Your names we know, | by knack-sight of ghost;
chthonic kind-tag | does not catch essence
of our rank rightly. | Of rock-bound eldest
that yet mind master, | as mortal we breathed
in time Fold-faring, | before grew Tar,
with spurned exiles. | Only age is root
and reason sole | that we rule kingrik
bone-beamed and deep, | where baneful ghosts,
man-scathes greatest, | grim ill-wielders,
forever lie. | All here have broken
deep-laws that hold | perhaps even gods.
Many the folk-years, | few the comings,
for souls shudder | at sight of cave
shroudless and open; | even life-blessed,
though brave up above, | bold on cliffside,
this dire-hall flee. | So deal askings:
truths that you seek here | sow in our mind-mould.
Like the Herald in Book IV, this character [name and role withheld!] uses alliterative verse modelled more after Old English alliterative verse, rather than the later-fourteenth-century model used to represent Taru high speech. I've bolded the lifts, because I felt try-hard.
Some key differences compared to the more common Taru high speech alliterative verse:
- there is no principle of asymmetry: the same set of metrical patterns—I'm working with the Sieversian 'five types'—are legitimate for both a-verse and b-verse
- long dips and short dips are not distinguished
- only one of the two lifts in the a-verse must alliterate with the line's third lift, the first lift of the b-verse, though both a-verse lifts can alliterate if you want.
In other respects many rules remain the same: four lifts in a line, metrical caesura, all vowels alliterate with all other vowels, and so on.
Contextual notes (with very light Book IX spoilers)
This takes place in a series of caves set into a cliff. Most have curtains/shrouds covering their entrances. Kin-Bright and Qwerthart have descended past all the upper caves and come to the bottom-most.
The speaker is royalty, thus 'we', 'our'.
Kin-Bright asks them, when they meet, whether they're a chthonic, which explains the start of their reply.