Disquiet Gods

Pain teaches mercy,” I said. “You suffer so that you understand suffering, so that you do not inflict it without need. Pain makes us human, teaches us to be . . . human.

Your road will not be easy, nor your burden light.""That does not matter," I said. "It must be.

Our fear of pain is the foundation of all morality. It is that fear that shapes our world, orders civilization. We pass laws, build walls and fortresses, fight wars and forge empires all to minimize our people’s pain. That is why it is the lowest form of obedience, not because it is basest—as I once answered when asked by Tor Gibson—but because it is foundational. Our experiences of pain teach us the nature of suffering, and so we are moved to minimize that suffering in others. Pain grounds our reality, is the cornerstone of our interactions with the objective world.

but a man is not the sum of his memories, but much more. A man is a story, a thread winding back through time from death to conception, an unbroken line—save where the powers of our universe intervene. A man is neither body nor soul, but a soul incarnate.

It is not power that builds empires, that asserts order on the stars.It is vision. Vision and the heroic will to act.Where there is that vision, all else follows.Where it is not, there is decadence, desperation, and decay.

That devil has long escaped its bottle

And we should not suffer evil to endure.

Reputations are lies of consensus.

We are beasts of burden, we men. We struggle, and by that struggle are filled.

Evil anywhere harms good everywhere.

The Chantry was right, had been right all along. The machines were devils. What was a machine intelligence? A pattern of electrical energy, of light and pure force, independent of its container.

Do not despair, Child of Earth. His victory is certain.

I was nothing at all.The barest drop in a limitless ocean. One photon against the infinite Dark.

Have I not said that freedom is like the sea? That a man may swim in any direction he chooses, but all he will do in that sea is drown.

She was only Tavrosi.

You cannot wash away a tiger’s stripes, Lorian had said. You can only be eaten by it, or ride. I had chosen to ride.

Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footsteps of doom?” She said this last in Classical English, and I recognized the phrase. “Tolkien,” I said.

Man is not matter, but a phenomenon, a wave crashing across the unpastured universe. A force. And that force was unchanged. That force was me.

He was not an emperor, not a king, but the Monarch of Latarra. The only ruler. The only one.

You're a good man Albee. None of us is good lord. Edward said. It's for us to do good, despite ourselves.

Do we tolerate our suffering only because we come into it gradually?

Kharn Sagara was evil. I say it plain. And we should not suffer evil to endure.

The way was straight and broad, as is every road to perdition.

I know!” I said. “We’re on our own down here! We can still do the job we came here for. Win or die!

Whatever I am is not written in my blood!

It is not power that builds empires, that asserts order on the stars. It is vision. Vision and the heroic will to act. Where there is that vision, all else follows. Where it is not, there is decadence, desperation, and decay.

The scholiasts had banished emotion, or the great among them had. But in doing so—as Gibson had warned me when I left him on Colchis for the first time—they had banished the greater part of themselves.

Our fear of pain is the foundation of all morality. It is that fear that shapes our world

Pain teaches mercy,” I said. “You suffer so that you understand suffering

Not Lorian’s lethal game of cat and mouse. This was mettle against mettle, man against man. Toe-to-toe. Hand-to-hand. Face-to-face. This I understood.