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June 10 - December 7, 2023
I have greatly weakened. When I return on my old path, back into the lands of the Teblor, there are wounds that I shall need to mend. And so, when you say it is time to return to your family, Torvald Nom, I understand and my heart is gladdened.’
One can scrape patterns in the blood no matter how dried it’s become.
It was not, Strings had come to believe, a question of right and wrong. Some cultures were inward-looking. Others were aggressive. The former were rarely capable of mustering a defence against the latter, not without metamorphosing into some other thing, a thing twisted by the exigencies of desperation and violence.
They act, and act yet again. They persist. Choose the worst tyrant you can from your knowledge of human history, Heboric, then imagine him or her as virtually undying. In your mind, bring that tyrant back again and again and again. How, having done so, would you imagine our history then?’
‘That’s what you say, not what I have to listen to. All the time. Endless words. Does a man even exist who believes there can be too many words?’
‘Of course I don’t!’ he snapped. ‘Then why didn’t you just say so?’ ‘It was more fun conjecturing creatively, of course. How can a man be the object of a woman’s interest if he’s always confessing his ignorance?’
‘For every virtue they espouse, a thousand self-serving evils belie their piety.
This is the truth my shamans embrace, the bones upon which the future clings like muscle.’
‘When memories have returned, Trull Sengar, solitude is an illusion, for every silence is filled by a clamorous search for meaning.’
Time will heal. Or weaken.
I do not grieve for my own ignorance. Why should I? Not knowing what I have missed means I do not miss what I do not know. How could I?
Empires, thrones, tyrants and liberators, a hundred thousand tomes filled with versions of the same questions, asked over and over again. Will answers deliver their promised solace? I think not.
‘Your flaw, Korbolo Dom, is that you think in a strictly linear fashion.
‘She does not have to initiate the scheme, Korbolo Dom. She need only comprehend the offer, and then decide either to acquiesce or not. It is not her clarity that is relevant, but that of Laseen’s Claw. And do you doubt the cleverness of Topper?’
Soldiers say no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy. But the game of subterfuge is the very opposite. Plans derive from persistent contact with the enemy.
‘The harder, the more miserable, the more terrible and disgusting your life, child, the greater the reward beyond death . .
As if by adhering to simple habits in the flesh and bone, your mind will in turn strive towards the same perfection.’
Living simply, Febryl belatedly considered, should not be made synonymous with seeing simply, since the former was both noble and laudable, whilst the latter was a flaw most deadly. A careless error, and, alas, he had made it.
Relax, lad, old Strings here has always got your tender feelings in mind . . .’
‘I, Sergeant Strings of the 4th squad in the 9th Company of the 8th Legion, swear by the ghosts of the Deadhouse and every other nasty nightmare that haunts me that the creature before me is a natural, unaltered Red-backed Bastard scorpion.’
‘I, Sergeant Gesler of the 5th squad in the 9th Company of the 8th Legion, swear by the two Lords of Summer, Fener and Treach, that the creature before me is a natural, unaltered Birdshit scorpion — even though I know there’s something about it I’m not seeing and I’m about to lose my life’s savings on the Sergeants’ Wager.’
‘All right, I won’t rush you. Just swear your damned vow before my heart flies out to fill my breeches.’
‘I, Borduke of the 6th squad in the 9th Company of the 8th Legion, swear on the downy belly of the Queen of Dreams that the creature before me is a natural, unaltered Birdshit scorpion, and may my father’s ghost remain in its tomb, since the inheritance was mine to lose anyway, right? Dead means you don’t care any more, right? It had better, because if it doesn’t, then I’m doomed to paternal haunting for the rest of my days.’
He settled back in the saddle, the strange, cloying lassitude in his mind deepening.
‘I wonder, did we indeed drive it from this realm?’ ‘If the Nameless Ones speak true, then yes—’ ‘Your question, Kullsan, confuses me. Are we not marching from the city? Were we not just victorious?’ The conversation had begun to fade as the soldiers who had been speaking marched onward, but Kalam heard the doubting Kullsan’s reply: ‘Then why is our road lined with ghosts, Erethal?’ More importantly, Kalam added to himself, why is mine? He waited as the last of the soldiers marched past, then stepped forward to cross the ancient road. And saw, on the opposite side, a tall, gaunt figure in
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Most scholars, in their species-bound arrogance, believe that humans domesticated dogs, but it may well have been the other way round, at least to start. Who ran with whom?’
Exaltation, then comfort, then mutual contempt. One, two, three.’
Osric’s interest was with Osric.
I am a vessel ever filled, yet there’s always room for more. More durhang. More men and their seeds. My master found my place of pleasure and removed it. Ever filled, yet never filled up. There is no base to this vessel. This is what he has done.
No, pain is simply the path taken to indifference. And indifference destroys the soul.
Observant. She is right, companion L’oric. Maudlin. I would waddle. Alas. Torpid vulnerability. Distraught. All alone.’
Whatever weakness you feel is not unique — realize that it is shared, by hundreds or even thousands, there in our legions.’
What value a tale if it is not instructive?’
Instruct yourself in blindness and indifference
We ask that he resurrect his memories of life, then wonder at his struggle to satisfy our demands. The failure is ours, not his.
We speak of them in reaffirmation of our judgement. But it is our intransigence that finds itself fighting the fiercest war — with time itself, with the changing world around us.
I regret that you view . . . things that way, and can only conclude that you derive a peculiar satisfaction from discord, and when it does not exist — or, rather, has no reason to exist — you seek to invent it.’
Love changes, aye, in the manner of growing to encompass as much of its subject as possible. Virtues, flaws, limitations, everything — love will fondle them all, with child-like fascination.’
Before the Imass, there was another people, older, wilder. They dwelt where it was warm, and they were tall, their dark skins covered in fine hair. These we knew as the Eres.
Glory belongs to ghosts and poets. What you hear and dream isn’t the same as what you live — blur the distinction at your own peril, lad.’
A world of vast silences where once kin and foe alike had opened throats in fierce challenge.
Her teeth gleam in the shadows, but it is a rictus grin.
We are ever the same years apart. The chain never draws taut. Never slackens. Its length is prescribed. But its weight, oh, its weight ever varies.
The slayer of Coltaine, who was now standing stock still, studying the approaching horse warrior.
Odder, still, to be thinking of Pearl. She was hard on him, viciously so at times. Not because she cared, but because it was fun. No, that was too facile, wasn’t it? She cared indeed.
