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The ugliness of the world does not fade, nor are fear and grief made less by time, nor is any suffering forgotten. We are only made stronger by its blows.
All things are always in motion. That is why it is the highest good and cause of civilization to preserve—to conserve—what is good.
We have need of heroes, however broken, however terrible, however insufficient they may be. And we have need of more than one hero, for heroes do break, you know.
“Monsters don’t have doubts.”
Some ask nothing of us, and so we are nothing to them. But there are those women who ask all of us. Those are the ones worth giving all for.”
One cannot step in the same river twice, and home is not home when you return, for you are not yourself. The man you were yesterday died yesterday, and is only a piece of the man of today, as you will be tomorrow.
But there is little right in all the universe, and none which we do not fight for and make for ourselves.
“I read,” I said, and shrugged. “People always accuse me of wasting my time, but they don’t complain when I have their answers.”
“The world’s changed,” I allowed, and glanced back to where Prince Rafael Hatim sat with Garan Peake and the others. “But men have not. Nor will.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “We keep making the same choices. The same mistakes. So the same wisdom will ever serve us.”
“Angels are only demons that kept their oaths . . . and still serve good and truth.”
We believe war is waged by heroes and brave men, and it is so. But war is waged as much—and more—by those not brave at all.
It is one thing to read of horrors in the dusty quiet of a library cell. Quite another to meet them in the bright light of day.
The cosmos is not cold or indifferent because we are not indifferent, and we are a part of that cosmos, of that grand order which has dropped from the hand of He who created it. Every decision creates its ripples, every moment burns its mark on time, every action leads us ever nearer to that last day, that final last battle and the answer to that last question: Darkness? Or light?
“Hadrian!”
