The Stone of Farewell (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #2)

by Tad Williams

“Does think well on ye, he does. Way he talks, un’d think he owed ye money.” He

“Does think well on ye, he does. Way he talks, un’d think he owed ye money.” He

But no one ever explained how terrible it is to be in the middle of a tale and not to know the ending. . . .

nothing.” The thin lips parted in a smirk. “Pitiful, short-lived things. Are you not yet used to dying with your questions unanswered?”

“I’ve no doubt of that, Miriamele. In fact, I think you should seek a greater challenge than merely being wiser than men.”

“You will come now, fat old man, if you don’t want to be hurt,” he whispered fiercely. “I have a knife.”

Erkynland spread below him like a carpet, he had felt as if he could reach out a hand and so change the world.

He was not great; he was, in fact, very small. At the same

moment, though, he was important, just as any point of light in a dark sky might be the star that led a mariner to safety, or the star watched by a lonely child during a sleepless night. . . .

But a mountain is bigger than we, and if it falls on us, we will still be very dead in a very big hole.”

square with rounded corners, full of dots and slashes. “Sesuad’ra,” the little man breathed, stretching the word out as if examining fine cloth. “Sesuad’ra—Leavetaking Stone. Or, as Geloë spoke it, the Stone of Farewell. A Sithi thing it is, as I guessed.”

Binabik squinted at the scroll. “It is the place, this is saying, where covenant was broken when the Zida’ya and Hikeda’ya—the Sithi and the Norns—split asunder to be going their separate ways. It is a place of power and of great sorrow.” “But where is it? How can we go there if we don’t know where it is?” “It was once being part of Enki-e-Shao’saye, the Summer-City

The Hayholt, Simon’s only home, was banned to him utterly. The sword Thorn was no more his than Simon himself was Sir Camaris, the blade’s most famous owner—and what was most important, he realized as he stared at his blistered heels, he had no horse at all.

“Simple answers to life’s questioning. That would be a magic beyond any I have ever been seeing.”

“Never make your home in a place,” the old man had told him that day. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey . . .”

“These are questions that need answering,” the little man replied. “I do not know. How do you know that the sword is for killing? And if it is for that, what makes you think any of us is to be the killer?”

“You are not a boy, Simon. You are a man in all the ways for measuring. A young man, true, but a man—or with great nearness.”

“Gods in the heaven or in the stone are distant, and we can guess only at what they intend.” He squeezed Simon’s forearm. “But you and I, we are living in a time when a god walks the earth once more. He is not a god who intends kindness. Men may fight and die, they may build walls

A folk that laughed at cold and at dizzying, breakneck falls at every turning of every trail had been chilled by a shadow they could not understand—not that Simon understood much himself.

Perhaps whatever the rhyme had spoken of would not happen until all three swords had been brought together.

Nisses was a madman?

“I’ll give you a new name. How about ‘Homefinder’?”

major awwww

Too many errors of such an obvious sort and one’s luck would at last run out.

The tapestries and gold candlesticks are all well and good—but how can anyone admire them when he’s freezing to death?

“Ah, Isbeorn. Well, I am Septes . . . but I told you that, no? Tell us more of what happens in the north. That is another reason I come to Nabban—for news we do not get in the Lakelands.”

Passing priests eddied nervously around the big-bellied northern monk, who was evidently caught up in some kind of religious fit. Isgrimnur roared and bellowed

with laughter until the tears coursed down his chafed pink cheeks.

Sometimes, when all was uncertain, a man just had to trust in the goodness of God.

“Can the Storm King make it winter forever?” he asked. Binabik shrugged. “That is not in my knowledge. He has been making winter very well during these Yuven- and Tiyagar-months.

It was hard to tell whether it was due to the scratching or to the spectacle of Simon being thrashed, but the wolf seemed to be enjoying herself immensely: her tongue hung from her grinning mouth and her brushy tail twitched in pleasure.

“what are they?” “More than shadows,” Binabik said quietly. “What you are there seeing are the towers of lost Tumet’ai.” “Towers inside the mountain? And what’s ‘Tooma-tie’?” Binabik frowned mockingly. “Simon. You have been hearing its name several times. What kind of student did Doctor Morgenes

“What is it?” “The song of the fall of the city of Tumet’ai, one of the great Nine Cities of the Sithi. That song is telling the tale of Tumet’ai’s abandonment. Those shadows you see are its towers, imprisoned in many thousand years of ice.” “Truly?” Simon stared at

Part of manhood, I am thinking, is to ponder one’s words before opening one’s mouth.”

“All, Hotvig. Six men, two women, one child. Only one cannot walk.”

stone-dwellers,”

“Didn’t you hear him?” the prince whispered. “Didn’t you hear him?” Deornoth was alarmed. “What?” “Six men, two women, and a child,” Josua hissed, looking from side to side. “Two women! Where is Vorzheva?”

“I don’t care!” Shem said, his ashy form swirling away now into darkness, as did the shadowed smithy and then the hayloft itself. “I don’t care! I must know . . . !” Finally, even the glowing thing that had been Ruben became only a bright point in the blackness . . . a star. . . .

He was close to the point where he would take a mattress in Hell if the Devil would lend him a pillow.

Otherwise, it is only worrying about things we cannot be changing; that is foolishness.” He mustered a smile. “‘When your teeth are gone,’ we Qanuc say, ‘learn to like mush.’”

Thus, if you are not soon taking this soup from my hands, I will drink it myself. I am no more interested in starving than you, as well as a great deal more sensible.”

“You may be washing the bowl when you have finished,” the troll sniffed. “A nice bowl is a luxurious thing to have on a journey of such dangerousness.”

great patientness and kindness.” Simon chortled.

I feel ike something vrrybad is gvoing to happen

“Vren,”

The Hyrkas, Simon knew, were a footloose people accounted good with horses and skilled in games at which other people lost money. He had seen many at the great market in Erchester. “Do the Hyrkas live out here, in the White Waste?”

The boy stared back at him, solemn as a petty cleric at a public ceremony. A small hand snaked out from beneath the jacket to pat Homefinder’s back. With Vren’s slender form resting against his chest, Simon took his reins in one hand so he could drape an arm around the boy’s midsection. He felt very old and very responsible.

Awwwwwwww

“And little I care, either. The old devil could be in Hell and it would not bother me.”

Miriamele distant on her tower balcony at the Hayholt, the maid Hepzibah, cross old Rachel, and angry-eyed Lady Vorzheva.

How could anyone hope to stay in one place in this mad world? To promise that to a child would be a lie. Home? He would be lucky to find a place to get out of the wind for a night.

Vren, when his turn came, calmly informed his listeners that while gathering acorns he had been pursued by an icy demon with glinting blue eyes, and that Simon and his two companions had saved him from the frosty menace’s clutches, smiting it with their swords until it shattered into icicles.

oh god!!!! the last one is true... I hate hate hate this kinda foreshadowing, pretty sure this is where Martin got it

So men always would be, ape and angel mixed, their animal nature chafing at the restraints of civilization even as they reached for Heaven or for Hell. It was amusing, really . . . or should have been.