Tigana

by Guy Gavriel Kay

Devin was in the process of changing his life for a story told under the moon, for a childhood song, an evocation of his mother, something almost purely an abstraction for him. A name.

Somewhere, part of the way through, he had a bright image in his mind of a blue-white star named Micaela aloft in a black night, and he let the keenness of that carry him, high and soaring, up towards Catriana’s harmony and then back down softly to an end.

He looked at the two of them and he couldn’t have said which man he admired more in that moment. The one who had asked, knowing what he asked, or the one who had given, knowing what he gave.

In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.’

She felt as though her heart were a bird, a trialla, only newly born, spreading wings, preparing to give voice to the song of its days.