Into the Narrowdark (Last King of Osten Ard #3)

by Tad Williams

So is there something wrong in the way men rule each other? she wondered. Animals walk and birds fly freely from one land to the next and no one thinks to stop them doing it. And God makes no lines across His Heavens—the sky is blue from one horizon to the other with scarcely a difference to be seen, let alone a boundary. And yet His children fight each other to the death over lines they can only imagine.

“Find what is real,” Master Himano always said. “Then consider only that.”

None of us must love the tasks we are given, we must only perform them faithfully.

But the novelty is not worth a poem,

“We are only loaned to the air, then the earth takes us all back.”

without stumbling into the dangerous terrain of too many assumptions.

‘Carry only what you can and leave the rest beside the road. Either someone else will carry it for you, or it will still be there for you to pick up on another day.”

“The only doom that is inescapable is the doom for which one helplessly waits,”

He could make out odd, vast shapes that might have been the apparently famous vessels—Tanahaya, too, had mentioned a story of eight ships—but they had neither sails nor rigging that he could see.

“When your sister is not present, it is my task to do so,” she said. “Now speak. You have never been so fearful before, because . . .” At last he surrendered. “Because it was you. Because I feared you would be hurt or even killed—that I would lose you.” “Do you think I did not feel the same?” His expression was carefully neutral. “Felt the same fear for me, you mean?” “Of course, you cautious, beloved fool.” She laughed. “Forty summers and more we have known each other, and you have been like a brother to me—and more than a brother.” She took a breath. “Can you not admit you care for me, Jiriki? And not just as another sister, but as more than that?” “I do,” he said simply. “But these are evil times, and I will be protector of Year-Dancing House after my father is gone. I did not think I had the right—” “May Unbeing take your ‘right’!” she said with some heat. “It is precisely in times like these when we must speak openly, must reach out for what we want. Do

you want me, Willow-switch? Do you want me as I want you?” He could not make himself smile, but he forced the other sorrows from his face. “I do, Spark. You know I do.” “Then that is settled. Help me up onto your saddle.” She realized she was still trembling. “We will have to leave my good Bluejay here. I will mourn him.”

“You know many things I do not, beloved, but you live on the mountain of Might-Be, as my father likes to say. I am down here in the valley of Must-Be.”

There are as many reasons as there are untruths.”

But how can anyone prove they are who they say they are? Only when someone who knows the truth says that it’s true. And even then, some will doubt it.

“Will you hold me?”

“The man who does not tend his flock, thinking that my Father will do his work, will find himself one day without any sheep.”

“Who can say?” The Sitha seemed impatient, as though Simon was failing to understand something important. “Your Moor-Gan was in Da’ai Chikiza with the scholar Tanahaya.”

“I do not see how any of this could be my fault.” Yeja’aro almost sounded insulted. “I did not put chains on you. I have not harmed you. I came and did as I was told. Now I must ride west to complete my last task for Year-Dancing House, then my honor will be regained.”

“Honor! The Devil with your honor! Jiriki would want you to help me.” “It is not for me or you to decide what Jiriki would want.” The Sitha might have been a magistrate, quickly handing down some gruesome sentence because he was in a hurry to get to his country estate. “I know what he told me. I have accomplished that. Beyond that, the Garden waits.”

“If not for my sake, then for Jiriki’s. And Aditu, his sister—she is my friend, too.”

How few are there, he wondered, whether men or immortals, that can be trusted with power over others? Not many. Not many at all.

My last words with my uncle were also harsh ones. I wish I could amend that, but an arrow cannot fly backward to the string.