A Brightness Long Ago

by Guy Gavriel Kay

Ours is a time when public display matters. Most times are, I suppose.

It was interesting, I suppose it still is, how vicious men can take power and be accepted, supported by those they govern, if they bring with them a measure of peace. If granaries are full and citizens fed. If war doesn’t bring starvation to the walls. Uberto was a man who had sealed an enemy in a cask to see if he might observe the soul escaping when his prisoner died.

Balancing acts of the soul. Acquiescence happens more than its opposite—a rising up in anger and rejection. There are wolves in the world, inside elegant palaces as well as in the dark woods and the wild.

First among them, I was allying myself—now, today—with the Wolf of Remigio. Everything I was doing was designed to achieve a triumph for him over Folco—and Adria.

Warfare was, then and now (all these years later), a theatre for men to perform, test themselves, a way to advance in and through the world. Over the bodies of others, of course—but none of us had been born into a time that offered peace and seemliness.

We are always the person we were, and we grow into someone very different, if we live long enough. Both things are true.