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January 3 - April 2, 2021
‘Tell my Daughter’s faithful courier to beware despair above all.’ ”
“Tell dy Yarrin his councils are being reported by some spy to dy Jironal.
“Cazaril, tomorrow morning I want you to ride to Ibra as my envoy to arrange my marriage to Royse Bergon.”
“An hour ago, I became the future of Chalion.
Ordol, read the gold letters on the spine. The Fivefold Pathway
Betriz was gesticulating emphatically.
In minutes, it would be his task to tell a mother that her son was dead.
Like Sara, the inky shadow of the curse hung about her. So. I was right in that guess.
I have seen the dark cloud that hangs over your House. The Golden General’s curse, the bane of Fonsa’s heirs.
“Then the Mother of Summer came to me, when I was round to bursting with Teidez.
“She said that the gods sought to take the curse back, that it did not belong in this world, that it was a gift to the Golden General that he had spilt improperly.
the gods might draw the curse back to them only through the will of a man who would lay down his life three times for the House of Chalion.
The prophecy 🥠
saint to saint and soul to soul, for this floating moment it was an intimacy stranger and more soaring than lover to lover.
Ista and Ias had tried to force a solution, as though the curse were magic, to be countered by magic. A rite done by rote.
Valenda must now prepare for a funeral, a wedding, and a war,
Oh, and beware, your Baocian captain you sent with Teidez sold himself to Dondo—he cannot be trusted.
Betrayal and corruption the hallmarks of evil.
“Bastard’s demons,
Five gods,
I love the way the religion and gods of the world impact language. So very realistic considering the religions of humanity.
Yet his new eyes rendered familiar places strange again;
the world made strange as he was remade, over and over, and no place to rest at last.
“If it please you, Lady, give us three good mules.”
Cazaril growing more confident in his connection and favour of the Lady of Spring. He becoming more confident with his God touched status.
“It is a sea dog. It has paddles in place of paws, and chases fish.
Definitely a seal or sea lion...
“Please, sir, a year and more ago, in the fall, were you not rescued from a Roknari galley off the coast of Ibra?”
Cazaril was reminded that these scavengers with their cold golden eyes were sacred to the Bastard in Ibra.
Sacred animals
“Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I’d always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.”
“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice—if not whether, then how, they may endure.”
These prizes are for living men, I think. Not dying ones.”
Cazaril contemplates death because of his affliction/curse or in fact blessing...
By the Bastard’s balls, she’s sent me an unbribeable ambassador!”
Prayer, not drunken sleep, he reminded himself, was his purpose here . . .
On the way to Ibra, he’d seized the chance at every rural rudimentary Daughter’s House,
How long have I been walking down this road?
Once, he would have traced his allegiance to the Lady’s affairs to a coin dropped in the Baocian winter mud by a distracted soldier. Now he was by no means so sure, and by no means sure he liked the new answer.
The God's influence on the world are deeper and surpass understanding. Was Cazaril a tool of the goddess from the beginning?
Had all his pain and fear and agony there been manipulated by the gods to their ends? Was he nothing but a puppet on a string?
Umegat’s insistence that gods could not seize a man’s will, but only wait for it to be offered.
swore that any other god could pick him up who willed, or none, so long as the men who had trusted him were let out of this trap. As for himself, he was done. Done.
The gods’ most savage curses come to us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
The power of prayer in Chalion...
Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.
But it was the nearly half-dozen new ghosts, whirling frantically about the courtyard, that opened Cazaril’s eyes wide and stopped the breath in his throat.
The advantage of second sight...
He lowered his bow and touched the five theological points, forehead-lip-navel-groin-heart, in a warding gesture.
Again beautiful reference to the gestures enacted by people in the name of religion. 5 points 4 the 5 God's in Quintarian religion.
Cazaril fell to his knees, and whispered, “Lady. If I am alive in this place, you must be too. If it please you, give these poor spirits ease.”
Like a god touched Saint shoild, Cazarils evolution in this story is complete.
Rumors that the royesse has sent agents into Ibra to contract a marriage with the new Heir are flying everywhere.”
“I’d storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.”
He claims that the gods, and we, are both right here all the time, a shadow’s thickness apart.
By theology and tradition, the Bastard had no official place in a ceremony of marriage,
Deep lore and theology in relation to the 5 God's.
but all prudent couples sent a placating gift anyway.
Cazaril glanced at the crowd and caught his breath. A man, middle-aged—around him hung a subdued gray light like a winter’s day.
The man was staring back at Cazaril in open-mouthed astonishment, his face drained.
“Sometimes—not every time—He permits me to know who is lying in my justiciar’s chamber, and who is telling the truth.” Paginine hesitated. “It doesn’t always do as much good as you’d think.”
“I said god-touched, but that hardly describes what I’m seeing. It . . . it almost hurts to look at him. Three times since I was given the sight I have met others who are also god-afflicted, but I’ve never seen anything like him.”
Cazaril is unique, touched by the Godess & carrying the death demon in his stomach.
“Saint Umegat in Cardegoss said I looked like a burning city,” Cazaril admitted.
