The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #6)

by Steven Erikson

‘Usually,’ Heboric said in a rough voice, pausing to spit. ‘Usually, running from one thing throws you into the path of another.’ ‘Well, thanks for that, old man.’ Heboric gave Cutter an unpleasant smile. ‘My pleasure.’

When you play horror against horror, dear listener, leave all hope behind—and ride a fast horse.

Never bargain with a man who has nothing to lose.

Compassion existed when and only when one could step outside oneself, to suddenly see the bars from inside the cage.

A field of battle knows only lost dreams and the ghosts clutch futilely at the ground, remembering naught but the last place of their lives, and the air is sullen now that the clangour is past, and the last moans of the dying have dwindled into silence.

‘Even the gods cast shadows, Master of the Deck. But what do shadows cast?’ ‘I don’t know. Gods?’

Burdens were born from the loss of innocence. Naïveté. While the innocent yearned to lose their innocence, those who had already done so in turn envied the innocent, and knew grief in what they had lost. Between the two, no exchange of truths was possible.

My faith in the gods is this: they are indifferent to my suffering.

‘Pure genius. Why didn’t I think of that?’ The tone began rising once more. ‘Why? Because I’m not an idiot!!’

I have heard the dead, but I could not serve them. Just as I have lived, yet created nothing.

‘You’re looking thoughtful,’ Quick Ben observed at his side. Kalam grunted, then glanced over. ‘Was wondering, Quick. You ever get tired of your own memories?’

There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it.

I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.

‘My concern is with the child.’ The blacksmith began walking towards the side chamber. ‘No it isn’t. Your obsession is with propriety. Your version of it, to which everyone else must bend a knee.

The existence of many gods conveys true complexity of mortal life. Conversely, the assertion of but one god leads to a denial of complexity, and encourages the need to make the world simple. Not the fault of the god, but a crime committed by its believers.’

The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers, for they hold to their conviction with taut certainty, febrile in its extremity, and so cannot abide dissenters. They will kill, they will torture, in that god’s name. And see in themselves no conflict, no matter how bloodstained their hands.

only humans centre salvation solely upon themselves.

The most deadly seducers are the ones encouraging conformity. If you can only feel safe when everybody else feels, thinks and looks the same as you, then you’re a Hood-damned coward…not to mention a vicious tyrant in the making.

The world, Ahlrada Ahn knew, was indifferent to the necessity of preservation. Of histories, of stories layered with meaning and import. It cared nothing for what was forgotten, for memory and knowledge had never been able to halt the endless repetition of wilful stupidity that so bound peoples and civilizations.

Discipline is the greatest weapon against the self-righteous. We must measure the virtue of our own controlled response when answering the atrocities of fanatics. And yet, let it not be claimed, in our own oratory of piety, that we are without our own fanatics; for the self-righteous breed wherever tradition holds, and most often when there exists the perception that tradition is under assault. Fanatics can be created as easily in an environment of moral decay (whether real or imagined) as in an environment of legitimate inequity or under the banner of a common cause.

‘A person hurts enough inside, all they can do is hurt back.