Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #3)

by Steven Erikson

Kruppe blinked, then slowly nodded. ‘No doubt. Vast responsibility, being the eyes of your commander regarding said lass.’ Both women paused in their chewing. They exchanged a glance, then one of them swallowed and said, ‘Who, Dujek? If we’re his eyes then he’s blind as a mole.’ ‘Ah, Kruppe meant Whiskeyjack, of course.’ ‘Whiskeyjack ain’t blind and he don’t need us to see for him, either.’ ‘None the less,’ the Daru smiled, ‘he no doubt is greatly comforted by your self-appointed task and reports and such. Were Kruppe Whiskeyjack, he knows he would.’ ‘Would what?’

The heart of wisdom is tolerance.

To grieve is the gift of the living

We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned. T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance.

‘This is not a burial,’ K’rul said to him. ‘The Mhybe now sleeps, and will sleep for ever more. She sleeps, to dream. And within her dream, Murillio, lives an entire world.’ ‘Like Burn?’ Coll asked. The Elder God smiled in answer. ‘Wait a moment!’ Murillio snapped. ‘Just how many sleeping old women are there?’