Король Терний

Горы учат дисциплине – и, заметьте, совершенно бесплатно.

Его жизненно важные органы, похоже, уже давно не были для него жизненно важными.

Trust is a fine thing, but try not to build plans upon it.

There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.

Brother Row you can trust. Trust him to lie, trust him to cheat, perhaps to betray. Most of all trust him to be true to what he is, a weasel, a killer in the dark, handy in the fight. Trust in all that and he will not disappoint.

We`re built of contradictions, all of us. It`s those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. Give me a man whose parts are all aligned in agreement and I`ll show you madness. We walk a narrow path, insanity to each side. A man without contradiction to balance him will soon veer off.

Roma hated nothing like it hated invention. A priest might order you burned for making free with some enchantment, but find the trick of a better steel, or rediscover some alchemy of the Builders, and they would have an expert spend all week killing you.

There`s something about a fight that makes you forget your troubles. Mainly it`s that all your troubles are suddenly very small in the face of the new problems swinging yoru way with sharp edges on them.

These things seem terribly important when you`re young. Matters of the heart and groin. They fill your world at eighteen. But believe me. When you`re the wrong side of forty-five and past is a bright haze... they`re more important still.

"The world isn`t shaped by reasonable men," I say. "The world is a thief, a cheat, a murderer. Set a thief to catch a thief, they say."

"Old men make old words holy. I say old words are worn out and should be set aside. Take a new bride to bed, not a hag," I said, thinking of Ekatri. "A fool may scrawl on a slate and if no one has the wit to wipe it clean for a thousand years, the scrawl becomes the wisdom of ages."

The forest in the Danelore have a character all their own, dense pines that make a perpetual twilight of the day and ink-black soup of each night, moon or no. Old needles deaden every footfall and hoof, leaving the dry scratchings of dead branches the only sound. In such a place it takes no leap of imagination to believe every goblin tale of the long-hall. And in breaking clear once more into open air you understand that it was with the wood-axe man claimed these lands, not the battleaxe.

Brother Maical`s wisdom lies in knowing he is not clever and letting himself be led. The foolishness of mankind is that we do not do the same.

"You know why I keep you around, Rike?" I asked.
"Why?"
"You`re like the worst part of me. That squeak of enamel on enamel again as I ground my teeth. "Damn." It slackened off. "I don`t have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. I got me a devil on both. But you`re like tha bad one. Like I`d be if I lost my charm, and my good looks."

Sir Makin is almost the handsome knight of legend, dark locks curling, tall, a swordsman`s build, darkest eyes, his armour always polished, blade, keen. Only the thickness of his lips and the sharpness of his nose leave him shy of a maiden`s dream. His mouth too expressive, his look too hawkish. In other matters too Sir Makin is "almost". Almost honourable, almost honest. About his friendship, though, the is no almost.

"This is a bad idea," Makin said. He stank of horse-shit.
"If you ever stop saying that I`ll know it`s time to start worrying," I said.

I had wanted my uncle`s blood. His crown I took because other men said I could not have it.

Coddin frowned. "He might be handy in a fight, but there`s no subtlety in him, no discipline, he`s not clever, he--"
"The way I`d put it," said Makin, "is that Rike can`t make an omelette without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens and wearing their entrails as a necklace."