"All my life I have prayed, and all my life I have been refused answer. I scarcely believed in the gods anymore, or if I did, it was only to curse them for their indifference. They betrayed my father, who had served Them loyally all his life. They betrayed my mother, or They were powerless to save her, which was as bad or worse. If a god has come to me, He certainly hasn’t come for me!"

"All sorts of men had the capacity to kill for the convenience of their betters; though usually, the only spell required could be fitted in a clinking purse."

"I saw no reason to stop my life for other people’s theories."

"Oswin was the most perfect servant of the Father, always so concerned for figuring out the exact rules and getting himself on the right side of them. Or them on the left side of him."

"Those who are unwilling to admit error are fated to repeat it?"

"Indifference served him quite as well as integrity."

"It still felt like hauling buckets from a well of memory with a rope that burned his hands."

"So when Audar the so-called Great slaughtered four thousand Wealding prisoners of war at Bloomfield, it’s said he didn’t pray at all. That made it a proper Quintarian act, I suppose, and not heresy. Some other crime, perhaps, but not human sacrifice. One of those theological fine points."

"“Your pleasure, my lord?” he inquired nervously. To be anywhere but here, doing anything but this."

"Boleso’s men, Ingrey was reminded, were out of the habit of questioning the sense of their superiors’ orders. Or perhaps it was that any who dared were got rid of, one way or another, and these were the remainder. Residue. Scum."

"Too little payment for a crime, too much for an accident."

"One scarcely knows if he would be of more use to us as a hostage, or set loose to be a very bad enemy leader."

"...your soul is your own, now, to make of what you will. We are all of us, every one, our own works: we present our souls to our Patrons at the ends of our lives as an artisan presents the works of his hands."

"An hour will suffice. If it is the right hour."

"We are all, every living one of us, doorways between the two realms, that of matter that gives us birth, and that of spirit into which we are born in death."

"The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!" "I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair."

"One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns."

"You are a most excellent lawyer, for a dead man."

"He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers."

"Such a perilous concentration of demons would create chaos all around it." "War gathers on these borders," said Ista. "A greater concentration of chaos I can hardly imagine."

"I would be considerably more impressed with your god, dy Cabon," said Ista through her teeth, "if He could have arranged one life's worth of simple protection in advance, rather than three hundred lives' worth of gaudy vengeance afterward."

"I have denied my eyes, both inner and outer. I am not a child, or virgin, or modest wife, fearing to offend. No one owns my eyes now but me. If I have not the stomach by now to look upon any sight in the world, good or evil, beautiful or vile, when shall I? It is far too late for innocence. My only hope is the much more painful consolation of wisdom. Which can grow out of knowledge alone. Give me my true eyes. I want to see. I have to know."

"So, you dragged me here, whichever of You harries me. But you cannot force me through that door. Nor can you open it yourselves. You cannot lift so much as a leaf; bending iron or my will is a task equally beyond your capacities. They were at a stand, she and the gods."

"The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded."

"The entire center of her life was a blackened waste, its long years not to be recovered nor replaced."

"A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter."

"You must go home eventually." "I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again."

"The gods...the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart." Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves.""

"And the Bastard grant us . . . in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding."

"You can't solve problems by running away from them, it was said, and like the good child she had once been, she had believed this. But it wasn't true. Some problems could only be solved by running away from them."

"The shocked silence that followed was decidedly baffled. And even, possibly, a little thoughtful, if that was not too much to hope."

"I don't duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange. If I decide you die, you will die when I choose, where I choose, by what means I choose, and you will never see the blow coming. (...) I don't duel. But if you seek to die like a bludgeoned steer, cross me again."

"A skilled soldier kills your enemies, but a skilled duelist kills your allies."

""Mercy from the Father and the Mother, mercy from the Sister and the Brother, Mercy from the Bastard, five times mercy, High Ones, we beseech you."… Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice."

"And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not."

"Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action."

"Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure."

"Just what kind of noose are you offering to put round my neck, here? Is this treason?" "Worse," Cazaril sighed. "Theology."

"Second sight is redundant to reason anyway."

"Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be."

"Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods."

"I for one find a casual destruction of a man's life even more repugnant than a determined one."

"The confusion of mind you dub honor is a disease."

"He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He'd seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he'd had his chances, though the gods knew he'd made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he'd be forced to leave undone."

"I think it (i. e., sainthood) is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god."

"But have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, then from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls. If the gods could seize passage from anyone they wished, then men would be mere puppets. Only if they borrow or are given will from a willing creature, do they have a little channel through which to act."

"The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers, you know."

"The joys of command — well, you know. You taught them to me. One part glory to ten parts shoveling manure."

"Right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics."