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April 3 - June 15, 2022
“No way in,” he hissed, “but the way out. It’s not yet the hour. A life given for a life taken, remember those words, remember them. You are wounded. You are bright with infection. My servant will tend to you. A caring man with salty hands, one wrinkled, one pink—do you grasp the significance of that? Not yet. Not yet. So few…guests. But I have been expecting you.”
Without another word the three began walking.
Three? Thought it was two
finding that place in the mind, cold and silent, the place where husbands, fathers, wives and mothers became killers. And practice made it easier, each time. Until it becomes a place you never leave.
“Do you truly believe Duiker’s still out there, sailing back and forth for—what, five days now?” Heboric squatted, setting the sack down. “He’s not published anything in years—what else would he have to do with all his time?”
A journey to fabled Tremorlor, where all truths shall converge with the clarity of unsheathed blades and unveiled fangs, where Icarium shall find his lost past, the once possessed fisher-girl shall find what she does not yet know she seeks, where the lad shall find the price of becoming a man, or perhaps not, where the hapless Trell shall do whatever he must, and where a weary sapper shall at least receive his Emperor’s blessing, oh yes. Unless, of course,” he added, one finger to his lips, “Tremorlor is naught but a myth and these quests nothing but hollow artifice.”
If Kalam succeeded in killing Laseen, then perhaps he would also succeed in guiding to the throne someone with spine enough to avoid ruling from a position of crisis. The assassin and Quick Ben had someone in mind for that. If all goes as planned.
Hmmm...who?
The lesson of history is that no one learns.
Children were dying. He’d crouched, one hand on a mother’s shoulder, and watched with her as life ebbed from the baby in her arms. Like the light of an oil lamp, dimming, dimming, winking out. The moment when the struggle’s already lost, surrendered, and the tiny heart slows in its own realization, then stops in mute wonder. And never stirs again. It was then that pain filled the vast caverns within the living, destroying all it touched with its rage at inequity.
“That’s a succinct summary of humankind, I’d say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.
Why do the survivors remain anonymous—as if cursed—while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?
Now we simply exist. Look at those beasts over there. We’re the same, you and I, the same as them. Struggling beneath the sun, pushed and ever pushed to our place of slaughter.”
Grim
How does a mortal make answer to what his or her kind are capable of? Does each of us, soldier or no, reach a point when all that we’ve seen, survived, changes us inside? Irrevocably changes us. What do we become, then? Less human, or more human? Human enough, or too human?”
Children sat unmoving, watching with the eyes of old men and women.
“Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks—all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.”
Locked in a war against an entire continent…stumbling onto a recognition of an even greater threat—the Pannion Domin…shall the Empire alone fight on behalf of a hostile land? Yet…how to fashion allies among enemies, how to unify against a greater threat with the minimum of fuss and mistrust? Outlaw your occupying army, so they’ve “no choice” but to step free of Laseen’s shadow. Dujek, ever loyal Dujek—even the ill-conceived plan of killing the last of the Old Guard—Tayschrenn’s foolishness and misguided idea—insufficient to turn him. So now he has allies—those who were once his enemies—perhaps
...more
This is important. So many questions. Is this saying Dujek was loyal to Laseen all along and outlawing him was part of a plan to pull Brood and Rake into fight against the Pannion Seer?
if so wha abouy Kalam's plan to assassinate Laseen?
even though it was understood that he would not do with his burden what Dassem Ultor had done.
What does this mean?
“A daughter. Of sorts.” He sighed, then smiled wryly. “We had a falling-out, I’m afraid.”
Is dancer talking about Apsalar? "Falling out"...lol
But it occurs to me that even as mortals are but pieces on a gameboard, so too are the gods.”
Heboric speaking to Felisin
A moment later he closed his eyes, began concentrating. The bleeding in his side slowed to a thin trickle, then ceased.
Kalam has healing power?
