The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, #1)

by Guy Gavriel Kay

but as the years swept past, such tales dwindled, as they tend to, into the mist of half-remembered history. Ages went by in a storm of years.

But above all he could wait: wait as the cycles of men turned like the wheel of stars, as the very stars shifted pattern under the press of years.

The prospect greatly facilitated patience and brought a certain anticipatory satisfaction, for it had been bred for such a purpose, and most creatures are pleased to do what their nature dictates.

We are the total of our longings, he had written. But Kevin was a songwriter, not a poet, and he never did use it.

for the mountains are a stern barrier.”

“Song,” the aggrieved troubadour said, “is a gift to men from the immortal gods.” “Not the way you sing, Tegid,” his critic snapped. Loren was suppressing a smile, Kim saw. Kevin snorted with laughter.

The moon slanted a thin beam of light into the far corner of the room, illuminating neither of them.

The words were gracious, but there was little pleasure in the low desiccated tones in which they were spoken.

All in white she was, very tall, with red hair held back by a circlet of silver on her brow. Her eyes were green and very cold. In her bearing as she strode towards them was a deep, scarcely suppressed rage, and as she drew near, Kimberly saw that she was beautiful. But despite the hair, which gleamed like a fire at night under stars, this was not a beauty that warmed one. It cut, like a weapon. There was no nuance of gentleness in her, no shading of care, but fair she was, as is the flight of an arrow before it kills.

“It is power that teaches patience; holding power, I mean. And you learn the price it exacts—which is something I never knew when I was your age and thought a sword and quick wits could deal with anything. I never knew the price you pay for power.”

She was waiting there for them, dreamer of the dream, knowledge in her eyes, and pity, and another nameless thing.

long-faced and clearly apprehensive, he listened with desperate attentiveness,

The other was the Lady Rheva, a striking, dark-haired woman who clearly enjoyed a higher status than the others, and to whom Jennifer had taken an effortless dislike.

We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair. And so Jennifer Lowell, whose father had taught her, even as a child, to confront the world with pride, eventually rose up, cleaning herself as best she could, and began to wait in the brightening cottage. Daylight was coming outside, but it was not only that: courage casts its own light.

chosen to be where he was for reasons deeper than loss and more oblique than empathy

There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.

How can you tell the dancer from the dance? she had read somewhere. Or the dreamer from the dream, she amended, feeling a little lost. Because the answer to that was easiest of all. You can’t.

It was patience that power taught.

“I tell you these things, not because I expect to change, but so you will know I am aware of them.

Too much asperity, she, thought. You must go carefully here.

Immediately. One did not sleep when war began, or one slept forever when it ended.

He would have comforted his younger son, but knew it was wiser to leave the boy alone. It was not a bad thing to learn what hurt meant, and mastering it alone helped engender self-respect.

If he had a virtue, Ivor reflected, something of his nature he wanted his sons to have, it was tolerance. He smiled wryly. It would be ironic if that tolerance could not be extended to himself.

Levon was unlike anyone else. And he had done something the morning before that Torc was not sure he would have dared to try. The realization was a hard one for a proud man, and a different person might have hated Levon for it. Torc, however, measured out his respect in terms of such things.

Your hour knows your name,

only a compounding of sorrows.

mercurial glitter made him simply too unreliable.