The Winter King

I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,” I heard myself saying, “and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.

The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.

If you can master me, that look seemed to say, then you can master whatever else this wicked world might bring. I can see her now, standing amidst her deerhounds that had the same thin, lean bodies, and the same long nose and the same huntess eyes as their mistress. Green eyes, she had, with a kind of cruelty deep inside them. It was not a soft face, any more that her body was soft. She was a woman of strong lines and high bones, and that made for a good face and a handsome one, but hard, so hard. What made her beautiful was her hair and her carriage, for she stood as straight as spear and her hair fell around her shoulders like a cascade of tumbling red tangles. That red hair softened her looks, while her laughter snared men like salmon caught in basket traps. There have been many more beautiful women, and thousands who were better, but since the world was weaned I doubt there have been many more so unforgettable as Guinevere, eldest daughter of Leodegan, the exiled King of Henis Wyren. And it would have been better, Merlin always said, had she been drowned at birth.

Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man.

How much of our earth has been wet by blood because of jealousy! And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.

To ask another man’s blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility.

Os bardos cantam sobre o amor e sobre como as mulheres desejam o amor, mas ninguém sabe o que ele é até que, como uma lança atirada do escuro, ele acerta.

One of the things I can’t stand about Christians is their admiration of meekness. Imagine elevating meekness into a virtue! Meekness! Can you imagine a heaven filled only with the meek? What a dreadful idea. The food would get cold while everyone passed the dishes to everyone else. Meekness is no good, Derfel. Anger and selfishness, those are the qualities that make the world march.

Are all Dumnonian warriors so ill-mannered?" she asked the table at large in an acid voice. "You want warriors to be courtiers?" Celwin retorted brusquely. "You'd send your precious poets to kill the Franks? And I don't mean by reciting their verses at them, though come to think of it that might be quite effective." He leered at the Queen and the three poets shuddered.

You're not a Christian, are you?" "No." "You should consider it. We may not offer too many earthly delights, but our lives after death are certainly worth having.

Poor Uther. He believed that virtues are handed down through a man's loins! What nonsense! A child is like a calf; if the thing is born crippled you knock it smartly on the skull and serve the cow again. That's why the Gods made it such a pleasure to engender children, because so many of the little brutes have to be replaced. There's not much pleasure in the process for women, of course, but someone has to suffer and thank the Gods it's them and not us.

I believe the Gods hate to be bored, so I do my best to amuse them. That way they smile on me. Your God,’ Merlin said sourly, ‘despises amusement, demanding grovelling worship instead. He must be a very sorry creature.

A vida é uma brincadeira dos deuses e não existe justiça. Você precisa aprender a rir ou então vai simplesmente chorar até morrer.

The sword was called Kaledvoulc'h, which means hard lightning, though Igraine prefers to call it Excaliber, and I shall call it so as well because Arthur never cared what name his longsword carried. Nor, did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. “What is the egg to the eagle?” he asked me, then said that he had been born, he had lived, and he had become a soldier, and that was all I needed to know.

Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. ‘What is the egg to the eagle?’ he asked me…

Madness has a purpose! It’s a gift from the Gods, and like all their gifts it comes with a price,

Mais tarde, muito mais tarde, aprendi que a alegria e o medo são exatamente a mesma coisa, uma apenas se transformava na outra pela ação, mas

And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.

of every night you must be open to the Gods, and if

Children born to unwed mothers,’ he said after a long silence, ‘have parts of their souls missing.

Some Gods are wicked, Derfel. And besides, they have no duty to us, only we to them. Maybe it amused them?

Dizem que este Deus (deus cristão) é do perdão. Melhor ofender um desses do que qualquer outro.

Entendo que é possível olhar nos olhos de alguém e de súbito saber que a vida será impossível sem eles. Saber que a voz da pessoa pode fazer seu coração falhar, e que a companhia dessa pessoa é tudo que sua felicidade pode desejar, e que a ausência dela deixará sua alma solitária, desolada e perdida.

The Gods play games with us, but if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims.

our oaths.’ He advanced down the path

I know I have gained Christ and through His blessing I have gained the whole world too, but for what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything.

I learned that the joy and the fear are the exact same things, the one merely transformed into the other by action,