At the Corner of Teiban & Clive

At the corner of Teiban and Clive streets, before tor-tu-gor began to bake away the dew from the stones, I painted a timely oath on a broad wall overlooking the area where vendors for today's market would soon congregate.

Here, without contemplating consequences,
before the black Sardar range and in the face of the world,
I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it,
of the City of my life, my liberty and my love.

The author was a bold man from the earliest days of our founding. A peasant farmer who had been at various times in his life a bargemen and a sutler. A voracious reader and thinker, admired both for the strength of his arm and the strength of his will, he came to be caste leader in his village and, soon, for many of the villages that surrounded his own as Ar, both the City and the ideal, grew into what we know it to be today.