Go carefully, child of mat, where no mercy can be had, and let your faith lead you on.

When I write what publishers call 'fantasy' I am writing in what I think is the most important tradition of fiction: starting with Homer and up through Shakespeare and Milton, the most important themes to tackle are those of the mythopoeic domain, tales of the body and mind seen through a temperament and a cosmos divorced from current reality so what is said can be more clear.

"Learn what can, and cannot, be asked from destiny."

These Stepsons tread where mortals don't belong, some of us think. They seek out battle high above their station. Who knows what powers may yet take them and their mystic allies to task, bring them their comeuppance?

Every man heals himself.

Tempus never left a problem for another to solve. Tempus never let the pain or difficulty of an undertaking persuade him not to pursue a resolution his heart thought was right. Tempus never gave up.

In every age he had ever studied, doomsayers abounded. No millennium is attractive to the man immured in it; enough prophecies have been made in antiquity that one who desires, in any age, to take the position that apocalypse is at hand can easily defend it. He would not join that dour order; he would not worry about anything but Tempus, and the matter awaiting his attention.