Aspects

by John M. Ford

But some passages must be held by single soldiers.”

The feel of its cushions, its smell of wood and leather and iron, the particular bounce of its springs, were part of the welcome, the stay, the farewell.

wheran comes this cruelty?” “From hurt, whence all cruelty comes,”

She laughed. That was an old quote, from Lescoray’s Quercian age: Three Imperial legions had moved north, to bring that part of the country under control. In the forests of Black Pines, they had been ambushed and cut to pieces. The commander, confronted with the local general, said, “This cannot have happened. The Bright Empire is invincible.” To which the native, quietly as a Northerner, replied, “I fear not today.”

Longlight wrapped her right hand around her left wrist. “You see,” Silvern said with great gravity and kindness, “you make the sign of the Willed Draw, even though you are not called a Palion.”

She heard the shower run and had a sudden, terrible feeling that the water was supposed to cover some other sound.

Longlight put a hand to her own mask, feeling a brief shock of unminded fear, a childish fright that the mask worn too long—or too well—would not come off.

“Forest is forest, and sand is sand, But hearts shall be always debatable land.”

Only mediocre conversations could be brought to an easy end. The intolerable and the important always found momentum to roll on.

Never confront madness eye to eye, because it will not blink, and the longer you stare, the more of yourself you give up to it. Look past it. Look through it. There is a soul inside it; speak to that.

There would have been a time when he would have read the letter over again, just enough times to memorize it, and then burned the paper. There had been such times, such messages. But just now, he needed some things to exist outside his own mind: to be absolutely, independently real, where he could return and touch them at need.

“One does not recover, really. But one goes on. To go on is the only stand against Death.”

“I broke pens drawing, and then Rahme and I burned the pictures. It was a kind of screaming. And then, I think, a kind of offering. There are places where prayers are written on paper and burned, so they will rise to Her.

I wanted to break and burn things. Beautiful things, because what is the point of there being beautiful things in a dead, ugly world?

“If you looked out on a stormy night and you saw a traveler whose candle was guttering in the rain, what would you do?” Longlight’s hand moved involuntarily: Shyira-Guarding-Seed. “You know that mine is a hard country. There is only one rule for that.”

There were very old sayings that a sorcerer who had not killed three dear friends wasn’t really trying; that all Masters walked alone, sooner or later.

In bottom drawers and backs of books, one only finds these things who looks.’”

They needed more experiments, out here at the end of the world.