The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10)

by Steven Erikson

K’rul seemed to study the fire. Eventually, he said, ‘In these dark waters, one cannot feel one’s own tears.’ Mael’s reply was bitter. ‘Why do you think I live here?’

‘What would it be like, I wonder, if we all ate only vegetables?’ ‘We’d break all the land and the wild animals would have nowhere to live,’ Brys replied.

When that which offers blessing predicates such on the absolute obeisance of the supplicant … demands, in fact, the soul’s willing enslavement – no, how could such a force stand tall in moral probity?

‘Romance is the negotiation of possibilities, towards that elusive prize called love. There, you see?

Teeth lay scattered like the beads of a broken necklace.

She cocked her head and asked, ‘The Letherii you speak, it is high diction, is it not? Where did you learn it?’ Faint shook her head. ‘City. Seven Cities. Ehrlitan. Lowborn tongue, in slums. You speak like whore.’

There was an old saying among the Perish that a room full of women was a knife-seller’s vision of paradise.

‘Delusions of comfort – are these not the gifts of love, First Sword?’

but as everyone knows, stupidity needs no excuse to repeat itself.

‘Even a man who has lived a life of sorrows will ask for one more day.’

They blocked his nostrils, fought to enter his ears. Their bites cut through his eyelids and burst the eyes behind them. They swarmed into the sockets. The god of the Forkrul Assail was coming home.