The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle, #6)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

“A knowledge, I say, but it’s rather a mystery. What’s the difference between us and the animals? Speech? All the animals have some way of speaking, saying come and beware and much else; but they can’t tell stories, and they can’t tell lies. While we can . . . “But the dragons speak: they speak the True Speech, the language of the Making, in which there are no lies, in which to tell the story is to make it be! Yet we call the dragons animals . . . “So maybe the difference isn’t language. Maybe it’s this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. The dragons are dangerous,

Seppel did not smile at all. “Thanks are rare, in my trade,” he said. “I would do a good deal for them. I think I can help you, Master Alder. But I have to tell you the rope is a costly one.” Alder bowed his head. “You come to the bourne in dream, not by your own will, that is so?” “So I believe.” “Wisely said.” Seppel’s keen glance approved him. “Who knows his own will clearly? But if it is in dream you go there, I can keep you from that dream—for a while. And at a cost, as I said.” Alder looked his question. “Your power.”

She had estranged Lebannen. She had lost him. He was polite, affable, and unforgiving. How men feared women! she thought, walking among the late-flowering roses. Not as individuals, but women when they talked together, worked together, spoke up for one another—then men saw plots, cabals, constraints, traps being laid.