More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“What we will do,” she said at last, “is what we Wise always do when wisdom fails. We will chant and charm in all the languages we know, using every prayer, every incantation at our disposal, conjuring to make what approaches leave us in peace. And it… it will do whatever it will do. Begin.”
“What we will do,” she said at last, “is what we Wise always do when wisdom fails. We will chant and charm in all the languages we know, using every prayer, every incantation at our disposal, conjuring to make what approaches leave us in peace. And it… it will do whatever it will do. Begin.”
Chestnut pancakes, browned perfectly at the edges… pomegranate syrup… fresh milk… there might be something said for living after all.
Chestnut pancakes, browned perfectly at the edges… pomegranate syrup… fresh milk… there might be something said for living after all.
A day can lie in so many ways, she realized; for though the sun was shining, she now saw mother-shaped thunderclouds in every direction.
There’s just something upsetting about getting what we want. I suggest knitting. It hadn’t helped.
men believe themselves to be all straight lines and right angles—an illusion you will find it important to allow them, though in fact they are as hopelessly snarled as a ball of yarn
Don’t worry about it anymore, dear—he’ll come around. I had to do the same with your father. You just have to make them understand. They never do on their own.”
It was a good start. Patently false, of course, and everyone present knew it, but they felt complimented all the same.
Your Highness. Direct me. For I am your sword and your shield, your arrow and your bow. Use me and free me—or send me on my way, to live forever in the empty darkness that would be life without your daughter.”
But diving for cover as a white-hot flame sizzled between his hair and his hat… this was terror, this was bowel and bladder and legs all turning to water together, this was abandoning all concern for any other person in the world.
This was the moment when Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax, eighteen years old, realized that he really was going to die.
She said softly, “Dragonheart.” Robert stared. Odelette said, “Vardis did not merely give you a hero’s soul. She gave you the heart of a dragon. I have heard about such things—my own mother used to tell me—but I thought… I thought it was just a story.” She clasped her hands tightly in front of her. “Dragonheart.”
Only someone who shared a dragon’s heart, a dragon’s very being, could have done that. Only a dragonmaster. Only my son.”
everybody in the world is a donkey with the heart of a lion. Everybody. Only most people don’t ever discover it—they don’t have to, they get along all right just being donkeys. But it’s there, always, if you really need it.
Even so, the impact came as though the night sky had caved in, burying him under shards of stars and the moon. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
I leaped into the King’s shadow with all my heart, wanting to know what a King knows, wanting to embrace the shadow and have it embrace me, wanting to be rid of my humanity—rid of bloody stupid Robert—just for once, and to be one with something splendid and magnificent and uncaring.
“My own opinion,” Robert said tightly, “is that you have fiendishly set out to bore us to death. It’s working.”
“Whatever you do to us, great wizard, we beg you—stop talking, and just get it over with. In a heroic lifetime devoted to slaughtering villains, I have never encountered one who chattered so!”
“Robert, my one companion, love of my life forever, ‘let’ is not a word you will use to me again.”
