Feral
Treasure knows no laws.
Man understands this; greed as a force of corruption stands without equal.
For the glitter of gold, for the shine of silver, for the call of copper,
A man will sell his mother,
A maid slaughter her lover,
A mother cast away her child.
Neither druids nor bards are immune to the laws of such spoils,
Nor are gods.
It hurt when the beast took my arm. Not at once;
My heart blazed with the flames of battle, and I roared as I closed with him,
No more aware that my sword-hand lay on the grass, still clasping my blade,
The rim of my shield laying nearby,
Than swine are aware that they fill their bellies in summer
Only to fall before the butcher’s blade come autumn.
They say that I cried out for aid; I have no memory of this,
Though I doubt not the honorable word of my honorable friends.
My companions rushed in to fill the gap between myself and my foe:
My brother from Norway was first to my side, moving to place himself
Between myself and the warrior that sought my life; fast and furious
Were the blows between Aengaba’s sword and Sreng’s bloodied spear.
In heartbeats, the Dagda stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Aengaba,
And this, at last, made my foe quit the field,
Unwilling to face two such heroes.
Then, and only then, did I fall; then did the Dagda
Summon kings to guard me, and doctors to staunch the bleeding,
And women of healing to bind my wounds,
And I was carried from the field, near dead.
There is no finer man of healing than Diancecht;
Miracles can he perform, illnesses that would kill he can
Drive away like whipped curs, but even he, so skilled,
Could not restore my arm; the blood had fled from it,
The raw meat and bone of it trampled into the muddy field
Until every sinew shattered and the skin was rent by a thousand heels.
But he gave me what he could: a hand of silver,
More finely wrought than any jewel, the very strength and shape of my own,
Every pore, every scar, every fold of finger and gleam of muscle
Akin to my own of flesh and bone.
And so cunningly was it wrought, that only by its hue could it be told
Apart from my own.
But it was not flesh, not perfect and part of me.
Oh, aye, sealed by Creidne to the scarred shoulder where the original had hung,
And yes, of power and might alike with that,
But the Tuatha De demand that their king be flawless, without imperfection.
I could no longer claim such a truth,
And so I stepped aside.
Three things breed resentment in a man’s heart:
Greed for the wealth he cannot have,
Longing for the respect he once held from every man,
And the fire for revenge that cannot be gained.
Many’s the valorous man that fell in that battle,
Yet he who took my arm remained until the end.
He challenged me to single combat again, before Diancecht had fitted me
With that arm of argent, and I bade him bind his own sword-arm behind him.
The cur would not consent to such a compromise,
And instead of that final battle,
Wherein I might still have bested him,
The Children of Danu agreed to divide the fair lands between
Ourselves and them.
My recompense denied. No chance was I given
To strike Sreng down; the pain like poison inside my heart grew,
Festered,
Twining its cold, shining tendrils around the core of me,
And something inside
Awoke.
Three things there are that live upon this world:
The kingdom of those plants that grow and take their strength from the sun,
The kingdom of those creatures that breathe, and take their glory in battle,
And the kingdom of the gods, that take power from every praise that comes to their ears
from the lips of man.
King no longer; perfect no longer;
I suffered in sullen silence, while the white worm of hatred
Writhed in my heart like a serpent in the haymow.
At length, I began to draw away from my fellows and my friends,
Perceiving some mockery in their slantside glances.
They say my sickness was upon me, and they did not lie;
Not the sickness within me before Diancecht had given to me
A hand of silver, but the sickness inside my chest,
As the three things which bred resentment did their deadly work.
The day came when my hand moved, and yet I moved it not;
The day came when my hand grasped, and yet I bade it not to grasp;
There came the day when my hand struck out at one I had no will to strike,
A poor and humble charcoal-maker whose roof I sheltered under,
And the wretch fell down dead, head split from crown to jaw and streaming blood
From the blow of my silver hand.
Then it was that I understood: the poison in my heart had moved
Through all the streams of my blood, and lastly reached
The scar whereunto the silver hand was grafted,
And yet despite the shield of scar between blood and bright metal,
The venom coursed throughout.
Hatred for Sreng and the fire for revenge bade my fingers curl;
Lust for the honor all the Tuatha had once showered upon me as king–
Now bestowed upon that cruel, petty, pretty princeling Bres!–
And greed for the wealth I no longer had:
The silver like that of the hand itself;
Its shine and its weight called to my hand,
And it responded in kind:
Treasure knows no laws.
Once a god, I fell from their company and became
No better than a man; hard but hale, sturdy and sore.
Once a man, the poison flooded my veins, flowed to my hand,
And I fell again, striking down those who would aid me,
Knowing neither the nobility of the Tuatha De
Nor the decency of man; an animal I was, no more than that:
Ravening and greedy, lusting and violent,
Consuming or destroying all that crossed my path,
A feral beast needing healing–or destruction.
In my last moment of clarity, I secreted myself away from all men, all maids;
Deep in the darkest woods of the fair isle I hid myself,
And hoped — in vain — that I would perish before another innocent
Fell beneath my unwilling blows.
But keen eyes noticed my absence:
Miach son of Diancecht had conceived
Of a charm that would restore my hand of flesh to me,
Confident in his own skills, finding the work of his father deficient,
And over all the land he sought for me, until finding me,
He came upon me in a slumber, and knowing the evil of the hand of silver,
Deepened that slumber with a brew of herbs
Bestowed upon him by his sister, radiant Airmed,
And conveyed me, all unknowing, to his own shelter.
There, over three days and three nights,
He sang the charm he had created;
The first night, flesh returned to clothe the bones;
The second night, sinew and tendon grew to weave bone and muscle to each other;
The third night, skin gleaming bright was restored over all, and he
Removed the silver hand and cast it struggling and bloated with poison into the fire.
Then took he up the hand of flesh he had healed,
And affixed it once again to its proper place at my shoulder.
All in a daze I flexed my fingers, staring as each one moved,
The secret of my evil buried inside my heart,
Fading quickly as Airmed’s balm washed away the poisons,
And once again I rose, facing the one who had made me whole,
Facing those who crowded around me,
Facing the Tuatha De who would never come to know
That the one they hailed as king once and king to come again
Had been, when all virtue and vanity and valor were torn away,
No more than a beast.
inahawksi 
