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December 18, 2020 - February 25, 2021
Does one find memory in invention? Or will you find invention in memory? Which bows in servitude before the other?
‘Rely not upon conscience,’ Feren said, hearing the bitterness in her own voice and not caring. ‘It ever kneels to necessity.’
Portraits were the weapons of tradition, and tradition was the invisible army laying siege to the present. And what was at stake? What victory did it seek? To make the future no different from the past. With every stroke of his brush, Kadaspala opened a wound, against all who would challenge the way things were.
When stripped down to its bones, criticism is a form of oppression. Its intent is to manipulate both artist and audience, by imposing rules on aesthetic appreciation.
In her youth, Hish Tulla had given her heart away with what others had seen as careless ease, as if it were a thing without much worth, but it had not been like that at all. She’d simply wanted it in someone else’s hands.
The world was not infinite, and yet a population could aspire to become so; it could (and would) expand well beyond its own limits of sustainability, and would continue to do so until it collapsed.
There was, he said, nothing so deadly as success.
‘That was an unpleasant war,’ Rint said. ‘Never knew a pleasant one,’ Feren replied.
We live in a world of facades, but the grins behind them are all equally wretched.’ ‘Grins, Lord?’ ‘As a dog grins, sergeant.’ ‘A dog grins in fear, Lord.’ ‘Just so.’
There is but one god, and its name is beauty. There is but one kind of worship, and that is love. There is for us but one world, and we have scarred it beyond recognition.
‘You imagine that I will live through ages, master?’ ‘Child, you will live for ever.’ ‘A child’s belief!’ ‘An adult’s nightmare,’ he shot back.
it is only when opposed that some things find definition.
‘Do you know,’ Mother Dark went on, ‘when you can see in darkness, nothing is hidden.’ If she wept now, the tears would freeze upon her cheeks, and burn leaving scars. For all to see. ‘Nothing,’ Mother Dark then added, ‘but darkness itself.’
it seemed they had nothing but questions to exchange, a worthless currency when no answers could be found.
To rule is to kneel before expediency.
Judge only my skill, my feeble efforts in imbuing a dead thing with life using dead things – dead paints, dead brushes, dead surface, with naught but my fingers and my eyes living, together striving to capture truth.
Cruelty was the bridge between mortals and the gods, and both sides had a hand in building it, stone upon stone, face upon face.
A man who could offer weakness in strength was a man at peace with power.
To draw a weapon is to announce an end to uncertainty. It brooks no doubt in its wielder.
‘The last act of an historian, priest, is to live through history. It is the bravest act of them all, because it faces, unblinking, the recognition that all history is personal, and that every external truth of the world is but a reflection of our internal truths – the truths that shape our behaviours, our decisions, our fears, our purposes and our appetites. These internal truths raise monuments and flood sewers. They lift high grand works as readily as they fill graves. If you blame one appetite you blame all of our appetites. We all swim the same river.’
We seek reasons for what we are and how we imagine ourselves; and every reason strives to become justification, and every justification a righteous cause. By this a people build an identity and cleave to it. But it is all invention, High Priestess, to make clay into flesh, sticks into bone, and flames into thought. No alternative sits well with us.’
But Urusander’s Legion stood nowhere between that divide. They stood apart, wanting only for themselves, and they now gathered into ranks with weapons on hand, to take what the poor did not have and the rich had not earned.
I will not follow any deity who demands murder.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because we know murder to be wrong.’ ‘Is it as simple as that, captain? Are there not exceptions? Do we not draw circles in the sand and claim all outside them to be less than us, and by this distinction do we not absolve ourselves of the crime of murder?’ ‘Sophistry, sir.’ ‘Yet, as a warrior, captain, you have committed murder in the name of our people, and in the name of your lord.’ ‘I have, but in the taking of life I appease no god’s command. The crime is mine and upon no other shoulders do I set it. If I did – if we all did – then
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Perhaps one day I shall proclaim myself the goddess of love – what do you think of that, O Suzerain? Would not this aspect welcome you, as love welcomes the night and as a caress welcomes the darkness?’
‘With your vicious and incessant assault upon my natural equanimity, you force upon me the necessity of a tale, and I so dislike telling a tale.
His was the face of war. His was the body that raped the innocent. And every desperate whisper to the fallen was a lie, and the way ahead was filled with smoke and fire, and he moved through it like a standard, a banner awaiting the rallying cry of killers.
To look upon them, as he did when he and his companions rode past, was to see a dead hand’s longing for life, but a life belonging to the past. Every scene was a broken promise, and upon these hills now had settled a pall of silence.
Or is it a title you wish? Very well, I proclaim you the Lord of War, and will seek for you a proper estate. In addition, I give you fields of horror to harvest nightly, and granaries filled with wretched memories, which you can daily grind to dust on this millstone you call your life.’
‘How is it you can deny a belief in power?’ ‘It is my thought that without belief, there is no power.’ ‘What do you win with that, historian?’ Rise shrugged. ‘Freedom, I suppose.’ ‘And what do you lose?’ ‘Why, everything, of course.’
If holy words could not offer up an answer to despair, then what good were they? If the truths so revealed did not invite restitution, then their utterance was no more than a curse. And if the restitution is found not in the mortal realm, then we are invited to inaction, and indifference. Will you promise to a soul a reward buried in supposition? Are we to reach throughout our lives but never touch? Are we to dream and to hope, but never know?
Will I speak of gods, then, and their dominion over lesser beings? I will not. Such hierarchy signifies little. We must all stand upon this side of the Abyss, and make what we can of words and dreams, of desires and ambitions. The gods are only elevated in the boldness of their arguments.’
