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

by Steven Erikson

More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children, far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armour of adulthood. Armour encumbers, restricts the body and soul within it. But it also protects. Blows are blunted. Feelings lose their edge, leaving us to suffer naught but a plague of bruises, and, after a time, bruises fade.

And perhaps that is the final, most devastating truth. The gods care nothing for ascetic impositions on mortal behaviour. Care nothing for rules of conduct, for the twisted morals of temple priests and monks. Perhaps indeed they laugh at the chains we wrap around ourselves – our endless, insatiable need to find flaws within the demands of life. Or perhaps they do not laugh, but rage at us. Perhaps our denial of life’s celebration is our greatest insult to those whom we worship and serve.

For them, she knew, the sea of her mind, whipped now to a frenzied storm of panic and despair, meant nothing. They were hunters, and what resided within the soul of their quarry had no relevance. As with the antelope, the bhederin calf, the ranag, grace and wonder, promise and potential – reduced one and all to meat. Life’s final lesson, the only truthful one buried beneath a layered skein of delusions. Sooner or later, she now understood, we are all naught but food. Wolves or worms, the end abrupt or lingering, it mattered not in the least.

What the soul can house, flesh cannot fathom.

The curse of great minds. Arriving young to an idea, surviving the siege that invariably assails it, then, finally, standing guard on the ramparts long after the war’s over, weapons dull in leaden hands