If I am the pawn of the gods, it is because they know me so well, not because they make my mind up for me.

Her queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth.

Muse of poetry, come to his aid, I thought. Could the man produce one more metaphor of husbandry? He seemed to be trying. "Green wood," I suggested, but even he sensed that there was something unfortunate about a metaphor for a king in which you dry out your royalty before you set fire to it.

All of my own impulses to balance and move seemed to conflict with those of the guards, and I was jerked and jostled down the portico, just as graceful as a sick cat.

That one,"-he nodded toward the closed door-" will rule more than just Attolia before he is done. He is an Annux, a king of kings.

Why didn't you tell me to take Attolia's advice from the beginning?" "I thought you should figure it out. What you learn for yourself, you will know forever," said Eugenides. "Pol used to say that," said Sounis, surprised. "I learned it from him. I just wish to my god that I had his patience for the process.

I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a burden that I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown slave in the fields of the baron, I knew the worst was over. I had failed them. At least I could not do so again