Beyond (The Founding of Valdemar, #1)

by Mercedes Lackey

“It’s always ‘a thousand years’ in stories, even if it was eight hundred ten or fourteen hundred eighty. ‘A thousand years’ is dramatic, and drama means more to people than accuracy, I’ll tell you that for free. That’s how you get throngs of obedient morons, while the educated have to work doubly hard to keep records accurate. Historians and librarians have saved more lives than Healers.”

“Some people are makers, some are bakers. Some are cooks, and some are chefs. Everyone has their own recipes, and everyone wastes good ingredients into a charred mess when they overdo it. That’s spellwork. Good spellwork needs a sharp, resourceful mind, a prepared work space, the right tools, good ingredients, and a schedule. Anything else that you want to know?” asked Ponu.

“The Emperor wants us all in competition against each other,” Kordas had told her. It all made a twisted sort of sense. If you were in competition with people who were your equals or slightly better, you’d be too busy to pay much attention to what the Emperor was (or was not) doing. And if you were spending your income on frivolities, you wouldn’t be building up your own personal army.

“Self-examination is not common for my kind. We mainly exist simply to be, and to avoid not-being. If this one were to sum up my kind—as Dolls—in your terms, this one would say that . . . we are very sad. In our efforts to avoid not-being, we have submerged our aspirations of what we could be.” Kordas leaned against the wall, and exhaled a long, tense breath. “I understand. When anyone is preoccupied only with staying alive, it is damned near impossible to embrace the fact that a better future is even possible. That’s why poverty is a form of suppression—it keeps the people without power from thinking too big.

There’s a twist of logic for you—‘since we’ve caught fewer and fewer spies, our enemies must have given up on trying,’” Kordas mused out loud. “And nobody could know whether it’s true or not. Still don’t. How do you find a truth out, when it’s about secrets?”