The Hero and the Crown

He laughed, tried to make it into a cough, inhaled at exactly the wrong moment, and then really did cough.

He will apologize, or I'll give him a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all.

If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.

Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for....

I love you. I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting.

If you wish, I shall go personally to your City and knock together the heads of Perlith and Galooney.

And none at all has ridden at the king's side since Aerinha, goddess of honor and flame, first taught men to forge their blades. You'd think Aerinha would have had better sense.

We kings do develop a certain ability to recognize objects under our noses.

Why do you tell me... so much?" Luthe considered her. "I tell you... some you need to know, and some you have earned the right to know, and some it won't hurt you to know--" He stopped.... "Some things I tell you only because I wish to tell them to you.

The lessons she'd been forced to learn were dry spare things, the facts without the sense of them, given in the simplest of language, as if words might disguise the truth or (worse) bring it to life.

She fell in love with him, and he with her; that’s a spell if you like.

Don't let the title mislead you," Arlbeth told her. "The king is simply the visible one. I'm so visible, in fact, that most of the important work has to be done by other people." "Nonsense," said Tor. Arlbeth chuckled. "Your loyalty does you honor, but you're in the process of becoming too visible to be effective yourself, so what do you know about it?

Galanna's gift, it was dryly said, was to be impossible to please.

She caught her father one day at breakfast, between ministers with tactical problems and councillors with strategic ones. His face lit up when he saw her, and she made an embarrassed mental note to seek him out more often; he was not a man who had ever been able to enter into a child's games, but she might have noticed before this how wistfully he looked at her. But for perhaps the first time she was recognizing that wistfulness for what it was, the awkwardness of a father's love for a daughter he doesn't know how to talk to, not shame for what Aerin was, or could or could not do.

Gods of all the world, say something," she cried, and Talat startled beneath her. "I love you," said Luthe. "I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting. Go quickly, for I cannot bear this." She closed her legs violently around the nervous Talat, and he leaped into a gallop. Long after Aerin was out of sight, Luthe lay full length upon the ground, and pressed his ear to it, and listened to Talat's hoofbeats carrying Aerin farther and farther away.

There was a long pause while she hated everyone impartially: Tor for behaving like a farmer's son whose pet chicken has just been insulted; her father, for being so immovably kingly; and Perlith for being Perlith.

The burden she carried was different from yours, and it had worn on her for many years. When I knew her she had forgotten joy, although I believe Arlbeth gave her a little back again.

They could at least part with love. It was like Tor to make the gesture; her father, for all his kindness, was too proud—or too much a king; and she was too proud, or too bitter, or too young.

but she brooded not only about how to tackle her father, but also about what, precisely, she was setting out to do. Test the fire-repellent properties of her discovery. Toward killing dragons. Did she really want to kill dragons? Yes. Why? Pause. To be doing something. To be doing something better than anyone else was doing it.

she brooded not only about how to tackle her father, but also about what, precisely, she was setting out to do. Test the fire-repellent properties of her discovery. Toward killing dragons. Did she really want to kill dragons? Yes. Why? Pause. To be doing something. To be doing something better than anyone else was doing it. She

She had courage enough, but little imagination; or she would not have forgotten joy, whatever the weight on her.

Tor said in a strangled voice, "He will apologize, or I'll give HIM a lesson in swordplay he will not like at all.