, have the same effect as the sound of a river, or a gentle wind making music with the trees. The Silver Path is a song of literary meditation; a song of inner stillness while meeting an ancient darkness. This is a tale of the spiritual warrior. A tale not for those seeking answers, but for those beginning to doubt the noise of answers. It is for him standing at the edge of language, ready to listen inward for a silence that precedes spoken wisdom.

Please note that it will be likely that I will publish The Silver Path in paperback format, but will occasionally publish a chapter here on Substack to palpate audience feedback.

Please note I use the nineteenth century literary application of the semicolon, where it is used as a rhythmic device — a pause slightly longer than a comma and often used when a slight contextual shift takes place within a single sentence. I have great love for the archaic tongue.

Seven tears from the deeps of time
Seven sages who concealed the light
In the Age of Shadow when darkness reigned
One hidden in the realm of dreams
One in deadless ice
One in immortal streams
One in mountains where the eagle cries
Two Saphyira upon her bosom kept,
beneath lakes and sea
The Seventh Tear forever lost
Since the Age of Shadow, when darkness reigned,
and wisdom forever slept

The Son of the Twilight

He walked aside the river Ariëll, gift of blue Ethiniëll, whose white mountain peaks hazed in the far horizon as the day was ageing, and evening was born from the lap of the silver dusk. The valley of tall grasses and rye swished in the silence while afar he saw Men lightning the traditional red Thelean lanterns, as soon the sun would sink and allowed the shadows of night to unveil themselves, as if the dark of the inner most earth would reach up from the ground and rise to the sky for the light in the moon and the stars.
And the grey eyes of Ri’nuin seemed themselves the house of eternal twilight, of a soul that lives neither in the day of Man but also not in the slumbers of his nightfall. For though the silvern twilight lived within the realm of his eyes, a light lived within them also, for which many shunned and feared him, and the silence of mystics was deep in his heart; and the ways of the erratic mind of common Man could not go there.

He entered into the thick growth of the ancient wood and would soon find his home; it was sufficiently removed from town yet not too afar, so that the strong beat of the smith’s hammer could still be heard resounding through the sky.
A fire burned in his hearth and crackled into the solitude of his house.

He moved into his study; upon the desk he unfurled a scroll, its paper made of the bark of the mulberry tree.
He would grind the inkstone and prepared the ink and soon, feeling inspired by his meditative walk through the twilight, his mastery in the art of calligraphy would spell the runes of high virtue.
He was a poet and calligrapher—arts taught to him by his deceased father, for Ri’nuin was an orphan of martial sorrow, and his mother too had parted from the world by some evil means too young for him to know either her name or her face, and Father would not ever speak of it.

He remembered how he had just been a child within this very room and Father had begun teaching him the way of the brush. Amdor had attentively beheld his son, as young Ri’nuin had soon found a place of mystical equanimity in his heart with which he wrote the sacred runes with a skill beyond many masters.
“The master keeps empty the mind,” Amdor had said, “and naturally applies the hard and the soft; he knows when the hand must be firm, and when it must be gentle. Too firm, one’s grip does not give the Uncreated realm of Origin its due part of the hold, too loose is the grip that fails to understand the responsibility of mortals, whereby one’s effort shall fail. Drift ever between the Knowable and Unknowable, my son; it is the way of the brush, and of life.”
And Amdor then smiled upon him, and bowed as he retrieved the brush; upon an empty parchment he had cast droplets of ink and studied their patterns in earnest, as if they presaged meaningful things. Then he held his son in stern yet loving eye: “In life holdst thou close the heart of calligraphy, whether the road is steady or steep; for there shall be trials, and I long from home.”
And in the silence of his father’s eyes read he secrets dark and beautiful, like glittering morning dews on gossamer, and descried he in Father foremost a hidden identity, wise and powerful. And in that quiet moment, silent a promise had been made: Ri’nuin shall not speak of Amdor’s higher Self.

