Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #5)

by Steven Erikson

‘She has the sweetest lips,’ Rhulad murmured, then looked up and met Trull’s eyes. ‘Is that what you want me to say? To give proof to your suspicions?’ ‘I have many suspicions, brother,’ Trull replied. ‘We have sun-scorched thoughts, we have dark-swallowed thoughts. But it is the shadow thoughts that move with stealth, creeping to the very edge of the rival realms – if only to see what there is to be seen.’ ‘And if they see nothing?’ ‘They never see nothing, Rhulad.’ ‘Then illusions? What if they see only what their imagination conjures? False games of light? Shapes in the darkness? Is this not how suspicion becomes a poison? But a poison like white nectar, every taste leaving you thirsting for more.’ Trull was silent for a long moment. Then he said, ‘Fear spoke to me not long ago. Of how one is perceived, rather than how one truly is. How the power of the former can overwhelm that of the latter. How, indeed, perception shapes truth like waves on stone.’