Quite impressive, to unbind what I have wrought with nothing more than blood.
Did you know I never paid taxes before I came here? The Edema don’t own property, as a rule.” He gestured at the inn. “I never understood how galling it was. Some smug bastard with a ledger comes into town, makes you pay for the privilege of owning something.
Tempi reached out and gripped my shoulder firmly. Then he looked up, met my eye, and held it for a brief moment. Such a rarity for him. He gave a small, quiet smile. “Proud,” he said.
As above, so below.
He suggested several unpleasant, unsanitary things I could do to myself at my earliest convenience.
I’ve learned that the best way to stay safe is to make your enemies think you can’t be hurt.
Offstage I worry and sweat. Onstage I am calm as a windless winter night.
Her lips were red. Not the garish painted red so many women believe makes them desirable. Her lips were always red, morning and night. As if minutes before you saw her, she had been eating sweet berries, or drinking heart’s blood.
Out of class, Elxa Dal was charming, soft-spoken, and even a little ridiculous when the mood was on him. But when he taught, his personality strode back and forth between mad prophet and galley-slave drummer.
The crickets, too, respect the silence. Their calls are like careful stitches in its fabric, almost too small to be seen.
Wrong things never lead to success. If a man acts wrongly and succeeds, that is not the way. Without the Lethani there is no true success.
If your mind had the rare talent of not being fooled by its own expectations, you might notice something else about them, something strange and wonderful.
But you of all people should realize how thin the line between the truth and a compelling lie. Between history and an entertaining story.” Chronicler gave his words a minute to sink in. “You know which will win, given time.
I would pass over the whole of that evening, in fact. I would spare you the burden of any of it if one piece were not necessary to the story. It is vital. It is the hinge upon which the story pivots like an opening door. In some ways, this is where the story begins. So let’s have done with it.
It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.
The point of all of this is control. First you must have control of yourself. Then you can gain control of your surroundings. Then you gain control of whoever stands against you. This is the Lethani.
After a moment he reached out and brushed the unruly red hair back from his face, like a mother would with a sleeping child. Then he began to sing softly, the tune lilting and strange, almost a lullaby:.
Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying “time heals all wounds” is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.
For all that she lacked your fire.
She caught a piece of my smile and shone it back at me.