The Curse of the Mistwraith Quotes

“An illusion threatens no one with harm. Neither can it be dispelled by armed force.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Show me a hero and I’ll show you a man enslaved by his competence.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Mage-taught wisdom reproached him: any gift of power was two-edged.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“The same sages also wrote that violence is the habit of the weak, the impotent and the fool.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Damn you," said Arithon. In a shattering change of mood, he was laughing. "You have it. But what's my word against the grandiloquent predictions of a maudlin and drunken prophet?"
"Maybe everything," Felirin finished gently. "You're too young to live without dreams.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“As a spirit schooled to power, his perception stems from one absolute. Universal harmony begins with recognition that the life in an ordinary pebble is as sacred as conscious selfhood.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“All things were formed of energy, arrangements of bundled light that were subject to natural law. The awareness of this truth, defined to absolute perfection, granted the mage-trained their influence. To know a thing, to encompass its full measure in respect was to hold its secrets in mastery. Life-force was the basis of all power.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Arithon said nothing for an interval. Then with clear and deliberate sting he said, ‘Why not? You know the ballads. Show me a hero and I’ll show you a man enslaved by his competence.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“A bad king revels in his importance. A good one hates his office. He spends himself into infirmity quashing deadly little plots to make power the tool of the greedy.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Show me a hero and I'll show you a man enslaved by his competence.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Let her own shortfalls, and not your vindictive perfectionism, be the quality that throws her to destruction.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Light,’ said Asandir, ‘and shadow, granted intact upon conception. That’s enough to destroy the Mistwraith, but only if the half-brothers work jointly.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Athera could ill afford the consequence if the Mistwraith that afflicted the world was ever to yield its hold on sunlight.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Descended of royal lines older than Dascen Elur’s archives, Arithon was the last living heir to the High Kingship of Rathain, a land divided in strife since the Mistwraith had drowned the sky.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Arithon; the word brought Asandir to sharp attention. Whoever had named this prince had known what they were about, for the Paravian root of meaning was ‘forger’, not of metals, but of destiny.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“How had a royal son of s’Ffalenn come by the abuse so cruelly marked into youthful flesh? The sight was an offence. Dascen Elur must have changed drastically in the years since the Fellowship sealed the Worldsend Gate for the cause of Athera’s drowned sunlight.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“When the first reedy snore escaped the Mad Prophet’s lips, Asandir’s forbidding manner softened. His fingers smoothed black hair from a profile all too familiar, and his smile widened with amusement. ’So, our Prophet thinks you a servant, does he?”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“The shadows’ geas bound the mind to madness: already Athera’s hope of renewed sunlight might be ruined. Sharp words prodded the Mad Prophet back to awareness.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Lysaer’s knees buckled. Arithon caught him as he fell. Barriers abandoned, he locked both arms around his half-brother and threw himself at the bright, mercurial shimmer of the Gate.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Lysaer managed a stumbling step. When his senses cleared from the explosion, his eyes beheld a vista of nightmare.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“The wisest of sages have said that a man will choose violence out of fear." The Master's words were expressive, but cold, and directed toward the King. "Is your stature so mean that you dare not face me without fetters?”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“the resolution of the great West Gate Prophecy.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Prudence, my prophet,’ the sorcerer rebuked. ‘The results of prophecies often resolve through strangely twisted circumstance.’ But if Asandir was yet aware that the promised talents were split between princes who were enemies with blood debts of seven generations, he said nothing.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Because the factual account lay hopelessly entangled between legend and theology, sages in the seventh age meditated upon the ancient past, and recalled through visions the events as they happened. Contrary to all expectation, the conflict did not begin on the council stair of Etarra, nor even on the soil of Athera itself; instead the visions started upon the wide oceans of the splinter world, Dascen Elur. This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“Yet contrary evidence supports a claim that the Master was unjustly aligned with evil. Fragments of manuscript survive which expose the entire religion of Light as fraud, and award Arithon the attributes of saint and mystic instead.”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith

“The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the third age of Athera, the most troubled and strife-filled era recorded in all of history. At that time Arithon, called Master of Shadow, battled the Lord of Light through five centuries of bloody and bitter conflict. If the canons of the religion founded during that period are reliable, the Lord of Light was divinity incarnate, and the Master of Shadow a servant of evil, spinner of dark powers. Temple archives attest with grandiloquent force to be the sole arbiters of truth”
― Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith