Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

His voice was terribly loud, like he spoke to fill up every room he was in with whatever he had to say.

All closed things wish to open. They’re made to open. They’re just made to be really reluctant about it. It’s a matter of asking them from the right way, from inside themselves.>

She needed money. She always needed money. Money to bribe someone, money to buy tools to get more money, money to get a safe place to store her damned money. Life was cheap, and cash, as ever, remained dauntingly expensive.

<Is a bad plan better than no plan? I’m not sure.>

A few hierophantic texts call the basic sigils we use the lingai terrora—the language of the earth, of creation. But the Occidental sigils were the lingai divina—the language of God.”

The second the lash had touched her, all her pride and fury and hope had been dashed away. It was surprising, how fragile your idea of yourself was.

As is well documented, it is unknown if a civil war was the source of this conflict, or if, perhaps, the hierophants battled against another, greater force.

A struck match sounds like a kiss in the dark, sometimes. She remembered thinking that, watching the flame crack to life and then flutter down to the pools of alcohol running across the floor.

<I think this nutter doesn’t care about money—and someone who doesn’t care about money is less likely to sell you out.>

“I got shot at the other night. Rather a lot. I came prepared to prevent such a thing from happening again.

His suspicion, I think, was that their elevation came from this artificial being they’d made. The men built a god, and the god helped them become hierophants.

“It’s a weak door, and a weak lock—but you don’t need it to be strong if no one knows it’s there.”

If I’d scrived my own massive house, I’d have put in all kinds of permissions and goodies just for me.”

“Traditional,” she echoed. “What a curious word that is. So bland, and yet often so poisonous.”

The houses have grown complacent, and ambitious men have gained seats of power. It is inevitable—one day, some bright young man will say, ‘We’re quite skilled at waging war abroad—so why not do it here?’

“I have lived my life in war,” he said to her. “I returned to Tevanne to find civilization. It was not as civilized as I liked, Mother. So I shall focus on amending that, and nothing more.”

“My life’s not a hell of a lot better since I escaped the plantation. I still starve a lot and I still get beaten occasionally. But at least now I get to say no when I want to. And I’m saying it now.”

After Dantua…it was like a magic spell had been lifted from my eyes. We are making these horrors. We are doing this to ourselves. We have to change. We must change.”

Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation.

Reality will happily follow the instructions of the tool you’ve created—because, in a way, it genuinely believes the tool is God Himself!”

“The hierophants were not angels at all. They were devils.”

<Why did Tribuno Candiano make you?> asked Sancia. <To attract a hierophant,> said the Mountain.

All that is within it is within me. Yet I do not exert total control. Just as people do not have control over their heart, their bones.

And I have been as a child. I have learned. I have Made myself from Nothing.>

<You bear commands within your person. Crude ones, true, but still commands. Such commands give you access to the world—but also give the world access to you.>

When one makes a mind, it is in itself a product of the mind that made it. There was too much of themselves in the thing they made.

To make toys from the bones of creation—a mad and dangerous practice.>

<True. A mindless thing. A slave that does not know itself and thus cannot know the violation of being a slave. So they wrote the commands within you—“Be as things!” But they did not understand their commands. Did not define “things” adequately.

<Do you feel free?> asked Valeria. <Or do you feel, perhaps, like you have stolen yourself?>

<To steal a thing is not the same as freeing a thing,> said Valeria. Then, in a soft, slightly darker tone: <This I know full well. This I know more than anything else.>

“I am subjecting him to the same thing he and my father subjected me to,” said Estelle. “Pressure.”

“The hierophants made themselves the same way they made their devices,” said Estelle. “They took the minds and souls of others—and invested them in their very bodies.”

Captain Riggo possessed the virtue that Tevanne valued most of all: the ability to ignore what was right in front of his eyes for a huge sum of money.

No one understood what was happening, for it had not happened upon the earth for thousands of years.

So it just waited, and waited, and waited, like the scythe waits in the toolshed for its master’s grip, thoughtlessly and perfectly.

Valeria is more like a complicated command that was given to reality—a command that reality must change itself.

The choices you make will change you over time, Sancia. Make sure they don’t change you into something you don’t recognize—or you might wind up like me.”

I might not have strength enough to open Valeria’s box—but I do have strength enough to restore the key to its original state. And that can open the box.”

“Remember—move thoughtfully, give freedom to others, and you’ll rarely do wrong, Sancia. I’ve learned that now. I wish I’d known it in life.”

An old monster has been hiding in your city. And tonight, you have made an enemy of him. He will not forgive you for this. So, as I said—tread carefully.”

Any given innovation that empowers the individual will inevitably come to empower the powerful much, much more. —TRIBUNO CANDIANO, LETTER TO THE COMPANY CANDIANO CHIEF OFFICERS’ ASSEMBLY