– You’re a fool. I thought so and now I know it. Go, while you’re yet safe.

–The Iron Rose turned, looked blindly out into the darkness where Torc still stood. Look what you’ve done! she screeched at him, her face twisted. You hated thing. Now are you satisfied

– Smoke. She smelled smoke. She ran to the door. She took a deep breath to shout, choked. The passage was full of it. She ran back into her room, took up her washcloth, soaked it in water, put it over her face, and opened her mouth to shout again just as a strange light erupted through the passage windows, and a loud wild bell sounded tocsin over her voice. The king’s tower was afire.

– The trembling gave way to faint excitement. What if—what if Gar came home again before she returned the scrolls? What if she couldn’t get back into his bedchamber? Or someone saw her leaving the queen’s tower and followed her there?… The excitement faded. But after another minute, so did the fear. If they caught her, so be it. At least she’ll have tried.

–Out of the dark the old woman’s voice came. “I’m here. Pick her up, young man, gently, if you value your splendid outfit, and follow me.” “Harbeli!” Tanna was vaguely aware of being lifted, of the old woman’s face hovering somewhere upside down against the wheeling stars then in a flash of pain the face and the stars winked out.

18 –Then tell me only one thing, if you can: shall I be king hereafter? The Athor regarded him long and solemnly, then slowly he nodded. Yes, he answered. You shall wear the crown. The Athor stood, and in that moment a shiver of cold air passed through the arbor, stippling the surface of the pool, scattering the fish, and sending a faint frisson through the brittle bushes, showering dead and dying leaves onto the grass, chilling Torc’s sweat-damp clothes.

–If the scrot would make a likeness of the melk for him, and maybe give her some hair, that indeed would be a gift. But the mentor would never agree to ask Sheshu for the kind of likeness of her that Torc would want. But if he ever did, then, oh then would Torc test out the Gurnyac lore!

She … tried to sit up. But the night had been too much for her. The stables, the shock of seeing Feric’s treachery. The horrible moaning from next door. And now this that she’d tried so hard to avoid. With awful suddenness, hot caustic fluid welled from her gut, spilling out and down as though it would never ever stop.

He stood before a grassy courtyard walled in by white rush screens. In the centre of the grass was a raised blue mat marked off by a thick latik cord. In the centre of the mat sat a small golden man dressed only in a loin cloth…. “Behold the Harash D’ho, prince. Grand Master of the D’hogana.”

Here, where light and dark commingled, one stood to greet them. No Lothuri was he, for sure…. The features were blunt as the pitted Dryacs atop the Gurnyac keep. His scalp, furthermore, was shorn. His robe was dark brown, whatever that meant.