The Wandering Fire Quotes
"Winter was coming. Last night’s snow hadn’t melted and the bare trees were laced with it."
"To this I will make reply although he be a god and it mean my death."
"How many shadings, Kevin was thinking, are there to helplessness?"
"If Rakoth takes dominion in Fionavar he takes dominion everywhere. There is only one Tapestry."
"He may break us into fragments in the end, but he will not be unresisted."
"Do you understand? He is stronger than any of us... He cannot take away what you are."
"This child was something so unpredictable, so truly random, it numbed the mind."
"Whatever the father might be... a child learned love from being loved."
"To raise a King from the dead and make him surrender a name. After that I’ll be on my own."
"She had come to coerce, by the power she bore and the secret she knew."
"No space for sorrow here, and weakness shown might break the summoning."
"You are dead," she said coldly, in the cold wind. "And given over to the stone I bear."
"Has he not suffered enough?" the father cried in a voice that overrode the wind.
"For Ygraine deceived, and a son falsely engendered." The old, old telling.
"I have no time, Uther, and he is needed. By the burning of my stone I compel you—what is the name?"
"The name!" said Kimberly into the keening of the wind, and she raised the ring above her head to master him.
"Fear not. We went so deep because we are near to Gwen Ystrat. The old stories are true after all."
"I want to wake the Sleepers and set free the Wild Hunt!"
"She’s Torc’s," he’d said. "Has she no other choice?" Ceinwen had answered, and laughed before she disappeared.
"Not really," the King replied. "Not in this war."
"I’ve come this far," she said levelly, meeting his look with her own light green eyes. "I’ll stay the course."
"Because I tasted it on the Tree, along with all the other shapes of death."
"It was time for Sharra to be wed, but every time he raised the point she evaded him."
"It was a tableau of such studied magnificence that no man alive could miss the import."
"The Prince bowed. The lios bowed. Over their heads Angirad stood in blood up to his knees and claimed the Valgrind Bridge in the name of Light."
"He had been manipulated, he knew, but he also knew how much control underlay such a thing."
"We are honoured by the welcome you have offered us and stirred by your reminder of the deeds of our ancestors, both of Brennin and Cathal."
"I thank you. Eighteen of your chariots have unbalanced wheels, and we will need another thousand men, at least."
"The people of Cathal claim only wagers they have fairly won!"
"Is gallantry adequate compensation for incompetence?"
"You did. How better should I use it than as a gift?"
"Let all three of us remember that Kim dreamt his name and so he has a place. He is in the Tapestry."
"We do things differently. You had your charts and plans."
"The gods speed your blade in battle, and grant you final rest."
"There is no snow in Daniloth. The sylvain are blooming now as they do each midsummer, and there is green grass on Atronel."
"Aline decided; she sank down into a proper curtsy before the King. Rising, she said, 'We have need of you, High King. Audiart requests that you remember how seldom we ask aid and that you therefore consider our plight with compassion.'"
"It was Finn who had explained what Father had meant when Dari came crying to him after, because there was something wrong about him being bigger than Finn. Soon, Father had said."
"Finn had dressed him in his coat and boots and carried him out for a walk. Dari liked it more than anything when they did that."
"He had to try to love everything, Finn said, except the Dark."
"It wasn’t going to get any easier at all, not for a long time, maybe not ever."
"It was there, any fool could see, it might be greater than any of them could fathom, but as of now it was latent only."
"She had no space for sorrow because something else from her dream had slotted into place with the High King’s words."
"It was, surprisingly, Dave Martyniuk who broke the stillness. 'This may be very dumb, I don’t know … but it occurred to me that if Kim’s ring is being called, then maybe Owein is ready to be released and we’ve been given the means to do it.'"
"They were calling. Calling him to come and play outside in the wild dark dancing of the storm."
"With a sigh of pleasure, Dari kicked off the slippers and crawled in beside Finn, who moved over, leaving Dari the warm part where he’d lain."
"The wind was behind them, which made things easier, and then, when they dipped down towards the valley around the lake again, he felt it grow milder and less chill."
"Paul watched him go. He remained motionless for a long time after, his eyes fixed on the curve in the trail past which Kevin had disappeared."
"How many twists for the heart are gathered in this one night?"
"There is some brightness allowed. Even for you. The morning will offer light."
"It is a cold fate for one with so warm a heart."
