The Books of the South (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #3.5-5)

by Glen Cook

I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled toward absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks. I was her truth object, and she was mine.

Oh, well. If the gods were out to get us they were out to get us. All our wriggling on the hook wouldn’t change a thing.

Landscapes of despair and death under skies of lead, fields where bodies rotted and stunted vegetation melted down like slow, soft candlewax. Slime covered everything, hung in strands like the architecture of drunken spiders. Mad. Mad. Mad. And not a touch of color anywhere.