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

by Steven Erikson

you give your sympathy too quickly and therein hide your belief in your own superiority. I do not deny your cleverness, but I question your compassion.

There are many forms of courage, I believe, most of which pass unseen by the majority of us. It’s not always about facing death, is it? Sometimes it’s about facing life.’

‘Because it is home to all which cannot be possessed, cannot be owned. And so too is the throne within the Hold empty, left eternally vacant. Because the very nature of rule is itself an illusion, a conceit and the product of a grand conspiracy. To have a ruler one must choose to be ruled over, and that forces notions of inequity to the fore, until they become, well, formalized. Made central to education, made essential as a binding force in society, until everything exists to prop up those in power. The Empty Throne reminds us of all that. Well, some of us, anyway.’

Who struck the first blow all those thousands of years ago was without relevance. The only thing that counted was who would strike the last blow.

Eyes half closed, he experienced again the echo of the life he had watched seething back and forth in the day now gone. He wondered at all those lives, the way few would meet the gazes of their fellows, as if crowds demanded wilful anonymity, when the truth was they were all in it together – all these people, facing much the same struggles, the same fears. And yet, it seemed, each one was determined to survive them alone, or with but a few kin and friends offering paltry allegiance. Perhaps they each believed themselves unique, like a knot-stone in the centre of the world’s mill wheel, but the truth was there were very few who could truly make claim to such a pivotal existence.

‘I went into the priesthood looking for wisdom and only then did I realize I’d gone in precisely the wrong direction.’

Perhaps he was right. But that did not mean he had the right.