"All through the company, smiles and then laughter began to blossom like flowers in a stony place."
"He is insofar as he is anyone's. He was mine once, a very long time ago, but Cavall fights his own wars now."
"Not to die in silence, not servants, never slaves, though their thread be torn from the Loom and lost forever in the Dark."
"There are greater griefs and lesser, and I am trying to find the lesser."
"Not that one. He has walked with Dana in Avalon."
"She smiled with the simplicity of a child. 'Good,' she said. 'Then I will sleep now. I could sleep for days.'"
"It is bad, he was thinking, when you have to lie to friends. But the reality was too difficult, too alienating, and it was private, too."
"The truth was that nothing of the desire that every other man in the company was feeling had even touched him."
"All he wanted was to matter, to have some way, however slight, of effectuating the heartfelt vow he had sworn."
"There was, he told himself, no room for maudlin self-pity in a curriculum vitae like that."
"Fur gezunter heit, und cum gezunter heit," Sol Laine had said in Yiddish. Go safely, and come safely. Nothing more."
"It took a moment before he realized that she was crying. He hadn’t expected that."
"For a moment Kevin looked back. There were lights behind him in Morvran and in the Temple, and dimly, if he listened, he could hear shouts and laughter."
"His breath frosted in the night air, and the only sounds were the movements of his horse and the sighing of the wind, softer now since they had come down from the high places."
"He took a number of slow, deep breaths and felt his heart’s hard beating ease."
"The twenty-seventh was the last; it took him out of the path to the edge of a huge round chamber that glowed with an orange light from no source he could see."
"He hadn’t brought any sort of light, so he had to wait for his eyes to adjust."
"His heart seemed to have slowed and his palms were dry, though there was a dampness to the rough walls."
"He went on for a long time, how long he didn’t know."
"Eventually the corridor bent sharply right, and down, and in the distance Kevin saw a glow of light."
"The path widened now, and there were steps. He counted, for no good reason."
"She was laughing still when he rose. Spittle rolled down her chin."
"With the same needle she pointed, inwards, to the chamber."
"It was warm. He undid another button of his shirt and then, on impulse, took it off."
"It seemed to him as if they floated for a moment, and then the long falling began."
"In the absolute black he waited and there was so much power in him, so much longing."
"She was there and her arms were around him in the dark as she claimed him for her own."
"He heard his own harsh breathing, felt the storm gathering, the power, knew this was the destination of his days."
"With her own transfiguring ecstasy she flared alight; she was incandescent with what he had done to her."
"And now she had come, and it was more than anything could be, more than all."
"In summer turned winter made bitter by frost."
"Not yet," he said aloud. "I’ll be fine when I’ve had a haunch of eltor meat on the grass under the stars."
"I wish you could, too, dreamer. I am glad to have stood with you before I died."
"That was Ysanne’s to see, and so it is mine. Go easy, Gereint, back to your Plain. You will have tasks enough waiting there. You cannot be everything to all of us."
"No. You won’t want to share what I think I’m about to do. Send them west, Gereint. The war is Loren’s now, and Matt’s, I think. In the place where Amairgen died."
"All the nights she had lain beside him after the arc of lovemaking was done, watching Kevin struggle to come back from so far."
"It is joy that is the rarest thing," said the onetime King of Dwarves.
"Never believe it! We are not slaves to the Loom. Nor are you only Guinevere—you are Jennifer now, as well. You bring your own history to this hour, everything you have lived."
"The only way, sometimes," he replied. "Do you not feel it, though?"
"I am sent to say to you, in this place and among the people here gathered in concourse, that the sun rises in your daughter’s eyes."
"Oh, my love," she said and her voice broke, after all. "I need you to forgive me for so much. I am afraid—"
"I think I do. There is always grief. It is joy that is the rarest thing," said the onetime King of Dwarves.
"But we are at war, Father. How can I not ride?"
"Every gift the Goddess gave was double-edged."
"He was old now, and the blinding had been a long time ago, but he remembered it with utter clarity."
"It had been a rich life, he thought; more full than he could have dreamed."
"Long years he’d had, before he lost his eyes, to find a truer sight."
"He had never seen the sea, but he had to find that ship wherever it might be among the waves."
"You cannot drive five hundred men all day without rest."
"How should you expect the wildest magic to tamely serve your will?"