Paladin of Souls (World of the Five Gods, #2)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

“They were lovers for years, as all Cardegoss knew but did not speak of outside the capital walls. My own mother told me, just before I wed, so I would not step into it unawares.

I suspect her mother was less shrewd and honest than mine, preparing her for her high marriage. Or less informed.”

“No man accumulates all that he did by chance.

“His possessions were a magic mirror, to reflect him the size he wished to be.”

“Arvol and Ias did not betray me by concealing their love. They betrayed me by concealing the curse.

The visions started when I became pregnant with Iselle.

thought I was going mad. And Ias and dy Lutez let me go on thinking ...

“That was cowardice. And contempt for my wits and spine.

They mired me in the consequences of their secret, then refused to trust me with its cause.

Except the gods did not seem to regard me as unfit. For it was me They came to. Not Ias. Not dy Lutez. Me.”

the Mother of Summer

told me that the curse might be broken and carried out of the world by a man who would lay down his life three times for the blighted House of Chalion.

Arvol let himself be stripped, bound, lowered upside down, until his struggles ceased, until the light of his soul went out to my inner eye.”

I could see the crack in the curse.

But he has to be willing.

For rage at his slander. And for raising my hopes so high upon his pride, then dashing them so low upon his frailty.”

and cowardice

Haha

if I had listened to my heart and not my head, and allowed Arvol more time, who is to say that after another day, or week, or month, he might have recovered his nerve?

This is an indictment.” She rocked back. “Of Arvol? Yes,”

“that, too.

But to demonstrate the true possibility, and then fail . . . shattered my heart.

One cannot force another’s soul to grow wide enough to admit a god to the world,

Arvol dy Lutez was a great man. But . . . not qui...

Those who have admitted a god do not shrink back to their former size, in my experience.

Question what experience?

In the long, lonely watches of his unsleeping nights, what did he now think about?

Simile unhelpful.

She fell into an evil dream

left over from the bad dreams I’d had last night,

“She wants a rite by rote,” said Ista. As I did, once. “A merchant’s bargain. Pay the coin, get the goods. She just can’t find the peddler.”

“So now she has taken her quick and her dead and gone on pilgrimage.

As Ista did, also for selfish reasons.

Foix has not the authority to command Cattilara’s servants against her own wishes. And someone must handle her demon.”

Haha - slap her face hard. She needs it.

Haha

LISS

Ista

Feather.

Featherwits.

A/k/a witless

Can I do this? She wasn’t sure. Well, I am sure that I can try.

“If you want him upright and moving,” said Ista to Cattilara, “you must keep him so yourself, now. No more stealing.”

Yeah it’s easy for selfish people to harm others to get what they want. Few will harm the selves in that pursuit.

“Illvin!

Haha

Haha

The demon’s spell is unbroken, just . . . reapportioned.”

Haha

“It’s a hard thing, when all your life rides on the decisions of others, and you can do nothing to affect the outcome.”

But no god awaits him, Ista thought. That’s what sundered means.

Simile nice.

I have already overstayed, most grievously.

it is the nature of miracles that their human conduit may not choose them, except to cry them yes or no.

It is only demon sorcery that we may bend to our own wills. No one bends a god.”