Presently, Ri’nuin sat by the desk and wrote:

O Haven Grey before the stars immortal
Before valleys of darkness whence come the mortal dreams
Between night and day is the portal
Where the River Twilight streams

Into the vales where night is eternal
And stars immortal dwell
O Valley Nocturnal
Where-in the River Twilight fell

The River Twilight, estuary to the Streams of Dawn
The Streams of Dawn that the Light of Stars carry
And grey of morning shall be gone
O, by streams luminous, that the starlight ferry

Ri’nuin cleaned his brush and hung both it and his runes to dry. Soon he might need to travel to Namensis, Thelean’s capitol city, to see if the houses of high prestige would be willing to offer him silver for his works of calligraphy and verse, for business in his line of work was ever scarce in this mere town, and most of his coin had to be earned by counselling on the names of newborns, and write their names in calligraphy, as was the custom of the land. These names were names of power, connecting one with one’s soul and destiny. A Namegiver gave the names of power; but parents also named their children their ordinary names used in one’s dealings with the world. Many kept their name of power to themselves, or couples would call each other by their names of power in their marriage, so as to greaten their bond.

Eventide had latened and had long gathered in darkness when he poured buckets of cold water over himself in the garden. The full moon had risen above the trees.

There was a silence in the wood; a gentle wind breathed from it, seeming to carry whispers.
Ri’nuin listened to the wind. He felt called. Was it a mere desire to walk among the trees, to gather dreams beneath the canopy, prior to sleep? The wind withdrew, but it was as if a gentle spirit had returned among the trees.
He donned his robes and decided to follow.

The trees of Ceitidh were ancient; further North and East, beyond the high plateau of Angkasa, where stand the stones that of old measured the sun, the moon, and the stars, stand the Trees of the Eternal Kings, whose rings would count ten-thousand at least. Great was their height and girth, and so were their mighty protruding roots, and the ancient kings that of old dwelt this land had lain their deceased bodies to rest by their feet, that their dead flesh would be consumed by their roots and come part of their living immortal wood, and blossom into their flowers and live on in their verdant leaves, and they believed that so they would become a part of the eternal breath of the world.

But Ri’nuin went there not; rather, he sought the tree, a nameless tree but ancient, that stood by a stream that murmured into the stone mound of a grotto. In childhood oft he had sat there, feeling veiled by its great roots from a world that sees, but not understands. Among the deep silence at whiles a tree would creak and groan. The full moon in the sky cloudless illumed the woods in the night.

A gentle wind moved among the trees; a gentle power it held that seemed to move through him. Did he hear whispers upon it? There, towards the tree of his childhood yet in the distance, crowned upon a camber with the great boulders; there seemed to be a hue of a soft radiance; a lambent stroke painted into the dark canvas of the nightly woods.

When he came closer, he saw; he saw that from the moon fell a slender beam of silvern light, that with a gentle lambency parted the dark of eventide. But within that light there was a greater light. It was a flicker, and it was small but so bright it should have hurt the eye of he who beholds it, and yet it but soothed his nerves and the moods of his soul. The silence of the woods seemed to yield to a deeper silence still; a voice ethereal that spoke unto the stillness of his heart.
He felt called; his hand passed through the light, and it felt cool like the springs that usher from mountains immortal clad in deadless snow.
A gentle power commanded him so that his hand closed into his palm, and rays of soft silvern light ushered through the seams of his fingers. He felt a thing of hardness.
A vision came to him: he saw a lady in robes of white, a master of the deeply arcane. Alone she wandered in mountains vast below the moon, and she looked up at her silvern wake, and a solemn task was within the lady’s heart; and after a long search of peril she now knew what to do. And from deep within Ri’nuin there suddenly awoke a feeling of some ancient vow, a vow he had made before he was ever born; it was strong and clear, and yet he could not see what truly it was, as if it was the voice of one whom deeply you know, but the wind sweeps away the words and casts them into valleys of far mountains beyond, and only distant echoes remain.
But now the lunar light faded, so that the moon now stood silvern and alone beyond the foliage of the trees, with the light of stars enwound.
Ri’nuin opened his eyes and looked into his hand, and beheld there a lucent diamond sized no greater than a finger nail; and it shone bright, and he again felt that vow from deep within his heart, though now somehow mingled it was with a sense of deepest grief. And he looked upon the moon and spake, “o silvern light of plenilune, what gift bestowest thou upon me, and what purpose puts it upon the errands of my soul?”

He placed the diamond in the inner pocket of his deep blue robes, and went home.

𑁍 Chapters: | 1 | 2 | …

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If possible, I would like your comment on one thing: I fear the opening verse is very similar to the opening verse of The Lord of the Rings due to the rhythmic repetition of numbers, the mention of a mythological object (the tears), and reference to ancientry. What are your thoughts on this?

The Sound of Clouds

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