You would choose only the worthy to embrace, Shield Anvil? Then what you do is not an embrace, sir. It is a reward.
As if true honesty belonged to solitude, since to be witnessed was to perform, and performance was inherently false since it invited expectation.
Death is every mortal’s shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him.
Conviction is a fist of stone at the heart of all things. Its form is shaped by sure hands, the detritus quickly swept from view. It is built to withstand, built to defy challenge, and when cornered it fights without honour. There is nothing more terrible than conviction.
If you come to the window, and look through the other end, Karsa, you will see things far away drawn closer.’ He scowled at her, and set the instrument down. ‘If something is far away, I simply ride closer.
Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they see how those others are deceived and made into fools because they chose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse.
I cannot help what I am – and that is the first lie, the one I uttered to myself long ago.
With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it.
But history teaches us nothing new. And should I choose to look ahead, to what is yet to come, why, I see a future made most toxic, born on the day society sets the value of wealth above that of lives.
They are a generation that has tasted blood, and where horror fades, nostalgia seeps in. In war all is simple, and there is appeal in this. Who among us is comforted by confusion, uncertainty?
Belief creates, Arathan. So you have been taught. The god cannot exist until it is worshipped, until it is given shape, personality. It is made in the crucible of faith.
Why not worship money? At least its rewards are obvious and immediate. But no, that was simplistic. Letherii worship was more subtle, its ethics bound to those traits and habits that well served the acquisition of wealth. Diligence, discipline, hard work, optimism, the personalization of glory. And the corresponding evils: sloth, despair and the anonymity of failure. The world was brutal enough to winnow one from the other and leave no room for doubt or mealy equivocation.
Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of wilful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls.
Some things are important. Others are not. Yet all would claim a mortal’s attention. It falls to each of us to remain ever mindful, and thus purchase wisdom in the threading of possibilities. It is our common failing, Brys Beddict, that we are guided by our indifference to eventualities. The moment pleases, the future can await consideration.
The simple ones aren’t simple. The broken ones aren’t broken. They are rearranged.
His wounds now bear scars, and those scars dull all feeling. You may see that as a flaw, but I assure you, just as the body will protect what was damaged, so too will the soul.
Take a thousand soldiers. Four hundred will stand in a fight but do nothing. Two hundred will run given the chance. Another hundred will get confused. That leaves three hundred you can count on. Your task in commanding that thousand is all down to knowing where to put that three hundred.
Knowledge is not enough. It never is. It’s the capacity to do something with that knowledge. To do it perfectly. Absolute timing. With devastating consequences.
What I was is not what I am. Two men, identical faces, but different eyes. In what they have seen, in what they reflect upon the world.
They are human, after all, and it is human nature to transform loss into a virtue. So that it might be lived with, so that it might be justified.