Stone of Farewell

Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess. Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their consciences with the gift of survival.

Now I end my death song. I give my farewell to mountain and sky. It has been good to be alive.

Fear goes where it is invited.

It was strange how the future seemed tied inseparably to the past, so that both revolved through the present, like a great wheel...

For all the things we've seen... my goodness, the world still has more to show us, doesn't it?

He was not great; he was, in fact, very small. At the same moment, though, he was important, just as any point of light in a dark sky might be the star that led a mariner to safety, or the star watched by a lonely child during a sleepless night. . . .

Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbled house, thinking: ‘what a nice basking-spot someone built for me.

Part of manhood, I am thinking, is to ponder one’s words before opening one’s mouth.

well-armed and fierce-faced, threatening despite their small stature. Simon stared at the trolls. The trolls stared at Simon. “They’ve all heard of ye, Simon,” Haestan boomed; the three riders looked up, startled by his loud voice, “—but no one’s hardly seen ye yet.” The trolls looked the tall guardsman up and down in alarm, then clucked at their mounts and rode on hurriedly, disappearing around the mountain face. “Gave them some gossip,” Haestan chuckled. “Binabik told me about his home,” Simon said, “but it was hard to understand what he was saying. Things are never quite what you think they’re going to be, are they?” “Only th’ good Lord Usires knows all answers,” Haestan nodded. “Now, if y’would see y’r small friend, we’d best move on. Walk careful now—and not so close t’edge, there.” • • • They made their way slowly down the looping path, which alternately narrowed and widened as it traversed the mountainside. The sun was high overhead, but hidden in a nest of soot-colored clouds, and a biting wind swooped along Mintahoq’s face. The mountaintop above was white-blanketed in ice, like the high peaks across the valley, but at this lower height the snow had fallen more patchily. Some wide drifts lay across the path, and others nestled among

You show her respect. That is a good thing,” he said. “Too often it is that men think those who serve are doing it from inferiorness or weakness.

In a hole, in a hole.” Skodi piped, “. . . in the ground, in a hole, where the wet-nosed mole sings a song of cold stone, and of mud and gray bone, a quiet, small song all the chill, dark night long as he digs in the deep, where the white worms creep, and the dead all sleep, with their eyes full of earth where the beetles give birth, laying little white eggs, and their brittle black legs go scrape, scrape, scrape, and the dark, like a cape, covers all just the same, darkness hiding their shame as it covered their names, the names of the dead, all gone, all fled, empty winds, empty heads, Above grass grows on stone, fields lie fallow, unsown all is gone that they’ve known so they wail in the deep, crying out in their sleep, without eyes, still they weep, calling out for what’s lost, in the darkness they toss, under pitweed and moss in the deeps of the grave, neither master or slave, has now feature or fame, needs knowledge or name, but they long to come back, and they stare through the cracks at the dim sun above, and they curse cruel love, and the peace lost in life, think of worry and strife, ruined child or wife, all the troubles that burned, dreadful lessons unlearned, still they long to return, to return, to return, they long to return. Return! In a hole, in the ground, under old barrow-mound, where skin, bone, and blood turn to jelly-soft mud, and the rotting world sings . . .