Magic's Key Words and music by Catherine Faber © 1990This girl with all the beauty I could never hope to own, In that brief, bewitching moment between child and woman grown, Mistress to a Monarch; this girl is half my age-- Am I only jealous that she is the better mage? For I have worked and studied hard, but slowly have I learned. Too well I know the lessoning: All power must be earned. And yet, that's not exactly what the axiom avers. . . "All power must be paid for--" How has she paid for hers? She seems like some enchanting child, so innocent and frail, Like dew upon a rose, the jewels on her silken veil Her strength as far beyond my own as stars surpass the storm, The mightiest of mages, she can change her very form. But magic's key is magic, I've pursued it half my days, In tattered book, in harpsong, and in half-remembered phrase, In silent meditation, beneath the sighing firs. All power must be paid for. How has she paid for hers? Am I grown old and bitter, do I flinch at every gaffe, To hear such spite and malice in her charming, chiming laugh? Why do her companions look so faded, white and drained? How did she taint the gnomish Deep, or what the Deep contained? She seems so vain and petty, with a pinched and twisted soul Where I'd expect maturity; she's won to such a goal, An age-old rule establishes, and all I know concurs All power must be paid for. How has she paid for hers? Her room ablaze with golden light, she sat like any Queen, I cloaked myself in shadows, that I might not there be seen Her lackey knelt beside her chair, and what between them passed? Her face. . .as though she'd hungered, and was sated now at last. Silently I crept away, ashamed that I should spy On something more than private, that had chanced beneath my eye, Yet ever and uneasy, the memory in me stirs-- All power must be paid for. How has she paid for hers?