Embrace the pain, Sharum.

Entitlements. Leesha hated the word, too, but not for the same reason as Arther. It was a cold word, used by those with full bellies to bemoan feeding those without.

It doesn’t serve the dead to stop living yourself, out of guilt.

War is, at its crux, deception, Dama Khevat taught. A great leader must hold his deceit so close that even he himself does not think on it until the time to strike.

Every day away from succor was another night spent outside with the corelings, and not even Arlen took that lightly, but he had a deep and driving need to see things that no other man had seen, to go places no other man had gone. He had been eleven when he ran away from home. Now he was twenty, and had seen more of the world than any but a handful of other men.

Kaji’s ways,” Abban said. “Interpreted by corrupt Damaji to their own ends over the centuries.

Forgot to breathe, again.

Even after all these years, there was something he knew he needed to prove. To himself, and to the night.

That is faith. You cannot measure it with weights and doses like your herbs. You cannot classify it in your books, or test it with chemics. But it is there, more powerful than any bit of old world science. Only the Creator can see the path ahead. He makes of us what he wants – what the world needs – us to be. But we can have a glimpse, looking back.

Because we forgot magic,’ Gim.